“Grief” Anna | Anna Ancher (1859 – 1935)
“Galveston was my love letter to absence. I wrote it in a London flat, 1968, far from Texas beaches, imagining a soldier in Vietnam staring at the sea—any sea—begging it to rinse his rifle and his soul. “Galveston, oh Galveston” is homesickness weaponized; the waves are both memory and mercy. She stands on the pier, not just a girl but the idea of return, of life before the draft. I gave Glen Campbell a soldier’s ache wrapped in major chords—sunlit on the surface, haunted underneath. It’s anti-war without a slogan: longing, not protest, is the sharpest blade.” — Jimmy Webb
