Letter to Hermione, by David Bowie

Like ‘An Occasional Dream’ this is a painfully and intimate song of lost love addressed to Hermione Farthingale, the lover and collaborator who left David [Bowie] in February 1969 after completing her part in Love You Till Tuesday. In November of the same year, Bowie told George Tremlett that Space Oddity’s two Hermione songs were “me in a maudlin or romantic mood. I’d written a letter, and then decided not to post it. ‘Letter to Hermione’ is what I wished I’d say. I was in love with her, and it took me months to get over it. She walked out on me, and I suppose that was what hurt as much as anything else, that feeling of rejection”. Nicholas Pegg, (2000), The Complete Bowie, B.H. Great Britain.

Last Saturday I went to see Separate Lies. In the film, one of the main characters, James Manning, experiences pain, embarrassment, and despair as his wife, Anne, goes off with another man. It is not abandonment as much as it is a passionate escapade.
There was a particular scene that struck me the most. James Manning arrives home from work, his wife has moved leaving him all alone…or so he thinks so. When James enters his house, as he is hanging his coat, he finds a silk scarf. He takes it and for a moment, which might have been eternity for him I suppose, contemplates it, hesitating; and then, defeated he covers his face with the scarf and gives a long profound breath. Another moment, another eternity goes by. A brief pause in hell that occurs as the smell of Ann fills James’s senses. Unfortunately, the obligatory exhalation interrupts this little re-encounter. Ann's scent flies away as James bursts into tears, without ever taking the scarf off his face.

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