One week in the Sixth Form, Dr Marsden forgot to set us any Chemistry 'prep'. I spent the time in the school library reading a book about William Blake (I think it was Mr Hills who got me started in that direction: one of the very rare cases where a teacher managed to engage me with any kind of culture). I can still remember, vaguely, some of things I read that evening — about the nature of our true Identity, and the responsibilities each of us has to his or her own; and some quote about the similarities and differences between people's souls being on the same scale as the similarities and differences between their bodies (i.e. some are short, some are tall, some deformed or exceptional in various configurations). The next morning Marsden berated himself for his forgetfulness. When I said I'd spent the time reading about Blake (not to be a swot; we'd already had our run-ins, him and me, and there was no way he'd mistake me for class angel), he scoffed and said, "pull the other one, it's got bells on". I didn't say anything. Didn't have to. This teacher had just lost a foot in stature in front of me, and he wasn't a big man to begin with.
Cut to 14 or 15 years later. I had resisted getting a Walkman™ for a long time. Apparently when Brian Eno first saw them in New York in 1979 he thought to himself, "people carrying around music and playing it on headphones in the street — that'll never catch on!" It didn't appeal to me. But when I realised I could use that walking time to absorb a bit of poetry, and be smugly counter-cultural in the process, I bought a cheap player, and some William Blake to listen to.
Unfortunately, though the idea appealed to me, it never worked very well. You concentrate on crossing the road, and on the other side you realise that you've missed two or three important lines. Then your mind wanders for a minute and you really lose the flow.
This is one of two recordings of Blake readings I got in the mid '90s. This one is read by Sir Ralph Richardson, and it's not the one I prefer. The voice for the Songs of Innocence is just a little bit too sing-song avuncular. Only occasionally is there a glimpse of Blake's indignation and rage. And when I hear Richardson read London, I can't help but compare it unfavourably to the Westbrook version. Speaking of which, when I wrote about that, I was within sight of Blake's burial ground. We were at one stage going to buy a house where I could have looked out on Peckham Rye Common where Blake had his first vision of an angel, but that plan got scuppered by the proverbial dodgy developer.
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