Scott Walker/Reclusiveness/This Writer
Scott In Youth
Watched the documentary Scott Walker: 30 Century Man two nights ago. In the other room, Lisa was watching Lost getting wrapping into these last few, precious episodes. In the other room my indulgence was 60′s pop/rock leading into 90′s/00′s avant-garde. My loose infatuation with Walker goes back to living in the Sellwood neighborhood. Kell Dockham adored Walker, played him on Saturday mornings while we looked out the picture windows at the driving rain or sun.
Enduring memories of talking about the most important things with “We Came Through” bursting on early spring Saturday mornings will never leave me.
What is it with reclusive authors? A musician who can’t get out of bed is far more intriguing than his extroverted consorts. Filmmakers who only reveal themselves once in a while make me happy in the most enduring way. Walker’s album Tilt kills me; it exists with Lou Reed’s Berlin in the stratosphere of art best kept at arm’s distance. It makes me nervous to listen to it in the same way people watch an unsettling image and have to look at it long enough to dry heave then ask themselves why. The once pop star lived in Scandinavia in the later part of his exile from himself.
Some of his cohorts described him as having possession of a vision of his more peculiar interior landscapes.
Interior landscapes. Good memory of the familiarity with my own. In recent days I feel like a fly-over state. I’m in the Kansas of the mind/soul. I’m the Saskatchewan of memories. These have never failed me. Until now. Maybe I’m quibbling with myself, setting expectations I’m not certain anyone can keep up with. Who else is there to compare with Walker? Salinger? Should I even mention his name while in a fit of self-reflection? It’s not fair to what I set out to do for myself. Each morning I wake up and examine a writer’s biography on Writer’s Almanac. Someone’s life I envy. Even the showmen. I’m disposed to knowing what I’m not.
There is something I’m terribly empty to defend against and that’s my desire to recluse. My time on this mortal coil won’t feel fulfilled until I can somehow sequester myself. Walker lived in Scandinavia. Fine. He spent a decade there. Good for him. Scott tell me how to retire to the Wallowas and I’ll do it. One month in a cabin and I’ll write a masterpiece.
Posted: March 4th, 2010 under Blog.