Day 81: Enya – Watermark
I know very little about Enya, but what I know, I like: Enya lives by herself in an isolated Irish castle and is very rarely seen. If I had a vision board, I’d print out that sentence and put that right in the middle of it. Except my castle would be Scottish, but other than that, that’s the dream.
Once my fantasy comes true and I live in a castle, my plan is to skulk around so mysteriously that the townspeople think I’m a ghost and enjoy spending time doing my artistic pursuits while having no technology around me that was made after 1999. For this, I’ll need something to listen to that’s appropriate to my new lifestyle, so it’s time for me to start prepping and get acquainted with the work of Enya.
Watermark was released in 1988 and it was Enya’s breakthrough album. It was made in collaboration with Nicky Ryan, her manager, producer and arranger, as well as his wife Roma Ryan, who is a lyricist. It was her second record, but her first one under her new record deal with Warner Music. The label head Rob Dickins was such a fan that they offered her a deal with creative freedom and no deadlines or interference from management. Dickins said, “Sometimes you sign an act to make money, and sometimes you sign an act to make music. This was clearly the latter.“
I’m not saying I had anything against Enya, but I’ll happily admit that I was being unnecessarily sceptical about her music. To be fair, I wasn’t really that knowledgeable about it – I’d heard “Sail Away” and “Orinoco Flow” and probably a few others, but I was probably never in the right setting to really hear them. I expected Watermark to be an album of kind of fun, new-age-y, hokey tracks without much depth to them, but that can really accompany the hell out of a candlelit bath. Turns out I was wrong.
I had a lot of time today, so I gave the record the respect it deserves and listened to it with good headphones, in a dark room, laying under a weighted blanket doing some light meditating. Reader, I have had An Experience. I think it would be impossible not to, it’s just very good music. It’s hard to categorise into a genre, it’s just something that’s unique to Enya. I was a big fan of “Exile” and even “Orinoco Flow” hit me very differently when I was properly sinking into it. It’s a very tactile record, you can really feel what you’re listening to in your body if you give it the time of day.
9.5/10, I’ll listen to this once I’m in my castle. But who knows how long that’s going to take, so I’ll listen to it before that, too. Also, fun fact about my aspirational neo-luddite queen: she says she only checks her emails only once every few weeks but she does it very fast because “the energy is no good. I’d rather go for a walk.” She really is living my dream.