In the meantime

I found out that my friends' entry in the 48 Hour Film Festival is on Youtube. If you look it up on Youtube under Truth On Your Face - 48 Hour Film Competition then you can see it. I play the father of a mormon (plausible?). I modelled my performance on Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Track Two - Let's Go Crazy

I won't dwell on this track, because I've already written about Prince. Previously I said:



I think what we’re really supposed to take from the song is this: let's have a party.


And then there’s the end of the song. The end fits with the beginning. We have had the stately start, been lifted up by the song sermon, and now we get the big finale (as in a black gospel church finale, not a hand-around-the-tea-and-scones white-church finale). When that guitar lifts out of all the synthesized pomposity and scorches alone, slightly breaking up – oh, man! It had more impact for me back in 1984 because playing guitar that fast seemed impossible, like we had entered another realm, like Prince had really leaped beyond the song and gone to, well, the afterworld.


Later on, sitting in various bedrooms around my crummy hometown with heavy metal albums and guys with guitars replaying solos note perfectly, I realised that even though it seems like you want more of that kind of Let’s Go Crazy guitar solo you don’t… less really is more.



I bought a lot of Prince albums. I even had his first two albums which were pretty poor (although the original Nothing Compares 2 U is on the second album I think). I still have 1999, Sign O' the Times, Under the Cherry Moon and Around the World. He really was amazingly good in the 80's. It still sort of amazes me that Madonna is the one who has survived - I would have backed Prince first, and Michael Jackson second.

What really attracted me to Prince (and the next "artist" on the mix tape) was his flamboyance, his ability to create a total fantasy world that included music, and clothes, and dancing and a persona. When I entered the album Purple Rain I wasn't just listening to music I was doing that magical thing called ESCAPE.

Track One - Take On Me

The first three tapes I "bought" (probably my mother bought them for me) were:

• A-ha - Hunting High and Low
• Elton John - Too Low for Zero, and
• Sting - Dream of the Blue Turtles

They were bought at a electronics shop that doubled as a LP and cassette store in the Paraparaumu shops. A rotund man with little hair and a rather dull white shirt and brown pants sold them to us. My evaluation of these three tapes was as follows:

• Sting - The singles were good but the other tracks were a bit "difficult"
• Elton John - Naff
• A-ha - Wonderful!

A great many girls at my high school wore a little collection of leather wristbands in honour of the frankly pretty dishy Morton Harkett. Nowadays Take On Me is probably considered one of the signature tunes of the 80s. Curiously it had to be released about three times before it became a hit. The third time it had the still "nifty" animated video attached to it.

The lyrics are sweet:

We're talking away / I don't know what / I'm to say I'll say it anyway / Today's another day to find you / Shying away / I'll be coming for your love, OK?

I always liked the delivery of the line: Slowly learning that life is ok. Although I was around that time slowly learning the opposite, Morton sounded convincing. It's a song that still appeals to my rather naive and romantic ideas about love. It's a song with an endearing shyness.

You're all the things I've got toremember.

Sonnet 130

When I was at school Samantha Fox had a hit called Touch Me. Sam Fox was a British page three girl with large breasts. At the end of the song she made a lot of moaning and groaning noises presumably suggesting sex, although she may have just been having a nice ice cream. She was supposed to be every teenage boy's fantasy of a perfect woman. I say supposed to be because she really didn't do much for me. In fact I always thought her large breasts made her look a bit uncomfortable (or maybe it was that all her tops were too tight). The best thing about the Sam Fox story is that I believe she is now a happily married lesbian.

At the time Sam Fox posed a problem for me. I knew that I was supposed to fancy her but I didn't so I had to fake it. If I had been insecure (instead of being lumpish and unthinking) I might have worried about my sexuality. On the other hand I did fancy girls, just not the girls I was supposed to fancy. I wrote love poems for these girls (of course I never showed anyone them). These poems were filled with lies. I can't remember an example so I'll make one up:

I love you, you're so perfect...

Your eyes are like pools

This kind of poetry is like make-up: it conceals the blemishes that make people really beautiful.

