A young Malcolm Sargent circa 1920.
Many of us would do well to remember that it's poetry/music/art that any potential audeience is interested in, not us and yet so many think they need to 'express themselves'. It has been encouraged in poetry for years now in the phrase 'finding one's voice'. As if yet another unique voice is going to be interesting.
The sameness of style among Elizabethan sonneteers did them no harm and it is, of course, a Romantic problem, more than 200 years old now, in which art became a vehicle for personal feelings. James Joyce, T.S. Eliot and, more lately, Thom Gunn were keen to be impersonal and one can but hope that their example, objectifying, standing outside of themselves, will reclaim more ground.
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That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with innovation or idiosyncracy but it does often mean some respect for tradition. Many thanks to BBC 4, Sky Arts, Johnnie Walker and Dotun Adebayo for their Marc Bolan features this weekend. Absolutely rightly, Dotun's listeners on Up All Night made Get It On their choice, a casting vote giving the decision over 20th Century Boy. From Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran and through Bob Dylan, Bolan knew his heritage and, in their turn, Oasis carried on purloining riffs.
There have been some moving moments over the last couple of days, the records still sounding astonishing whereas, as it has been pointed out, it's the music and tastes of some of those who descried his pop and glam that now sound dated.
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Johnnie's first half hour of 70's records, with Roxy Music, Al Green, the Faces and Telegram Sam and Children of the Revolution reminded me what it's all about, amongst other things, rather than rating my well-being on two indices, those of the plus or minus balance on the horse racing year and my rating at Chess24.
Although still comfortably ahead on the racing, the plus is not what it was and I've slid abjectly from an unreal high of 1917 at chess and am now struggling to regain 1700.
But it really doesn't matter at all,
No, it really doesn't matter at all,
Life's a Gas.