FiftyFive

Then again (see previous) this is Bonnie Raitt at her best - fantastic slide player, great singer and singing in memory of Stevie Ray Vaughan - another great player - perhaps I should ditch the blog and just post a series of players that I admire... this is the last day in September and the 55 is geting nearer...

FiftyFive

I was thinking today, it's a long time since I listened to Bonnie Raitt and I was trying to explain her attraction to 25 people who are about 30 years younger than her and me. But what was trying to do was talk about song lyrics as seduction - and how can this not be such a song? I persuaded them that when Bonnie sang, "I can't make you love me, if you won't..." that they had to deconstruct this as, "Why don't you, you should..." But do we ever really say what we mean. Our whole language is coated with paradoxes, contradictions and oxymorons. We ask questions when making statements, we use irony and satire just to be cruel and generally joke around when we are trying to say something serious. Its a strange language this that they call English. But I digress, in many ways, because I am in a Bonnie Raitte kind of mood, this is great song (its the one I was referring to) because what it says, really, is that not everyone you try to like is going to like you back - and we all know some of them, I guess!

FiftyFive

Sitting in the garden on a Sunday afternoon as the sun shimmered through the trees, while drinking green tea and listening to Pergolesi's - Stabat Mater (Dolorosa) - which I did yesterday - hardly counts as decadent; but taking time out in that way is surely the height of luxury in the busy lives we live. I had a hundred other things I could have done, from painting, pruning, cutting and sawing through to writing more of what I had started over the summer. I even have to prune the paper I am to give in New Zealand but I don't even have to consider the indolence of the moment as thinking time. It was just down time, time for reflection and mulling and just being. Don't we all deserve that on a Sunday afternoon? Earlier I had watched the football team I manage draw nil nil in a very good game in which my (Under 15) boys had a goal chalked off for offside and so did they; hit the bar and so did they; hit the post and they missed a penalty - a draw seemed a fair result. Though during the game something quite remarkable also happened. A mini tornado, not even a whirlwind, more like a whirlybreeze ghosted round the corner from behind some bushes and ran up the touchline, taking all sorts of paper, leaves and the like with it. It only lasted a few moments but a sight seen so little in my lifetime. I can only ever recall seeing one other (I am not writing this from Oklahoma, after all). So the interlude in the garden wasn't so much a celebration of the glorious game but an acknowledgement that despite the whirling dervishes that like to ruffle our hair, life's equilibrium is intact. That won't always be the case but I will worry about that when change happens...

FiftyFive

It is now Sunday night here and its been a long sunny day of football (which we love) but the Indian summer has continued. It is hard to believe this is an English autumn and that October beckons but no one is complaining. Tonight I was thinking about what clip to post and I have decided on this - Jeff Beck is WELL KNOWN for Hi Ho Silver Lining (which is a bit of a joke) - but there is so much more to him than that. I truly love listening to this, but watching him play Nitin Sawhney's, Nadia (which you can catch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJT7f5W7QB8) fascinates me, the dexterity and sheer control of what he is doing reveals an elecric guitarist, completely in control of his instrument - a master craftsman at work and a great tunesmith - with a space boogie too, we really are star-folk - and what an amazing band. The bass player is a New Zealander - which brings a certain symmetry because did I not mention I would be going there this year:

FiftyFive

Age fourteen D. was off to his first teenage party dressed as one of The Beatles - he thought George but his friends said Paul when he got there. Either way he was happy and isn't that a blessing? But a Beatle, is this a case of postmodern repetition, the trace of a past inhabiting the hyperreality of youth identity. His current big musical passion is David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust era (remember I said I saw the Ziggy Stardust tour all those years ago) all that transgendered transgression combined with rock and roll, it all seemed so radical when I saw it first and now we both see it as fun and good tunes. I suppose I should question whether there is a certain epistemic certainty being destabilised by this admission. Though I am more inclined to say we have much common ground to discuss when we drive to the football. Who needs a discourse on simlulacrum, hyperreal and the univocity of meaning when you are both singing along to Starman - bring it on - "...He'd like to come and meet us/But he thinks he'd blow our minds..."

FiftyFive

And then sometimes I don't want to write anything at all but just listen... this tune came to mind as I was sitting back waiting for nothing much more than the sun to go down. Isn't that just the way sometimes, a moment captures a tune which captures a thought and another trace of another fragment to become the closing bars in the dimming of a day, as you let it slip away. And yet still it remains, while little more than a brief memory it locks itself away... and its been a good day, nothing exceptional has happened, it just was... I may dig for a better version of this tune to update, like a longer version, but it will do for now...

