Yearnings

Reading in the news this morning that reggae singer Max Romeo has died triggered an odd reaction in me. It took me back to disco night at Hyde Town Hall in 1969, listening to what was then the singer's notorious banned single Wet Dream, only played twice on the BBC before their ban on it, and watching a line of very young ladies (probably around my own age, maybe a year or so older) dance to it in a very sprightly manner.

I don't think that up to that time I'd ever heard anything quite so explicit, and found it very edgy indeed. The fact that the girls dancing seemed to react with a kind of rhythmically engaged indifference added to the odd power of my feelings: sort of excited, perplexed, disturbed and a bit frightened by it all. I can actually conjure a vivid image of the moment & the dance even now; but today, this morning, as I did so, it all seemed just a bit sad and very charming.

And the same is true to some degree of what I felt on reading All On a Summer's Night by Yusuf Idris from the collection The Cheapest Nights which I referenced yesterday. Except beyond evoking sadness and charm the brilliantly crafted story had a most powerful impact on me in other ways when I read it this morning, just before reading the news. At one point, indeed, I thought it might take a turn towards brutal horror when the group of young fellahin on which it focuses are denied any release of the sexual urges that torment them and turn on their companion for setting them on fire with his entirely false account of an encounter with a very generous lady in a near-by town. But they hold themselves back, just, from beating him to death. And the story is as comical as it is sad. Inevitably so, I suppose, when dealing with the yearnings of very young men.

So, an odd parallel, though the young Brian was dealing with his inchoate urges at just thirteen years old (if I've got my sums right) and Idris's young men are clearly just that - men - and deeply confused, deprived and dangerous ones.

By the way, since my bit of reading in the early morning it's actually been a day of almost non-stop work, which I suppose is no bad thing when you consider the dark places music and fiction can take you to.