Two Forgotten Love Songs: Sorrow and Wall In China

Sorrow

Nits didn’t write many classic love songs, not many love songs tout court. And this one certainly isn’t a classic one in the sense of a mainstream or traditional love song. I adore the lyrics that speak of a sort of love/hate relationship and of a girl that is a somewhat mysterious presence/absence in the lyricist’s world. The lyrics of “Sorrow” are some of Henk Hofstede’s finest I think. They speak of the whimsicalities of young love, the heartache and unpredictability, the impulsiveness of the feeling and the utter defencelessness that overtakes you. They are written with humour and show an original take on the intimacy of love.

The fact that Henk doesn’t address the girl directly, but refers to her as a “she”, is not an unusual strategy of his when writing about love. Remember that other love song “The Milkman” where he writes about the love of two people, a “she” and a “he”, a cook and a milkman, also in the third person. Henk often shies away when writing about love. He likes keeping his distance in his lyrics, but in an affectionate, courteous and gentlemanly way which is quite endearing in my opinion. He is reserved and discreet in a good way I feel. It’s a characteristic of the Nits attitude towards intimate feelings. It’s all part of the untainted nature of the Nits world.

Like an elegant painter, Henk doesn’t make a show of emotions, instead he creates delicate images that are mere hints of what is really happening inside. Beautiful, poetic writing that entrusts the story to the imaginative skills of the listener.

dA dA dA is perhaps Nits’ closest thing to a love album. With tales of a young family, tales of lovers and friends. On the cover it has this colourful wooden children’s toy, a picture of innocence, which is – come to think of it – just the way Nits like their feelings expressed: with candour, innocence and purity. Only occasionally, like in “Desert Island Song”, will Henk cautiously address his love while she’s so far away: “I’m calling your name – Just your name”. But most of the time, in the colour Blue, he misses only “her”.

There’s a wall around her.

Wall In China

I had never heard the song until yesterday, when a fellow Nitsfan asked me what I thought of “Wall in China”. So I looked up the song and frankly, I haven’t made such an unexpected, sweet Nits discovery in quite a while. It is perhaps their most beautiful and heartfelt love song. Also about a “her” of course. I love Henk’s imagery of the wall in China and the missing stone. The ingenuous juxtaposition of love and something so remote as the wall in China makes the song even more sorrowful and sincere: the wide gap … And the lonely red flower moving in the breeze on the video screen ties the story and the metaphor of the song’s title beautifully together in the colour of love.

“I can’t forget her”. So simple and beautiful. A true Hofstede song. Love is a precious subject the lyricist of Nits approaches with care; he never seems to want to come too close.Or he transfers the emotion to an object … like a Bauhaus Chair. Henk’s love of art and his art of love. Wall in China never made it to an album. Although it would have fitted perfectly on dA dA dA, the “love album” …

I quite like the way Nits do love songs …

Joke Roelandt, June 2023