SONS AND LOVERS IS A HUNDRED YEARS OLD

 

SONS AND LOVERS was first published in the early months of 1913. The Lawrence’s were living on Lake Garda at the time. It must have been of some relief to Lawrence. It was many years in gestation, and featured any number of drafts. Lawrence’s former fiancée, Jessie Chambers (Miriam in the novel) was a heavy, early influence. She read and commented on many of the drafts. Later she lost a lot of influence when they became estranged after Lawrence became engaged to Louie Burrows who knew Jessie Chambers, and especially diminished when Lawrence met his future wife, Frieda. Frieda helped Lawrence see his past in a much different light. Sometime later Lawrence would admit that he was under the influence of his mother too much, to the extent that his ‘memoir’ of his boyhood struggles did a disservice to his father and his father’s relationship with his family. It must have come as quite a shock to Jessie Chambers when suddenly, one day, through Louie Burrows if I remember correctly, she was told that Lawrence had eloped with a German woman (not far from the start of the first war). The Lawrence of her girlhood and his boyhood, as traced throughout Sons and Lovers, was much altered.

           

The first book I ever read about Lawrence was a pictorial biography written by the celebrated champion of Lawrence, Keith Sagar. It was when I was living in Wangaratta, and I visited the local newsagent in search of something new. The account of Lawrence’s family and upbringing, the closeness with his mother, the hatred of his father, the death of an older brother, the struggles with women and the frustrations of sex, the love of languages and learning and nature, the boyhood joy of going to the rural property, ‘The Haggs’ to see Jessie and her family- this was the stuff of wondrous excitement for me and it left me hungry for anything Lawrentian, which still carries to a certain extent to this day. The next logical reading excursion was ‘Sons and Lovers’, and here to my great surprise was pretty much the Sagar story retold with a protagonist called Paul Morel, and a girlfriend called Miriam. The rural property was there, the massive mother influence, and the frustrations with sex and fascination for all birds, beasts and flowers- it was all there amidst incredibly vivid, psychological writing.

      

I went to England in 1987 and stayed the night at a YMCA in Nottingham. I spent the day in Eastwood where Lawrence grew up and wandered the streets, found the various houses he lived in with his family, saw the family graves at the local cemetery, and visited the local library to see their Lawrence display, which constitutes some of the lovely homage that Eastwood pays to its most celebrated citizen. I returned again in 1993 because I couldn’t get enough of it and did much the same thing- lots of wandering along the snowy footpaths and going to the Lawrence Birthplace Museum and bypassing the tacky ‘White Peacock’ café opposite. My most recent trips were made in 2002-2003. I was living in England at the time. I packed the car, and with my wife I drove to Nottingham city centre randomly in search of a job and a house to live in. For the next 2-3 months, after settling eventually in Old Basford, I found myself within easy driving access to Nottingham University to see the Lawrence collection at the library, and what’s more, Eastwood itself, so I could make many trips to the library, the museum, the wooded areas surrounding The Haggs, the four houses the Lawrence’s lived in, and the pub that Arthur Lawrence frequented. This was real ‘Sons and Lovers’ territory and it brought the wonderful book to life. I imagined the lucky students in neighbouring counties like Leicestershire, and Derbyshire, and even Yorkshire, going to Eastwood for school excursions whilst studying ‘Sons and Lovers’, and witnessing the respectful painted trail along the small city’s footpaths that follow in Lawrence’s former footsteps.

    

Last night I finished Geoff Dyer’s enigmatic ‘Out Of Sheer Rage’, which was supposed to be a book about Lawrence, but ended up being a book about writing a book about Lawrence. Much of it is intriguing, although admittedly I skipped certain sections, my eye alert mostly to the passages about the author. It is a book that I wished I had written- the pilgrimages to the houses lived in, the fun of following the blue line trail around Eastwood, ruminating on the fabulous letters and the best books. It is a good book to read on the hundred year anniversary of Sons and Lovers. And now that I’ve finished it I’m going to go back to the book published in 1913, about a boy and then a young man visiting The Haggs farmhouse, wondrous and lit up inside.

