Walk the Walk – Chapter Titles

Walk the Walk – Chapter Titles

When I decided to name all the chapters of my book Walk the Walk after Marillion songs, it wasn’t a case of, “that’s a cool idea,” and then having to pore over lyrics to find the appropriate songs. These songs seep through my veins. These words live in my soul. They have shaped and validated how I view the world.

In most cases it was pretty obvious which lyrics would best represent each chapter. Some had even come to me while I was writing, before I even considered chapter titles. They aren’t necessarily my favourite songs. But Derek Dick (Fish), Steve Hogarth (h) and John Helmer have always had a way of saying what I’m trying to say.

For each song title I included a line from the song that made it feel particularly relevant to the text in the book. Here’s a bit more explanation on each one.

Thank you to Marillion and Lucy Jordache for permission to use the words in the book.

Find out more about Walk the Walk and buy your copy.

Listen to a playlist of these songs on Spotify.

Read the lyrics in full on Marillion’s website.

80 Days

How many people can you love?

The thank you page. Most of the thanked people were involved or appear in the book in some context, but some are just special people. I had to stop myself from making this Oscar speech long! You never know if there will be another book, or if you’ll have a chance to thank people again, so it was nice to include as many people as possible.

The Crow and the Nightingale

Adding my dull sheen to your brilliant words.

The credits page. h talks about how his words are crude in comparison to Leonard Cohen’s in this song. I guess I feel the same way about using h’s words in my book. It almost feels like you devalue the crafted song by removing the odd line out of context. Writing this blog perhaps doesn’t help!

Go!

It only takes a fraction of a second
To turn your life upside down…
Wide awake on the edge of the world

I adore this song. It really does describe my approach to life, how quickly life can change (for good or bad) and how we, ultimately, are in charge of how we react to that.

This chapter describes the genesis of the idea, and how an idea that occurred in a fraction of a second really did turn my life upside down.

Map of the World

Watching the people on the street today she couldn’t help but smile
Watching the town go walking by all shaded eyes and alibis
Strange how much pain you can hide away beneath a well-cut suit
This is the day she walks away.

The journey begins…

There is a moment where I’m in Preston on my way to Leeds on a Saturday night. It was a bit weird being dressed for a hike and being around people who were dressed in their finery for a night out.

Map of the World is a song about the contradiction of running away from the pain that we have created as “normal life” to seek something better, but not really running towards anything. I think we’re all guilty of that sometimes with at least one aspect of our lives.

Be Hard on Yourself

Don’t talk to me of need
Don’t talk to me of want
Don’t talk to me of dreams
The world has seen enough impatient bags of blood
Don’t talk to me of speed
Acceleration never did you any good.

This is where the walking really starts. I also get to talk about my mantra for life; Live a satisfied life you don’t need to escape from. I talk about how I’ve crafted my life in a way where all the constituent parts compliment, rather than fight each other.

Have I perfected that? Nope! It will always be a work in progress. But I enjoy the process of creation. Life – like walking – is never about speed or getting to a destination quickly. If you spend life always waiting until you reach the next stop, you really are wishing that life away.

Out of this World

What the hell do we want?
Is it only to go
Where nobody has gone
A better way than the herd
Sing a different song.

The chapter begins with me donning my Stillmarillion t shirt, and how a weird coincidence of Marillion fans that ensures. I pass the Polish Airmen Memorial Site. I talk about setting and accomplishing goals.

A song which is about striving to go further and faster than any human ever has before seemed appropriate. Out of this World is about Donald Campbell who died trying to beat the water speed world record. It speaks of the tussle between personal achievement and the people we love who support us, but ultimately have to stand at the sidelines and watch. It’s one of Marillion’s most brilliantly poignant songs.

No Such Thing

There’s no such thing
As an easy ride
There’s no such thing
As a place to hide
There’s no such thing
As a perfect day.

Oh my god. Day 3. The most hellish day. One person who has read the book commented on how brutally honest I’ve been about how miserable the walk sometimes was. And this was the most miserable.

It was not an easy ride.

There was no place to hide from the rain.

And it definitely was not a perfect day.

Woke Up

With angels that come when all is lost
In golden light at dead of night
They take you home.

I love this song. It’s a song of realisation. “The blinding obvious is what you showed to me.” The whole album Happiness Is The Road is about coming out of the darkness and into the light. On day 4 of my walk, Lee Fuller and Gary Lambert (and family) were the angels that came when it felt as though all was lost.

And day 4 is when I was heading home and could sleep in my own bed.

Somewhere Else

Everyone I love lives somewhere else
And I have time to look at myself
And I’ve seen enough.

When you’ve lived away from your family for practically all of your adult life, when your friends are sprawled around the world but seldom local, and yes, when you are single, this song hits hard. I am content on my own, I have a plethora of amazing friends and family, but I do occasionally feel the loneliness of going solo. To not have a single point of contact that I can lean on no matter what. I love being single, but it isn’t perfect!

