I think the story behind my song ‘The High Far fields of Home’ might be quite interesting. It’s actually taken me 25 years to write. Quite a lot of ingredients went into the recipe that ended up as this simple song.
This is a song about someone wide awake and worrying in the middle of the night. It’s about that weird, lonely, scary time when the anxieties of the day make you feel distant from a grounded, secure and safe sense of being. Thoughts race. Reality distorts. Shadows become monsters. You obsess over relationships, work decisions and memories. But, in the chorus, the insomniac steps into the cool air outside, sees the lights on in windows, and finds something deeply reassuring, personal, and uplifting. It’s something beyond themselves. They find ‘The High Far Fields of Home’. The listener can have their own ideas of what ‘The High Far Fields of Home’ are- faith is a very personal thing.
I think of the person I’m singing to as a teacher, social worker, doctor or nurse- someone who can’t switch off from work worries, someone who cares too much for their own good. This was specifically inspired by health care professionals during the covid epidemic and by hearing about my mum’s experience as a headteacher.
I’ve had the ‘When it really hurts’ bit for 26 years. It was part of a song I used to play at ‘Creative Liquid’ in Brighton in 2000. The rest of the original song is long forgotten. The phrase was inspired by an article about Dexy’s Midnight Runners– about the commitment Kevin Rowland demanded of his musicians. So the phrase ‘When it really hurts, you find a bit more to give’ originally referred to someone playing a saxophone so hard their lips bled. Wonderfully, Kevin Rowland was in the audience once when I sang the song in a short-lived band I was in with two cellists. I met Kevin after the gig. My friends told me he had watched my performance intensely throughout. I have no idea what he thought of it- I was too shy to ask him.
The song got brought out of retirement in about 2010 when I felt the need to write about being a parent- it became a song called ‘Climb On’ about accepting my kids growing up and becoming more independent. I played it in another short lived band. All my bands were short-lived.
It nearly became the song it is now during lockdown, when I wanted to pay tribute to key workers looking after Covid sufferers. It had a more simplistic, cheesy chorus that just went ‘You are the hero of the universe’. It was okay but just a little too cringe!
The last ingredient was added in 2022 when I had a period of my own anxiety and depression. This was an intense, overwhelming period that I felt I might not ever climb out of. Ultimately, I found my own High Far Far Fields of Home- a sense of a spiritual place, or sense of being that isn’t logical or explainable- something that’s a mix of security and wonder, home and away. So it’s both ‘high and far’ and ‘home’. You can fully explore my ‘high far fields…’ in my book ‘We the Wild Ones’, that I made as I came out of this phase.
The ‘High Far’ bit was, of course, accidentally stolen from The Waterboys’ ‘The Whole of the Moon’. I didn’t notice until long after I’d finished the song that the words were borrowed from The Waterboy’s hit. But I’ve been listening to The Whole of the Moon for about 35 years. The song is in my blood and bones. So I’m pretty sure that’s where they came from.
The pounding piano in the song is a more deliberate steal from The Waterboys. So the song has gone in a circle and ended up being a tribute to a musical hero of my childhood- just like it began 26 years ago.
When I listen to the recording of the song I really think I’ve got it right at last. I think it’s good. It’s finished. I love it and I hope you will too.
Ed Boxall 