Music to lose yourself in while getting on with getting on

This, variations on the same theme and all forms of ambient Blade Runner sountrack music have been looping around me as I try to make a bit of progress ... or do I mean retrieve lost ground?  Vangelis. who knew?

Janet of Carterhaugh

Day 2 of the 28 Plays Later challenge (write 28 plays in 28 days) and script #2 was submitted about an hour ago. This was our brief:

So let’s look at myths and folklore today. Try to pick a random culture, find an interesting character in their mythology or an awesome folklore story and write about that.

I forgot about selecting a "random culture" and stuck with Scotland. I hummed and hawed for a bit between re-telling The Great Selkie of Sule Skerrie and The Ballad of Tam Lin. In the end I chose the latter, and not simply because it's one of Spike's favourites (although that did influence my decision).  

So I've re-told 'Tam Lin' in eleven pages, including music and dance. Me? Putting in music and dance. There's a first. And I've called it Janet of Carterhaugh because the more and more I thought about the tale, the clearer it became to me. It's Janet's story. The important point is that it's in. If it's a tenth as good as the rendition above of the ballad I shall be a happy man.

Yesterday is the birth place of today

Marvin Gaye, 1983. Not wrong.

And he wasn't wrong here either ...

This does for today

Holding Back The Years by Simply Red

This song went to Number 1 in the USA on this day in 1985, apparently. I was living in my Grassmarket flat when the single came out in the UK; barely three months out of hospital after ten months rehab following my accident. Even at that stage I knew the world needed changing. Thirty-something years later there is still work needs doing.

I bought the CD, of course. I still have it somewhere. 

This'll do for today. It fits, not that one knows why.

Purple Rain

It was seven years ago today ...

Bimbadgen Estate, Hunter Valley - 31 January 2009. Pic by Spike

... or thereabouts. This photo appeared in my Facebook feed this morning telling me it was a post from seven years ago. Really? ... I thought. Did we see Leonard Cohen on St. Valentine's Day? No, a Google search quickly confirmed. It was the 31st January.

This is true nevertheless. That was the best concert I've attended in my life. Quite brilliant be a singer, song-writer, poet, performer at the peak of his powers. I have been listening to Leonard Cohen singing since my older brother bought Songs of Leonard Cohen in maybe 1968 or 1969. I was eleven or twelve years old. 

When he started with "Come over to the window, my little darling ..." there may have been a welling-up in my Scottish Presbyterian old-man's eyes. A good night to be out and about with Spike.

Imagining writing spaces

Music to lose oneself inside

Week 2 of my writing course has started and I'm enjoying myself. So that's not at all bad. It's free. I think I'm learning something (about myself if nothing else). And I'm writing, inspired by Andy Warhol in a way and with track after track of Brian Eno's mesmerising* 'ambient' music playing in the background. It has a meditative, trance-inducing quality that seems to help me write, distraction-free, like I have never known before.

Here's an exercise completed during this afternoon's three-hour session. The time flew past unnoticed.

Trying to picture the worst place for you to try to write can help you realise what your best venue might be. Imagine two different venues for writing – one that seems most suited to you, and one that you would find bizarre or too difficult. Write a paragraph describing two writers at work, one in each of the venues.

(Edit of previous attempt, still describes my imaginary writing-space from Hell. All those responsibilities!) 

The Kitchen Table 

It's crowded with belongings that are not mine. Some, I suspect, have no known owner. Space is at a premium and we tussle over any new area that opens up temporarily. It's like the universe described by Dr Steven Hawking - constantly in motion and expanding. Chaos rules. Meals take place there sometimes and a fruit bowl, like a giant black hole, devours any object falling into its clutches. Were there not bananas once, a handful of pears, perhaps a pineapple? All vanish no matter how often we replace them. There are stacks of books - his, hers, theirs - like ancient standing stones in far locations set by the great librarian in the sky. Layers may shift and change over time but the columns remain. Inviolable. Like the pillars on Mount Olympus. There is mail too - who could imagine so much could still be sent and received in this online age? And homework - there is always homework; three sets at varying stages - not quite finished, waiting to be checked and ... "oh, is that where my homework went?" 

So. Not a place to write. But what a place to live our lives.

And the positive alternative:

"Andy Worhol - superstar"

My Place 

I have a room of my own, as Virginia Woolf advised us almost a Century ago. I know I'm lucky. 

It's a small room at the end of the hall and the cat is my most frequent visitor. She, by and large, is entirely disinterested in a mere mortal like me. Unless she wants fed. 

My desk faces an almost blank wall, except for the paper carrier bag I've hung there: large, square, white with giant black letters down one side. 'MoMA' - from the gallery store. It contains a print of Andy Worhol's image behind these words, "art is what you can get away with". I think that's a bit like my mind. Words are in there. Hidden. They might be art. I just have to work at taking them out of the bag. 