 

    

                

Three Colours White: Revenge and Obsession

                               

MOST people would say that ‘Three Colours White’ pales in comparison to ‘Blue’; that it isn’t as moving, or intense, or meaningful, or as important in some way. Well that would be to miss the point entirely. It has completely different aims, even though many of the films’ production team is the same for both. ‘White’ is a black comedy. The plot is ridiculous at times and it is very plot-driven, unlike the first film which has many moments of contemplation, in which the film seems to stand still. The two key male leads are the same, I believe, as the two leads in another Kieslowski ‘comedy’, from ‘Dekalog’- from memory it is the last or one of the last of the ten one hour films, about two brothers who inherit their father’s stamp collection with tragi-comic results. It is because of this association with the earlier film, that ‘White’ seems even more farcical to me than it possibly is supposed to. The male lead, in particular, has an amusing face, and is very hard to take seriously. Kieslowski uses him, in both films, as someone the audience can pity and laugh at, as much as if to say ‘I’m glad it’s happening to him, and not to me!’

 

The female lead is Julie Delpy (Dominique) who auditioned for ‘The Double Life of Veronique’ but would have been terrible, and rejected, mercifully, the offer to play Julie in ‘Blue.’ In ‘White’ she is good. A bit like a cat, she is cruel, and sneaky, and cunning, but, when trapped at the end, we witness her human side and find her more likeable as a result.

 

Zbigniew Zamachowski’s character (Karol) is signposted as tragic and ridiculous from the very start. He is visiting the law courts to find out that his wife, Dominique, wants a divorce because he is inept in the bedroom. As he is ascending the steps, he looks at a pigeon in the sky. Suddenly there is a splash of white on his coat, from the pigeon, just as he is admiring its flight. This is the first sign of his helplessness. This is Kieslowski marking him as a ridiculous figure who seems destined for bad luck. He has that sense of resignation all over his face. Soon enough, Karol is seen pathetically running after Dominique as she speeds off in their car, lugging a heavy suitcase after him, calling her name. This is after she has coldly and brazenly told him publically that she doesn’t love him anymore.  Here he is having his only credit card cut into pieces by the bank (her money it seems); and freezing to death sitting on his suitcase to see how his life will unfold; being shown as an abject failure again by failing another consummation test with his wife, and being threatened with arson; playing his comb as a musical instrument as a busker on the Metro and being told his ‘fly’ is open. It is here, at the Metro, however, that Karol meets Mikolaj, a fellow Pole from Warsaw, whose friendship will give him a spark and change his life forever. Before this, however, Kieslowski’s anti-hero makes a triumphant escape on a flight to Warsaw in a suitcase, only to be a victim of corrupt baggage handlers who, judging by the weight of the suitcase, think they have discovered gold. We are shown another scene in which Karol is lugging his suitcase in the freezing cold, weary, beaten and bloodied, this time to his former hairdressing salon shop he co-owned with Dominique before things turned sour. The little shop is amusingly lit up with ‘KAROL’ on a red neon sign.

 

Well Karol proves to be made of much sterner stuff than either his ex-wife or the audience give him credit for. He is able to scheme and hoodwink just as well as any other Polish businessman, and make a lot of money out of property scams, and being able to offer his loyal friend, Mikolaj, a partnership in a company. His main objective is to seek out revenge on his callous ex-wife. All overtures to reconcile with her have been fruitless as she treats him like trash. By faking his own death, getting her to attend his funeral, and using a substitute body for the coffin, Karol is able enact a brilliant scheme that will see Dominique go to jail. A moment of epiphany occurs, however, as he witnesses her real tears at his mock funeral, and sees evidence of the love that was once shared.

