Anthony Phillips
Wise After the Event

Anthony Phillips – Wise After the Event 1978

The sadness that grips me can be infinite: a black spiral that envelops me, an evil demon that prevents me from breathing and tightens the knot around my throat. And it pulls, pulls until it makes my eyes burst.
I have no more tears to shed.
I have no tears that can bring the bitterness grown within my soul out of me. I feed this morbid state with anger and resentments and with hatred and envy. Everything that tries to approach me is diverted by my state and taken elsewhere, I no longer grasp anything, my hands do not clutch, my spirit rejects every presence, in a misanthropy more desired than natural.
In this state of mine, I have the memory of some notes, music that, at first distant, wants to approach me, envelop me, and awaken me from the lethargic grip that extinguishes me. As the notes spread, their blending becomes presence, becomes body, and I seem to feel better.
The power of poetry, of the lightness of words, laid like overlapping veils to soothe every wound. Every acoustic guitar arpeggio gives me relief, every press of black and white keys becomes healthy air for my lungs, every blown word is a surrogate endorphin. The record that saves me is Wise After the Event by Anthony Phillips, the first historical guitarist of Genesis who retired to a private life for seemingly inexplicable reasons. Yes, someone said shyness, stage fright, panic from the audience, whatever... it is not important. What is important is that after the Genesis experience, once the fear or whatever it was had subsided, Phillips embarked on an intimate solo career, semi-hidden, aimed at those few who, he knew, could put their heart into listening. In return, he would put his heart into the records, into his music. He has never failed in the silent promise, and in the now very rich discography, this poetic, elegiac, refined, and calm status stands out, which we have learned to appreciate.
This record is not his compositional peak, but it certainly remains in the most emotional part of the discography because it contains all the soul, all the musicality, and all the melancholy poetry that accompanies Phillips' life, all the renunciations, perhaps resentments, perhaps regrets, we do not know. But from those minor tones, from that warm explosion of notes, everything becomes poetry. That intimate, secret, personal poetry, at times even claustrophobic, but at times liberating and with a healing touch.
There is no need to narrate about one track or another, no need to highlight a passage or a solo or a phrase. This is a record that goes by itself and goes straight where it has to go. The heart receives it in its entirety, and its weight can be a rich burden or an ethereal feather, a leap to heaven or a stab. Saving, for me.

Sioulette p.a.p.