New Britain

I was up before eight in time to see Mum leave for work but I made no effort to sit down and make a start on my work.

I frittered my valuable time away until  two when guilt finally took a hand and forced me into action. I made desultory notes for an hour and a half until Grant’s call interrupted me. It’s just a case of getting going, because I know once I’ve conquered the initial psychological barrier I’ll be able to do the work quickly and do it well. Perhaps coming home to do it was a mistake.

Grant called round half-an-hour after he’d called, staying until ten. He says he’s writing an obscene country and western song based on an impromptu rendering into a tape machine he and I did years back and has just finished reading a life of Artaud. I played him Whitehouse’s New Britain and the shrill electro-screams and metallic breathing prompted him to put his hands over his ears and demand that I turn it off because it was unnerving him. We listened to The Fugs and Captain Beefheart instead. . . .

Grant is going back to Gloucester soon to find accommodation for next term, which begins Oct 1st. We talked about the supernatural for a while and he told me of the alleged haunting of Woodley residence hall at Gloucester, where the shade of a mid ‘70s suicide has been heard and glimpsed on the top floor—one student supposedly felt himself being dragged across the floor in the middle of the night. Crying and sobs have been heard coming from one particular room, but always stop when the door is opened, & Grant said the building has an odd atmosphere. He also told me about the ‘Gloucester Prowler’ who creeps around the corridors of Woodley trying doors.

Dad was morose and subdued the brief time I was in his company. This I attribute to his hassles over his job that continue unabated. I’m returning to Watermouth tomorrow night to sign on Friday, and I’ll then travel back to Easterby the same day. This will consume another two and possibly three days of my rapidly dwindling holiday. I can’t push the guilty feelings from my mind. . . .

Simply sound

Last night a few people were invited to Mo's at Castle Mount Court and we all sat about dumbly, watching TV. John found it amusing that Liddy Rees was ignoring him and that she has, supposedly, recently tried to 'embarrass' him in front of others. He tried to chat up Lindsey and received a curt "You're rude, you are" in reply.

I bought an LP of C20th piano music (Webern, Schöenberg, Copland, McCabe etc.) . . . I can’t wait to listen to it. There’s a big new world out there—new to me at least—just waiting to be tapped, and now the stifling world of ‘pop’ music and NME conventional alternatives etc. seems insufferably narrow and unsatisfying if taken solely on its own. There seems a progression here; from my 16-year old salad-days of Santana and 'jazz-rock' I gained a love of jazz and through this I listened to more people like Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, '65-on era John Coltrane, Art Ensemble of Chicago, then via The Fall into the more traumatic experimentation of bands like Whitehouse, Nurse With Wound, Psychic TV.

Now this.

The barriers break down in all this music and right at its very extremes categorisation becomes impossible; it’s simply sound . . .