A rare beast in the Simple Minds canon, in that there is almost no musical intro before Jim starts to sing. (As far as the version on Our Secrets Are The Same goes. More on that later…)
“I’ll hurt you if you say I did”. (ie: if you wish it to be, it’ll come to fruition.) It’s not a threat…but a statement. You almost need to read the sentence backwards. If you believe I’ve hurt you, then I have…as far as you are concerned.
“Imagination wears you out. Crying brings you down again.
The dream is over,
The feeling’s gone.
And we were something you were dreaming all along.”
This part of the song always speaks to me on a personal level. I always feel it when….I feel that my “time in the sun” is gone. That Jim is…no longer interested. That I have pushed things too far. Made myself far too emotionally attached, etc, etc. These lines are what will play.
Space feels really personal because of it.
This “why I love” will be stupid, personal, oversharing as a result. This song…breaks my heart, but I love it too.
The past three years of my “uber” fandom has been such a whirlwind. And it *is* like one massive rollercoaster. Loads of highs and some lows. I could…go through it all…but, well, just take a look at this blog. It explains it all.
And so when the Minds fandom rollercoaster is on a low (like about now), when I feel “the dream is over” and “the feeling’s gone”. When I feel I need to brace myself to be “dumped”. When the emotional investment is too high. When the stick dangling that carrot gets pulled away from me with short shrift…this is when this song has its potency and poignancy.
It’s the lines aforementioned that make me feel all…melancholy. “Oh, this time I’ve done it! I’ve hacked him off. I’m sharing too much of the art. Of myself. If I piss him off, I wish he’d just tell me to fuck off instead of being quiet!” The silence kills.
And then…it comes back again. He’ll interact with me. Reply to a comment with a big old blurb. Suddenly, randomly share a piece of art.
And then the last verse is there in the mind.
“The dream is over, party’s over,
I’m still waiting, nothing falling.
No confusion, no suspicion,
If you’re talking, I will listen.”
And the ever hopeful chorus…just like that little child’s nursery rhyme…
“Star light, star bright,
I’m the star you see tonight.
And I wish I may, I wish I might,
Be in your dreams tonight.”
And so do I, Jim. So do I. Nearly every single night I fall asleep…when sleep actually takes hold. Except, I hardly ever dream of the ones I…love. (See? What did I say about oversharing?!)
Charlie’s guitar (unless I am mistaken and it is Gordy playing? He once told me that one riff I really loved that I assumed was Charlie’s, was in actual fact Gordy Goudie’s) is just SSOO bittersweet. Along with my favourite of This Earth That You Walk Upon, I find a proper “weeping” guitar moment. Just…yearning, and beautiful.
There are two versions to Space. The original studio recording done for Our Secrets Are The Same, and a re-recording placed on the Celebrate compilation. I love both versions equally. There’s an extra vulnerability with the first version…as well as the way Jim’s voice has been distorted. The latter version, I love the protracted ending, with the vocal repetition of “be in your dreams tonight”….it seems like it’ll never end…yet it does, rather suddenly too! The latter version has much more of the lullaby quality to it.
The vulnerability is in the rawness of the former….the sensibility of the latter is in its subtlety. It’s much sweeter, musically.
As with just about every Simple Minds song I can think of, there is ultimately a hope.
Mine is…never to stuff up. Never to fall “out of favour”. Never to feel that “the dream is over” and that “the feeling’s gone”. And that Jim will wish to be in my dreams, because I wish him to be in my dreams…always.
And that is why I love…Space.
Enjoy the latter Celebrate compilation version.