There's a PC on my desk and clutter - my clutter - which only I may move: a teapot, books I've read or am about to read, and my new writer's notebook, never out of reach now. I have bookshelves behind me, a radiator for winter and a window with a seductively uninteresting view of the world beyond: our back garden which is world enough when I'm working. 

We've agreed it's my place. To think. To be not distracted. To take small risks as I write. To make mistakes. To learn. Make more mistakes. And write again.

* By the way, "mesmerising" seems to be this week's fave word. I'm using it all over the place.

Ziggy played guitar

Carpenters - Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft

I never knew there was a longer version of the Carpenters venture into the trippy world of beyond.  Clearly, I don't have much on my plate today while poor old Spike has to make the house decent for our friends from The Netherlands who arrive this evening.

Joe Cocker

I can't remember when I first heard Joe Cocker perform; forty years ago, a bit more?  My older brother had a marvellous album collection from which I acquired my defining musical preferences. 

One of his albums was, perhaps of course, Mad Dogs and Englishmen.  

So ... farewell Joe Cocker.  As with so many ageing men like me, he was one of the lead singers on the soundtrack of our lives.

There will be days like this ... but not always

You have to keep moving - sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively.  Sometimes you need to remind yourself that you have to push on.  Some days you'll cover more ground, sometimes less.  

Prepaing for the next move

Two years ago today Spike started packing up our lives in boxes, stacking them from floor to ceiling in the flat in Ashfield.  Within a few days it was almost impossible to open the bedroom door.  And then we moved, first to a room in a hotel on Northbourne Avenue, Canberra (where we stayed longer than either of us thought we would) then here to suburban Gilmore.  We have a house that's bigger than we need, a double garage we don't park cars in but which provides a base for an artist to emerge and gardens front and rear that Spike is making her own, now we've decided it's here we'll stay; at least for a while.

Shit happens.  You do whatever you can, however insignificant it may seem, to be part of the solution; not the problem.  And you move as much as you can - large or small. That's what matters.  You move at least a little.

Call that art?

Andy Warhol, 1963

We had brunch with Jon Simpson and Rosie Birch at the teeming Deus cafe on Parramatta Road.  The food was decent enough; nothing remarkable but a good place to sit and chat.  So we enjoyed a good couple of hours catching up on their whistle-stop tour of the UK, their five days in New York, New York and Spike's adventures in the Australian art world.  Jon brought a gift from MoMA.  He said he saw the poster and immediately thought of me.  Am I that transparently obvious?  A philistine! 

As David Bowie chorused on Hunky Dory

Andy Warhol looks a scream
Hang him on my wall
Andy Warhol, Silver Screen
Can't tell them apart at all

Time for Van Morrison

It's been that kind of day.  So, from Inarticulate Speech of the Heart ...

Rave on john donne, rave on thy holy fool
Down through the weeks of ages
In the moss borne dark dank pools

Rave on, down through the industrial revolution
Empiricism, atomic and nuclear age
Rave on down through time and space down through the corridors
Rave on words on printed page

Rave on, you left us infinity
And well pressed pages torn to fade
Drive on with wild abandon
Uptempo, frenzied heels

Rave on, walt whitman, nose down in wet grass
Rave on fill the senses
On nature’s bright green shady path

Rave on omar khayyam, rave on kahlil gibran
Oh, what sweet wine we drinketh
The celebration will be held
We will partake the wine and break the holy bread

Rave on let a man come out of ireland
Rave on on mr. yeats,
Rave on down through the holy rosey cross
Rave on down through theosophy, and the golden dawn
Rave on through the writing of "a vision"
Rave on, rave on, rave on, rave on, rave on, rave on

Rave on john donne, rave on thy holy fool
Down through the weeks of ages
In the moss borne dark dank pools

Rave on, down though the industrial revolution
Empiricism, atomic and nuclear age
Rave on words on printed page

Roberta Joan Anderson

How long have I been listening to Joni Mitchell; singing along.  Forty years?  Forty five?  According to Wiki (so it must be true!!!) her first studio album was released in 1968 (I was eleven and have no recollection of any track from it).  But a year later cam Clouds and I do know Chelsea Morning and Both Sides Now.  I'm pretty sure that BSN caught my attention as a twelve year old, probably as a result of my big brother's record collection.  He would have been 15 going on 16.  He was into contemporary folk - Pentangle, Donovan (but not Dylan, funnily enough), Joan Baez, CSN&Y, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell - as well as - let's think - John Mayall, Cream, Hendrix (of course) and way out there on the Californian edge of blues-based rock n roll, The Doors.  You can see where my tastes come from.  Did we all look west ... to America?  Anyway, I've been listening to Ms Roberta Joan Anderson sing for at least 43 years. Still am.

