Your Ghost, by Kristin Hersh

We would listen to it again and again. The description of restlessness: sleepwalking, the amplified sounds of night. The repetitive nature of a visitation: ghosts are real, are here. Walking among us. The clock, the phone, maybe water dripping. The sound of naked feet on the stairs. Staying awake, thinking of someone who is not here anymore. Some people just wake up hungry, can't sleep unless they eat. They hunt for easy preys in the kitchen in the wee hours. And then they hear steps, or voices. Others wake up hungry and make phone calls to empty houses. A song I used as a letter so many times, an alarm call, a testimony, an exorcism. You recognized his voice right away, Michael's achingly temperamental voice right there, behind her, like a supernatural dialogue. A spirit. This was a hymn for us, in many ways. How can someone we don't know pin down the feeling so well? How can one relate so much to someone else's craft? How can two voices, her Throwing Muse voice and his Georgian Starry Throat, a guitar and some strings -the ubiquitous Mr Martin McCarrick, (who we saw once play live in Mexico City next to Siouxsie and her Banshees many years ago, remember?) say so much, translate the presence of the spectre, invoke the melancholia felt when the ghost still drives in circles around us?