Here I am once more along with my ball and chain
HERE we go, leaping into March 2024, which makes it four years since I began inflicting this column on you, the public – or at least that small part of the public that reads it.
Who could have suspected, as I put metaphorical pen to paper at the start of the coronavirus, that some 1,5000 or so days later, I would still be at it (certainly not me – Editor).
A weekly columnist, whose name escapes me, was once asked what drove him to meet his deadline every seven days and he responded with the single word “fear.” I understand. Like a child impatient for sweets, the column tugs at my sleeve as the week progresses. Ignoring it does not work.
In truth few people would find their lives drastically changed if on occasional weeks this column failed to appear. There would be no rioting in the streets, nor marches to Downing Street; no-one would glue themselves to the Houses of Parliament, or go on hunger strike. The world would continue revolving and the sun would continue to get up in the morning and retire at night. The best I could hope for is that the odd person may say ‘oh’.
But for me it is you see, a matter of stubborn pride and were I to miss even one deadline, guilt would sit heavily on my shoulders. Remember if you will that I was brought up a Catholic and we Catholics (even lapsed Catholics) never quite rid ourselves of this sense of guilt. To mix the metaphor, we drag it behind us lifelong like a ball and chain.
Much has changed since March 2020. I have less hair for one thing and the number of times I am forced to ask the question “pardon?” forces me to admit that the hearing is not what it was.
Plus these damned arthritic knees. During the night, the stiffness and pain of said knees is forgotten. Then reality strikes home when I swing the legs over the bed and take the first steps of the day. Competing in the Great North Run fades into distant memory.
I also passed the awesome landmark of an eightieth birthday a few months back and now occasionally receive the mixed compliment, “well, you don’t look THAT old” – to which there is no satisfactory reply. Enough of this whingeing. Watching the recent Brit Awards, it struck me that while music can often be a strong and natural support for drama and action, the reverse is rarely true.
Think of that wonderful film Brief Encounter and how brilliantly Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto is brought in to reinforce the love story. It fits like a glove. Or who can hear Strauss’s ‘Also Sprach Zarathusa’ without evoking those vivid scenes from the sci-fi epic, 2001? Again, creating the music and making the film were independent matters but seem just right.
I mention this having watched the recent Brit Awards and also having viewed over recent years countless music videos, the vast majority of which I cannot remember.
The reason is that the videos are mainly unnecessary ornamentation. The songs do not need them.
Is there any real demand for them? Do people hunger for music videos the way they hunger for the music itself? Deny people their music and the world would soon be in a mess. Not so music videos. Who watches music video times over the way we repeatedly listen to our favourite music? Who remembers them?
It’s music that triggers memory, not videos.
This neat verse arrives from poet Harry Gallagher, who picks up on my recent column which was inspired by the W.H. Auden poem ‘Night Mail’. Harry moulds Auden’s original and makes it relevant to my own ’umble weekly efforts, now numbering close to 300.
‘This is the column that thunders on three hundred issues three hundred and one out to the coast rattling latches in a seaside study a head gently scratches.’
True enough! A great deal of head scratching every week...
Thanks Harry.
■ Planet Corona – The First One Hundred Columns, IRON Press, £8.00
■ pmortimer@xlnmail.com