Another influence for this image was from Procol Harum's classic "Whiter Shade Of Pale" which I heard and much loved as a teenager (still do). The haunting organ reminded me of Bach and Johann Pachelbel and the lyrics somehow made it very powerful. This blend of tradition and modernity has always for Elliott been the ultimate in culture, and is a cornerstone of my work. For me as a young man, I always loved the dirges best and this track without doubt, was "A Dirge for A Decade". The closing lines of this lugubrious piece are : "She said 'There is no reason And the truth is plain to see.' But I wandered through my playing cards Would not let her be One of sixteen vestal virgins Who were leaving for the coast And although my eyes were open They might just as well have been closed. And so it was that later, As the miller told his tale That her face at first just ghostly Turned the whiter shade of pale". If ever the tragedy of watching a love die was beautifully expressed, that was it. Whether the love is dying spiritually or the loved one is physically dying, the feeling of helplessness is overwhelming and makes us close our eyes in despair. As if we just don't want to see. This song is also probably one of the reasons why the whole image is so pale. So anyway, I was thinking about the accessible and the inaccessible and how this can be partly a physical but also a psychological thing. That which protects also imprisons. Both Life and Love are a bit like that in a way. In our attempts to build castles in the air we fashion a prison of our own making. Everything has its advantage and disadvantage. I always craved security in everything. By 35 I had it. I never want it again. Give me thunder, give me blazing sunshine, but please no grey days!! One thinks of Shakespeare's "In Life there is no good or bad but thinking makes it so". A hard one to swallow when you first hear it, but brilliantly perceived. Shakespeare was the first Artist to inspire me, by the way, as a young teenager. It also never entirely escaped my attention that I looked like him.