|
"Some months ago, as I was working on my new double album in Bude in Cornwall, I had a really important dream. A voice appeared in my head. I call her my dark angel. She was a soulsister, who sang in my head. She was humming a melody to me. It was about half past five or six o'clock in the morning. I got out of bed and went over to the studio. In the country, the people there leave everything unlocked. So the studio was open. I went in and recorded the melody. From this melody the song A Thousand Oceans developed. I worked very long on it until it was finished.
Sometimes it takes an incredible amount of time for me to understand a song I have recorded. Because I am so much in it and I can't distance myself from it. Sometimes I don't really understand my songs until I go on tour and live with them. They are like girls for me that keep me accompanied. But sometimes I only understand my songs through the reactions of other people. This was the case with A Thousand Oceans. Mark had just lost his father. The two were very close, because Mark was an only-son. Before the death of my father-in-law they talked on the phone everyday. His father fooled us into believing he was getting better. He had cancer and one day he was just dead. It was a shock for Mark, because he had really believed it got better. They had already made plans for his father to come to visit us in the USA. He had never been there. After the old man had died my relationship with Mark got very difficult. He was inconsolable. You can't do much for somebody who has lost the most important person in his life. I often held him in my arms and took long walks with him. I was just there for him a lot. But I never really got through to him. I still have my mother and my father so I didn't have the experience. I only reached him with A Thousand Oceans.
After Mark heard the song, he always came to me, sat down next to the piano and said: 'Please, play that song again.' And I played it to him. Through that we got in contact once again. I took him back from that other galaxy he was in a million miles away from me. So that dream was very special to me. It renewed the connection between Mark and me."
|
BACK