Watermarks
Essay for “Sounds of Water” Art Festival — part album review of Enya’s Watermark, part travelogue and art eco-diatribe.
Essay for “Sounds of Water” Art Festival — part album review of Enya’s Watermark, part travelogue and art eco-diatribe.
Growing up in the early 1990s, I got my hands on the music of Enya. Watermark, the Irish musician and singer’s second album, had become a worldwide hit and was reissued in 1991 at the height of my angsty teenage years. Enya was a Rockstar, although it was New Age Celtic avant-pop, not rock, that she sang. Sitting in my wood-paneled attic room, with the volume as high as was allowed in my big family’s house, I lay on my bed and fantasized about the bigger world that Enya described in her music.
In songs with titles like: River and Orinoco Flow, the lyrics proclaimed, “Let me sail to the shores of Tripoli…from Bali to Cali” and, “From Peru to Cebu, hear the power of Babylon.”
Oh, how I wanted to go to these foreign lands! They were marked by the flow of waters, seas, oceans, and rivers that they touched.…
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