Iain Cameron's Diary
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2002-08-10 - 10:08 a.m.

In a charity shop I bought a 1974 tape of Hall and Oates for 20p and I finally got round to playing it. About half the songs are average - and the rest are the business. I think the first album I heard by them was one or two after this and I have just bought a (disappointing) reunion tape. They were live on Later (BBC2) about six months ago - and wonderful. Its the Philly elements which I really love - H&O are clearly devotees and on this album they are just beginning to explore strings, more elaborate chords and richer harmonies. But they add this stuff to well conceived songs with heartfelt delivery. Includes Rich Girl.

Corrction - that quote was not Laforgue but Valery. This is Laforgue:

In short I was about to give myself away

With an "I love you" notwithout stress

I realised that I didnt quite

Possess myself in the first place

Poor pale and paltry individual then

Who doesnt believe in his Self except

At his last moments.

I saw my fiance

Fade out

Carried away by the course of things

__________________________

To which I would suggest:

"A whole long lifetime could have been the end"

The structure of Bryter Later fascinates me - who knows who planned it. The HJ songs framing City Clock and One of These Things.

Robin and I once kicked around the idea that in One of These Things the singer lacks a prior identity in the eyes of the world and this robs him of sufficient inner conviction to commit to the other. Or maybe his existential stance on all the "could have beens" - say a distaste at the contingency of adopted roles - is also his stance in the last verse. One could develop this approach drawing on Buber who posits a fundamental "other orientation" as part of being-in-the world.

The next step is a bit convoluted. Berger portrays Picasso as the artist completely in the grip of a monumental creativity. His best middle period works concern the fundamentals of existence - sex and grief/pain. This apercu is enough to launch several thousand words - how Pic creates a social/creative role which is later assumed and developed the rock-n-roll identity. How Pic's portrayed identity may have influenced the self development of say Pollock.

However, I hadnt realised til I read Berger how powerful Pic's work becomes once this classic middle period identity is undermined by old age. There are an astonishing series of self portraits with model and monkey which Berger discusses in his final chapter. As he discusses them he brings in Yeats because WB is the poet who most thoroughly most recently explores this territory in poetry.

So it is this frame that I try to put round Crazy Hazy Jane. You might say that in the Late Picasso drawings and the HJ songs there are three identities - the creative, singing voice; the monkey-like actor who represents prgamatic action; and the desired woman. Yeats Picasso and Drake ricochet around in there. For the ND identity having thought of the adoptive roles and dismissed them is as if he had tried them in practice and found them wanting.

The HJ songs sandwich two which are about the growing distance between the creative-identity and forms of engagement. Although Cityclock flirts with a kind of engagement through openness and vulnerability.

In one of my never-ending treks across this landscape I suggested that the Time Has Told Me set out the unrealised ideal - to keep on trying to til there's no more left to hide. This was the basic Buber-like orientation to the other that made sense inside. This is a high-trust high-vulnerability strategy - one which setbacks and misunderstandings or maybe simply the natural chaos and contingency of life could easily disrupt.

My idea was that HJ was seen as a candidate and then dismissed- maybe because the gap between what was supposed to be inside and seen to be outside was deemed to be too large.

Yesterday the sea was rough - so much so that there was only one boat-route operating - to Tresco. Being out on the rough sea in the wind and strong sunlight was extraordinary - very gripping - from time to time waves would break over you and throw salt water in your face. We had a beach on tresco pretty much to ourselves and looked across the channel to Samson and Bryher as the tide went out a long way. Sandbanks emerged from the shallow sea and the odd pre-historic line of stones marking a field boundary.

It reminded me a bit of this time last year on the Indian Ocean coast a few miles South of the Mozambique border. We have been talking about the contrast between this year and last year.

Back to the mainland today.

I bought a wooden instrument for �3.50 - it seems to be in G and to have two easily accessible octaves. "Chiff" is the name given to the tranisents at the beginning of a blown note. I quite like the chiff on this thing.

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