Coincidental with the clocks springing forward, I’ve “finished” my latest tome. 76,000 words, 260 pages. It’s a memoir. People ask me, “What are you up to these days?” And I reply, “I’m writing my memoirs.” And they think it’s a gag. I say “finished”, in quotes, because to say it’s all done and dusted is a bit arbitrary. I could go on tinkering forever. What makes me think it’s finished? I can hardly imagine it has reached a state of perfection. No doubt it could be much better, but maybe I have the sense that further tweaks will only make it worse. I haven’t so much done with it, as it has done with me. So I need to lock it away in a drawer for a week or two, and then read it again with less jaded eyes, and make a final edit.
Of course it won’t be a final edit at all, if I am lucky enough to get the thing published. Somebody else will become the editor. That which was a lonely undertaking becomes a collaboration. I’m no use at it; not a team player. From past experience, the editor will like the bits I’d thought to ditch, and cut the bits I most cherish. There must be a golden mean somewhere between throwing a Beethovenian fit and saying “Don’t change a note!” (or a word), and accepting all advice in a sullen mood of passive aggression. Yet I hope to be faced with the quandary, even though I had a recent experience of working with a copy editor and realising that the editor was a robot; or at least, was using an algorithmic piece of artificial intelligence. That was a dispiriting episode.
Yet it’s delightful to have reached this stage precisely at this, my favourite time of year. The daffodils are in full bloom, the tulips will shortly arrive, we have passed the spring equinox, the clocks have sprung forward, and British Summer Time is with us for the next seven months. Glorious. I can fulfil my resolution to get out more. Admittedly it was gey dreich here yesterday, and to add insult to injury the boiler in Dunblane Cathedral has packed in. I said to the minister’s wife, “I am taking a turn about the room in order to keep warm”, and she obliged by handing me a hot water bottle.
So for the time being I must relinquish this preoccupation with the past, and return to the present. I turn on the news with some reluctance. President Trump says he is thinking of seizing Kharg Island, while simultaneously saying that talks with the Iranians are going well. Talk about cognitive dissonance. Perhaps it’s a sign of the precarious times in which we now live, but it seems to be impossible even to try to absent yourself from the constant drumbeat of the news, but that something drags you back in the direction of its harsh reality. There I was in the calm oasis of the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on Saturday evening, listening to Paul Dukas’ L’apprenti sorcier (The Sorceror’s Apprentice), the tale of a trainee magician who casts a spell over a broomstick which proceeds to go rogue and create chaos and mayhem. Perhaps you remember it from the 1940 film, Fantasia. The trouble is that the apprentice doesn’t know how to break the spell and restore order. In other words he is out of his depth. He has opened Pandora’s Box but he doesn’t know how to shut it again. Now, who does that remind you of?
And it gets worse. In the second half of the concert we heard, and saw, Ravel’s stage work L’enfant et les sortilèges (The Child and the Magic Spells), the tale of a spoiled and bad-tempered brat who, in a sulk, inflicts injury upon everything and everybody around him. Now, who does that remind you of?
But enough already. I abjure the doomscrolling tendency. I’m rationing myself. I catch the news headlines and then turn the radio off before the speculation and punditry starts (unless it’s Jeremy Bowen, Lyse Doucet, or Steve Rosenberg). There may be trouble ahead, but while there’s music… Of course you can’t escape harsh reality in the concert hall any more than you can in the cathedral, especially this week, the week when the fickle mob turned, and powerful vested interests found a way to remove somebody who had become inconvenient.
In between the Dukas and the Ravel, Ethan Loch played Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Born in Blantyre in 2004, he has phenomenal pianistic, compositional, and improvisatory skills. I had the sense that the cadenzas in the Gershwin were original and spontaneous, appropriate to the mood of the piece, and entirely successful. He played as an encore a cadenza from his own First Piano Concerto in C sharp minor, Rachmaninoff’s key, and indeed a performance reminiscent of Rachmaninoff both musically and technically. It brought the house down. The critic in today’s Herald gave the concert a ***** review. Incidentally, Ethan Loch has been blind from birth. How he can learn, let alone play, music of such complexity seems beyond comprehension. Four weeks ago in the same hall, Felix Klieser, born with no arms, played Richard Strauss’ First Horn Concerto. How can that be possible?
Such people are inspirational. They inspire us to put aside any petty preoccupations of our own and think, what can I do, albeit in a small way, to make the world a better place? How dare I carp about today’s bad news headlines, or some putative imaginary nit-picking editor, while I have hands and eyes? I suppose therein lies the meaning of the parable of the talents. We are taught that we ought to use them, or it, if we only have one, no matter how modest, to make a contribution to the community.
But is it true? This week Matthew Syed, in his BBC Radio 4 programme Sideways, talked about a New Zealand musical protégé who became the conductor of the Nova Scotia Symphony, and then suddenly packed it all in to become a computer programmer. It kind of rang a bell with me. All your life you take it as a given that your talent must be honed and utilised. But what happens if it all starts to drag you down? You think, is this worth the candle?
That’s where it behoves the writer to take the “finished” article, temporarily stick it in a drawer, and get out into the sunshine. I actually found the volte face of the NZ conductor incomprehensible, not because she gave up conducting, but because she took up computer programming. Computer programming? God help us.
jamescalumcampbell 