34 CARTER
C ARTER
We didn’t get into London much when I was growing up.
But every couple of years, my parents would pack us up for an overnight or two and we would board the train in York.
Jacob and I would be buzzing with excitement for the three-hour journey, emerging into Paddington Station with wide eyes.
When I was around twelve years old, I’d become sort of fascinated with outer space, as many kids tend to be around that age.
But I tended to be obsessive about things.
When I locked on to a subject, it was all I wanted to talk about.
Funny it’s just occurred to me now that my interest in all things space came about right around the same time as my first guitar.
We were on one of those rare trips into London, and my mother suggested we visit the Royal Observatory, which meant very little to me at the time, mainly because I think she’d wanted to keep it a bit of a surprise.
All I really knew was that it was a museum, which sounded fairly boring.
We took the Thames Clipper that day from the city, traveling past Canary Wharf and into Greenwich.
Jacob and I complained about the rare heat wave that had descended upon the city as our parents dragged us through the streets and up the endlessly steep path through Greenwich Park that I thought might never end.
But when we arrived at the top of the hill, I shaded my eyes with my hand and stared at the strange dome towering over me, rising above all of London and the Thames.
My mother leaned down with sparkling eyes and smiled, pointing upward as she explained.
“It’s the home of the largest refracting telescope in the UK, you see.
Here in this building, hundreds of years ago, some of the finest philosophers and scientists in the world learned to plot the planets and stars.
” At fifteen, Jacob was fidgety and bored, but I was completely enchanted, walking through the Flamsteed House where astronomers had once lived and worked, gazing out of windows through newly invented lenses, making discoveries about not only space but time.
There’s a photo of me straddling the Prime Meridian beneath leafy trees with a wide, lopsided grin, and another beside the twenty-four-hour Shepherd Gate Clock.
“This explains a lot,” Michael says with a chuckle, listening to me tell this story. “The cover for the Mysterium album ...”
I nod. “The Tulip Stairs in Greenwich.”
I took her there once, eager to share the spaces of this world that made me tick and knowing she would love it in the same way that I did.
After the Observatory, we’d walked down the wintry hill to the Queen’s House, and I watched her smile at the magnificence of its classical design.
Sneaking away from the crowd at just the right moment, we lay at the bottom of the Tulip Stairs, holding hands as we gazed upward through the geometric black-and-white swirl of stairs that looked like they might go on forever, a golden spiral leading up to a glass window resembling an all-knowing eye.
“After the tour, we all headed back to the UK to finish writing and recording the Sigma Five album,” I say, returning my attention to Michael and picking up on his earlier questions.
“Did she come with you?” he asks.
I nod. “For a while, yeah. By then, she’d pretty much stopped taking all other assignments and was with us all the time.
She wanted to devote her full attention to the film, and it was tough to coordinate other assignments while on the road.
She planned to just pick up where she’d left off eventually.
But I don’t think she ever did.” I look away then.
She told me she didn’t regret the way her career had gone, but I can’t help but wonder if she did sometimes.
“Why not? She had had a successful career before working with you. Why not after?”
I hesitate before answering simply. It isn’t my answer to give.
“Life, I guess.” He doesn’t push this, and so I return to the subject we’ve been discussing.
“Then there was talk of sending us back out on the road at the end of March for our first headlining dates. She had turned in some initial footage of the documentary, and the label decided to extend it, which meant that she would be on the road with us in Europe. Believe me when I say, we were on top of the world. It was such an amazing time for all of us,” I tell Michael.
“Those were good times,” Tommy adds with a small smile as we think about the making of the Sigma Five album. The light before the dark.