Vigil in A Wilderness of Mirrors - Lyrics

Lyrics

The album is not a concept album, however, several of the songs refer to "the hill" – a metaphor for greed and consumerism. The songs deal with the themes that Fish has always been passionate about – personal and social politics – but in single-song format. "State of Mind" and "Big Wedge" stand out as the most overtly political songs: "State of Mind" strongly articulates the growing civic disillusionment in the late Thatcher years, "Big Wedge" is an explicit criticism of capitalist greed, American society and policies (the cover of the single features Uncle Sam offering a wedge of dollar bills to the viewer). Incidentally, the lyric had earlier been vetoed by Marillion as "anti-American", they feared it might have hampered their entry into the U.S. market with the next album. Other songs express a more general disgust with materialism ("Vigil", "The Company", "View From The Hill"). "Family Business" refers to domestic violence, the bonus track "The Voyeur (I Like To Watch)" to TV voyeurism. Finally, "A Gentleman's Excuse Me" and "Cliché" are love songs.

The phrase "wilderness of mirrors" is originally from T. S. Eliot's poem Gerontion, but has since become a widely used metaphor for disinformation in spy fiction, where Fish picked it up.

A number of the lyrical concepts on the album (most particularly, the Voice In the Crowd motif) can be heard in Marillion demo sessions released on the 1999 remaster of Clutching at Straws. These sessions were part of the writing process for Marillion's fifth studio album with Fish, which never came to fruition. Many of the musical ideas developed on those demos can be heard on Seasons End, the first Marillion album with Steve Hogarth.