Elin's Photograph

Appears on:
Love And Other Demons
The Greatest Show On Earth CD2 (Live Acoustic version)

               Calling out for someone to take this all away
               Calling out for anyone to make it go away
               Try to kill the picture the flowers in her hair
               Or taking shots of anything so I don't have to care

               Staring at a paper cup
               The emptiness inside
               She's going high someday
               She's going high someday.

               Living with a photograph is really not the same
               I've kept it in the suitcase where no one ever came
               Watching other insects as they feel around my walls
               They say that taking anything don't change a thing at all
               Stare again - the photograph
               The plastic is her mind
               She's going high someday
               She's going high someday.
               Crawls up the walls, yes she crawls up the walls

               Staring at my body,
               Christ! It isn't mine at all.

               Crying out for someone to make it go away
               To take away this photograph so I can live again
               Staring at the plastic cups
               The emptiness inside
               She's going high someday
               She's going high someday.

               Crawls up the walls, yes she crawls up the walls

               Now I'm waiting for that day,
               Yes, I'm waiting here that day.

ELIN
"ELIN was my girlfriend," Patrick says, squinting into the sun, "an incredible woman, a very talented artist, the only woman I've ever loved. My first girlfriend. She never wore skirts or dresses - she hated them, preferred jeans and a T-shirt, jeans and a jumper. And obviously I had no problem with that - God I'd be a bastard if I did. Anyway, I was drinking in a derelict house with friends - an awful place. The toilet had holes in the roof, and the pigeons would fly in and watch you pissing. Dreadful. "One day, I overheard a conversation, they were talking about a recent art exhibition in town, and how the artist had worn a long, pink dress and flowers in her hair, like a crown. And, as I listened, I realised they were talking about Elin - she'd invited me to the exhibition but I was too drunk, I'd forgotten about it completely. And she'd stood there in her pink dress and her flower-crown, waiting for me to see her, and I never came." Patrick winces. "I don't have any pictures of Elin - not even a snapshot - never did. But the song, 'Elin's Photograph', is about the picture in my head of this beautiful woman, who loved me inordinately, standing and waiting for me, gradually getting embarrassed and bitter in a party dress. Sometimes that picture rises in my mind, and I stop walking - stop whatever I'm doing - and feel like I've been punched. Life just seems to stop for a second. "I never told her that I knew about the dress. You'd better not print this story". Patrick thinks for a minute. "Yes, you should, actually." (from melody maker june 96)