The Other Shore
Three meanings in one title. The far bank Juliane Werding taught a German generation to sing toward whenever they sing of the dead. The far bank the ferry across the Strait of Messina has never bridged, not since Homer. And the far bank that opens between every parent and every child — the crossing no one quite completes, because there is always a chasm, and no birthday emoji ever quite reaches across it. Three shores, one water — and the growing suspicion that sometimes the ferry itself is the most honest thing two people can offer each other.
Three Currents, One Water
The Doors open it by kicking the door in — “Break On Through (To the Other Side),” the whole idea shouted once before the water goes still. After that the crossing runs on three currents, and no song rides only one. There is the current of death and reunion — Oldfield’s mandolin passing for a summer hit until you learn it’s a murder song, Werding carrying it into German, Cohen writing at four in the morning, Cave praying to a God he doesn’t believe in because someone he loves does. There is the geographic current — three kilometres of water between Messina and Reggio, Dalla dying into a melody on Capri, De André handing bread to a fugitive, Veloso moving through three languages without ever losing home. And there is the current of what can’t be said at all — George Michael’s saxophone as cover story, Anohni asking who will be there at the end, Wainwright’s dinner with his father that never gets eaten.
Cassidy Diane’s Lo Stretto carries all three at once, which is why it anchors the whole crossing — the label’s own voice, dropped in among its ancestors. Careless Whisper carries all three too, except its third current is buried so deep the world mis-heard the song for forty years: it heard a cheat’s apology where there was really a man who already knows he is standing on the wrong shore and hasn’t found the words. Which may be the real point of the title — the other shore isn’t always where you go looking for it. Sometimes it has been sitting in the dentist’s waiting room since 1984, in plain hearing, wearing a saxophone.
It ends where it began, and turned. Picture Moonlight Shadow sung by Anohni, or by Rufus, or by the George Michael of Careless Whisper with the cover story finally down — the melody holds, the voice is another, the shore has rotated. That take is on no streaming service. You have to imagine it. Which is the last joke of the crossing: the other shore is also the version that was never recorded, and already exists in the ear of everyone waiting on the far bank.
Play it front to back. The crossing is the argument.
Pairs well with a ferry you don’t take, a letter you don’t send, and a birthday emoji you never correct.