Perhaps the most enjoyable scene from the entire film is the shock on Dominique’s face as she returns to her Parisian flat after the funeral, to find Karol, shirtless, in her bed. They make passionate love for the first time and suddenly it seems a cloud has lifted over the fickle Dominique and she is in love with him. It’s all too late for her. The police arrive and arrest her for complicit involvement in Karol’s ‘death.’ The film ends with Karol seeing Dominique through the bars of her prison. She seems, in her sign language, to be suggesting future plans for being together. He stands there, weeping, perhaps wondering if it can ever be.

             

It is difficult to have a colour like white, thematically, to dominate a film, unlike the tones of red and blue that are so striking in the other films. Kieslowski, however, finds ways. He creates a snowy landscape in various parts of the film, especially scenes set in his home city of Warsaw. As in ‘Dekalog’, his intimate feel for Poland is evident in the way he makes his film, however it is always a totally unsentimental approach. Kieslowski also uses a dominance of white in a montage that is repeated throughout. It is a view of Karol and Dominique’s wedding day. She is beautiful in her white dress and the background sky is of a cold, milky white. There is also a lovely scene in the pure white snow in which Karol and Mikolaj are celebrating their unusual friendship by rolling around on the ground, again under a white winter sky.

                              

‘Three Colours White’ is probably not as dense as ‘Blue’ but its exploration of friendship and loyalty on the one hand, and mistrust and vengeance on the other, make it intriguing. Filming parts of ‘Blue’ at the same time as filming ‘White’, and even editing ‘Red’ at the same time, and maintaining ridiculous brief sleeping patterns over a long period of time, is no mean feat. Juliette Binoche even wanders onto the ‘White’ film set at the start of the film as if to suggest she is looking everywhere for her director in order to cut another scene- for the film that she stars in.

     

Three Colours Blue: introspection and liberation

                   

Having watched a whole range of Kryzsztof Kieslowski’s Polish films over the past year, I have now revisited his famous Three Colours Trilogy. The three films- Blue, White and Red, were all filmed within a tight time frame and edited at the same time. I think it was the director’s first foray into French film making, and he died shortly after the release of the third of the trilogy, ‘Three Colours Red.’


There are a number of memorable moments in the first film, ‘Three Colours Blue’, which has Juliette Binoche (as Julie) in many of the frames. I remembered, from seeing the film twenty years ago, the shots of Julie swimming in the pool, enveloped by beautiful blue water, a blue bathing suit, and each sequence seeming to become a deeper blue, as though it is all filmed through the prism of a blue lens. Julie is grieving, after the road accident that killed her famous husband and her child, and she is curled up in the water like a foetus, her hands cupping her ears, trying to absorb everything that has happened, or perhaps block it out.
          

The film uses the colour blue as a repeated motif, just as the other two films will (sometimes) use white and red. Another strong image is of a glassy blue mobile that Julie is enamoured with. Julie stands beside and behind the crystals, and a glorious blue light splashes over her whole face as she examines the mobile for some deeper meaning. We all need to hang on to something from our treasured past.
            

Julie is told by her doctor at the start of the film that her husband and daughter are both dead. She is lying prostrate on a hospital bed. We know the doctor is talking to her because we can hear his voice. The only vision of him, however, is reflected through one of her eyeballs. It is a classic Kieslowski shot- difficult to capture- an intense close up of Julie’s eye is needed- and it emphasises the tragic elements that are in the doctor’s words.

The colour blue creeps into even the unlikeliest of scenes. Julie comes home to find a large mouse in her kitchen, hovering over several just born blind and hairless babies. The image, in close up, is startling and alien, and yet there is that soft suffused spot of blue light in the background.

It is the detail and the intellect that makes watching these films closely, rewarding. The introspective side of Julie is shown when she watches herself reflected in a spoon that is dangling on top of a glass vase. Moments later, in a Parisian café, she seems to be avoiding the attentions of a family friend who loves her, and has tracked her down after several months of searching. Instead of regarding him, she is more intent on studying the way in which coffee slowly absorbs an entire sugar cube, grain by grain. Julie is not ready to deal with anything that is not abstract.
 

