Commonplace Book

'She did not realize that he - this man - was one of the race of lovers who are not of the race of fathers. Since he discovered that she was pregnant, he kept away from her, and was disgusted with her, in spite of himself. He had often in bygone days said that a woman who has performed the function of reproduction is no longer worthy of love. What raised him to a high pitch of tenderness was that soaring of two hearts toward an inaccessible ideal, that entwining of two souls which are immaterial - all those artificial and unreal elements which poets have associated with this passion. In the physical woman he adored the Venus whose sacred side must always preserve the pure form of sterility. The idea of a little creature which owed its birth to him, a human larva stirring in that body defiled by it and already grown ugly, inspired him with an almost unconquerable repugnance. Maternity had made this woman a brute. She was no longer the exceptional being adored and dreamed about, but the animal that reproduces its species. And even a material disgust was mingled in him with these loathings of his mind.'

from Mont Oriol by Guy de Maupassant (Chapter IX)

Commonplace Book

'How was it that the tiny bagatelles of time present, from being held so close to the eye, obscured and shut out the huge bulk of things future? Why could not one always feel like this? Why could not one always stay in that state of mind? It was the only right state, the only wholesome state, the only sane state. All other states of mind were nothing but disease and madness. Why was one always like the dog in the fable - dropping the solid piece of meat into the water to snatch greedily at the reflection?(....)Why is it so hard to distinguish between what will grow bigger and bigger every day, and will last for ever, and what will each day wax smaller and smaller, and in a few to-morrows will be gone as if it had never been? Why do things not keep their shapes, but are always mazing and puzzling one by their shiftings and windings?'

from Not Wisely, But Too Well by Rhoda Broughton (Chapter XX)

Commonplace Book

'"Kate's friendship," strikes in Margaret, with what may be called a pleasant acid in her voice, "always reminds me of a little poem I used to learn in my youth -

"'Will you walk into my parlour? said the spider to the fly;
'Tis the prettiest little parlour that you ever did spy!'

I'm not so sure that they do always find it such a pretty little parlour, do they, Kate?"

It is sweet, saith Lucretius, to sit on a bank, and see a good ship battered to pieces by the waves under your very eyes; but it is not sweet to sit in a comfortable arm-chair and watch your younger sister putting her hook in the nose and her bridle in the jaws of any man you come in contact with.

"I deny the justness of the metaphor altogether," replies Kate, with a shadow of irritation in her clear young voice; "and anyhow, the parallel is very incomplete; for if any fly does not like my parlour, he is more than welcome to leave it with his full complement of legs and wings; you see what a character they give me" (sorrowfully to George). "'Give a dog a bad name,' you know; and such an innocent-minded dog, too!"

She looks innocence itself, as she turns her great eyes[,] wide open in a sort of aggrieved surprise, limpid as wells of water in a limestone country, upon him. Flirting is ingrained in the blood and bone and fibre of some women. One can no more blame them for it than for having a cast in the eye or a stammer. Kate would flirt with the undertaker who came to measure her for her coffin.'

from Not Wisely, But Too Well by Rhoda Broughton (Chapter XIX)

Commonplace Book

'...When I am listening to a work that I like, it seems to me first that the opening notes detach my skin from my flesh, melt it, dissolve it, cause it to disappear, and leave me like one flayed alive, under the combined attacks of the instruments. And in fact it is on my nerves that the orchestra is playing, on my nerves stripped bare, vibrating, trembling at every note. I hear it, the music, not merely with my ears, but with all the sensibility of my body quivering from head to foot....'

from Mont Oriol by Guy de Maupassant (Chapter V)

Under a Different Star - Biographic 2

I changed schools in 1973. From tiny Millbrook to tiny Paracombe. Millbrook was the school which had belonged to the village now underneath the waters of the reservoir - being higher on a hill it had survived. Paracombe was closer, tucked down a lane right in the middle of orchards and fields - no better location for a school. The experience was pretty similar though - dislocation and a strong feeling of not belonging.

The nasty teacher who had prompted my leaving Millbrook finally had the same effect on my best friend from the Millbrook days. Terry turned up at Paracombe in 1974. There were only seven of us in our year - the personalities loomed large and formed a whole world of understanding, at least for me. Archetypes is probably not too big a word, thinking back. This equivocal intensity was my world for the next four years. Memories of hot summers, birthday parties, pouring rain pounding on the roof, fear, nervous anticipation, agonized relief, headaches, chocolate. And of course easier memories like the signs for the change into kilometre measures being yellow and green, replacing the very old black and white ones - I still have misty memories of mile-signs in out of the way places with 1/2s and 1/4s on them in very old script. And the religious watching of Countdown for the latest pop, and the variety shows like The Two Ronnies on television; particular wrapping paper one Christmas; odd presents like a pale orange plastic electronic keyboard, and oddly a pale orange Pininfarina Matchbox car loom up far beyond their just deserts. Endless days spent in and around the old family Morris Minor which sat rusting away in a corner near the shed. Or in the shed tinkering in Dad's myriad bottles and boxes of this that or the other. Or in the pool in the baking heat, going brown over weeks which seemed like eternities in summer holidays. Making plans; designing a school, including report cards and names for all the students, with a friend Cindy from over on the next hill; making my books into a library with cards, gold stars and writing in the back; spending hours going through old sets of Knowledge magazines collected for my sisters in the mid 60s and carefully cardboard-bound by my Dad; How and Why books; plastic dinosaurs; constant fascination with stationery - new sets, new colours.........