So I'm sitting here in Sydney, early in May, listening to Night Ride Home (1991).  As I type, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, based on Yeats's The Second Coming, is playing.  Sing on Joni.  Sing along Dougie.

I love the whole album; no track is better than another but this poem / lyric / song never ceases to grab me.  The unanswered question is audacious, irrefutable, unanswerable: Who you gonna get to do the dirty work / When all the slaves are free?



Passion Play (When All The Slaves Are Free)

Magdalene is trembling
Like a washing on a line
Trembling and gleaming
Never before was a man so kind
Never so redeeming

Enter the multitudes
In exxon blue
In radiation rose
Ecstasy
Now you tell me
Who you gonna get to do the dirty work
When all the slaves are free?
(who're you gonna get)

I am up a sycamore
Looking through the leaves
A sinner of some position
Who in the world can this heart healer be
This magical physician

Enter the multitudes
In exxon blue
In radiation rose
Misery
Now you tell me
Who you gonna get to do the dirty work
When all the slaves are free?
(who're you gonna get)

Enter the multitudes
The walking wounded
They come to this diver of the heart
Of the multitudes
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done

Oh, climb down, climb down he says to me
From the middle of unrest
They think is light is squandered
But he sees a stray in the wilderness
And i see how far i've wandered

Enter the multitudes
In exxon blue
In radiation rose
Apathy
Now you tell me
Who you gonna get to do the dirty work
When all the slaves are free?
(who're you gonna get)

Enter the multitudes
The walking wounded
They come to this diver of the heart
Of the multitudes
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done

Oh, all around the marketplace
The buzzing of the flies
The buzzing and the stinging
Divinely barren
And wickedly wise
The killer nails are ringing

Enter the multitudes
In exxon blue
In radiation rose
Tragedy
Now you tell me
Who you gonna get to do the dirty work
When all the slaves are free?
(who're you gonna get)

Good question

Born To Run

From Bruce Springsteen's web site:

Clarence Clemons photographed by Danny Glinch

It is with overwhelming sadness that we inform our friends and fans that at 7:00 tonight, Saturday, June 18, our beloved friend and bandmate, Clarence Clemons passed away. The cause was complications from his stroke of last Sunday, June 12th.

Bruce Springsteen said of Clarence: Clarence lived a wonderful life. He carried within him a love of people that made them love him. He created a wondrous and extended family. He loved the saxophone, loved our fans and gave everything he had every night he stepped on stage. His loss is immeasurable and we are honored and thankful to have known him and had the opportunity to stand beside him for nearly forty years. He was my great friend, my partner, and with Clarence at my side, my band and I were able to tell a story far deeper than those simply contained in our music. His life, his memory, and his love will live on in that story and in our band.

Oh Magnificent Seven

Is it true? Do we all want to be cowboys
riding as one of the magnificent?

Seven years old and surrounded by toys
we built improbable futures, spent
too much time, too little effort
and insufficient energy on hopeless
schemes of the make-believe sort
we never thought led up life's endless
path of dreams or sped away from
one lost chance to any interrupted
opportunity to add a little to the sum
of ill-conceived imaginings, disrupted

by the world in which our real lives lurk;
dad says: bed straight after homework.

Listening to Desert Island Discs again.  Alfie Boe's third selection was the theme tune from the Magnificent Seven.  I was at least ten when I saw the movie but I have to practise my craft (I can call it poetic licence).  Clearly, a man clutching at straws will find inspiration anywhere he can.
.

The Juke Box Cafe, Eversholt Street

One note, long and low; held

as the heart beat accelerates.

The chest muscles of a young man

begin to ache, yearning for the release

of tension during an age, if not

of discovery, at least of exploration;

experimentation, which some might call
youthful exuberance.

                                    Meanwhile

a saxophone player
with whom

                                   someone’s mother
almost ran away.when she was barely seventeen
...............(which was not yesterday)

looks up from a newspaper

where he’s been checking classified ads

and searching jobs vacant columns

that seem never to have changed

and in an act of recognition,

recollection maybe, he smiles fondly

but not entirely happily. 

Shine on you crazy diamond

He played the part once, on stage

in a student union bar somewhere,

north of Wolverhampton.

The band was rocking.  He was

on fire

but the moment had passed.

It was all downhill

from there.



I'd been listening to Roger Waters on BBC Radio Four's Desert Island Discs

.

Nuff said ...

"If someone comes to you and asks for help, and you can help them, you're supposed to help them. Why wouldn't you? You have been put in the position somehow to be able to help this person."

Gill Scott-Heron in the short video by Jamie Byng here.
.

Gill Scott-Heron died today

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the 
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message
bbout a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

.