Have you ever been to the main restaurant at The Albert Hall? It looks as if they haven’t redecorated since about 1955. These huge, utilitarian chandeliers, white tablecloth, velvet upholstered chairs and lots of elderly couples in suits eating prawn cocktails. Okay, a bit of hyperbole in there, but it is honestly like stepping back in time. I recommend it. Food’s not bad either.

 

Counting up the number of mouldy and unmouldy oldies I’ve seen performing over the last year, I feel old myself. Leonard Cohen, James Taylor, Bruce Springstein, Jimmy Cliff, Judy Collins, and then the other night, that icon of folk icons, Joan Baez, now in her sixties. She has worn well, insofar as I could see from the gallery of the Albert Hall. Her voice is not what it was, but who cares? She was one of my earliest influences and I still know some of the ballads she sings by heart. I was probably one of the youngest people in the audience, but I sang along with Amazing Grace all the same. I found out recently that the song was written by a slave owner who became an abolitionist. That has changed my view of the song completely. I suppose Joanie was disappointing - her new songs from her new album are nondescript to the point of appalling, but the older stuff does well, and she continues to do a great Dylan impersonation. But for me, Leonard Cohen is the sixties icon who’s stood the test of time with his combo of poetry, music and sheer charisma and cool. He has changed and developed over decades, but he’s still his own man.

 

Anyone been watching The X Factor? All those people who believe this is their only chance to make it. I watch it with my son Ethan and we hotly debate the choices as it goes along. We viewed the recent episode yesterday afternoon before I went to ...

 

Linda Black’s book launch of a series of prose poems ‘Inventory’, at The Red Hedgehog on The Archway Road. - a vegetarian cafe with a Bohemian edge. This was an atmospheric and cheery event, with Linda turning up in a a gorgeous red frock and reading with her customary verve, a book of startling prose poems which I am looking forward to perusing in more depth. I put a few faces to names, too, people whose work I had read, but I had never met, as well as catching up with some friends.

 

Then I came home to watch the results of The X Factor. I can almost hardly bear to  watch the pain of the losers on that show. It’s not just about singing, although many of them do have a passion for it. They all talk about a life as a singer as being their ‘dream’. ‘I can almost touch my dream’ said one, and many said ‘It’s always been my dream’. What is interesting for me is the way that fame and music cross over. One contestant said she works in a restaurant where she serves celebrities, and what she wants more than anything is to be on the other end, being served.  I’m not knocking that dream, but I can’t help feeling that so many of those people are in it because they want to be loved and pampered, as much as they want to sing.

 

Poetry is different. There is no fame, not really. There is no glamour (unless you’re Linda Black in a gorgeous red frock of course) There is no money. You might still go on working in that restaurant even if you did win the TS Eliot prize and have a collection out from Picador. There is no glory, not really. There is just the work to keep you going. The steady sweat of sticking at it, and the odd moments of joy and exhilaration.

Talking of which, I think it’s time for me to clear a space for Madame La Muse.

 

Have a great week.