“Is he still working on that peculiar labyrinth thing in his garden?”
“He calls it a maze,” I corrected.
“Take me out, Louis,” she pleaded. “We can talk over dinner.”
After speaking to her and arranging to meet her at Le Caprice that night I knew intuitively that where Crow might need a hard sell to go back to work with Walter, the Hansons would hungrily consider what Walter was now creating and might rediscover hope for their old band.
As she smoked a small postprandial cigar that enraged even the sophisticated folk in Le Caprice, Patty fluttered her eyelashes at me. Did she think I wanted to fuck her?
I wanted to explain my real reason for needing to see her. I told her all about the soundscapes and ended by saying I was sure that Frank would feel they could trigger a band reunion. That seemed to alert her.
“So Walter is hearing anxiety, and wants to make music out of it. It all sounds interesting, Louis. Most intriguing.”
I coughed, and she laughed at me.
“You’re a saint, Louis, really.” She showed her amazing white teeth as though posing for a press photo. “But you do need to speak to Frank about this. Not me. The business stuff is all so boring. I’d love to hear one of these soundscape thingies though. I’ve completely run out of new ideas myself and Steve is no better. Walter always was a dark horse.”
A mathematically organized arrangement of notes cascades rapidly from a slightly out-of-tune upright piano. The patterns sound like an attempt to evoke a Bach partita or prelude. In a major key, the patterns hardly come close to melody but are pleasant, like the sound of a waterfall. Light reflects from the surface of the rippling pool; the sun is reflected. The first piece is short, quickly followed by another in a darker and more somber mood. Again, there is a Bach-like modality to the composition and a two-handed elegance to the performance. This piece too is short, followed by another, very fast, optimistic, and eloquent set of passages that ends suddenly with an ostentatious and flamboyant flourish.
I contacted Frank and he felt, as I had predicted, that we should try to bring Walter’s band back together. I would rely on Frank Lovelace to run things once I had planted the seeds, since it seemed to me that in order for Walter to survive the embedded and indoctrinated musical ego of Crow on the one hand and the grandiosity of the Hansons on the other, he would need a more musically adept mentor than myself.
I spoke to Maud from time to time. Old Nik’s paintings were selling very well and were still the backbone of my business as an art dealer. He painted the same scene over and over again with small variations: a sweeping field of human souls presided over by vast angels.
Once when I called I said, “I thought it might be a good idea if Nik could spend some more time with Walter, which could help him harness and unleash his own angels and demons,” I suggested nervously. “Walter’s are sonic ones of course.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” said Maud. “Nik is dying. He has advanced leukemia.”
“Bloody hell!” I was stunned.
“He is reliant on intravenous morphine, and is surviving, but it’s reset his clock. He’s also even madder than usual.”
I couldn’t help thinking that the old hero was about to live up to the name of his old band and was approaching ground zero.
This was a shock to me on many levels. I had come to depend on the sales of his artwork, which provided a steady and reliable income. I had come to adore Maud, a woman who carried some sweet quality that continually attracted me to her. I was at ease with her, she was my age, and I found her still beautiful, serene, and immensely kind. This jarred with another emotion I often felt whenever I saw her face after a long hiatus: sexual arousal. I never acted on this, but I know she was conscious of my vulnerability around her. She didn’t take advantage of me; once she laid a hand on my knee while consoling me about some small personal crisis and my heart started to beat so quickly I thought I might be having a stroke.
I was aware that this attraction might well have been leading me by the nose from the very first day we met. Old Nik’s paintings could, for all I knew, have been produced to order from a factory in Lahore, the Pakistani city with at least one excellent art school. Equally, they could have been knocked out in Taiwan. Neither I, nor my clients, would give a hoot. Nik’s esteemed Tolstoy-inspired signature was all that was necessary to validate his process.
“I’ve only met Walter in passing,” Maud reminded me. “I’d very much like to speak to the young man. If he’s been so influenced by Nik, it would be good for me to have an hour or two with him.”
