This is a good song but not that good a song.
No, this isn’t my English assignment but Mary’s post about “It’s A Wonderful World” inspired me, Idda paid cash money to see Helen teach Mary the Ramones names.
For me, “In A Moment” means so much because of something I give it which it doesn’t have in itself.
Five years ago, two years before Ray Davies released “In A Moment” on his first solo album the nothing much Workingman’s Café, I was deeply in love with a woman but the age difference was seriously putting me off. We were beyond best friends but skirting romance.
On a Friday evening I took her for a drink after work and one thing lead to another. She lived in Long Island and I dropped her off at Penn station elevenish and I was happy -it isn’t often you get exactly what you want precisely when you want it most.
But after she had left, with the time to reflect on the evening, I was actually happier than when I had been with her (the curse of the writer, right?). I walked uptown on Broadway, lost in thoughts (and CD Player) and the thoughts at first was, here we go, of instant nostalgia. The absolute knowledge that whatever happened before, or happens next, wasn’t and never would be the perfect gleening shiny brightness of love and acceptance she had felt for me this night.
I walked and walked and walked and ended up somewhere in the 100s and sat in a bar and knocked back beer and chasers and the lines of my happiness began to blur and in a jump of time I could imagine how this was going to end.
I was wrong. It would actually end worse than I imagined.
But I could just about see the outlines of a devastating emotional end.
Two years later and the end of the affair was long buried (she is married now) and I was one of the walking wounded and more importantly disappointed in the new Ray Davies. A naff set at Beacon Theatre was the follow up to a misguided attempt to use his natural English observation to an international scene.
Except for “In A Moment”.
Though the song itself isn’t a lost love lament, we tend to take from music what we need and that was what I needed from it. “In A Moment” is a minor Davies gem, melodically sparking power-pop till the bridge where it loses its grip. Still the move from chorus to verse is a musical metaphor for the lyrical metaphor in the song.
Ah, yes, lyrical.
Lyrically, it reminds me of that evening walking alone in the city.
Davies is wandering an urban city at twilight and at dusk, and the light of the sky as it changes, brings on a form of nyctolopia. Davies uses that night blindness to explain how a romance can fall apart in an instant.
“Like a momentary loss of sight
Fleetingly it went so wrong from right
In a second it can change from night to day
Any second love can turn to hate”
It is seldom, if ever, somebody else crystalizes a fear you had so clearly. That was precisely what had entered into my mind: it edged the pleasure with what felt at the time an irrational too soon fear.
The song itself ends on a positive note though in my mind it never ends there. Davies sings:
“Like a momentary loss of sight
Fleetingly it went from dark to light
In a second it can change from night to day
But in a moment hope will find the way “
I can’t see that hope. My mind backs up a verse, just before a blistering and highly melodic guitar break, Davies catches my deepest of fears (and one that seems to come true constantly):
“I had a momentary loss of sight
Fleetingly it went so wrong from right
In a second you would change your point of view
In my hesitation I lost you “
That hesitation was the crack in reality I had found that night. It is in the hesitation of loss where I find reality and for no reason I can imagine Ray Davie’s caught it.