She Came from Out of Nowhere
A slightly odd song from Harry's Gone Fishing, which provides an almost mythical female character to follow the similarly elusive Harry. The song seems to have grown from an initial idea over a period of years, but in its final form remains unresolved. "She" not only came from nowhere, but goes back there in the end, leaving us wondering if we'd imagined her. Although the title of the song reminds us of Leon's earlier poem, "She Appeared Out of Nowhere" (reproduced, for example in the songbook, For The Good of the Nation, p51) there does not seem to be a direct connection.
"The first four lines of 'She Came From Out of Nowhere' floated into my head one day from out of nowhere. Over the next few years, I made numerous attempts to work out where the story was going and why. Now that I've finished the song, I'm still not sure what it's all about. The invisibility of women at a certain age? The fantasies of young men? The demonisation and fear of the outsider, the unknown 'other'?." - (Turning Silence Into Song (songbook), p45)
Recordings
Version 1 (1999)