From Russia with Love

Here is a picture of Red Square, with St. Basil's Cathedral on the left and the Kremlin on the right, the 'center' of Moscow, Russia where I travelled on a mission trip with Let's Start Talking in the summer of 1994.  It was an amazing experience, though not quite what I expected.  But I'm getting ahead of myself...

I have followed Erasure since their 1988 album 'The Innocents.'  It was probably the first time I feel I really had a 'musical identity.'  I followed suit with 1989's 'Wild' and was able to buy 'Chorus' the day it came out in 1991.   But those came out before I was 18- and this blog is a soundtrack of my adult life.   During the three years that transpired I threw myself into my growing music sensitivities.  And shortly before I left for Moscow, Erasure released a new single- 'Always'- which exceeded even their expectations in terms of critical acclaim and radio play.  It has an odd sense of tempo, at least for my unknowledgeable ears- but it's an 'offness' that draws me into it.  Sometimes if something sits too comfortably with you it can sink into the background until you lose your awareness of it.  This song resists that- a lesson that would later feed into my artistic education.  

Always

The second song here, called 'Take Me Back,'  literally takes me back to Moscow every time I hear it.  First of all, I was excited to have something new by one of my favorite bands.  Plus- I had always felt something was missing from their previous album, 'Chorus.'  Though they've always been an electronic band, there was something different about the sound of that album- it was even more electronic- less 'notes' and more 'blips' and 'bleeps.'  But when I heard this track, I was instantly pulled in.  They continued their electronic sound but it had a fullness that 'filled the space' better.  (It was many years later that I learned the reason- 'Chorus' was devoid of chords- it was all 'isolated' notes.  'I Say, I Say, I Say' brought the chords back.)  But it's arrival coincided with my departure for Russia and the two are forever linked in my mind. 

Take Me Back

As I alluded to earlier, it was an experience like no other.  Not that I could even have any expectations of what my first venture into world travel would be like- and to Moscow, Russia no less- for so long 'the enemy' as I grew up.  I was going to do missionary work with a program called Let's Start Talking which used an 'easy to read' version of Luke to teach conversational English while exposing our 'readers' to the gospel of Christ.  Nikole also participated in Let's Start Talking that summer, but to the surprise of many we went on separate teams to different hemispheres.  She went with a team to Uruguay in South America.  It was a time of incredible reflection for me.  A time to ponder the world in a way that few get to.  A time to ponder my faith in the act of sharing it.  A time to ponder my relationship with Nikole in a time of separation from her.  It was a time of pondering what art was- something that was really just coming into my consciousness for the first time in my life (even though I had been drawing all my life.)  I thank God that my team's experience there was out of the norm in the sense that we had far fewer 'readers' that we worked with compared to other teams.  From my perspective, God was giving me time and space to grow.  And for that I praise Him.

A cool aside:  we had a day layover in London on the way there so we decided to take the opportunity to eat at the original Hard Rock Cafe.  The Hard Rock was started by a couple of Americans in London in 1971.  Unbeknownst to us until we got there, but we happened to arrive on the anniversary day that the restaurant opened.  So for that day only- everything on the menu was at 1971 prices!!  Inflation has its priveleges when it is temporarily suspended.