I felt a pang of jealousy and promised myself that such a meeting would not be a show I mounted.
Chapter 15
The show I did manage to mount began with Crow rolling up in Sheen on a Wednesday afternoon in his black 1956 Lincoln Continental Mark II at two in the afternoon. There were no free parking spaces in the street, but Floss was at the stables, so he pulled up onto their small driveway and left the trunk of the coupe hanging over the pavement so that the local mums with strollers had to divert into the road. It was not a sunny day, but it was warm, and he and Walter hugged each other at the front door, with a degree of uneasiness on both sides.
Soon we were sitting drinking coffee just outside the entry to Walter’s maze, and catching up. Walter was clutching a laptop computer nervously. Crow spoke about his divorce from Agneta, while Walter spoke fondly about Floss. Crow talked about his band and the fact that almost nothing had changed for him in fifteen years, and how rapidly the time had seemed to pass. Walter talked about his garden and then showed Crow around it. Crow was a businesslike fellow; he had no time for niceties. He could be blunt, but he held no grudge against Walter. He quickly cut to the matter at hand: Walter had been composing. Crow wanted to hear what Walter had recorded.
Walter prevaricated. There was a lot of nervous preamble. He was aware that Crow wouldn’t know what to make of the demonstration soundscapes based on what he had been hearing. He himself felt they were unfinished, tinkling piano, inadequate as a true reflection of what he hoped to achieve given more time and resources. Walter knew that Crow was far more broadly educated about music than he appeared. It was only with the Stand that he had insisted on the very narrow manifesto that gave them their power.
“Please remember this is all work in progress, Crow,” he said. Crow nodded, looking down. “Would you read the descriptions? They give a far better idea of what I’m hearing.”
“Give me some credit, Walter,” he barked. “I know what you can do. I worked with you for years. Just play something. I’ll read the descriptions as we go. Soundscapes you call them? The first syllable works for me. You could give the capes to Patty.” He laughed his smoker’s gasp that was almost a wheeze, and his joke cleared the air.
“I will,” said Walter. “I’m sorry. But what you will hear is not conventional. Not songs as such. If I sit to play the piano, as soon as I find some good melody or interesting and enticing set of new chords, my mind flies off into chaos and disorder. If I fight it, it gets worse and I simply have to stop work. If I allow myself to accept what I’m hearing it begins to take shape, and I can write down what I hear, and then later I can try to gather sounds and record a mélange.”
“A what?” Crow knew perfectly well what a mélange was. “A blancmange?”
Walter opened the laptop.
“You’re not recording on a fucking computer now, are you?” Crow was laughing again. He sat back and let his old personality shine through. He was the Luddite pub rocker. For him “recording” would always involve reels of tape, a mixing console with controls like a wartime airplane, and a lot of cigarette smoke.
“When I left the band,” explained Walter, “I gave away my funky old recording gear.”
“Can you work all that stuff?” Crow looked at the colored patterns on the laptop screen.
“The learning curve was steep,” admitted Walter. “Remember, I’ve been digging in
the garden for so long. I usually only turned this thing on when I wanted to order plants.”
He told Crow that he had tried reading inspirational books, and worked programs intended to help artists who were blocked.
“I needed to find a way to unlock the art.”
Crow was now trying not to laugh. He didn’t like musicians using the word “art.” Music was music. Art was something else. Art was what music critics looked for in all pop music, including pub rock, yet became irritated if any artist aspired to deliver it. Defining what was and what was not art was not for the musician. It was down to the critic.
“You should talk to Siobhan,” he said, not without a little sarcasm. “She was the one who always thought you could be the new W. C. Yeats. She knows what art is.”
“You mean W. B. Yeats, I think,” corrected Walter. “I don’t really contact Siobhan that much. Louis speaks to her sometimes. Selena of course.”
