MARIANNE FAITHFULL: "A Child's Adventure"

Original released on LP Island ILPS 7 90066-1

(US, Fébruary 1983)

Nothing. Nowhere. Lightless, without luminosity. Soundless, without the accent of life. Weightless, without the gravity of the living. There was nothing. Nothing to feel or taste or scream at. If the world was formless, this was now the world. Unreality was populated as silence and hyper-insignificance. My universe was bleak, was eviscerated, was a once-filled cosmic egg drained of essence and meaning. My world was dead. My world had ended. No starlets to turn me on. No warmth of lover's legs or ass. No life around me to nag or cry. The death knights had won, and the light brigade was eternally smothered. Doctor Death has injected me with his singular brand and had conquered my realm. The great timekeeper and gatekeeper of my universe were put to their final rest. The great formerly boundless ardor had been steamrolled and crushed by the Reaper's mechanized, four-wheeled beast. Blood, spit - there were no words for anything, anymore. No sex. No friendship. No emotion. Nothing...that is until Faithfull's "A Child's Adventure".

One minute I was crushed beyond repair by heartache and loss, the next I was listening ad nauseum to "Running for Our Lives". I was happy to be running for my life, for I felt like I had a life once again. "A Child's Adventure" isn't avant-garde jazz, or opalescent psychedelic jams, or hair-whipping metal. It isn't stuffed with horror stories. There's few fingers like frightening shadows skulking to strangle your soul, though a couple of songs (like "Morning Come") with petrify you with gorgon's eyes in their sincerity and mindfulness, which can be as terrifying as a slasher flick for some. I'm not sure there's a Marianne Faithfull record that moves me more or aligns my insights in love, the memory of love and memory of pain, and with those the irresponsiblity of memory's senses. Though C.S. Lewis once wrote in The Problem of Pain that "love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal", I think "A Child's Adventure" brings its own specially trained love, and with that special training some sweet exorcism. (in RateYourMusic)