The Dolby Triptych: Love in Three Movements
“When I was small I was in love with everything.
Now there’s only you.”
We climb the cliffs
And hang from trees
Wrap the rocks and pave the beach
State of shock at flick of switch
into the cloudburst overhead
I wanna get my face wet
It's been buried in the sand for years
(Headlong) into the cloudburst naked
There's really no escaping it
There's gonna be a cloudburst here
Come out of your shell
And look at the sea
It may be just as well
You stayed here with me
Private hell at turn of a key
into the cloudburst overhead
I wanna get my face wet
It's been buried in the sand for years
(Headlong) into the cloudburst naked
There's really no escaping it
There's gonna be a cloudburst here
And it's dawning on me
I've been a cork in the ocean, been bobbing in the North Sea
Then take this vest of plaster, these boots of concrete
And make them down as surplus, return to Mulberry
Cloudburst at Shingle Street
Cloudburst at Shingle Street
Cloudburst at Shingle Street
When I was small I was in love in love with everything
Now there's only you
— Thomas Dolby, “Cloudburst at Shingle Street”
Taken individually, they may seem surreal or oblique. But when placed together—Weightless, Windpower, Cloudburst at Shingle Street—they reveal a secret narrative: a love story in three movements.
I. Weightless — The Hunger
“Big hunk of carrot cake, blueberry milkshake,
Fistful of coldrex won’t fix the empty feeling…”
It begins with emptiness. A man drives highways, fills his tank, and medicates his body, while a woman flicks through TV channels and memories. Each reaches for distraction, yet nothing touches the hollow in the chest.
Love flickers as a possible cure—“You could be the one”—but even that is fleeting, gone as quickly as it arrives.
Here Dolby sketches modern restlessness: a soul unanchored, weightless in a world of consumption, craving connection that nothing else can provide.
II. Windpower — The Current
“Switch off the mind and let the heart decide
Who you were meant to be…
There is no enemy.”
Then comes revelation: emptiness cannot be filled by sugar, fuel, or static. One must surrender calculation, let the heart decide.
“Windpower” is both literal and metaphorical: the promise of clean energy and the invisible current of love that carries life forward. It speaks of renewal, of belonging, of a tribe bound not by fear but by trust.
Where Weightless was hollow, Windpower is alive. It insists: love is a force of nature, the renewable current that powers us when reason fails.
III. Cloudburst at Shingle Street — The Storm
“Headlong into the cloudburst naked
There’s really no escaping it.”
At last, the storm arrives. Cliffs collapse, seas rise, thunder breaks overhead. Destruction is inevitable.
And yet, Dolby frames it with intimacy. The “private hell” of isolation is undone by the presence of another. Childhood wonder—once a love for everything—contracts into a singular truth: now there’s only you.
In the cloudburst, in the apocalypse, what survives is not fear but love. Stripped of illusions, defenses, and distractions, the heart knows its final truth: to love one person is to defy the storm.
Summary
The three songs together form a hidden triptych:
1. The Hunger — the hollow ache of disconnection (Weightless).
2. The Current — the invisible energy of love, urging surrender (Windpower).
3. The Storm — the final revelation, where love is the only truth left (Cloudburst at Shingle Street).
This was not just a set of tracks, but an arc. A movement from longing to renewal to surrender. A recognition that while the world leaves us weightless, love alone is wind enough to carry us, and strong enough to stand even in the cloudburst.
✨ This is how Dolby sang it: emptiness, current, storm. But in her choosing, it becomes something more personal: a coded message of longing, power, and final truth—where in the end, it is you who remains.
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I am in a meadow. They appear to be no flowers, but they are tall grasses and thousands of bees, bumblebees honeybees, wood bees. I see at least five or six kinds of bees and these tall sparse stocks are getting visited over and over they’re these bifurcated grasses and they have little nodules that I wouldn’t think we’re pollen nectar but the bees are going crazy for them . This must be some kind of wheat. I never seen so many bumblebees the bumblebees outweigh the or outnumber the other bees by 10 or 15 to one regular honeybees I saw maybe 10 I’ve seen 100 bumblebees three or four wood bees that’s crazy. I’ve never seen anything like it. There must be hives here. Is it the weather the woods I’m going to see the vineyard
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Thank you for coming here and walking through the garden of my mind. No day is as brilliant in its moment as it is gilded in memory. Embrace your experience and relish gorgeous recollection.
Into every life a little light will shine. Thank you for being my luminance in whatever capacity you may. Shine on, you brilliant souls!
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