“I’m teasing you, Walter.” Crow laughed again. He exchanged a look with me. I knew he had bedded Selena. He winked at me as if to make sure I kept quiet about it. He lit an American Spirit and blew a cloud of smoke into the air. “How’s it going with Floss? Still in love?”
Walter blustered a little. “Yeah,” he said quite shyly. “Still good. All is well. We spend a lot of time apart but it seems to work.”
It was unconvincing. The gossip about the separate lives he and his wife led troubled him. He trusted Floss, but her friends and stable clients didn’t. He knew Crow was teasing him and he had forgotten how to handle it. He clearly felt the need to go further, to be more positive.
“I’m really happy with Floss,” he said. “She’s a complete star, so incredibly beautiful too, and always glowing; vibrant. Still riding, working at the stud, and teaching too.”
Crow leaned forward; did he sense that Walter had something to say that might require him to stop acting like a jerk?
“I always seem to be waiting for her to come home,” admitted Walter. “She’s a great rider. Does all the biggest meetings and horse trials. Badminton and all that.”
“Oh yes!” Crow made a lascivious face. “Tight riding pants. You should cheer yourself up while she’s away by reading Jilly Cooper novels.”
But Walter was serious; he couldn’t properly pick up on Crow’s clumsy levity and didn’t try. “I’ve only just started to feel that life is slipping by, that something is missing.”
However, Walter could sense that Crow was glazing over, leaving the room. If he didn’t play him something soon, he would put down his coffee and drive away. Walter was not desperate to be judged, but up to this moment no one had heard what he had started to record. Not even me. I’d just pretended I had to get Crow and the Hansons to reconnect; so far I had only read the written soundscape descriptions, which were impressive.
Walter led Crow and me through the maze, where for fifteen years he had been creative in a way that was natural, easy, and spontaneous, and into the gazebo-like garden room he was now using as a studio. The sound of their footsteps echoed slightly, and at first sight there was nothing in the room but a Yamaha grand piano and stool. Through the window I saw Walter set down the laptop on a little table in the far corner beside some small digital boxes. Crow looked around for a sound system. I saw him realize that Walter had had speakers buried inside the walls, like someone who wanted music but didn’t want large loudspeaker boxes and wires cluttering up what had earlier been a middle-class living room. This was not a musician’s sound system, he was probably thinking. It was an interior decorator’s notion. He said nothing. There was nowhere to sit but on the piano stool, which he took. Walter stood nervously by the table and hit a button on his computer.
Walter had called me afterward; he said he was pleased with the way things had gone. Crow hadn’t liked the primitive and arty music demos. They were full of electronic twittering and white noise interspersed with strange discordant piano. But Walter didn’t really like what he’d done either; he was still struggling to make music out of what he had written down. But he said Crow had taken it all seriously. With the descriptions of the soundscapes on his lap, reading and listening at once, Crow was the first to read and hear a crude approximation of what was going on inside Walter’s head whenever he tried to write a song.
“The best part,” said Walter, “was that Crow asked to take a copy of the essays home with him. He wanted to share the entire thing with Selena. He said she would love it.”
