All I Have To Give

“Staring in the mirror,
Watching as the walls are closing in,
A shadow of a figure
Trying to make the best of the state that I am in.
I guess I could do with the friends I’ve been pushing away,
But I’m destined to suffer until I discover the reasons I’m afraid.

God knows I try:
It might not be good enough,
But it’s all I have to give,
This is all I have to give.
You might be right sometimes,
I never open up,
But it’s all I have to give,
This is all I have to give.

Staring in the mirror,
Picturing the face of a younger man.
He buries it away
‘Cause he’s gotta try and cope in a way he understands.
Be there for your brother and strong for your mother again
‘Cause he’s too young to get it and she’ll get upset if she knows you feel the pain.

God knows I try:
It might not be good enough,
But it’s all I have to give,
This is all I have to give.
You might be right sometimes,
I’m too scared to open up,
But it’s all I have to give,
This is all I have to give to you.

I tell myself there’s nothing left to lose.
I don’t know why I’m hiding from the truth.
I face myself and all I see is you,
Is you
Staring in the mirror,
Watching as the walls are closing in.

But God knows I try,:
It might not be good enough,
But it’s all I have to give,
This is all I have to give.
You might be right sometimes,
I’m too scared to open up,
But it’s all I have to give,
This is all I have to give to you,
To you,
This is all I have to give.”

[ All I Have To Give – Hurts ]

It’s kinda easy and tempting to dismiss All I Have To Give as just your garden-variety soppy piano ballad: I almost did initially. For the first few plays I gave Faith, I regarded it as the weak link of an otherwise consistently strong album. Thankfully, once I get familiar with the melody, I’ve got the habit to add the lyrics to my iTunes files, which require a specific listen during which I double check if everything is in order (yeah, I’ve got my idiosyncratic rituals when I listen to music). And lo and behold, is this apparently harmless ballad actually about the fact that Theo suffers from depression? Yeah, dude, same: welcome to the club. Suddenly, All I Have To Give had become one of the most relatable songs in Hurts’ entire catalogue, and its apparent simplicity had turned into a mark of sincerity and openness.

Once I got to work on a photographic concept, I decided to start with two reoccurring keywords in the lyrics: the mirror and the fear of opening up, the latter symbolised by the shut jewellery box and resting bitch face. I decided to basically make a still life with my trustworthy Mirror Of Decay (of Morphine fame), the box and a few other items, with a model (myself) appearing as a reflection.

As for the objects, aside from the candles, which are mostly for dressing, I included a vintage Industar 50mm lens (which belonged to my mother’s now defunct analogue camera) as the “all I have to give”: sometimes I do feel as if my artistic output is the only thing I am able to give, or the most effective way in which I can sort out and communicate my feelings. The calendar (which returned from Gloomy Sunday) and broken clock (from the unrelated We Just Stopped Breathing) are there to represent the weird relationship between depression and time: sometimes it feels like days are just running by with no way to slow them down or at least savour them, sometimes like time has frozen and the clock won’t move.

 

It took me a while to get down to shooting the photo because the weather has been too gloomy for an indoor photo, given that all my light equipment is still in Trieste, but at last I took advantage of yesterday’s sun and shot it.

From a technical standpoint, the photo actually consists of two merged exposures, one focussed on the still life scene and one on the reflection, which is optically much farther away and thus can’t be focussed on at the same time unless you shut the diaphragm to a prohibitive degree, given the light conditions. I also made no effort to hide the chip in the mirror or the surface being unglued from the frame, to further emphasise a sense of weariness. You can also have a glimpse of my CD library because I wanted to ground the photo in reality rather than depict it in some abstract space.

So there it is, a rather simple photo with some below-the-surface symbolism, much like the song has hidden depths beneath its sweet ballad appearance.