At the end of the film we know there is a release, or liberation, for her, as she makes love with this same man. We seem them through a grainy window, the faces pressed against glass, almost like they are in an aquarium, and there is no intellect, nothing cerebral, just pleasure and release. The final shot features a close up of Julie’s face, a hazy blue glow enveloping her, tears running freely down her soft face. She is dealing with her grief. There is a noticeable smile seconds before the final fade. It is vague, and not emphatic in any way, but it is definitely there, and means everything.
 

JOHN HARRIS VENTURES OUT FOR THE FINAL TIME (PART 3)

(CONTINUED FROM PART 2)

 

 

     ONE fateful day- well, actually New Year’s Eve- John Harris and his female companion decided to herald the beginning of a new year by drinking and dancing at one of Wangaratta’s nicest pubs called ‘The Vine’,  situated a little out of town, and down a dusty lane. It was here, mulling over the events of the year just lapsed, the good times, and the plenty of mistakes made, that John Harris met Jenny and Bob, both from nearby Whitfield, seemingly kindred spirits of his (well that’s how it seemed after two or three hours of celebration and dancing). Jenny was short and thin, wearing those tight, stretchy jeans that make your legs seem even skinnier. She was trotting around like a wild goat, pumping those skinny legs with occasional little hops and bounces. Bob was a bit more refined and a much better dancer. He was also thin but better proportioned, faintly good looking in a dark-haired Irish kind of way. Even Bob’s dancing was faintly reminiscent of Irish dancing, with his long but nimble feet. It was all so light-hearted and easy, basking in the glow of warm minds.

About a month later John and his friend Sharon were walking down Faithful Street. As they passed a real estate agent- in fact just at that exact moment- Jenny and Bob tumbled out onto the street in front of them, exiting the rental shop. There were smiles and good wishes all ‘round, happy memories of the event before. Jenny and Bob had decided they wanted to live in Wangaratta. John blurted out that, because of Alan No.2’s defection, there was a spare room at 39 Templeton Street. Bang. It was sealed.

Just three days later, on a Saturday morning, John Harris woke to noise down the formerly quiet section of the house. Jenny and Bob were unpacking. There were things everywhere. There was a corpulent dog running around the back yard (‘corpulent’ was a word that Bob himself used about his dog, the first time John had ever heard the word). Jenny had just put a bucket of water on the kitchen floor to help stave off the Wangaratta summer heat for the dog. Pretty soon it would be wandering over, slurping water out of the bucket and onto the linoleum, its furry cheeks dripping and glistening. Suddenly a poster supposedly of a UFO was plastered onto the kitchen door. Fine sheets of material were draped over doorways. Packages of food were thrown into cupboards. And then there was that little corpulent dog running around the house. John rubbed the back of his head with his hand. He couldn’t remember seeing the little dog outside the real estate agent the month before.

The next weeks and months went by in a blur. Jenny and Bob certainly had a huge impact on the house, and they were a fascinating couple to live with. There were cold drinks every night and fabulous stories told. Bob seemed to know quite a lot about everything. He was studying psychology by correspondence, and his essays were fantastically written. He knew everything about the Arabian Nights and was quite enlightened about politics, the Royal Family and world events in general. Talk would drift into the early hours and it was a miracle that John wound up fresh for his job at Benalla High each morning. When John would go home to Reservoir the occasional weekend- and it must be said that it was only occasional now- he would have fabulous stories about Jenny and Bob to tell his friends. There was the time that Jenny stole a big sack of clothes from outside St Vincent de Paul one Saturday night, and tipped the contents all over the floor. The sack contained about twenty pairs of jeans, all in various states of usefulness. Bob tried them all on and discovered to his delight that about six pairs fitted his thin body. When asked, by John,  about the ethics of such an event,  Jenny stated with viciousness, “well the money only goes to the Pope, and he’s got enough anyway.”

