I'll Follow you into the Dark

A converted locomotive shed wasn't perhaps where I would expect to experience transcendence but these precious if fleeting moments usually take us unawares.

My birthday present from a friend back in February was a ticket to see the American Indie band 'Death Cab for Cutie' at the Roundhouse in Camden. I've often cycled past that large (and decidedly circular!) building when out and about on Irish Chaplaincy business and I'd often thought it would be fun to go to a gig there. I mentioned that recently to the team and was interested to hear from Ellena that she'd once seen Amy Winehouse there before she was famous. She'd been support to McFLy and, in Ellena's view, quite stole the show.

At the time of receiving my gift I'd only heard one song of Death Cab, but what a song it is. My eldest son Kieran had once sung at a L'Arche event 'I Will follow you into the dark', beautifully, not long after he'd taught himself to play the guitar (like me, at the age of nineteen!). The lyrics tell of the writer's love for his girlfriend and the assurance that they will meet again after death, whether that's in heaven or in hell! One of the verses also speaks of his negative experience of the Catholic Church that he grew up in, and I meet many people who have been similarly hurt.

Ben Gibbard, song-writer and frontman of Death Cab, explains that he'd gone to the recording studio one day with his packed lunch in a bag. It was in the midst of a highly creative spell and he got out his lunch but then wrote the song in about fifteen minutes. He put his lunch back in the bag and went home! He explained in an interview, "When people ask me about this song, I never feel like I can claim that I wrote it because you should never be able to write a song in fifteen minutes, because I feel like I channelled the song but I didn't necessarily write it. Thankfully, I was able to put my name on it." I had a similar experience once in the middle of a six-day silent retreat and it was also around lunch-time! I was working on a couple of songs and then from somewhere there came a different tune. It was 12.45 p.m. and lunch was at 1 and I didn't want to miss lunch so the song just emerged, almost complete, in ten minutes (five minutes quicker than Ben!). It's called 'My Beginning and my End' and the words are based on an old Irish prayer. I was lacking one line when the meal bell rang but that came to me on my afternoon walk. Like Gibbard, I can say that I was simply the channel for something and I just had to get it down on paper.

So there we were in the Roundhouse, which is the most wonderful space, with its original wrought iron pillars and raised, curved seating above a large standing area. There were poignant memories for me of the 'Tiffany's' of my teenage years. It was the huge nightclub right in the centre of Coventry, also with a balcony area curving around a vast dance-floor, and now the Central Library! I have nothing at all against libraries but thankfully the impressive piece of Victorian architecture in London that was originally an engine repair shed, then a gin factory, was made in the 1960s into an arts venue. The opening night in 1966 featured a then-unknown band called Pink Floyd! Six decades on, John and I were up in the seats, and down on the floor I was excited to spot Yim Soon and our children and their partners.

It was a great gig and at a certain point Ben was handed his semi-acoustic guitar and the other band members left the stage and he went into the opening chords of his most well-known song. When he'd sung it once through he gave a little spiel about how when he goes to concerts himself he doesn't necessarily want to sing for the artist; rather he's there to hear the artist sing for him! "However," he went on, "when you're up here on the stage, it's a different matter!" He duly played again the chords that lead into the chorus and stepped away from the mic and allowed us to sing as one:

If Heaven and Hell decide that they both are satisfied
Illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs
If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark

As we come once more in the Christian calendar to Holy Week, I was grateful to a lapsed Catholic in a disused railway shed for putting me in touch with those universal themes of heaven and hell, and death and resurrection, but above all for the encouragement that, whatever darkness we experience in our lives we can always dare to have hope.