Featuring American poet Allen Ginsberg reading his masterful work “Song”, considered one of the great works of American literature, “Shadows of Our Evening Tides”, is an immersive and contemplative journey about finding peace through grieving time, about longing for a safe place to lay down, about the eagerness to let go in the context of a life that keeps on distancing itself so hastily that any personal emancipation ultimately looks totally out of our reach. It’s about accepting to see ourselves under a softer light, all while living with the regrets of moments left undone… of losing what can’t ever be replaced.
The lyrics originated from a short essay I wrote about the ineluctable choice we have to either keep on pursuing a genuine and fulfilling form of unreachable higher happiness or to become the mirroring projection of an aesthetic kind of self-created elation set for other’s envy to feed our own need for personal acknowledgment. It’s an allegory between the elusive world I was not only a part of but kept on resolutely building, as opposed to the simple joyful autarky embraced by the people who live in the old part of Tangier… a fascinating, yet shocking difference.
Therefore, even though I kept the undertone of that essay, I decided to expose it from a different angle by using a more barren and direct type of lyrical approach, which magnified the delicate and singular nature of the song into some gospel hymnal uplift that keeps “Shadows of Our Evening Tides” free from time and space, in a way, so that emotions can be felt and not only be perceived or become the object of a never-ending philosophical contemplation.
That’s why I guess that from all the songs on “Windows in the Sky”, “Shadows of Our Evening Tides” is the one that represents the best what Tangier means to me; a place defined as much by the sea as by the desert. Standing in between both gives the city a unique meaning, making it a place that always finds a way to reflect light through the shadows of time, and which, just like water and sand, remains elusive to anyone trying to capture its complexity, to own its heart, to explain its spirit or possess its soul. It’s a city free from anyone’s ambition… like home should be.
About the Video:
“Shadows of Our Evening Tides” is the second single off “Windows in the Sky”, the first solo album by Alex Henry Foster, Your Favorite Enemies’ lead singer.
Filmed in Tokyo, Japan, the short movie represents the ineluctable pursuit of an everlasting happiness within the implacable context of a life hastily passing by. A relentless voyage about finding a personal purpose in our daily humdrum, discovering vivid colors in leaden monochromatic sceneries and uncovering the nature of extraordinary in what is too often considered the essence of ordinary. From a stranger to another, the short film “Shadows of Our Evening Tides” reflects an intimate story that intertwines into a greater, collective one.
