Night Owl ( full version) - Gerry Rafferty

"I know that he went to meet his maker sober and unafraid, and fiercely curious and with enormous bravery." (John Byrne)
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There is no returning to the seventies hair cut

Steeleye Span are coming to Sydney's Seymour Centre. Is that amount of nostalgia worth 88 bucks a seat? I can't say I know the answer.
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David Malouf

Tonight's university class was the second of two on David Malouf's An Imaginary Life. I read it for the first time about two year's ago (which is the last time I thought about preparing to return to university). I have to admit that before then I had never read anything by Australia great Romantic; never even heard of his imagined life of Ovid. Well, now I have.

It's an impressive read. I've no idea if the text takes me inside the head of the exiled Roman poet. Who could know such a thing? But the short novel certainly did take me inside the head of some imaginary other. I believed I was with someone crossing the frozen land of a hostile Black Sea hinterland. I could picture the Shaman drifting into a trance. I felt the scorn and suspicion of hard-working woman who felt the arrival of the wild child posed some kind of threat.

That seems even more impressive to me (as a late reader) given that so much of the novel evokes the tensions of post-colonial Australia. In some senses only an Australian could have conceived and written the text. Good stuff. Well worth the read.

I let loose my worse nature in tonight's class (although I doubt that anyone noticed). I struck a pose; made an observation about sentence construction in the novel and asked a question that was too clever by half (about what constitutes good or bad writing ... as if I didn't already know what ideologically loaded terms those are). It would have been better for me and more interesting for everyone else if I'd used this brain of mine (size of a small planet in a far off galaxy) to real effect. There is no need or benefit to underplay one's interest, intellect or perception. Why bother Dougie? You'd still have much to learn by asking questions that you don't actually know the kind of answer a tutor is likely to give (which she did).
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The world seemed younger then ...

Where does the time go?

I was thirteen years old ...

I loved this song. Not quite sure why it should appeal to a spotty adolescent, barely into his teens. What would I have known about about my love "gently sighing as the evening slips away"?

Never comes the day indeed ...

So long, farewell ...

... as the Von Trapp family children (whom you know so well and love, Spike) sing. Last day at the office. End of this phase, standing on the threshold of a dream (as the Moody Blues were wont to tell us in the sixties anvd seventies). We love you and will miss you.

(They don't write them like this anymore!!)

Thirty years ago ...

... and still the music makes you think that a man can change, live out his dreams; realise his ambitions. The reality may be different, of course. You know, Gerry Rafferty still earns $120,000 a year in royalties from Baker Street but he seems not to have escaped his demons and the bottle. Let's hope he does. But our dreams don't die. That saxophone cries out to us still. Anything is possible it seems to tell us; not easy, maybe not even likely but always possible so ... give up the booze and the one-night stands ... and keep at it.
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John Martyn

I saw him in concert in Glasgow, at the City Halls. I was sixteen or seventeen. There was him and Danny Thomson. Half way through John Martyn got into an argument with a guy in the audience (it might have had something to do with JM's wife Beverly). JM climbed off the stage and chased the guy out of the hall. We were all younger. RIP man, RIP.

John Martyn: a music legend remembered in The Guardian
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Original and best

Happy 18th birthday Lucien

Parliament-Funkadelic ... it was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

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We were younger then ...

Saw them live in The Appollo, Glasgow in 1973. It's been demolished but we might be still there calling out for more.