Weirdo, Jumpy Stuff

Listening to Music for 18 Musicians

I have just discovered that Hapworth 16, 1924 is available online because The Complete New Yorker is out on DVD. Not sure what the status of this online version is but if you don’t publish what must be the ultimate in Salinger completists’ fetishes, this is what you get. I’m not sure that I should read it right now but I may. I’m also not sure what to write about today. As usual all that seemed bright and important over the weekend now seems dusty and irrelevant, like a forty-year old magazine but hey - who cares?

This music makes me think of sunny days, an indeterminate number of years ago but before the various Orwellian distortions of the truth regarding certain declared, disastrous futures came to haunt our waking lives. I like a music that is out of time, something which references nothing but itself with a melody that just soars and repeats like a continuous happy memory. But then again, maybe the bad feeling around is due to lack of emotional connections with the world. You know those days when there is nothing remotely interesting on the horizon? Well today is one of them – not that it leads to depression - just a sense of boredom and resignation. Anyway, this is where the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is supposed to kick in isn’t it? I am afraid that the sun shining is not enough to lift this feeling – I prefer it raining and you may say that I have been satisfied over the last few weeks but it is never enough. My son likes to sit with me in the porch when there is a belting rain-storm. The air seems to flow through the house, giving a delicious feeling of being safe and dry but with the potential to run out and get soaking wet. Of course the white noise is part of this as well, the calming sound that fills up any gaps where the worries creep in, a blank nothing with no associations and no positive or negative – just the sound of something – like the monsters coming out of the sea in Welsh Incident. I was coming to that.

It was nice to see Shetland on the new series of Coast yesterday. We went there once in 1974 I think but I can still remember the silence that seems to still be there. We stayed at a remote hotel where there was a permanent resident who had run away to sea during the First World War. He looked at us kids with horror as we poured sugar on our porridge. We’ll be back there one day. I hope it stays as quiet. I am shocked to realise that it is ten years ago that we went on Honeymoon to Lewis and I only hope that that place has not changed either. It might not be so wonderful in the winter but I suppose I would like a good storm. We had one day of rain and wind and the rest of the time it was like The Mediterranean or even somewhere in Oceania, white sands and balmy sea-breezes.