This was a day when I needed my mum. I only had two days when I didn’t have any company, and this was the second. I was walking away from home and I knew it would be tough, so I saved my calls to family for this day.

The Sky Above the Rain

Heading West and climbing
In that place the sun never stops shining
The rain’s below us.

There is something about this song that makes me cry, without fail, every time. It’s a really unusual lyric. The first half speaks of how the couple are regressing from each other, the pain of reaching out to someone you love who brushes you away. But the twist – the bit that makes me cry – is the second section. “Maybe they’ll talk,” Steve Hogarth sings, and the couple find a way through their troubles, to the final refrain that I’ve quoted above.

It’s the hope that gets me.

I had a friend who was going through a separation when this first came out, and when my own marriage broke up and the hope was gone it hit harder still. Two years later when Marillion played this live, I went to pieces and practically collapsed with the grief. Because the end of a long relationship is a grief, even if you were the one who chose to walk away.

How is this relevant to the book? Well, this chapter is day 6, the final day. The rain mostly stopped, the sun shined and I reached the westernmost point. And I was nursed over the finishing line by good friends who I nearly lost in that marriage breakdown. I am beyond grateful that it wasn’t a permanent loss.

Childhoods End?

It’s me I see, I can do anything
I’m still the child
‘Cos the only thing misplaced was direction
And I found direction
There is no childhood’s end.

I feel the need to explain why my good friends in Marillion tribute band Stillmarillion get a thank you in the book. I talk about the community that has built around Marillion, and all of the tribute bands are a huge part of fostering that community. Marillion’s music has always been more vital in a live setting, and bands like StillMarillion keep the early era songs that the “real thing” no longer perform alive.

I’ve been friends with singer Martin Jakubski for over 20 years and we’ve had a long running joke about the cheesy jauntiness of this song. I hated it for years and years. In fact, I never really connected with Marillion’s most successful album at all.

Repetition grounds you down. Decades of hearing the album performed live by StillMarillion has shined a new light on Misplaced Childhood for me. I could have easily picked out a different verse from this song, one that Martin sang directly to me one time:

You’ve found the leading light of destiny, burning in the ashes of your memory
You want to change the world
You’d resigned yourself to die a broken rebel
But that was looking backward
Now you’ve found the light.

Ouch.

I guess that’s the beauty of this music and these words. Some songs take years to feel relevant. Life is long and as growing, learning, developing humans we go through many changes. And words that are about the human experience will inevitably hit differently as we change.

And the beauty of good friends is they sometimes see things in you that you don’t yet see in yourself.

Neverland

I want to be someone
Who someone would want to be.

The previous chapter was about the realisation of achieving one goal, and resolving to write the book as the next goal. Neverland is a chapter about setting myself far bigger goals and dreams, and stepping out onto the next path of my life. The path that leads to changing the world through politics.

I have this lyric tattooed on my foot, but I changed it a little to be more of an affirmation. It’s pointless WANTING to be a good person when you can just BE a good person. So the tattoo reads, “Be someone who someone would want to be.” It’s also a song about how the support of others can help elevate you to be the best person, and that’s very much the theme of the book.

I’m still too independent for my own good, but I am gradually allowing myself to lean on others more and more. It was one of my biggest learnings of this whole experience.

Happiness is the Road

The greatest blessing that we have
Is the dawn of each new day
A chance to finish what we started
And made a mess of yesterday.

This lyric is one of the most important that Steve Hogarth has ever written. I live by this line. It’s not that I don’t have regrets, but I use those mistakes and mis-steps to motivate me to do better, to be better. Hand-wringing achieves nothing.

This is a chapter about how humans change. This is one of my most pivotal beliefs; human beings do and should change. We have to be growing, learning, developing, progressing human individuals in order to be a growing, learning, developing, progressing human society.

And that means our relationships change. I am long past thinking that there is anything static about my relationships with anyone. I see it in so many partnerships; two people grow and change in different directions or at different rates, and they grow apart. We should normalise this. Life is long and the idea of staying with one person for your entire life, while wonderful for those who manage it, is not necessarily “normal”.

People also drift together over time. Friendships find new depths, become more emotionally intimate. Embracing the ebb and flow of our connections should be celebrated.

There’s another book in there somewhere…

She Used To Be Mine – Sara Bareilles

She’s imperfect, but she tries
She is good, but she lies
She is hard on herself
She is broken and won’t ask for help
She is messy, but she’s kind
She is lonely most of the time
She is all of this mixed up
And baked in a beautiful pie
She is gone, but she used to be mine

I was too scared of the legal implications of including this lyric in the book – it’s not a Marillion song but it’s important to include these words somewhere. It’s a song that really sums up my friend Dani Wallace who runs The FlyAnyway Foundation, a CIC that I raised money for while I was doing my walk. When it came on the radio on day 6 of the walk, it was a very emotional moment. (This all make more sense when you have read the book!)