Have I mentioned how much I love this piece of earth? Have I mentioned the delight of a rose's fragrance, the satisfaction of watching a bat's trajectory while the sun falls behind the spire of an English village church, the surprise as a fading magnolia blossom drops upon a cappuccino-sucker beneath?
On Monday morning in Nashville, breakfast with Patricia the Sister before taking us both to the airport. Geographical mobility is a great freedom, and no longer the privilege of an elite. An outcome of this is that a brother & sister brought up during medieval times in East Dorset might now regularly meet in Nashville.
Then an uneventful journey to Washington reading the June 10th. Sunday Times, acquired at Davis-Kidd en route to the airport. This brought me up to speed on the election results. South Dorset has returned a Labour MP. This is rather like informing English Diary visitors that the Archbishop of Canterbury has been elected Pope. No doubt Labour stalwart the Sidney Smith is continuing to cheer & celebrate as I speak, although I sense the Sidney will also be disturbed that only 47% of the electorate felt sufficiently engage to engage.
Then, an uneventful journey to London with a Mr. Picky on my left, one who chewed his nails, scratched at whatever protuberance his skin might offer & remembered to give his nostrils a scrape as well. No one noticed, of course.
Landing at 05.45 Tuesday, the Frippmobile powered me down to Deepest Dorset taking me past Stonehenge. This is the signal that, a few miles later, countryside begins. And how it rolls, how it waves, how it sings to a country boy! How it lifts their heart and offers consolation to a man who harbours two deep grievings: one for a particular kind of England that is being systematically eradicated; one for the repeated absences from his dear little Wife.
The Sparkford service station & Spar store provided car juice at the junction I leave the A303 to hurtle deeper into the England I love & miss deeply. Elizabeth & Mr. Bennett are buried just up the road in Sparkford church, near The Roundhouse where I used to visit Elizabeth, my spiritual Mother, for lunch or tea. Through Yeovil, now without its integrity, destroyed by helpful traffic & building schemes, & arriving in West Dorset I impersonated a pitiful, dribbling, incontinent, witless feeb while hurtling down to the village store for a loaf of village bakery bread, local lettuce, mushrooms, tomatoes & cheese.
The feta cheese stocked by our store is produced by a farm at the centre of the Devon outbreak of foot & mouth. That means, the feta isn't presently available. A concert to raise funds for the local brass band in this village's Big House has also been cancelled. The House is surrounded by a deer park and is therefore vulnerable to contamination by foot & mouth, should visitors bring the contamination onto the grounds. This is only one small example of how F&M continues to radically affect rural communities. The Europa String Choir were booked to perform at the BH. Pooey pooey, as my Sister would say.
Cappucino on the lawn, despite a Guestbook visitor offering helpful advice upon my coffee consumption, followed by an afternoon sleeping. Then, back to the lawn. Roses have erupted on the west face of the barn, constructed in 1681 and decidedly French to these English & Welsh eyes. The house was tarted up in 1725 to provide guest accommodation for visitors to The Big House, and presents a wonderful Georgian faÁade to the main drag in town (which has two streets). Conceivably, the man responsible for constructing the barn was brought in from the Gallic realms. It is not a barn that resembles anything that I know as English.
Today, a visit to DGM World Central. Three messages from John Wetton, back from working in Japan with Ian McDonald, on my answer machine. I have been trying unsuccessfully to reach John in return. A call to Eno on arising matters, vibration with David Singleton, post-frenzy & back to Deepest Dorset. Then the lawn & the sheer joy of being here.
Tomorrow, off to see The Little Horse who is rehearsing for Titania in Midsummer Night's Dream at Stafford Castle - yippee! Have I ever mentioned that I love my Wife?
Response To The Guestbook:
Tom Ace has returned to clarify his original posting, which objects to the term "download". If a creative insight is instantaneous, then how may this be referred to as a "download"? Tom has a good point, and one that deserves more time than I have available to honourably address.
Very briefly, one approach is this: a creative insight does not inevitably, or necessarily, strike that part of us which is best able to respond. Creativity is necessarily creative: how could this be otherwise? So, creativity "downloads", or broadcasts, or impinges, or appears, to whatever & wherever it may. This is its necessity and, in a sense, its inevitability. Some of the "reception zones" are undeserving, some inappropriate. For example, cruelty may be creative; and evil may be also creative, however we understand the implications of that. The Basement may also be creative. This is sometimes referred to as being "creative in personality" in differentiation to "creative in essence".
To explore the shades & graduations which occur as & when a creative insight takes place is, or drops upon us, is primarily a practical matter and is properly explored & investigated in an appropriate context. It cannot be experienced merely through words that attempt to describe the process, although words may prepare the ground & help to clarify the experience.
A creative insight is so powerful that it may continue to resonate & repercuss, even throughout the duration of a lifetime. The insight itself is instantaneous and takes place outside mundane time. Its unfolding, however, is in sequential time. The repercussions continue to repercuss, the unfolding continues to unfold. This is the part of the creative process that is more appropriately referred to as "download": the outgoing, spreading ripples as the significance of what we have been given continues to resonate within us, as we increasingly move closer to understanding the implications of what we have been shown.
The concern of the artist is to become a bridge for the creative impulse to have effect in our wonderful, dreadful, fallen, rising, appalling, blind, deaf, stupid, available, pleading, aspiring world. For this, the price is to deny ourselves what we want and choose instead to be what we wish.
Forgive me. It's very late. I'm tired. And I miss my Wife more than words can say.
"If we can define our aim, we are halfway to achieving it."