Another, somewhat more disturbing event, occurred in the unusual couple’s bedroom. John needed some sort of assistance and knocked on their door. Bob had been away for the weekend, and John soon discovered why. He had had a vasectomy. After a rap on the door, Jenny sang out casually, “Come in!” As he entered the vision that greeted John was of Bob lying naked on the floor, and Jenny applying ointment to a particularly sore part of his body. Moreover, this wasn’t the only thing that he found startling. A used potty, apparently kept each night under the bed, was sitting on the floor near the fire grate. Stories like these amused John’s friends no end.

Then things suddenly turned not only sour, but nasty as well. John forgot to put the money in the kitty for food a couple of times. The arrangement was that Jenny and Bob would buy the unorthodox vegetarian food- mostly nuts and grains, John noticed, to his chagrin- and would then go ahead and cook whilst John did the dishes. One night, in the cooler winter months, John could hear wine glasses clinking and the sounds of food being served on plates. He came out of his room nonchalantly to say “oh, is dinner ready?” Jenny’s response was abrupt and forceful (expletives deleted). “We haven’t made any food for you. We’re sick of the way you keep forgetting to put money in the kitty…” So that particularly warm arrangement was terminated, and the winter evenings became colder as a result.

A few days later John went to work having left the iron on. Jenny and Bob were your archetypal greenies. They loathed wasted power, and they both hated irons, especially because of the conservatism they associated with them. When John got home he stared at the lounge room wall in disbelief. “TURN IT OFF!!!” was written above the ironing board and thick blue crayon letters.

Then the issue of untidiness and grotty living came to the fore. It was always an issue for John, especially when the corpulent dog was nosing around. One day a friend from Benalla High came around. He and John were sitting in the kitchen. It was incredibly embarrassing. Large, unsightly flies were hovering around the room. Some were clinging to sticky cups and spoons. These days, the dishes were often left not done. When John opened a cupboard to extract coffee for his guest, they both noticed lots of little weevils flying around cups and saucers and unsealed food containers. John’s heart sank. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind he thought fondly back to his mother’s kitchen in Reservoir. Spick and span, with Tupperware containers filled with rice and pasta and other foodstuffs, tightly sealed.

Animosity grew between the once happy residents. Little things took on greater annoyance, like the woodchips all over the carpet in the lounge, and the Safeway trolley incongruously situated in the corner. The end of the year could not come soon enough. John was going home, back to Melbourne, to say goodbye to Jenny and Rob, and Wangaratta, forever. As a kind of parting gesture, John naively lent Jenny a hundred dollars during his final days. She said she would place the money in his bank account. She did place half of it in. The other fifty dollars, she insisted, was left on the table for him before he left. It wasn’t her fault he apparently, when cleaning, must have thrown it out.

Much later John was able to look back on his two year experience with a reasonable level of satisfaction. Yes he made plenty of errors, much of it to do with naivety and misplaced goodwill. However he survived, and learnt a lot, and felt that the next time he chose to enter a shared arrangement with other boarders, he would make fewer mistakes.

                

END PART 3

 

 

Young John Harris, Still Venturing Out... (PART 2)

  

Continued from part 1…

SO, sometime towards July, after six inglorious months at 81 Rowan Street, Wangaratta, a second opportunity confronted John Harris.  An advertisement appeared in the local paper reading approximately thus: ‘A single man requires a boarder, male or female, non-smoker, professional,  in lovely old house in tree-lined street.’ Ha! That word ‘professional’ again. John Harris smirked as he perused the invitation, then steeled himself for the possible change. Leaving Lindsay, Peter and the fabulous thin grey spectre, Alan, would be no easy task, but one wintry day he made the journey around the corner to meet a new, older and wiser Alan, and the deal was struck virtually on the spot.

