Past lives

Matt has lemon trees in his garden. They just grow. Lemons. Large, ripe and yellow, as though they’re saying “look at us basking in this glorious tropical climate.” I keep singing the song “Pasadena” because it reminds me of everything here.

“Home in Pasadena, home where grass is greener. Where honey bees, sing melodies and orange trees scent the breeze.”

I have a feeling that Pasadena is where the Big Bang Theory is set, but to me it will always be the song that I used to sing as a teenager when I wanted to be a post-war Siegfried Sassoon and live in the 1920s. I always longed for a wind-up gramophone, a monocle and a wireless. I never found a monocle despite looking in every antiques shop I could find, and I could never afford a wind-up gramophone; although when I was a teenager, they were ten-a-penny. I should have seen it as an investment!

It was overcast again this morning. A sort of white mist has hung over LA every day I’ve been here until about 2pm when the sun breaks through. I noticed something similar with the weather on my last trip to the city, which, I think, was about this time of year.

It’s actually rather cold under the mist, but it feels refreshing, so I rather happily sit at the huge table by Matt’s swimming pool working on Brass.

At the moment I’m dealing with crude, broad strokes, getting everything down on the page with a view to refining things in a later pass.

I’m attempting to surround myself with inspiring art whilst I’m out here. Matt and I are watching a number of films and documentaries which trigger quite a heavy amount of nostalgia in me. This feels like an appropriate place to write from. There is a curious sensation which I’ve always had with Brass that I’m somehow writing my memories down. It sounds profoundly weird, but I suspect it’s simply because my obsession with the First World War was so engulfing in my teenaged years, and I read and saw so much material about it, that things have simply lodged themselves in my subconscious and I’m accessing them rather than dealing with some sort of past life issues!

Jet lag has suddenly caught up on me. It’s 23.15 and I’m already heading to bed!