It all started when The Blogger was very young. One day, after plowing through music videos in the early 1990s on MTV, back when MTV used to play music (yes, such a time existed not too long ago), I was taken aback by the sight of an angelic, impeccably dressed woman moving in slow motion, opening her mouth to emit a sound that is clearly her voice dubbed about two hundred times over to make her sound like a choir of seraphim. So this is what God must have intended an angel to sound! The video must have had something to do with it: waves belonging to no ocean in particular crashed over beaches while calla lilies magnified several times in height bloom menacingly yet serenely in the background behind the temptress. The woman calls to me like the sirens to Ulysses, on his way home to Penelope. This … was “Orinoco Flow”. This was Enya.
And I couldn’t help myself. It seemed so innocent and yet so wrong! I would go to the record shops (back when they had records – Ed. Note: I feel old), gloss carefully over the latest bestsellers by Nirvana, U2, Boyz II Men and Pearl Jam, I would glance to see if I saw anyone I knew from school. Then, tiptoeing to the New Age section, I would carefully run my fingers with one eye on the door to the shop to see if anyone I knew would wander in, and plucked out the incriminating copy of Watermark. With my selection in hand, I cupped the disc in both hands and hurriedly dashed to the register, only mumbling a polite thanks as I flung my money on the counter, demanding to have my purchase brown-bagged and running with my head down out of the store, hoping no one would have seen me.But what sweet, sweet temptations the siren offered to me! I started to think of the sounds of Enya as being almost vaguely sensual, but in a non-threatening manner. If this is what lovemaking must be like, I thought, then no longer will women close their eyes and think of handbags, nor will men have to close theirs and think of England in the middle of Business Time. All they need conjure is the sound of the siren Enya to call to them and they can get to that post-coital cigarette a lot faster.
This wasn’t something that I could deny about myself. It felt right. I was uncontrollably attracted to the sounds of Enya’s music. I couldn’t control it and it wasn’t a choice. But I couldn’t live a lie and hide my love. I would have to face my toughest critics’ judgments, sooner or later.