The house, in Templeton Street, was a lovely old house- with the emphasis on ‘old’, and Templeton Street certainly was tree-lined. The local Ovens River ran alongside it, and in the past, and probably into the future, it would be subject to floods. Alan was firmly ensconced into the nicer, front room, and John would have the back. There was also a nice sized kitchen, an ugly third bedroom, and a serviceable bathroom and lounge. Alan himself was a builder and part-time musician, quite a handyman who would soon make John look silly- he was always slightly uncomfortable around ‘handy men’- but this was a gentle, older soul, who was probably looking for mateship and colour and solidarity in his choice of John as boarder. It was true that John was becoming firm friends with some of the women in the town; nevertheless a father figure in the form of Alan was never going to go astray. And John immediately sensed that this was a much nicer Alan.

A few weeks into the adventure, John decided he’d like to paint the walls of his bedroom a baby blue. Alan was impressed. John was one to hang around for a while. So John bought the brush and paint somewhere and began splashing on thick layers of the lovely pastel paint. Alan wandered in to see how the preparation was going- the sanding, the preparing of floor covering, the different sheens of paint required, the sandpaper, the taping of the walls… the list goes on, especially for builder aficionados like Alan. Well, one can only imagine the mirth spread across Alan’s face as he became doubled over in pleasure at seeing John with paintbrush in hand, the baby blue paint looking streaky and unhealthy on the walls, and little globules all over the wooden floorboards. John’s parents visited Templeton Street a few days later, and what a wonderful story Alan was able to tell Mr and Mrs Harris after their long drive up from Reservoir.

 

Time went on and Alan and John became reasonably strong friends. John found himself a nice girlfriend and Alan had a short American woman called Bobby with him most of the time, and the four of them would sometimes go out as an unlikely foursome, to cheap restaurants, and one time to Beechworth to hear Alan play in his jazz band.

John’s coterie of friends had widened further towards the end of the year. Suddenly there was a party at Templeton Street. Alan was away for the weekend at Bobby’s pad in Yarrawonga. When he came back home at about midday on the Sunday he couldn’t believe his eyes. John was still in bed. The coterie of friends had left about six hours earlier. There was mess everywhere. Broken half empty packets of chips, cola and wine stains on cheap rugs, a couple of overflowing ash trays, a sink full of sauce-stained plates, a small piece of cold fried fish near the kitchen door, drinking glasses in almost every room in the house, clothes strewn on the floor. Alan waltzed into John’s bedroom, despair filtered all over his sad face. ‘I don’t feel as though this is my place anymore’, he blurted out. John was still a bit sleepy, and not his usual tactful self. ‘Well Alan, it’s not as if there’s a leaking car engine rotting on the lounge room floor.’

Things never did seem quite the same after all of this. Alan left one day, presumably with Bobby, with not exactly rancour in the air, but a certain formalness and coldness nevertheless. John had a bit of time to reflect. In two households he had independently inhabited in his short adult life, things had either turned sour or failed to ignite. There was another experience around the corner, which would become the third and final incarnation that would put these two experiences to shame, in terms of both dysfunction and unhappiness.

                           

 END PART 2

 

JOHN VENTURES OUT FOR THE FIRST TIME (PART 1)

       

 

 

JOHN Harris’ parents drove him up to Benalla, a three journey from Melbourne, to get some sort of insight to the new life he would shortly be leading. He was a mummy’s boy- a sort of daddy’s boy as well- living a very uncomplicated first twenty three years or so. He’d never mowed a lawn, never planted a tomato, never painted a fence. John Harris led a charmed life in luxurious Reservoir, and knew absolutely nothing about the real world. The day his parents drove him to Benalla, he sat in the back seat, contemplating the next chapter in his uneventful life with a degree of naïve confidence. ‘How could it be so difficult?’ he thought to himself. There was the teaching caper that was just around the corner, and the living in a rented house with others caper, and the new town of which he knew next to nothing caper. It all sounded fairly easy. He was always natural and good humoured, and knew he would always be able to fit in. Benalla High was about to be the location for his first teaching position.

