One Crowded Hour

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Hush. Like all the best things in life, it starts quietly.

By streets and miles, leaps and bounds, there is abso­lutely no com­pet­i­tion for the song that meant the most to me in 2006. Unusu­ally, it even man­ages to be a track that was released over this past rather strange year, too. For me, that’s almost unheard of in these times of feel­ing so pathet­ic­ally out of touch.

I have been known to listen to One Crowded Hour, by the Aus­tralian band Augie March, some thirty or forty times in a row. I will admit to hav­ing cried whilst it played, and to being unable to stop the tears once they star­ted flow­ing. I will con­fess to hav­ing been almost unhealth­ily obsessed by the song — by the lofty clas­si­cism of its lyr­ics and the dream­like atmo­spher­ics of its music, all of which is then intric­ately carved round a melody that can only pos­sibly exist in the couldn’t-care-less musical free­dom of the 21st cen­tury, whilst at the same moment sound­ing so instantly recog­nis­able that it seems as if it might have sprung fully-formed out of any dec­ade from the 1930s onwards.

“Far from these non­sense bars and their nowhere music,
It’s mak­ing me sick and I know it’s mak­ing you sick.
There’s noth­ing there, it’s like eat­ing air
It’s like drink­ing gin with noth­ing else in,
And that doesn’t hold me together …”

I’m drink­ing gin tonight too, albeit with some­thing else in. Tonic, of course. Purely for medi­cinal pur­poses, I assure you, because after six months without so much as a drop of alco­hol passing my lips I am hav­ing to be care­ful. Very care­ful. Tonight, I’m a long way from the thud­ding beats and caco­phon­our noise of those non­sense bars too, although some four hours before the new year dawns I can already hear the first rev­el­lers carous­ing their way to the drunken hell­holes of south-west Lon­don. For a moment there, I wanted to be with them. It is New Year’s Eve, after all. But quite hon­estly, with or without the events of the past few months, I think this end of year even­ing would have found me exactly where I am now. I can’t bear the seem­ingly enforced jol­lity. Give me solitude and an over­grown path through my own thoughts any night of the week.

“Well, put me in a cage full of lions,
I’ll learn to speak lion, in fact I know the lan­guage well.
I picked it up while I was vers­ing myself
In the lan­guages they speak in hell …”

You talk, and I’ll listen. I’ll cast nervous, shy glances in your dir­ec­tion, and I’ll appear to be dis­trac­ted, but I will be listen­ing. I’m all ears. Always. I may even reply in frames of ref­er­ence that we can both under­stand, because I’ve taken the time and care to learn how to com­mu­nic­ate in those terms. Your terms. Every­one else’s terms. I have to be able to do that just in order to get by, to exist. I can seem nor­mal, and some­times I even want to pre­tend to be that way. When everything is too con­fus­ing, I really do desire such small town nor­mal­ity. It makes the day-to-day real­ity easier.

But look behind my eyes, and you’ll see me thirst­ing for the words that only you and I under­stand. Our secret code. I want to open my mouth and let loose mundan­ity, but have it mean so much more by the time it has wormed its way into your mind. I want you to read the move­ments of my lips and hear the cadences of my speech, and be able to grasp their mean­ing as if I was the dusty, cobweb-covered Enigma machine inside your head, decod­ing clar­ity from this banal ball of bray­ing con­fu­sion. Will you do that for me? Be that for me? I will for you, I promise.

“And for one crowded hour,
You were the only one in the room.
I sailed around all those bumps in the night
To your beacon in the gloom …”

There. That’s it. That’s the sum total of all I ask for in life. I don’t care for pop­ular­ity or to be appre­ci­ated simply at a sur­face level. All sur­face, no ten­sion. For one crowded hour — and all our hours are crowded, because that’s the nature of this fren­zied mod­ern whirl — I want to be the only thing you see. The only per­son. The only tar­get in your sights. Uncar­ing as to what’s hap­pen­ing out there, in here, even right next to us. Just to be, because if we never get the chance for being then there is little point in con­tinu­ing our piti­ful exist­ence. Con­stantly rush, rush, rush­ing can never replace even one single moment of simply being with one who under­stands you, one who gets you and all your foibles, oddit­ies and strange ways. Can you spare sixty minutes for that? Do you have a win­dow for me in your hec­tic sched­ule? Because I do. I’ll clear the decks for you, I prom­ise. I’ll move hell and high water and heaven besides. I’ll take an eraser to every appoint­ment if it means that I get the chance to appre­ci­ate you and what you mean to me.

That’s all I ask of a true friend, a con­fid­ant, a rel­at­ive and, nat­ur­ally, a lover. And since we’re alone and there’s abso­lutely no one listen­ing, you can tell me. Whis­per it in my ear. Take a con­fes­sional risk as the year draws to a close. Go on. I know you don’t like to admit it because it seems selfish, want­ing and needy, but that’s all you ask too, isn’t it?

Augie March are my secret. My own won­der­ful secret. Over the past twelve months, I have war­ily revealed their exist­ence only to those people whom I could be sure under­stood me and would grasp the true nature of shar­ing sixty minutes in my com­pany. I still want this eerie, time­less music to be mine and mine alone, but for this moment I want to share it with you too. I don’t know why, and I may come to regret it tomor­row. But for now, call it a part­ing gift to a year when this four minutes and fifty seconds of sub­lime melody rarely left my heart or my head.

Close your eyes and listen, but tell no one. This is our secret. Our under­stand­ing. Our silence in an all too crowded hour and an all too crowded, mad­den­ing world.

• Augie March
• Lyr­ics to One Crowded Hour