I was pottering in the garden this afternoon when, quite suddenly, it seemed important that I listened again to Joan Baez. (Don’t ask me why.) So, while a prepared dinner I rooted out one of my old LPs which I bought back in about 1963. I think that originally I borrowed a copy from the girl in the flat next door, whose music I could always hear through the walls. (The disc is entitled simply Joan Baez. I can’t find a date on it.)
What an emotional journey that became! I realised that this disc is probably a memorandum of my emotional development as an adult. Not long after I acquired it I began to play the guitar, and took as my repertoire a good deal of her music, which subsequently was inflicted on my children. Are they reasonably well-adjusted adults now because of that, or in spite of it? If they have hang-ups is this to be laid at the door or Joan Baez, or Leonard Cohen, whose songs I appropriated later?
After the hectic activity of June and July I have decided that I must have a complete break throughout August. It is amazing what happens when you stop driving yourself in pursuit of goals, and just permit things to rise to the surface.