Then loomed the greatest fear. High school. Thirty kilometres away in an Adelaide Hills town called Birdwood. Waiting for a bus full of potential conflict in the form of my fellow students at a lonely spot on the main road near our house. That sense of being lost in it all and subject to it all and trying to brazen it out within a small radius and hope it didn't notice me in the larger. The sense of intimacy in a small group gone and replaced with a wilder, more exciting, more baffling circumstance. The roughhouse ante was upped. We were growing older. I gravitated toward the quiet brainy ones of course, with always an appraising eye on the socially successful in this jungle of mixed intent. Thinking back to it now I see the signs of all sorts of things that weren't clear at the time - which of us were already having sex, which of us were probably just pretending to. What sort of kids we were to the adults around - which was not what we were to each other. The secrets hidden under bravado; the determination hidden in the unpopular and unwanted; and the emotional turmoil and pain hormonally swathing us all. Or was that just me?! There is a sense, looking back, that I opened up a little in those five years, my bones started to show, but also I was substantially still that frightened kid who first turned up in 1978. Those bones did their best to point outward and take on board the next coming change, little knowing what a liberation it would be....

More later.

Commonplace Book

'The neighbourhood of the Cathedral though is depressing. So much ancient stone however fairly piled, and however rich with the bodies of Saints and famous men, seems to suck the vitality of its humble neighbours. It is like a great forest oak; nothing can grow healthily beneath its shade.

All this is a form of heresy I know. A long walk in the sun, all along the valley too, leaves one little appetite to appreciate the value of the picture from an aesthetic point of view. A bare hilltop would have pleased me better than all the Closes and Cathedrals in England - '

from Salisbury Cathedral, a piece in the 1903 diary in A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals by Virginia Woolf

Pop Music - Talk Talk

This is in reference to the opinion that is commonly promulgated about Talk Talk - that those 'in the know' would have you believe. It is that there is nothing much to take in from them until the last two albums. That all they were in the period 1982-1986 was a grimly inferior label-mate of Duran Duran, modelled on them in fact, and that there is nothing much to them until Life's What You Make It, and that that was only a poppy start to the real stuff.

I can definitely see the fascination in Spirit of Eden (1988) and Laughing Stock (1991) - fabulous textures built up in lilting, long progressions. Well worth it. But for the life of me I wonder whether these commentators have listened to the earlier material, or if they have, whether they have the ears to hear it. Mark Hollis seems to me to be the definition, in this early period, of the maladjusted boy with enormous talent, just hitting the point where articulation breaks through his wordless rage. As such he ought to be the hero of many! The crucial part of that is the talent - the pop-wisdom of the first two albums is phenomenal, extending to greatness in the case of the second, It's My Life (1984). Where a lot of other material from the period now sounds twee or worn, Talk Talk are still speaking loud and clear.

The idea that they were some sort of imitation of Duran Duran is the most peculiar. I have no doubt that EMI would have liked them to soak up some of their label-mates' success and perhaps dressed them similarly, as of course did many a contender in those days. But the music is an entirely different matter. About the only Duran Duran song which gets near to them is the fab Careless Memories, and that only obliquely. Where this idea started I have no notion, but it seems to be one of those things that just keeps on and on, Chinese whispers-style, wrong as it ever was. Hollis' songwriting is completely different, the treatment is completely different, the result is......and on we go.

I was hoping there would be a considerable wake created by No Doubt's cover of It's My Life - that there might be a wholesale rediscovery and reappreciation of the early Talk Talk. It doesn't really seem to have happened, though it's great to see a newer generation taking an interest; maybe it just has to be one of those slow-burning events. I look forward to hearing what can be made of The Last Time, Call in the Night Boy or It's You from It's My Life by younger artists. And Today, Mirror Man and Candy from the first, The Party's Over (1982).

Not to mention, between the two, the fantastic My Foolish Friend, released as a single in 1983. I remember reading in music papers at the time that it was the first single from the new album, supposed to be called My Chameleon Hour. Then some months later came the news that the album had been scrapped. When its magnificent replacement finally came out the single was nowhere to be seen. That's always made me wonder. As has the fact that I can clearly hear Hollis singing the lyric

'And my chameleon hour
has already started..'

in the song. All the lyrics around on the internet, and therefore I presume in the published song, have a completely different pair of lines at that point. Mmmmmmm, what does it all mean? Mark must be laughing into his cornflakes......