Every year for as long as I can remember, I have put together a mix CD for Adrienne's birthday (which is today). Usually it is culled from a mixed bag of random off-cuts, thrown together with little or no regard for playability or continuity, good to break the monotony on long car trips but perhaps for little else. This year I attempted something a bit more scientific. (Only a bit more.) I had two songs that I wanted to use, and I decided to try to build a mix from the ground up, centred around those two songs, to see if I could do it. It was hard. I probably failed. It is also a little on the short side, 53 minutes inclusive of the closing 10-minute full-eighties 12-inch (comprising in itself, though, two songs, and no it isn't "Tainted Love / Where Did Our Love Go?"). Will she like it? I honestly don't know, and it would be in her nature to be too polite to say if she doesn't. The exercise has been fun. I probably won't do it this way again, though.
There were a few songs that came into my head as fitting perfectly, but which for various reasons I couldn't get to work. Chief amongst those was "Falling". There was simply no place for it, lest its delicate petals be crushed by the songs around it. It may be a song that can only exist in a vacuum of its own, to be followed by, and only by, an extended silence, so as to allow its many resonances to slowly fade. (If it was a primary-school child, its report card might read "Does not play well with others".)
Thus, I must present it here, on its own. Adrienne, this one's for you.
