served.
Nothing in the future has yet happened. I find that a good thought.
As well as the Quicksilver Messenger Service poster, there is one for Procol Harum live at the Rainbow, Finsbury Park. I have on my cork board a picture of Princess Anne and Mark Phillips, taken from a magazine; one of David Bowie with Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, a rare monochrome poster showing them with their arms round one another’s shoulders in some New York disco; one of Marc Bolan, because he reminds me of Julie; and one of Julie in her school straw hat with her sticking-out teeth.
I took a train to London from Reading to see Procol Harum when they premiered their new album, Grand Hotel , with an orchestra and choir. It was good, but I wasn’t sure Mick Grabham was up to it as Robin Trower’s replacement on guitar, particularly on ‘Whaling Stories’, a song of which I need only to hear the opening note to find my stomach tense and my saliva fill with the re-experienced taste of Glynn Powers’s A-grade hashish. There’s something essential in Trower’s tone that Grabham didn’t catch.
This being the case, I bought Trower’s solo album whose first track, ‘I Can’t Wait Much Longer’, bears a weight of melancholy that is unendurable – in my ears anyway. (Though I still quite like it. In the doom there’s passion and booze and things to do with living. For a distillation of despair with no redeeming qualities, for a tincture of suicide in A minor, try ‘Facelift’ or ‘slightly All the Time’ from Soft Machine’s Third .)
I go to the corner cupboard and take out the white vermouth. It’s that time of day: time for the small blue ten-milligram pill and Sainsbury’s Chambéry with ice. I feel all right, within my limits. I’ve known much worse. Down the hatch.
I often think good music is too much to take. Think of Sibelius Five, when the earth’s weight seems to shift on its axis in the closing moments. It’s well made, as it recapitulates the main theme and finally lets it out; but it describes a place I don’t want to look at, let alone inhabit.
I listened to Beethoven’s late quartets yesterday. They’re quite wintry, aren’t they? But they have the feeling of a man thinking about death. And he can’t keep out a slight sense of pleasure – of smugness. I’m old; I’ve won the right to fear no more the heat of the sun. Feel sorry for me and admire me. Indulge me. I’ve deserved it.
‘Late work’. It’s just another way of saying feeble work. I hate it. Monet’s messy last water lilies, for instance – though I suppose his eyesight was shot. The Tempest only has about twelve good lines in it. Think about it. The Mystery of Edwin Drood . Hardly Great Expectations , is it? Or Matisse’s paper cut-outs, like something from the craft room at St B’s. Donne’s sermons . Picasso’s ceramics . Give me strength.
There’s a lot of political activity at the moment to do with ‘co-residence’, which means boys and girls living in the same college, or not. At the moment there’s only one, King’s, which has both, and on Wednesday there’s a torchlight march on (not to) St Cat’s, whose Master is thought to be responsible for not letting girls, or women as we call them in this context, into men’s colleges. I see I’m down for something called a ‘co-residency lunch’ in Trinity Parlour next week, too. I’ll go because I think Jennifer’s going to be there. She’s not very political, Jen, though I think she’d like to be; she hasn’t really got enough time, what with all those concerts and films and theatres and parties in those tiny cold terraces and writing for Broadsheet , the student mag, and studying for a first-class degree, and Jen Soc (which is a bit political admittedly) and cleaning the house for the others and dutifully writing home and volleyball – and sex.
But she’s keen on co-res, I think, on the grounds that girls should have what boys have – viz., the best colleges, and not
Nothing in the future has yet happened. I find that a good thought.
As well as the Quicksilver Messenger Service poster, there is one for Procol Harum live at the Rainbow, Finsbury Park. I have on my cork board a picture of Princess Anne and Mark Phillips, taken from a magazine; one of David Bowie with Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, a rare monochrome poster showing them with their arms round one another’s shoulders in some New York disco; one of Marc Bolan, because he reminds me of Julie; and one of Julie in her school straw hat with her sticking-out teeth.
I took a train to London from Reading to see Procol Harum when they premiered their new album, Grand Hotel , with an orchestra and choir. It was good, but I wasn’t sure Mick Grabham was up to it as Robin Trower’s replacement on guitar, particularly on ‘Whaling Stories’, a song of which I need only to hear the opening note to find my stomach tense and my saliva fill with the re-experienced taste of Glynn Powers’s A-grade hashish. There’s something essential in Trower’s tone that Grabham didn’t catch.
This being the case, I bought Trower’s solo album whose first track, ‘I Can’t Wait Much Longer’, bears a weight of melancholy that is unendurable – in my ears anyway. (Though I still quite like it. In the doom there’s passion and booze and things to do with living. For a distillation of despair with no redeeming qualities, for a tincture of suicide in A minor, try ‘Facelift’ or ‘slightly All the Time’ from Soft Machine’s Third .)
I go to the corner cupboard and take out the white vermouth. It’s that time of day: time for the small blue ten-milligram pill and Sainsbury’s Chambéry with ice. I feel all right, within my limits. I’ve known much worse. Down the hatch.
I often think good music is too much to take. Think of Sibelius Five, when the earth’s weight seems to shift on its axis in the closing moments. It’s well made, as it recapitulates the main theme and finally lets it out; but it describes a place I don’t want to look at, let alone inhabit.
I listened to Beethoven’s late quartets yesterday. They’re quite wintry, aren’t they? But they have the feeling of a man thinking about death. And he can’t keep out a slight sense of pleasure – of smugness. I’m old; I’ve won the right to fear no more the heat of the sun. Feel sorry for me and admire me. Indulge me. I’ve deserved it.
‘Late work’. It’s just another way of saying feeble work. I hate it. Monet’s messy last water lilies, for instance – though I suppose his eyesight was shot. The Tempest only has about twelve good lines in it. Think about it. The Mystery of Edwin Drood . Hardly Great Expectations , is it? Or Matisse’s paper cut-outs, like something from the craft room at St B’s. Donne’s sermons . Picasso’s ceramics . Give me strength.
There’s a lot of political activity at the moment to do with ‘co-residence’, which means boys and girls living in the same college, or not. At the moment there’s only one, King’s, which has both, and on Wednesday there’s a torchlight march on (not to) St Cat’s, whose Master is thought to be responsible for not letting girls, or women as we call them in this context, into men’s colleges. I see I’m down for something called a ‘co-residency lunch’ in Trinity Parlour next week, too. I’ll go because I think Jennifer’s going to be there. She’s not very political, Jen, though I think she’d like to be; she hasn’t really got enough time, what with all those concerts and films and theatres and parties in those tiny cold terraces and writing for Broadsheet , the student mag, and studying for a first-class degree, and Jen Soc (which is a bit political admittedly) and cleaning the house for the others and dutifully writing home and volleyball – and sex.
But she’s keen on co-res, I think, on the grounds that girls should have what boys have – viz., the best colleges, and not
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