Tuesday, October 02, 2007

jazz, rare goods, juvenillia

Still on holiday in my mind,with the help of photographs and a 15 second video, I see and hear, above the sea, 30 or more young musicians called the Banda Los Teoporus. All the instruments they play are brass except the drums. They are all there - clarinets, saxophones, trumpets, tubas. The boys and girls are dressed casually and many are adorned with funny hats, including, in one case, a red, white-trimmed, Father Christmas bonnet. Their music, a sort of folksy jazz, is the sound of total cheerfulness. Buxom, blithe and debonair, they move their instruments in time with the music, and sometimes even dance while playing. Some small children begin an impromptu dance in front of them. The audience of passers-by cannot, themselves, keep still.

In a Tunbridge Wells shop window, all I can see is a woman sitting on the floor with her back to the street. She is a window-dresser sewing away at some striped material.

In a cupboard, which has needed clearing out for some time, I find a notebook full of juvenillia almost all of it, embarrassing. Just one poem catches my attention. After rendering a few nips and tucks, I find myself liking it, viewing it, as I do, in a completely detached way, as though I never had anything to do with it. I can't remember who the "you" was or even if it was any particular person:
The red flame contains a blue
And in the blue flame I see you,
And there you leap up bright and stark
To look into my enormous dark.

1 comment:

Lucas said...

Yes - that is very good: 4 lines to keep.