Songs from a Room

I was profoundly influenced by 'Songs from a Room' by Leonard Cohen - as much by the album artwork as by the lonely, haunting music.

Inside (or maybe on the back) of the white album cover was a grainy black and white photo of a woman sitting at a table in a simple room, smiling towards the camera. (It was actually Marianne - the subject of several of his songs). I thought the image was alluringly romantic and longed for that room.

In the summer before we were married, we travelled to a Greek island to meet my friends who were living there. We rented a small room in a town and when I saw it I realised that it could be the one in the photo, simple, sparsely furnished and white-walled.

The meeting with my friends went very badly and I was, and still am in some ways, very upset by the break-up. But being in that room was the start of an enduring love affair that carries on to this day - thirty-seven years later.

It was probably the texture of the wall in this image that revived these memories. The pieces of pottery around the base have been gathered from the beach.