When I was in my mid-teens I had a choice of rooms in my parents’ semi-detatched in Offerton Stockport. In the front room my mum and dad would be watching The Two Ronnies. In the Living room my elder brother would be sitting in the dark listening to Leonard Cohen or Al Stewart. In the kitchen I would be doing my schooolwork unless my younger sisters were doing their tap dancing. Sometimes I went into the front room to watch The Two Ronnies; sometimes I’d sit in the dark with my brother and try and work out what Leonard Cohen was all about; sometimes I did my school work in the kitchen.
These days, remarkably, I find myself tuning into You Tube to look at old Leonard Cohen footage or finding old Two Ronnies sketches. I also have a renewed interest in the reading matter that interested me as a fifteen year old (Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre). The things of the past that seem so random at the time etch themselves into your subconscious and never go away.
When I was twenty-one and living in Paris as a student, I shared a room with three other people. We all slept in sleeping bags with a small patch of floor each. Nobody had any money. One day Guy came back with an LP record. It was the first music we had heard for months. It was Vaughan-Williams Variations on a theme by Thomas Tallis. We all sat round and listened to it. After months of relative deprivation and no music, it was so moving that I was almost in tears. I listened to the piece the other day and it had the same effect. What happens? The past sneaks up on you and like some high yield investment it has grown exponentially and, whther you like like Leonard cohen or not, he’s got you.
