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 Site Intro

1. Fugazi Intro

Album Tracks:
 

1. Assassing
2. Punch & Judy
3. Jigsaw
4. Emerald Lies
5. She Chameleon
6. Incubus
7. Fugazi

B-Sides:

1. Cinderella Search

Fugazi - Incubus

Introduction:  Fish’s relationship with Kayleigh soured before the release of the first album. It could be even said that it was because of The Web: Fish had made the decision that trying to make a go of Marillion was more important than anything else, and his personal

‘sirens’
Brewer’s: One of the mythical monsters, half women, half bird, said by the Greek poet to entice seamen by the sweetness of their song, to such a degree that the listeners forgot everything else and died of hunger.

'Incubus'
Pear’s Cyclopedia: "A nightmare, anything that weighs heavily on the mind. In medieval times it denoted an evil demon who was supposed to have sexual intercourse with women during their sleep."

Incubi are supposed to impregnate women using the sperm that succubae had stolen whilst sleeping with men. They were first identified in ‘Malleus Malficarum’, literally ‘Hammer of Evil-doers’ which was the Catholic Inquisition’s main text on witch hunting.

‘The face that launched a thousand frames’
A pun on ‘the face that launched a thousand ships’. This line is from Christopher Marlowe’s ‘Dr Faustus’ (1354), a rendering of the folk tale of a man who sells his soul for his heart’s desires. (another famous version is by Goëthe). Faustus utters this line having ordered the demon Mephistopheles to conjure up Helen. Helen was the wife of King Menaleus. She was abducted by King Paris of Troy, thus precipitating the ten year Trojan War, which kept Odysseus from his shroud spinning wife for so long. (C.p. The Web)

‘I, the mote in your eye’
This is based on Matthew 7v1-5. It goes something like, "Let you remove the beam" (plank - Ed.) "from your own eye before you point out the mote" (speck of dust - Ed.) "in mine." Which means, before you accuse me of some minor sin, ensure that you do not have larger ones yourself.

Since writing this, I received the full version of the biblical story from Paul Wouters:

"Judge not that ye be not judged.
For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged,
and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye,
but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye;
and behold, a beam is in thine own eye.
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye;
and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

Matthew 7:1-5

‘No flower to place before this gravestone’
Flowers, particularly petals are a common image for the female genitals, for obvious reasons. A graphic example is Gerald Scarfe's disturbing quasi-rape animation of two flowers in the film of Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’.

Gravestone becomes a simpler image once the flower image is understood. The grave also hearkens back to the idea that the porno director is getting turned on, but the object of his desire is not there - the erection is useless...

Greg Baran emailed me to add: "I have a different take on this. The lyrics actually go:

"Taken in context, 'the darkroom' or a dark room where one might be alone, 'unleashes imagination', because in the dark, imagination becomes that much more prevalent, 'in pornographic images, in which you will always be the star', obviously he's fantasizing about someone who's 'untouchable, unapproachable' but 'constant in the darkness', constant in his imagination, to which he is 'nursing an erection', masturbating, which is 'a misplaced reaction', because the reaction of getting an erection at imagined sex, and masturbating to it, is 'misplaced' compared to the real thing.

"Then 'with no flower to place before this gravestone', would elude to the fact the he ejaculated, and the sperm that could have been a life is now dead, but he has no flower to place before the grave (or gravestone), and 'the walls become enticingly newspaper thin', as if, after his preoccupied masturbation, he is now aware of the world around and wonders if people could hear what he did through the 'newspaper thin' walls."

‘A irritating speck of dust that came from absolutely nowhere’
The spoken bit you can’t hear properly! ‘Speck of dust’ means the same as mote.

‘Maintain the obituary’
She’s on a stage, she sees the man who has the incriminating films and she forgets the line. In theatrical parlance, she ‘corpses’, as her luvvie theatre chums panic off-stage, and as the prompter in his corner is trying to feed her that line, and as her former lover debates whether to destroy her career, the theatre critics are penning their reviews.