There is a fine line between devotion, enthusiasm, love, single-mindedness, passion and obsession and this line is in a constant state of flux – until it makes that fateful shift – usually with conviction (and often irrevocably) – and encircles the subject in a single hypostasised category „cell“ where there is no disguising the emotion or state any longer and little chance of recourse or redemption. Yuka Honda captures this initial nascent, throbbing, latent state in „I Dream About You“ from her 2009 album Eucademix. The song is sung by Miho Hattori (I believe) from the perspective of a female subject to the female object of her burgeoning desire – the refrain „I dream about you“ is incanted over a monotonous electronic backdrop – occasionally interspersed with more elaborated semi-spoken narrative and snatches of dialogue from a European movie of indeterminate identity or content – save that it is suitably „moody“ and ominous. The ambiguity of the line „I dream about you“, that is alluded to in the song’s opening reference to the „little moment between twilight and night“ – is perfectly framed by the music, by the singer´s tone and by the paucity of detail. When we are focused – however healthily or unhealthily on an object of adoration – words are usually superfluous – and when we hear the line repeated again and again, each iteration is inflected with a different hue – Love? Sexual desire? Anodyne admiration? Tender affection? Venal obsession? Any interpretation could be possible. The narrator reveals how she meets the object of her passion three weeks earlier, when „She gave me a sweet smile – the kind I call sublime“. This word is most apposite as, Mona Lisa-like, it embodies the ambiguity and latent quality that exists at the heart of all change. Limus – „oblique“ and Limen – „threshold“ – words that it may derive from, signal that line which initially can crossed from moment to moment until something will happen that drives us to cross it without hope of return. Was the smile genuine? Was it a come-on? Was it a guarded, resigned defence put up instinctively in reaction to an encounter felt to be sinister? The great thing is we will never know. The song will remain forever in this unfinalisable state.