Stations Notes

I confess: I like travelling on trains. I particularly like the freedom at the start of the journey, normal life replaced by the passing of scenes through the window. And the stations too, little islands of certainty and uncertainty by which we measure our progress.

I am also drawn to the Stations of the Cross, another journey measured out in stations, this time through indignity, misery and hell.

These sort-of-journey-like things combined in my mind and resulted in a set of songs based on the latter, bracketed with departure and arrival (or is it arrival and departure) and some reference, sometimes very obscure, to a rail journey in each one.

We are on a journey, my friends, and we know the destination, but not always the stations on the way.

1. Departure

The feeling described above: letting go of responsibilities, becoming observers. Perhaps that’s how some of us prefer to see life: non engaging, watching, moving on. It is great temptation for me.

2. Carried away

Reflecting the first station where Jesus is condemned, this is about how we lose control of our lives. When we get on a train we relinquish control, when get on in life we do likewise.

3. King's Cross

There is a lot of word association here. The king takes up his cross (station 2), the well known London station (a tenuous link to the railway theme), electing our leaders (the ballot cross). I’m sort of sympathetic to politicians here, but also recognise that one of the great world leaders was removed at the age of thirty-three as an apparent failure.

4. First fall

My childhood was on the whole happy, but there was always the horrible possibility that at any second it could turn to misery.

5. Mother

The parent/child relationship is always full of tension, in the sense that at some point the child must be let go for its own good. But we children also struggle to find the balance between loyalty and independence. Nearly the same is the church’s dilemma: promoting stability and permanence when its leader didn’t seem interested in these things, in fact if anything the opposite.

6. Charing Cross

Mostly based on the plucking of a stranger from the crowd to carry the cross in the fifth station, this is also a variation on the detached observer theme. How when we the members of the crowd are satisfied that it is not us being picked on we can then unload ourselves on the poor unfortunate.

7. Veronica

The soothing angel, as exemplified in the sixth station, the one we sentimentally believe comes to soldiers’ aid in battle. (And the one on the refreshment trolley?)

8. Second fall

Here, with a stretch of the imagination, we arrive at the fall of man, as a gender. After the pressure heaped on men to be brave and not show their feelings there is usually a fall somewhere, whether a breakdown of some sort or emotionally stunted relationships. Or was the fall the pressure in the first place? Thankfully things are slowly improving.

9. The junction

Jesus meeting the women on the way led to think of how paths cross and then diverge. I have plenty of experience of knowing people quite well for a time and then losing touch. Occasionally I wonder where they are now and what has shaped their lives. That I wonder what has shaped mine. How much of what influences me now was sown in experiences long forgotten?

10. Derailment

This is the adult, or perhaps more mature, version of number 4. Plus ca change.

11. Dreams shed

At this station Jesus is stripped of his clothes. Perhaps the thing we fear most ripping away of our dreams, the removal of hope. The Buddhists would probably say this is when hope begins, in that self-contradictory Zen way of theirs.

12. No return

I find commitment very difficult (a common fault among men a lot of women would say). Whenever possible I give myself alternatives, options, ways out; bets are mostly hedged whenever possible. This song is about real commitment. In the stations Jesus is nailed to the cross and it’s abundantly clear that he has no return ticket.

13. The point of no return

Continuing the previous thought, all our journeys are all heading towards the final commitment of dying and this is a small meditation on it.

14. Stepping down

In this station Jesus is taken down from the cross and on our train journey this has been mixed in with leaving the train. One of the things I wonder about is the helplessness of the dead in the sense that all sorts of things get imputed to them. Many become saint-like, things are done ‘in the name of’, we try to be sure that they ‘have not died in vain’. On the other hand a lot of creativity is invested in trying to work out what the dead really meant and that can make big differences to the living.

15. Requiem (Traveller's Rest)

The Traveller’s Rest was the name of a typical British Rail buffet (when British Rail existed). This song is about rest after the physical and intellectual struggles of the past few songs.

16. Arrival

A simple finish to sum up the theme of the song cycle. All our lives we are travelling, and we know the end we are travelling to. Some of the stations are comfortable and we desperately want to stay there, but the train insists on moving on

I resisted the temptation to add the piano phrase from song 1 on the end because it wasn’t easy technically and it also felt a bit like a cliché. Nonetheless we are fortunate that, for now, the journey can begin again.