Weeks later, John Harris arrived, solo, to the main street of Wangaratta, just thirty kilometres north of Benalla. Someone told him it was better not to live in the same town as your students, so he prudently chose Wangaratta as the town of choice, for the multitude of virgin experiences that lay excitingly ahead. His car was loaded with bags and books and very little else. He travelled lightly and knew that he would have to buy things, but there was no hurry overall. There was an advertisement that he had answered from Melbourne, just to make sure that first day went smoothly. ‘WANTED: A SINGLE PERSON TO SHARE A COMFORTABLE THREE BEDROOM HOME WITH A COUPLE AND ANOTHER SINGLE PERSON. PROFESSIONAL PEOPLE NEED ONLY APPLY.’

The ‘professional’ part appealed to him. ‘You must make sure the people are sensible and professional’, more experienced adults advised him. The prospect of living at 51 Rowan Street was good. He saw right away what a lovely home it was. Potentially a bit noisy, being right underneath the overpass, but John Harris was given a comfortable, reasonable sized bedroom at the front of the house. The other occupants proved to be very difficult to get to know. Alan had just broken off an engagement- or, rather, it seemed that he was the one on the losing side. He was the other single person in the room next door. Overly serious, morose you might say, seemingly depressed and totally non- communicative. Oh, dear. John felt that Alan was impenetrable, and John wasn’t used to that. Later he would call Alan the ‘thin, grey spectre’, but never to his face, only to his amused friends in Melbourne.

The biggest bedroom was inhabited by an older, mature couple called Peter and Lyndsay. They owned a photocopying company in the town. They were a little more friendly, but wrapped up in their own lives and not particularly interested in poor John Harris. Where John was expecting friendship, John was receiving acquaintance. You pay your money, you get a room. That was the kind of alien thinking that unnerved John. Even after weeks, and months, went by, John still didn’t feel comfortable in this modern, breezy house. He would usually go to Melbourne on weekends. One Sunday night, after a particularly enjoyable time in Melbourne with dear family and friends, John reluctantly returned to Wangaratta, but was nevertheless in a good mood as he entered the household and wandered into the lounge area. Alan, Lyndsay and Peter were all watching ’60 Minutes.’ ‘Hi’ said John with a confident, optimistic tone, ‘how are things here?’ ‘OK’ was the reply. ‘How was Melbourne?’ There was a distinct lack of tenderness in the voice. In fact, none of the three occupants of the house even looked at John. Their gaze remained on the television. John spent a couple more minutes in the lounge, utterly deflated, and crawled back to his room, to his desk, and to his diary. His diary got a good workout this particular month.

                       

Things improved a bit after this. There were still lonely times ahead, though.  John would wander the streets of Wangaratta with his ‘Walkman’ listening to Van Morrison songs for comfort, delaying his return to the house as long as possible: ‘Oh, won’t you stay? Stay a while with your own ones. This old world is so cold. Don’t care nothing for your soul, that you share, with your own ones.’

And then there was the awkwardness in the kitchen. Alan didn’t go out much, and as much as John tried to avoid a clash of cooking times with Alan, invariably they would become hungry at the same time. One memorable day, Alan was in the kitchen cooking eggs and baked beans for lunch. There were your usual four elements to choose from. John found one that was free. He planted his skillet pan on this and scooped the hamburgers inside. The air was thick with tension. John and Alan had not spoken for weeks. Perhaps a grunt here, and a grunt there. It had been like a monastery of two silent monks. With a tiny bit of space enveloping them, Alan and John managed to cook each other’s sad and sorry meals, almost elbow to elbow, and should to shoulder, without speaking a solitary word. It was almost impossible, yet they pulled it off.

