ISLANDS - IBIZA - FORMENTERA
Happy birthday to ISLANDS, my favorite Crimson album, as is the lineup which recorded it (although I love all of them, being a fan since 1974 or so).
Placid, tranquil, serene, melancholic, sad, sophisticated, unpredictable, unique, distinct, inimitable, incomparable & unmatched. Choose a word: they all fit to describe the haunting beauty and atmosphere of the album. ISLANDS is an island in the progressive rock universe.
I live in Brazil, but in 2017 I had the chance to visit part of the family that lives in Ibiza. I could not miss the opportunity to know Formentera, one of the 5 Balearic Spanish Islands. Once there, I visited EL PILAR DE LA MOLA, which is a high and very large plateau (the highest point on the island). It ends in La Mola Lighthouse, placed on the edge of the plateau. This entire highland ends abruptly in a frightening vertical abyss which casts itself upon the Mediterranean Sea. The solitude and quietness of the place is phantasmagoric. It is just the wind blowing leaves, grass, bushes, cactus and the pine. Below the Lighthouse you hear the persistent cry of seabirds and gulls, which wheel and glide, mournfully cry, in the high weathered walls, protected by vertical fall. Pete Sinfield was not lying.
It is all still there in Formentera: houses iced in white wash still guard the pale sunset shoreline, strange herbs grow, fig trees, brown walls where Spanish Lizards run (they are green and all over the place in the wild parts of Formentera and Ibiza).
The only thing that isn’t there anymore are the ladies of the road. They are all grannies now and were at home cooking for their grandchildren. But in case someone wants to meet new ones, leave Formentera and head for Ibiza. There is a lot of ladies, girls, boys in the effervescent Discos and hot nightlife.
