20.1.22 They're only made of clay

This is the return to Ben Webster that I promised. (Yesterday/ A Couple of days ago?)

This is me saying that I'll return to something that I was going to talk about and actually doing it. Treasure this moment, it's quite rare. I am, if you hadn't already noticed, easily distracted. Hence the endless asides. And asides within asides. 

This is how writing tends to work. This is how *part of* writing tends to work. For me. Others will have their own rhythms and rituals, I can only talk about mine.

It's all about the music. The music has to be right. If the music's not right then nothing's happening. 

A couple of days ago I was revisiting the script for The Comeback Special; putting some new lines in, changing and removing some old lines that just don't work as they used to. We live in a different world now. The Trump and Farage gags still work though. Which is an appalling indictment of the world at large and its tendency to tolerate appalling little men as long as they appear to have been raised in a class above those they aim to persuade.

So, the music was Elvis. All day. Elvis. Same as it was when I first wrote the show, back in summer 2014. It's genuinely now an eight year old script. Venus Rising is pushing nine years old. All the original blog is from nine years ago. All of that feels like a different world. There are websites that I wrote for at the time that have not existed for a long time; there is no remnant left in the world of them. 

Elvis, though. You can't get tired of Elvis. It's impossible. Which is good when you're spending weeks with him as your only soundtrack.

Venus Rising. The moment that I break the couple up? Days of listening to Leonard Cohen and Joy Division. 

Which is fine by me, I don't find either depressing in the way that we're told we should. There are many, *many*, widely admired artists who I find profoundly depressing. Make you own guesses here.

Girls Don't Play Guitars. Obviously I had The Liverbirds on heavy rotation. That's fine, they get more wonderful every time you listen to them. Start your listening on YouTube and you'll end up down a rabbit hole of sixties girl groups, then garage bands, then the Stones, then Chuck Berry. It's a lovely way to spend your time and you're permanently in the right mood. The spirit is with you.

The synopsis and character sheet I was working on yesterday? That's another specific time and place, takes a specific playlist to get me in the required head space.

Which would be fine if it wasn't for the fact that the internet's died. Sky say it's BT's fault and BT are working on it. I can only take this on trust and use the hotspot on my phone. And I'm not using up all my data streaming music all afternoon.

So I revert to my fallback position: instrumental music. Words would be a nuisance here, they'd simply be the wrong words. The wrong words invade the characters moods, invade their movement. So, instrumental.

But I don't like classical music. It doesn't soothe me, it largely either bores me or irritates me (it doesn't stay till, it keeps doing things and I've no idea where it's going). So my go to is jazz. Which doesn't suit still, it keeps doing things and I'm more than happy to be pulled along in its wake. I don't try to understand these contradictory stances so I wouldn't suggest that you do.

Today's go to?

Costing an entire pound from a box in 81 Renshaw a few years ago:

I know nothing about Ben Webster. I know less about Kenny Drew, Nils Henning Orsted Pederson or Alex Riel who accompany the saxophonist here. I don't need to know anything about him, I kind of like the fact that I'm not tainted by knowledge or reputation. I get to enjoy this for what it is.

What it is is an album of six tracks recorded live at The Montmartre Jazzhus in Copenhagen on the 30th of January 1965, 10 days away from being 57 years ago. It's the livest thing you've ever heard. The club sounds small, sounds seated, there's a background of chatter, there's applause but it's not a crowd screaming approval, it's a room completely getting it, being completely in the moment. 

The musicianship is stunning, Mack The Knife may start as Mack The Knife but - as with all jazz - it's the solos that are important. There's a piano line that's graceful, a bass solo that's sinuous, a drum break that plays with time and then Webster's back in with the melody. 

It's the standards they're playing with 'Our Love Is Here To Stay', which you'll know from When Harry Met Sally (as great a script as there will ever be) if nowhere else; 'Londonderry Air', the tune that Danny Boy is built on and therefore almost the saddest thing ever made by humans.

It's four men in a relatively small room, playing this stuff once. This performance doesn't happen again, this performance is a thing of the moment, a thing where the mic is so close to the sax, the recording so clean that you can hear each breath pass through the reed. It's not just the note, it's the physics, the biology, the physicality of creating the note.

It's pure.