A body is a map of a life, and on it are marks of pain, of laughter, of age. The feet and hands have a roughness; the neck and inner arm are soft, pale. Real love poetry is specific and honest. It tells us not about what somebody should look like, but about who they really are.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

I don't know if Sonnet 130 is honest or not. I don't know if it describes a real woman, but it certainly has the feeling of truth. It's a neat trick Shakespeare pulls because he actually describes this woman by saying what she isn't.

She isn't Sam Fox.

Sonnets

In my first year at University I took English Literature. I was young, hairy and sulky. My tutorial was with half a dozen other students in a small meeting room, and it was held after five o’clock. I remember that it was usually dark outside when we finished (I suppose that memory is from winter).

At the first tutorial the tutor asked us each to introduce ourselves and say an object that we thought represented us. I said:

“I am John-Paul and I am a stone.”

I was thinking of a smooth, round rock at the bottom of a stream. The tutor may have been thinking of her gravel driveway though, because she didn’t seem impressed.

Our first essay had to be about a short poem. I chose Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare. I chose it because I thought it was very beautiful. This is actually a good reason to choose a poem, but at the time I thought you needed more profound reasons.

My essay was quite poor. I rambled. Nowadays I might say something like:

Sonnet 18 is beautiful because it is romantic. Most of Shakespeare’s other sonnets are not romantic.

Actually I would probably say: go and read the damn poem.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

I believe in this idea that art can make “things” immortal or, if not immortal, at least it can make them far outlive their brief natural existence. When I write a poem for someone or play them a song I am attracted to two things in that act. Firstly, that the moment of the performance is so fleeting and ephemeral, and secondly, that the words on the page make that same moment enduring. In itself that double act is beautiful.

Personal Times

It was pretty hard coming back to be honest.

I wrote a song for the first time in over a year yesterday. It was inspired by a few things: a book someone told me was their favourite, being unsettled and feeling up in the air.

School tomorrow.

The heart is
lonely, hunted
and blue.

Gifu

At the high school in Gifu we were greeted by an all girl brass band in slippers. They played "Tequila" with impressive skill.

We sang our national anthem with tolerable success.

Our homestay family had a fully automated toilet. You walked in and the lights came on and the toilet seat raised itself expectantly. Once you finished, the act of standing up would flush the toilet and lower the seat. The tap in the sink came on automatically.

The toilet brush holder said: Personal Times.

Pontocho

I used to visit Kyoto a lot.

There are parts of that city which are beautiful at night. We walked along the river where the waxy white flowers let out their rich sweet scent. Along the banks restaurants lit up and people gathered: smoking, talking.

We walked down Pontocho.

Alleyways and lanterns. Behind closed doors the sound of glasses chinking, the sound of laughter and singing.

Asakusa

Eye candy. Shopping in Japan is a pleasure for the eyes.

In the shopping street in front of Asukusa Temple there are a hundred tiny shops: stores with glass cases filled with the porcelain high-fiving cats; glass cases full of the beautiful silk bags that the women carry with their kimono; shops full of food - rice crackers in boxes wrapped in highly patterned paper. Souvenirs and junk, junk and comedy moustaches, wigs and children's ninja sets.

Afterwards we wash our hands. We walk up the shallow steps and into the temple. Inside they are throwing coins into God's collection box and praying.

Harajuku

We go to Harajuku. The bridge where the freaks go to be watched by tourists. They gather like flocks of birds, their plummage is magnificent, they twitter and preen in groups and then settle on the ground. Packs of photographers gather about them taking photos, not going too close, hoping not to disturb the quarry.

In the park the rock'n'rollers do the twist. The men dress like Elvis in his comeback year: sexy black leather and hips, a litre of gel pointing their hair in gravity defying directions.

Along the paths around the edge of the park are bands all in a line. Some play with ferocity and desperation; some play to amuse. It's wonderful to be young. It's wonderful all this sensation, this assault, this shot through the heart. As I stand there and watch a band play, and the lines of girls jumping up and down, and our students standing there sort of stunned sort of delighted, I think: "God New Zealand is dull".

Chotto matte

I'm going to Japan.

I'll be back in two weeks.