Best of 2008 - #7

Lift Me Up/Where You End – Moby

It has become very vogue since the mid-90’s to meld the realms of soul and body, and Moby has always been at the front of this crusade. His pulsing beats combined with soulful voices invite cognitive emotionalism. And in recent years he has tried to produce this sound more independently – using his own voice rather than old spiritual covers. I think critics knocked him for unoriginality. Well, his album Hotel suffers for the lack of voices that can go deeper and further than little Moby, but his beats have not diminished. In fact, Lift Me Up/Where You End cuts its own path as a blues song.

The song begins with a lament. Drab words are killing him; he is confined to a cerebral cell and is forced to plead: “Lift me up, lift me up!” over and over – rising to a shout. It’s a prayer of release and a cry from quicksand – aided here by electric guitar and background singers to add a little more gusto.

The agony like Dante’s lost souls howling from a well end the prayer just as it began it, but Where You End starts in mid-form – moving us back to the physical. There was no voice from heaven. Rather, Moby comes to a sobering recognition: “Some things fall apart.” So what can we fix ourselves to that is “real” and invigorating? Sensuality, which scares us to no end, is Moby’s grace. His yearning for touch is more than carnality. Sure, when he says, “Where you end is where I begin,” he’s is definitely speaking sexually. But, there’s something else here. There’s incarnation and the sacramental grace of divine touch, like a divine finger touching the index finger of Adam. Soul meets body. Bodies are gateways to souls. Moby’s been on to that for years.



Wes