My release 'The Wings of a Butterfly' is a song written 40 years ago, the vocals taken from a 30 year old recording by a dear friend. I had just met Sarah, a person I would share a life with and I wrote it for her.
'Touch' I wrote to try to capture how I feel now about my relationship with Sarah and the world. Although our love is as strong as ever, inevitably the character and 'shape' changes over time. It's been very difficult over the last couple of years, I've gone through a period of change due to Long COVID and a personal choice to abstain from any chemical intervention to suppress my autism and ADHD, this includes alcohol, recreational drugs and prescribed psycho active medication. It has revolutionised my life for the better (mostly) but also presents difficulties masked by chemicals for the last 45 years. It has been very difficult for Sarah as you can imagine and is a 'work in progress'.
So, at the moment I feel 'disconnected' from everything, including the person I respect and admire the most. In this song I'm just asking to 'touch', a word with a deeper meaning than a physical interaction.
The song itself is intimate, emotional and personal.
In the video I have animated an 'alien', apt to my feeling of alienation in this world. This 'alien' I animated from a piece of art created by a student I worked with who thought it looked like me. He took great delight in seeking me out on the campus to present it. This has an enormous emotional connection for me as the student had a terminal illness and not long to live, he was living his life as 'normal' as he could and lived it full of joy (which in turn was a test for the staff at times :). A lesson for us all!