School and teaching motored on reasonably comfortably. John took himself off sometimes to the local nightclub called ‘The Pinsent’ and met some local women. Things got easier rather than tougher. But he never felt happy in the tight confines of 81 Rowan Street. What a miserable household. Something comparable to a house in an Edgar Allan Poe short story.  John stayed six months. Eventually, and miraculously, he answered another advertisement.

 

END PART ONE

 

 

ON THE DEATH OF RAY MANZAREK

                                           

SO RAY is dead all of a sudden. I saw it in The Age last week, and I didn’t even know it was coming. It hasn’t a big effect on me like the death of John Lennon, occurring whilst I was having fun on a sunny day in a back yard pool. Dying in your 70’s after a life of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll isn’t so sudden, or shocking or surprising. Not like murder is. Still, The Doors were my favourite band for a long time, and I was barely cognizant of music when Jim Morrison died.

I never really thought a lot about Ray as I became obsessed with The Doors in the late 70’s and 80’s and even into the 90’s, but I think I have underestimated him. I’ve heard the story about when the Doors first got together- there are photos of it- staying somewhere near Venice Beach, trying to write songs. They set themselves a target to write songs this particular weekend- I’m guessing around mid-1966- and only Robbie Krieger really came back with anything substantial- just a little rock ‘n’ roll number he called ‘Light My Fire.’ Yes it was Robby’s tune, and Robby’s words, but I bet Ray had a big say in the way it was fully constructed, beyond the drafting phase. Think about the swirling organ at the start, and I wouldn’t mind betting he created that sound, just like John Densmore might have thought up the idea of the bang on the snare as the song’s first noise. The Doors, like The Beatles, I gather, all joined together to create their songs, like all good bands do.

I’m sure there is any number of key Ray influences in lots of Doors’ songs. ‘The End’ may shine in particular because of Jim’s words and Robby’s guitar, likewise Robby’s palpable influence on ‘Spanish Caravan’ or ‘Been Down So Long.’ But think about ‘Riders on the Storm’ and Ray’s pretty (for want of a better word) piano/organ comes to mind, likewise ‘Love Street’, the piano beautifully jaunting, the swirling mad organ in ‘Strange Days’, and especially in an underrated song like ‘Not To Touch The Earth’ with its exhilaratingly mad organ swirls.

           

Beyond the studio, I can see that Ray was an integral part of The Doors line-up. I remember Jim Morrison once saying that whenever he was getting ahead of himself, he would take one look at Ray and realise that he wasn’t Superman (it may not sound like it, but probably a nice compliment). It seems that Ray and Jim were pretty close, more than the others, and certainly more so than Jim and John. It was probably Ray that in some ways held The Doors together, talking Jim out of leaving the group, being a band spokesperson when something went wrong, like in Miami. And Ray was a crazy guy. You only have to read his memoirs about life in The Doors to realise that. Pages and pages about sex, and shamanism, and rituals, and what not. Ray used the (possibly LA) expression ‘man’ all the time, and he was, it seems, excessive in the way he spoke and the things that he said. He went on to create music and manage bands when the Doors ‘died’ but always associated himself proudly with The Doors legacy.

When I saw the obituary of Ray Manzarek in The Age the other day, I thought back to my days of being obsessed with The Doors and driving my friends crazy. It was a lonely time because I remember being, it seemed, not only the only fan in my school in Melbourne, but seemingly the only person who even knew The Doors existed. I would play the first album and ‘LA Woman’ over and over again, and it seemed back then that every album and every song they wrote was genius. It was not until later, from a less involved perspective, that I came to a personal view that albums like ‘Waiting for the Sun’ and ‘Morrison Hotel’ were not quite as good as I thought, and that even songs like ‘Queen of the Highway’ were downright average.

Ray was like a father figure to the group I am imagining. Not just in terms of age- he was the oldest, but not by a great deal, and barely older than Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger- but also in the sense that he may have been the wisest, the most experienced and most level headed, and probably the most settled or secure. This is only an inkling, because I cannot be really sure.

One day, I know, Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell will die- and then I will really feel it.