I’ve yet again been amazed by how all these weird connections come tumbling out while I’m writing — things I don’t realise until perhaps a day or two afterwards.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
I don’t know whether\u00c2\u00a0the digression into cultural references would make it\u00c2\u00a0into a finished novel but I’ve put a few things in for my own amusement.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a part I’ve just written, James and Kim are walking through an uninspiring part of Hoxton towards City Road and they see a view of the City through a gap created by a building site. The heat on the concrete shimmers and Kim thinks of Avalon — or, more specifically,\u00c2\u00a0an image based on Glastonbury\u00c2\u00a0Tor rising up over the\u00c2\u00a0flooded Somerset levels (as they would have been in Arthurian times).<\/p>\n
What James associates with Avalon is the Roxy Music album from 1982 which Kim knows too,\u00c2\u00a0with its wonderfully mythological cover. James, being on his way\u00c2\u00a0to being half cut, starts humming and singing tracks from the album while Kim is mulling over the\u00c2\u00a0imagery of the City as a citadel. The song he ends up singing is “Take\u00c2\u00a0A Chance With Me” (not to be confused with the Abba song of a similar title). This is a non-too-subtle portent for what both of them\u00c2\u00a0choose to do later.<\/p>\n
But what\u00c2\u00a0was so strange is that\u00c2\u00a0Kim has just asked\u00c2\u00a0James what he did at work and he responds\u00c2\u00a0that he ‘made money out of nothing’. Now a very similar quotation has always stuck in my mind\u00c2\u00a0by a musician — that the concept behind a particular album was ‘making music out of\u00c2\u00a0nothing’, which I’ve always thought was a great\u00c2\u00a0description of the music. The musician was Bryan Ferry and the album, of course, ‘Avalon’.<\/p>\n
Many critics have described\u00c2\u00a0Avalon as\u00c2\u00a0one of the most romantic albums ever\u00c2\u00a0made <\/a>and it was interesting that it came to mind while I was writing this scene (they’re just an odd, platonic couple\u00c2\u00a0at the moment). At the start of the\u00c2\u00a0chapter\u00c2\u00a0the two walk\u00c2\u00a0past the plaque\u00c2\u00a0marking the location of Burbage’s ‘The Theatre’ — where the first Shakespeare plays were performed — and Kim tells James that he’s standing right where Romeo and Juliet was first performed. Star cross’d lovers indeed.<\/p>\n Here’s a performance of\u00c2\u00a0‘Take a Chance With Me’ that I found on You Tube.<\/p>\n