Belated Future

Around the middle of my second year of uni, I got very into the BBC's 2000 four-part TV adaptation of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast. One character I was particularly fascinated by was the doomed Fuchsia,  played by Neve McIntosh. She was a dreamer, I'd begun to view myself more and more as one too...

So parallels were drawn, and in my enthusiasm I rattled off two wistful poems and a short story on the theme of this character, daydreaming in general, and the impossibility of truly relating to a fictional world through face-to-face contact with it – which bothered me quite intensely at the time.

Naturally enough, musical inspiration came largely from a pair of songs that were themselves inspired by the story of Fuchsia's downfall.

BELATED FUTURE

Belated future, here I am

You’ve been put off for far too long

Now from a boy into a man

They cannot say that I’ve been wrong

It’s surely time to face the truth

Avoiding it I’ve tried and failed

Delaying it with hopes of youth

All efforts coming off the rails

But now it changes

Today it fades and floats away…

Into the sun

Into the rain

Into eternal shades of pain.

I’ve come a long way, that is true

Starving, exhausted is my heart

I’ve always known what I’d come to

And now I know it’s time to part

From past illusions I have held

That chance has flown and comes no more

The future sounds its mournful bell

A new life knocks upon my door

So now it changes

Today it drifts into the sky…

Into the gold

Into the dust

My memories betray my trust.

O Lady Fuchsia, I love you

You’re but a story on the page

I see your hurt, I wish you true

I wish your beauty I could save

A tragic princess with your tears

Betrayed and startled by the world

Beauty you had through all those years

As in your fantasy you curled

At last it changes

Today it swirls upon the flood…

Into the storm

Into the calm

In fiction I will find no harm

I loved, but real lives let me down

We drowned confronted by what’s true

Your head’s not suited to that crown

A finer jewel belongs to you

Together we could dance away

Forgetting our unhappy lot

Within each other’s dream we’ll stay

Insane, but that is what we’ve got

Belated future waiting to be told

My Lady Fuchsia never can grow old.

Thanks to: David Bowie for Within You, The Cure for The Drowning Man, and The Strawbs for Lady Fuchsia.