Also this morning: the office is moving. A van is currently outside, and the office furniture is being carried & loaded.
My weekend with Toyah in Manchester was a holiday. Yesterday morning, something changed in respect of my attitude & approach to my professional life. How to know how this happens? But in our hotel room, when Toyah returned from the BBC tv studio, I knew that I had taken a decision. The effects of this will become apparent in future years. A decision, once taken, changes the world. However seemingly small, however insignificant the person knows themself to be, the world has changed.
The three baby thrushes are now much larger and, this morning for the first time, they peeped and cheeped without the presence of a parent. Until now, the peeping only meeped when a meal winged in for delivery. Conversation, or at least monologue, began today.
The office has moved & the baby birds are very much bigger. Frequent meals arrive from parent birds who appear to be unconcerned with the Buddha nature of tasty earthworms & snails (sans shells) which hang from their beaks.
This longest evening of the year is ambivalent: is it sunny or is it cloudy? Cloudy, but wonderfully rich in hues of grey which slide into each other without apology.
At last I've reached my pal Stu Hamm, overjoyed with Charlotte Lydian Hamm the Toad. One of the personal rewards of G3 touring was to find new friends. Sadly, I don't see enough of them. Another call: to John Potter of the Hilliard Ensemble, returned today from Germany & vibrating with Manfred Eicher. John has asked me to address his students in York next February on the subject of - wait for this! - Progressive Rock. Any regular visitor to this Diary will be anticipating a P'tah! as saliva strikes a foot. But, who could say no to John Potter?
Meanwhile, this quiet Dorset man, overjoyed at moving to Deeper Dorset, would happily adopt the life aims of his Uncle Charlie. The growth of grass may not appear exciting to those plugged into the First World of cyberlinkage, real virtuality, post-quantum shifting & parallel computing. But Dorset grass has a greening green which shifts & adapts itself to degrees of sunshine & rain. Do you ask whether I might happily sit for extended periods of time, perhaps with a glass of bubbling solution in hand, contemplating the Buddha nature of small creatures of wing, slime & hop, you know the answer. Me & a book is a party. Me & a book in a garden in West Dorset is a wild party. Me & a book in a garden with my Wife & Beaton the Wonder Bun in a garden in West Dorset is an orgiastic experience of such quiet satisfaction & intensity that I can conceive of no reason that I might leave that earthly paradise. Other than when necessity demands to be honoured.
In return for the privilege conferred upon me, undeserving, of standing by while music fell, an obligation & corresponding responsibility follows: to stand witness to the transforming potential within the act of music. If the form this takes is to present to students a feeble understanding of the (often deplorable) events which accompanied the emergence of "progressive rock" into the mainstream, well, so be it.
Yesterday morning at 10.45, against my personal & deeply felt need of quietude, I decided to accept what is required of me. This implies that a private man is about to become increasingly public. A public life is inevitably polemical. A musician, even an aspirant musician, aims to reconcile. This is a practical outcome of the search for harmony: seemingly dissentient voices are brought together & enjoined to act within the whole. Polyphony aims to accomodate all voices, as all voices accomodate themselves to the choir. We are all one, whether we like it or not.
So, here's to the future.
"Necessity is a measure of aim."
