Athlete – Wires – Radio 1 Live Lounge
I got this one from Donkey.
I don’t know Athlete at all, and I’ve never heard any other version of this song. But this one is one of those songs which seem to have been written by someone looking right into your head, your own private memories which you don’t know how to express.
This song reminds me of a very specific day in my life. My sister suffers from manic depression and has tried to kill herself several times. I have a diary entry that I wrote which describes the day which this song reminds me of, written a few months ago, but it actually occurred in the summer of 2001 if I remember correctly.
I was sitting in front of the computer in the flat I shared with my boyfriend Kriss, when my sister rang my mobile from the hospital across the road where she was being held under observation in the pysch ward for a few weeks after getting her stomach pumped for the second time that year.
“Hello bay-beeee!” I cooed as I answered.
And she was crying so hard, she was so hysterical, she just kept repeating that she was sorry and please come and save her. And I dropped the phone and ran out the door and over the street and into the hospital and the lift was so slow and into the psych ward and down the corridor to her room and I could hear her crying and nurses shouting and I hesitated and the door swung open and someone came out with a lot of bloody clothes and yelled that I wasn’t meant to be there and they pulled me away just like in the movies and I knew she needed me but I was so scared of what I had glimpsed on the other side of that door that I didn’t even want to fight them, I didn’t even want to go in there.After an eternity spent in the children’s waiting room, once they’d bandaged her up and mopped up the floor and taken away the razorblades she had hidden weeks ago in the box her cassette tapes were in and that she so cleverly had asked my mother to bring because she missed her music, well after all that they let me in to see her. And I was 17 and utterly clueless as to what I should do or say, and I wanted to be strong for her but what the fuck could I do. So I lay on the bed with her and held her and we cried for hours, until my mother came over after she finished work that night. Later on I walked back to the flat. Kriss was already in bed and the food he had brought back for me was on the table.
This song speaks to those flashes of memories, the snapshots, the photos in the windows in the corridors, the baby posters on the walls of the waiting room, the way time slows down, corridors, automatic doors, I’m here for you, and that line “I’ve seen Christmas lights reflected in your eyes” is even more meaningful for me than perhaps it was originally meant to be. All those childhood Christmas mornings that we shared… the memories shared with my sister…
I don’t know how the album version sounds, but this acoustic version is so powerful I can’t imagine it coming close.
You got wires going in
You got wires coming out of your skin
You got tears making tracks
I’ve got tears that are scared of the facts
Running down corridors, through automatic doors
Got to get to you, got to see this through
I see hope is here in a plastic box
I’ve seen Christmas lights reflect in your eyes
You got wires going in
You got wires coming out of your skin
There’s dry blood on your wrist
Your dry blood on my fingertip
Running down corridors, through automatic doors
Got to get to you, got to see this through
First night of your life, curled up on your own
Looking at you now you would never know
I see it in your eyes; I see it in your eyes
You’ll be alright
I see it in your eyes; I see it in your eyes
You’ll be alright
All right
Running down corridors, through automatic doors
Got to get to you, got to see this through
I see hope is here in a plastic box
I’ve seen Christmas lights reflect in your eyes
Running down corridors, through automatic doors
Got to get to you, got to see this through
First night of your life, curled up on your own
Looking at you now you would never know
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