SPIRIT OF PLACE: Music!!!!

Virtually every step of my life can be measured in music - and I really am extremely fortunate to have lived through ….. and in many respects, been a part of, the 20th century musical revolution that began in the early nineteen fifties and which has extended unabated right up until now. I really do have a great many people to thank - musicians who have no knowledge whatsoever of who I am, but whose contributions helped shape my life, and I am quite certain, the lives of a great many millions of other people down through the years. I will call many of them to book as I go forward, and I feel sure that those of you who may read this will join me in both recognition and thanks for how their lyrics and compositions have signposted so many moments in our lives.

One of my most important milestones was hearing Elvis Presley sing for the first time. I could not have been more than about ten or eleven at the time, and it would have been something I heard on the radio ……….. but even as I began processing what I was hearing I think that I subconsciously recognized the dawn of an era that would change the world as I knew it forever.

The early fifties were a drab and dull hangover of the post-war years for youth everywhere - there was little or no color in their dress, and certainly nothing at all that could be considered an ‘identity”. Then suddenly we had ‘That’s all-right Mama’, and the world would never be the same again. Quite suddenly youth everywhere had an identity - a sound, a look and an image that they could identify with - pink socks and blue suede shoes - stovepipe trousers - sideburns - ducktails ………….. and “Rock ’n Roll”.

Initially it was all quite innocent, but with the objections of the older generation came the belligerence and new found identity of the youth. Suddenly we had the Teddy Boys, the Ducktails ………… movie representation in the form of James Dean in ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ - and then (again quite suddenly), there was “Jailhouse Rock”, and our generation was in charge. The worlds’ youth would never look back - Elvis had given them an identity that would grow and expand under the tutelage of the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Elton John, Neil Diamond, Neil Young, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Simon and Garfunkel ………. and probably the most influential talent of them all, Bob Dylan.

All of these people were our idols …… and many of them are still today. Bob Dylan has never written better music than he has been doing for the last eight or so years. Neil Young has elevated himself to the position of “Protest Master” through the simple channels of honesty and commitment to the causes he has chosen to represent ….. Farm Aid - the Monsanto debacle - Impeach the President and so on and so forth ……….. all the time playing with his trains and working to convince Apple and the rest of the world of the worthlessness of MP4’s which only give us about 5% of the input that the musicians endeavor to impart in their music ……… would that his system becomes the standard, we would simply be aware of so much more, as we were in the days of vinyl and great analogue sound systems.

I remember well the first time I really became aware of Van Morrison’s music. Pat and I were travelling through France in our little white VW Beetle on a pilgrimage of sorts. I was intent on visiting as many of the architect Le Corbusier’s buildings as I possibly could. He was my idol in so many respects - a complete man of sorts whose achievements in architecture, town planning and art had captured me since I first became aware of him during my initial year studying architecture at the University of Pretoria.

We had hooked up with a friend, Lisa Woodsworth, who was living in a small apartment in Aix en Provence where she was studying French. Lisa was Canadian and the daughter of a past Canadian Ambassador to South Africa, which was where we first happened upon her. As “free” a spirit as one was likely to meet in Europe in the early seventies, Lisa collected stray hippies like many people collect cats, and staying in her apartment for the seven or so days we were in Aix was an experience indeed. She was living with a lovely guy, Jean, at the time - an artist who apparently made a living of sorts painting murals in restaurants and cafes. At the time there were, if memory serves me correctly, three other guys living there, one of whom, a cherub faced little blonde youngster who couldn’t have been more than about seventeen, was absolutely besotted with Lisa, and who - with Jean’s apparent permission - slept each night on the floor at the foot of their bed. We unfortunately had to share the floor in the lounge with two other strays - one of which was a total sleazeball who after lights out each evening subjected us to the stroked nylon beat of his meat inside his sleeping bag which would increase exponentially in speed over a period of about 15 minutes and climax in a veritable drum roll of “Nylobeats” - then dead silence accompanied by a whimpering sigh of completion.

This guy pretended to be everything he wasn’t, he simply latched onto everything discussed and built it into his persona. One evening we were talking about braais (barbeques), back home in South Africa, and he started up about how he loved the outdoors and nature and exploring unknown places …….. I’d basically had enough of his bullshit so there and then I suggested to everyone that the following evening we all trek up the side of Mont St. Vittoire until we found a nice spot and there we would light a fire and have a braai. Everyone agreed it was a great idea and the next day Jean and I went out and bought a few chops and sausages for the braai before going down to the vegetable market where we collected the most amazing discarded salad leaves and vegetables (only the best was sold - the rest thrown away), which we took home, washed and used to prepare a salad for that evening and an amazing soup for the next day which we would enhance with the bones left over from the braai.

That evening we left a little while before dark and tramped up the side of Cezanne’s famous mountain, finding an ideal little spot for our venture just before dark. As the light faded - and despite the fire, ‘Tjuk a Tjuk’ (the name Pat and I had given him - resembling the noise inside the nylon sleeping bag), began becoming quite fearful of the dark and suggestive of a whole host of terrible things that might befall us if we did not get off the mountain immediately. We all laughed him down, which only made matters worse, and eventually I escorted him down to where the street lights permitted him a degree of solace and told him to go on home and keep his bullshit to himself in future.

But I digress ……… Van Morrison! On our last evening in Aix Lisa announced that her, Jean, Pat and I had been invited to dinner at a friend of her’s apartment. This friend turned out to be one of the most beautiful women I had ever had the pleasure to meet. Dressed in the flowing fabrics of sixties and seventies hippiedom, not even the material excess could hide the sensuality she exuded, and her masses of deep red Henna-ed hair piled casually atop her head formed the perfect frame for - and only served to - accentuate the paleness and perfection of her parchmentlike skin and incredible bone structure. I was smitten. Not even the pointed stump of a severed forearm could detract from this picture of virtually perfect pulchritude. And all the time Morrison’s voice pervaded the space around us, wrapping her every movement and gesture in a cloak of inferred suggestion. We sat in a circle on the floor and she served us a simple curry and rice with all of the trimmings and copious amounts of wine, her disability never once seeming to present a hindrance of any kind, and often, waved almost as a baton, serving to accent whatever it was she was saying in a deep, husky, and very sexy french voice that we understood almost nothing of, yet which both Pat and I felt entirely included in. Funny how that sometimes happens …….? Again, Morrison was all pervading throughout the evening …………… ‘Astral Weeks’ I think was the name of the album, which I bought immediately upon our return to London a few weeks later, and which I still enjoy as much today as at that first hearing in Aix.

When eventually we got up to leave and we hugged in gratitude, Lisa mentioned to her that we were moving on the following day, she hugged me aggressively, and what I thought was quite intimately, and said quite clearly in broken english for all to hear, “You cannot leave, you have not made love to me yet.”

Ahhhhhhhh! Aix?