Blinded. There is only sound. Blinded by light. Burning light. All around there are small whirring creatures, mechanical, sounding like sophisticated mini-robots, but with clockwork motors inside them, slowly, steadily running down. Massive airships, driven through the whistling breeze by buzzing motors that seem far too small for the job. Flying geese, honking and squawking territorially, like the real thing, but obviously powered by some kind of complex multigeared engine. They swoop, honk, and crash, one by one. Small ships, pressing through the ice floes. Grinding to a halt, then being crushed inevitably by the encroaching ice. Tiny insects, also powered artificially, buzz, flap, zing, and whistle through the air, bouncing off windows, walls, then spiraling to the ground. Mechanical men, as real as men, walking sedately with a flowing and even gait across the roads, their slick, mechanical hydraulic motors hissing and fizzing almost imperceptibly. Artificial voices, having conversations about art and life and emotions and feelings, the phrases slowly becoming incoherent and unraveled, the language more absurd. The sound of an approaching Ice Age, the increasing hiss of freezing wind and crackling frost. Finally, a small snow sled, unmanned even by a mannequin robotic controller, out of the control of whomever once guided it, careers down a frozen street, skidding on the black and white ice and smashing into a tree. A few more feeble revs of its petrol-driven engine, a few more slurs of its caterpillar tracks, and it dies. A trio of singing penguins, or ostriches or emus, or some such upright walking bird, with absurdly feminine voices in uneasy harmonic approximation, trip down the street, slipping and sliding, giggling and laughing, their song a kind of crazy laughter in itself. They are stopped by something unseen; their singing ends with the little surprised and disappointed noises of children interrupted in a favorite game for bedtime: ah, oh dear, oooh, ooo-ah, poo, pah, bah, no, etc. This is the last we hear of the mechanical world of a fridge door, an automated gate, and a computer-controlled toy car. It is in fact the end of the toys, of the robots, the non thinking, non feeling machines; we are hearing the last of our little helpers. Helpless.
Selena told me that Crow had taken the soundscapes back to his house, where she waited for him, ready to fuck his brains out if he was ready. He threw them to her as he walked in.
“There you go, sweetheart,” he taunted. “Your beloved Walter’s latest brain farts. Actually, I must admit it isn’t half bad.”
I would learn later that Selena had known exactly what to do with the soundscape descriptions. She has confessed as much. On reading them she said she knew someone who might be able to help guide Walter.
“Siobhan will be thrilled to get her hands on this stuff,” she said to Crow. “She’ll know how best to develop them.”
Crow let her make copies of nineteen or so pages, and she—and it seems obvious now—sent them to her literary sister. She would know people. In her days at the BBC she would have built up contacts throughout the world of the arts as well as journalism.
When first reading the soundscapes Siobhan knew straightaway that Crow couldn’t really help Walter. Frank Lovelace wouldn’t help, while Steve and Patty Hanson would try to turn them into a rock opera or something. And Floss was too busy with long weekends of dressage, or maybe un-dressage if the gossip were true.
Siobhan was another who still loved Walter and still hoped to see him rise again. No doubt she despaired of me and my clunky attempts to inspire and focus my godson with embellishments of his madness and its potential, and she did indeed know what to do.
“Selena,” she said excitedly on
the phone. “Can’t you see?”
“See what?” Selena was baffled.
“Walter’s father Harry,” she said. “He’s fucking perfect for this.”
What an act of genius! Harry. When Harry called me a few days later, after he’d received the package from Waterford, he was excited at seeing what extraordinary creative outpourings his son had come up with, and was already beginning to think about how to contribute. Harry realized his son had at last done something that he could be a part of, that he could understand and develop, and—beginning with organ partitas reminiscent of some of the most extreme music he was ever asked to perform—started to compose orchestral scores. Harry Watts, organ supremo, for once in his life could do something for his son that no else could. He could compose serious, dark, audacious, and fearlessly accurate and impressionistic music that would bring to life what Walter had described. A gift from father to son.
“This stuff is nuts,” he said, “but it’s beautifully written. It’s audacious. Parts of it are rather sophomoric, overdone, but it’s been easy to use the descriptions as briefs for music. I have already composed the first three pieces. I’m using organ of course, and conventional orchestra and choir, and some unusual instruments that others have used before like thunder sheets and so on. I’m having a ball. I am connecting with my son emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually for the first time in my life. Move over, Louis! God bless you!”
It was a poignant time for me. Within a little over a month not only had Harry composed the bulk of the most clearly described soundscapes, but also made stunning orchestral recordings of them. As an organist, orchestra leader, and choirmaster he had everything at his fingertips. He told me later he had spent around thirty thousand pounds on it all.
“The least I can do,” he said with a laugh. “I’ve taken it out of what I am leaving Walt in my will.”
The Age of Anxiety Page 14
