sexta-feira, 1 de maio de 2015
Honor
researched the Portugal book in 1953, travelling on a shoestring with
eight-year-old Robert and his older half-sister Prue. «We travelled by bus a
lot of the time,» remembers Prue, «although sometimes we were lucky enough to
get a lift in a truck or cart or something like that. We slept wherever, in
blankets that my mother had stitched up – they were old army blankets of George’s.
We were just camping, but we had no tent. We’d sleep under the stars: in woods,
in florests, wherever we could.» Robert also remembers the trip with affection.
«I absolutely loved the place,» he recalls. «Dirty poor, I now realise, but
magical to me at the time.»
[…]
Though
he hides it well behind the beard and avuncular grin, Wyatt is a worrier. When
in Portugal with Honor and Prue, he had been so embarrassed at the poverty he
witnessed that for a period he refused to wear any shoes That empathy has
remained: it’s almost as if he failed to develop the so-called compassion
fatigue with wich the rest of us slowly become inured. Alfie describes Robert
as missing a layer of skin, and that quality is perhaps what makes his music so
affecting. But it also left Wyatt, as a human being, vulnerable, and quick to
blame himself when things go wrong. His constant self-effacement is not merely
English ‘after you’ etiquete.
Marcus
O’Dair, Different every time: The
authorised biography of Robert Wyatt
Robert
seems to have inherited his dad's sense of humour, as well as his iconoclasm. «George
and Robert had these silly jokes about sausages,» recalls Prue, shaking her
head at the memory. «They thought the word ‘sausage’ was just the funniest word
in the world. Everytime the word ‘sausage’ was mentioned, their shoulder shook.
One day George came back from work with a bag in wich he had what would be the equivalent
of about four pounds on pink cotton sausages. He’d got somebody at the workshop
to make them. Ohm they fell about, it was the funniest thing. Or George might
say, “What mark did you get in your english?” And Robert would say: “Sausages
over Sausages.” It was just ridiculous.»
Robert’s
sense of humour, in particular his love of word games, also derived from Lewis
Carol and Edward Lear, This pair of Victorian writers – surrealists before
their time – helped to inspire Robert’s
love of fun, puns and nonsense, crucial ingredientes in counter-balancing, in
Wyatt’s adult make-up, what would otherwise be seen as his slightly po-faced
politics. To Robert, However, there is not necessarily a disntinction. He lists
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland –
along with bubble and squeak, the Spanish city of Granada, the saxophonist
Gilad Atzmon and the Morning Star
newspaper – as one of the five things that makes his world a better place.
«People will probably say, “Oh that’s his infatilism showing”, he explains, “but
I think it’s one of the greatest political satires written. There’s na aspecto that
becomes more meaningful as you grow older, the whole ‘off with your head’
culture. Very scary.»
Marcus
O’Dair, Different every time: The
authorised biography of Robert Wyatt
Subscrever:
Mensagens (Atom)
Social Media
Search