11/07/17: Daniel Rachel (ed.) – Isle of Noises: Conversations with Great British Songwriters (2013)

A book of interviews offering in-depth conversations about the craft of writing songs. It's fascinating how differently these writers approach their work.

Damon Albarn seems restlessly drawn to the discovery of new sounds and directions, identifying "joy in mystery". Noel Gallagher, in contrast, seems to lack any musical curiosity, admitting he'd often rather go to the pub than write songs. He does, at least, acknowledge his failings. On Be Here How: "I listen to those words now and cringe. I was heavily into drugs at that point and didn't give a fuck." It's surprising just how honest he is about the limitations that, ultimately, prevent him from creating great work: "I'm not one of the world's great thinkers. Damon Albarn said this once in an interview: he can 'see four black dudes playing cards in a pub in Notting Hill and write a symphony about it'. I could see the same four black dudes and to me it's just four black dudes playing cards. It's just how you perceive things in life. I'm not a great reader of books; I'm not a great art lover." Later, he says: "It's difficult for me because I haven't got a lot to say."

It's refreshing how articulate and perceptive so many of the book's subjects are – for example, Joan Armatrading, Bryan Ferry, Robin Gibb (Bee Gees) and Squeeze's Difford and Tilbrook. The Pet Shop Boys may be the most witty and chatty of them all. Less interesting are the interviews with Mick Jones of The Clash, Sting and – especially – Annie Lennox.

Particularly illuminating is a conversation with XTC's Andy Partridge, who talks vividly about the process and inspiration behind his songs: "You're digging around in your guts and you pull up an idea, a concept or a thought and it just comes flopping out like some big, wriggly, wet fish. 'Oh my goodness, where was that hiding, whoa!', 'That is so sad, what made me bring that up?' I've been known to blub like an idiot...Sometimes you do go real deep down, scrimmaging around like a lucky dip. Your psyche is this barrel of bran…’'There's something!' I've paid my sixpence: I'm going to hoick it out, but it's not till you've got it out in the open and pull the wrapping paper off: ‘Ah, it's a hand grenade. I've pulled out a really uncomfortable personal feeling,’ or ‘Wow, that's really jolly, I do feel that great.' You can hoick out all sorts of stuff that you're not always expecting to.”

Three small criticisms:
1. The dates of the interviews are often not given. It would be useful to know the exact point that each writer spoke about their career, as in most cases that career was still unfolding at the time of the conversation.
2. The book feels over-designed and the black-and-white portrait photography gives it a certain “coffee-table” seriousness but ultimately adds little.
3. The overviews that introduce each subject could have been much shorter: two or three sentences would have been fine.

01/07/17: Iris Murdoch – The Unicorn (1963)

Bought this in the Oxfam bookshop in Swanage, Dorset, last Saturday.

"Some while later Marian began to walk back through the wrecked gardens. The moon had been quenched in cloud. She had not been outside. She had had to detach herself from the archway almost by pulling her hands off the stone, so alarming did everything seem both in front of her and behind her. She had never felt quite like this before, alone in her own mind; and yet not quite alone, for somewhere in the big darkness something was haunting her. She said to herself, I can't go on like this, I must talk to somebody. Yet to whom and about what? What had she to complain of, other than the loneliness and boredom which was perfectly to be expected? Why was she suddenly now so frightened and sickened?”

Primal landscape meets primal emotions as a young woman called Marian Taylor goes to work as governess at the remote coastal location of Gaze Castle on the west coast of Ireland.

Iris Murdoch writes in an extraordinarily vivid style. This novel is a sort of multi-dimensional love triangle: a group of characters isolated from the rest of the world have developed strange interconnected lives. Each of them is obsessively connected to Hannah Crean-Smith, an almost supernatural enchantress who exerts some kind of hold over every character. Murdoch explores the tangled threads that tie them together, then lets them steadily unravel while ramping up the drama with huge skill. In the hands of a lesser novelist, this sort of subject matter could easily become a mere soap opera. But Murdoch really gets inside her characters, their motivations and their inner conflicts.

At some point every person seems to love/hate/fear/desire every other person. You could argue that it's overwrought, or just allow yourself to be swept away by the intensity and enjoy sentences such as these: "It's odd, she thought, there is no one to appeal to any more, not even Peter. There is no outside any more. Everything is inside, the sphere is closed upon itself, and we can't get out. Pip had gone, he would wait and watch no longer. Effingham had deserted to the world of ordinary life and reason. She and Denis were ruined servants. The human world was at an end. Now they could only wait for Gerald to come down and whip them to the stables and turn them into swine."