Brothers In Arms
Artist: Dire Straits
Song: Brothers in arms
Album: Brothers in Arms
Model: Icelandic Road
Location: North of Akureyri, Iceland

This has been one of the last and undoubtedly the most difficult for me to produce.

It’s for and about my Dad. He died when I was 25 in 1990 of cancer. This song had been released five years earlier and I hadn’t taken any notice of it other than to hear it from time to time on the radio and TV.

After Dad’s death, like millions of other people in a similar situation, it took me some time to get to understand my emotions, my feelings and my massive sense of loss. Immediately afterwards, although we’d seen it coming for some time, I was functioning on auto-pilot. Living from day to day and ‘coping’.

I realised early on that music allowed me to lose myself in my thoughts about my personal tragedy and I often played it loud and raw to lift myself and help me keep going. Almost sinking myself into an upbeat trance to mask how I really felt. Occasionally, when alone, I played (and still play), this song. It speaks to me in a way that nothing else has ever done. It takes me right back to 1990, the horror, the worry and the grief. I cry my heart out every time I hear it. Sometimes, if I’m out and it comes on somewhere, I zone out and won’t let myself listen to it. Other times, alone, I play it and let myself go.

I chose the photo because Dad loved the outdoors, the mountains, views and nature in all its forms. It’s where my love of the world and nature came from. He would’ve loved Iceland. It epitomises everything he enjoyed about the great outdoors. Isolation, scale, mystery and wonderment. The processing is deliberate and the road speaks for itself…

Thank you Dad, I love you.