Memory and the springs of art

It has been ailing for some time, but I reckon that our CD player is certainly on its last legs. Last night I became so fed up with the problems we have been having in making it play that I powered up my old Hi-fi and dug out some of my old LPs. It worked perfectly! So tonight I didn’t even attempt to play a CD but went straight to the vinyl to find a musical accompaniment to our dinner.

I’m not sure why, but the album I chose was a selection of songs by Joan Baez. Listening to it again after many years was an interesting if somewhat disturbing experience. I began to play the guitar after my return from Canada, in 1964, and this particular selection by Joan Baez provided a very large proportion of the materials I learned back then. This was added to later by material from Leonard Cohen and also a number of Yugoslav folk songs. That world seemed tonight to belong infinitely far in the past. I gave me pause for thought, however, in another respect, as I began to realise the extent to which the theme of freedom was a significant element in much of what I played and sang. “I have a little book with pages three,/ And every page says ‘Liberty'”.

The reasons I believe lie behind this are not especially appropriate for this blog, but what I did notice was the fact that there was an emotional theme connecting so much of my musical preferences, and musical expression, in those days. As we ate together tonight I began to wonder whether there might be a similar kind of unity in the material that provides the springs of my painting.

Sometimes it is possible to see that kind of emotional coherence in the work of an artist. Stanley Spencer’s life-long engagement with the spiritual significance of his home village of Cookham comes to mind. Paul Nash’s sense of what I can only describe as “spiritual presence” in his landscapes is perhaps of this kind. Is there a similar feeling of unity in the way in which I have engaged with painting? Perhaps Almscliff Crag has become my Cookham….but if that is the case, what is going on here? I’ll have to think about that one.