FiftyFive

I can’t be alone in thinking this, and I have mentioned the Eco quotation aside, but at certain points in my life I have felt like the entire world is, indeed, an enigma; a bucketful of words, musical notes, paintings, pictures and ideas all jumbled up, weaving mixed metaphors, assorted similes, rhythms, rhymes, images, silences as hypothetical postulates and endless ellipses… into a web of complete incomprehension. Thus when I began writing this blog I thought I would be able to begin unravelling this web of mystery - what after all is so enigmatic about such an idea? But thus far, all I feel have to offer are the scraps, a fragment, a glimpse, a trace of an incomplete story that goes on indefinitely. That is essentially where the idea for this blog comes from. It comes from a voyage, a journey, a quest to try and collate those fragments, so that others may try to comprehend and make sense of them as they go about their own quests and journeys. Can any any of us do anything else? What I have tried do so far in my life is make a few connections, forge some links… which in the end amount to a kind of sense that allows me to maintain the enquiry, because the full sense itself is ever changing, always elusive and just far enough away to remain untouched (or untouchable). And things I read and pick up along the way encourage me to keep my channels of enquiry open, for example, G.H. Hardy once wrote, "I can remember Bertrand Russell telling me of a horrible dream. He was in the top floor of the University Library, about A.D. 2100. A library assistant was going round the shelves carrying an enormous bucket, taking down books, glancing at them, restoring them to the shelves or dumping them into the bucket. At last he came to three large volumes which Russell could recognize as the last surviving copy of Principia Mathematica [written by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, 1910]. He [the library assistant] took down one of the volumes, turned over a few pages, seemed puzzled for a moment by the curious symbolism, closed the volume, balanced it in his hand and hesitated...." This says a lot about the how of choices without really addressing the why; the randomness is intriguing; what to include and leave out; what to keep and what to ditch, do we keep what we understand and discard what we don't, or do we keep the book to learn what we don't already know? But just when you think you have sorted it out, still doubt remains - and then along comes Albert Einstein saying, "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." Which in turn pointed me to that reluctant philosopher, gagster and deeply unpleasant politician, Donald Rumsfeld, who told us, "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know..." and there is no way around that (to paraphrase Tom Waites in Nighthawks at the Diner). As I say - life is a bit of an enigma but all the more colourful for it. And talking about colourful - here is a Tom Waites clip of him intervening on an older song:

FiftyFive

And then how strange does it all become - this www stuff never ceases to amaze. I only started this blog yesterday and mentioned gardening and my passion flower in only the second posy (sic - that should be "post" but a nice slip, even I say so myself) and then my oldest ever friend - we met when we were 4 years old at Gorebridge Primary School and that was 50 years ago, goodness - anyway he is a serious gardener, as opposed to me hardly knowing what I am talking about (and he played bass in our first ever band but that's another story) well, he has just sent me an email. Serendipity and synchronicity are big words that really mean we are only a whisper away from touching. Ian and Gina are about to become a grandparents for the second time round, around about now (24th Sept 2009) - how life goes on and on and on and... this is such good news! To be truthful, few could sing this song better than Kate Rusby (and sorry its not a better clip) but its appropriate for the timing and the memories - grace notes I guess, close your eyes and let it wash away the day:

FiftyFive

Passiflora incarnatahus - thus far, Autumn has been a bit of an Indian summer. There are still passion flowers on the vine - do they grow on a vine - I have no idea though you can read about them (instant web access for the amateur gardeners like me http://www.thegardenhelper.com/passion.html) but above is a picture of one growing against my house. Looking forward from Autumn usually brings the gloom of winter but it is extraordinary how life propels you forward and away from such assumptions. Earlier today I received a very welcome invitation to give a lecture in New Zealand. So I will fly from the tail end of an English autumn into the tail end of an antipodean spring and then back again to an English winter. In fact I am not quite sure whether I will be going backwards or forward. I am looking forward to finding out though - one thing is for sure, the day I actually turn 55 will be closer by the time I get back, no matter how disrupted the changing seasons. So too will 2010, the second decade of the 21st Century. In the year I was born, bread was still rationed and I am not old at all, where has the time gone? But since I am on an antipodean theme I could close with a dose of Nick Cave for company... of course, none of this is me really saying anything because I am only warming up the blog for the impending 55 date; even if we are still contemplating the paradox of spring following autumn into winter - climate change and stranger times beckon, I reckon - its nearly October.

FiftyFive

When I was a kid I used to try and imagine what life would be like in the year 2000. That's not unusual I suppose. I am of that generation. Post war, baby boomer, watching the sixties happen, the Beatles and the Stones prodding me into looking forward to my teenage years, though of course 1966 ruined my life (I'm a Scotsman - I was 11). And that time of my growing was marked by events; Neil Armstrong walked on the moon; I played in my first band; took a train to Marseilles then St Tropez; saw the Ziggy Stardust tour; Neil Young in Glasgow; Bruce Springsteen in Edinburgh; kissed a girl or two, bought a 1960 Fender Stratocaster which I still have. But this is a list which is as long as its subjective and each event on the list is a nostalgic memory, probably less interesting than I remember - for isn't nostalgia a return to a place that never really existed, events become better in the re-telling. However, at no time did I ever anticipate who I would become and indeed what and where I would be now.

*

I have to confess, I have been immensely lucky. I have done things, been places, written things, sung some of them, lectured and read them in public too and now here I am, heading for 55 and 2010. So I thought 55 in 2010 might be a good time for me to collect fragments of the year while recalling snatches of the past... thus, this blog will be little more than a collage of thoughts and reminiscences, scraps and fragments, traces, places and grace notes, stuff like this from Neil Young which was first released when I was just 18...

*

*

...it never fails to put a smile on my face. YouTube at 55 is such a joy! Anyway, this is me writing about looking back, in the present, with an eye to the future...