Voices

“Say my name
And save me once again,
Just say my name.
Too far gone,
Is this where I belong?
Am I too far gone?

I can hear them in my head and I,
I can hear them and I wanna get ‘em out.
I can hear them in my head
Getting louder now.

So endlessly
These voices keep on calling me to rise,
These voices keep on praying for me,
These voices keep on praying for me:
I can’t stop them now.

Each step I take
I make the same mistake,
But they scream my name.
And I know it’s wrong
To keep marching on and on,
But I’m too far gone.

I can hear them in my head and I,
I can hear them and I wanna get ‘em out.
I can hear them in my head
Getting louder now.

So endlessly
These voices keep on calling me to rise,
These voices keep on praying for me,
These voices keep on praying for me:
I can’t stop them now.

I keep hearing them,
Hearing them come,
Hearing them voices.
I keep hearing them,
Hearing them come,
Hearing them voices.

I heard them say,
I heard them say,
I can’t stop them now.
I can hear them in my head and I,
I can’t stop them now,
I can hear them and I wanna get ‘em out.
I can hear them in my head
Getting louder now.

So endlessly
These voices keep on calling me to rise,
They keep on calling me, yeah.
These voices keep on praying for me,
These voices keep on praying for me:
I can’t stop them now,
I can’t stop them now.”

[ Voices – Hurts ]

To put it mildly, I wasn’t very impressed the first time I listened to Voices. Coming off the heels of the huge personal disappointment that was Desire, an album so bland and generic that any lesser band could have recorded, the funky rhythm and acoustic guitar of this song’s intro made me worry that the previous album wouldn’t be an unfortunate yet isolated misstep, but the new standard for an insipid musical production by a band that once left one of the biggest marks on my own artistry (though admittedly, I still thought Voices was better than anything on Desire). And honestly, I have no plans to adapt any songs on Desire into photos for the time being: I might after I’m done with everything else on Hurt’s catalogue, but I’m definitely in no hurry. So yeah, I was worried for the future of the project.

Thankfully, upon release Faith has proven a full return to form (even to pre-Surrender standards, at that) and I immediately started mining it for inspiration. Even Voices itself has grown on me with a few spins, and the lyrics have provided me with enough material to start working on a visual rendition.

Now, admittedly, “voices” might not be the easiest concept to represent visually, but since the lyrics specify they are prayers, I decided to use a multitude of hands encircling the main character in the photo, some joint in prayer, some bearing offerings such as candles, some just reaching out. Since the song is ambivalent on whether those voices are good or not, if their uplift is welcome or not, I decided the situation with the hands in my photo, too, would be ambiguous: are they helpful? Are they trying to save the main character? Are they pulling him apart? I leave it open for the viewer to decide.

On a production note, all the hands are obviously my own because, after a new surge in covid cases in my area, I’m back to stricter social distancing and would rather avoid shooting with other people. I tried as many different angles and poses as possible to give the photo the visual equivalent of a crowded, nosy space with many different pitches and words all spoken all at once.

As for general aesthetics, beside using dramatic lighting I went quasi-monochromatic because it’s the prevalent aesthetic for this Hurts era, and chunked up the grain and scratches as a homage to the grittiness of the lyric video for the song.

I’m already working on the next Inspiration Hurts photo, which I shot in the same session as Voices, and another one is coming as soon as possible. I’m really glad for this inspiration spree and I’ll try to milk it as much as I can.