‘Don’t Walk Away’, by ELO, was the firing of the ‘Creation of Hippie-ville’ in early 2023.
It was a cold grey cloudy day. Summer was cold and bleak. Winter was long and it engulfed eleven months of the year. I had spent all of 2021, ’22, and early 2023, numb. My dog and I walked many beaches in some listless search for a reasoning behind the catastrophe that had occurred in 2021. Many paths we had walked along the beach and each day our steps were washed away. Walking, aimlessly, just puzzled with the true realities of human suffering, attachment, and simply trying to make sense of all things after a traumatic event.
Songs had played out in my mind many times, but this succession of songs (Hippie-ville Creation Series) had repeated themselves throughout many “therapeutic” dog walk sessions along Somerset beach, and there upon a story unfolded. A story of emptiness, alienation, and building new foundations. Irrespective of one’s pain and suffering, life, the external manifestation of life, continues in its unrelenting fashion. And life pays no mind to one’s own mortal misery. But numb, I sat on the idea of Hippie-ville for many months with no real action. Then in August 2023, the first shooting of the series began (Everybody’s Talkin’) and what laid out before me was a full story depicting recovery from a traumatic event, and a phoenix flight to a new life.
‘Don’t Walk Away’ is set in 2021/’22/’23, and it is Part One of a DOUBLE ALBUM concept, that describes the loss, the pain, the rebuilding. In Part Two ‘Always Welcome’, begins its story in Jan 2024, and it describes the phoenix rising out of the ashes, a settled frame of mind and time of rebirth and a new life.
Electric Light Orchestra, ‘Don’t Walk Away’.
Written by: Jeff Lynne.
Album: Discovery, 1979.
Jet Records.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t...)
www.jefflynneselo.com/music/
Sound effects: www.zapsplat.com
www.hippie-ville.com.au