7/24: Secret Touch
'Tis a fearful thing to love what death has touched
You can never break the chain.
There is never love without pain.
A gentle hand, a secret touch on the heart—
A healing hand, a secret touch on the heart.
“Secret Touch” is a story about love after loss. Like many songs on Vapor Trails, it embodies the circular nature of grief, and how the only way out is through. The words “You can never break the chain / There is never love without pain” reminds me of the meditations that come before the Mourner’s Kaddish in the Mishkan Tefilah:
‘Tis a fearful thing
to love what death can touch.
While I’ve written ad nauseam about how I prefer the original mix of this album, I think “Secret Touch” is one song that sounds far, far better in the remix. The individual instruments are sharper, clearer; the drum hits feel more like a heartbeat and less like white noise. You can even hear some kind of strange-sounding guitar toward the end—a lute, perhaps? The original mix swallows that lute whole.
My favorite change, though, comes around 4:00, during Geddy’s funkalicious bass solo. The way the distortion-laced guitar and bass echo against each other during you can never break with change becomes less of a chaotic mess and more like something building, through folding and repetition and persistence. The way out is the way in, indeed.