Pop biographies etc

 Back in McDonald's (have I ever been away?) and some workman is repairing some piece of electrical set-up. Quite a shrieking of electric drilling, and it makes a change from children screaming. 

Well into pop biographies at the moment and one quote caught my eye...

I have always believed that rock ’n’ roll comes down to myth. There are no “facts.”  (Lester Bangs, in "Rod Stewart")

Not actually reading a Rod Stewart biography, but the quote was from another book sampled. No "facts". It makes me think of the art of translation......and it is an art. Samuel Beckett apparently suffered much as he sought to translate his own works, written in French, into English (or vice versa) Sometimes he gave up the job as impossible. Very easy to translate "the cat sat on the mat" but when you get down to nuances of expression within one language to translate/express the self-same thought/feeling into another becomes a daunting task. The implications of all this is far reaching. I leave it to you. 

For me it relates to "judgement", particularly of others. Reflect upon this:-

It’s difficult to be a legend. It’s hard for me to recognize me. You spend a lot of time trying to avoid it…. The way the world treats you is unbearable…. It’s unbearable because time is passing and you are not your legend, but you’re trapped in it. Nobody will let you out of it except other people who know what it is. But very few people have experienced it, know about it, and I think that can drive you mad. I know it can. I know it can.

 (James Baldwin, interviewed by Quincy Troupe)

It's difficult to be anybody in this world, where "hell is other people". In a preface to a bio of Elvis Presley I found this:-

“Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel,” Milan Kundera wrote in what could be taken as a challenge thrown down to history and biography, too. This suspension of judgment is the storyteller’s morality, “the morality that stands against the ineradicable human habit of judging instantly, ceaselessly, and everyone; of judging before, and in the absence of, understanding.” It is not that moral judgment is illegitimate; it is simply that it has no place in describing a life.

To be honest, thoughts on this bring me to tears, still being emotionally raw from ditching anti-depressants (into the second week now)

We are all living "lifes" and the judgements are terrible at times. "Judge not, lest you be judged". So true. We can know ourselves in the judgements we make of others, and we can therefore stand condemned while the one we judge rests in the mercy and grace of Reality.

But whatever, back to the biographies. Reading one on Charlie Watts at the moment. A good man, beautifully flawed as we all are......" there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in" as Leonard Cohen sings in "Anthem". Just stop trying to make a perfect offering! 

As Keith Richards, his bandmate, said:-

He was a very private man. I always had the feeling that I wouldn’t necessarily step over or enquire about something, unless he wanted to talk about it. There was no side on him, there was no act to follow. Charlie was just what you got, which was Charlie. He was the realest guy I ever met.

So Charlie was just Charlie, which says it all, or says nothing. Take your pick. 

PS One story from the book made me laugh, about Keith Richards in his library, on steps reaching and stretching up to get a book on anatomy by Leonardo da Vinci from the shelves. He slipped and did his collar bone. Keith reports that while he never got the book, he learnt a lot about anatomy!