Bill Nelson is the founder of Be Bop Deluxe and Red Noise, and
has lived a life steadfastly dedicated to his muse. Now in his sixties
and living with his Japanese wife, Emi, in rural Yorkshire, he spends
his days making music, dreaming, scheming and fretting. In these
verbatim entries from his diary he also reflects, with great tenderness,
on the early death of his younger brother, Ian, a fellow musician.
Elsewhere, he ponders...
on human nature:
Why is it that gentleness and sensitivity are in short supply
whilst cynical spite and small-mindedness flourishes?
on his life-force:
Song after song after song, still yearning, searching, harvesting
every last straw for the thatched roof of my own private cottage
museum.
on the joy of life:
I had a ball simply looking and feeling. Wow! And I remembered
our youth and those times and that music and I was grateful to be
alive and to have lived through those times. Ain't life grand when
you're in the mood for it to be so?
on the beauty of isolation:
Man, I'd live on a little island in the middle of some warm stream,
away from the herd, counting the buttercups in the meadows and listening
to the skylarks sing. The rest of the world could get on with its
manipulations and acquisitions without inflicting its shit on me.
on the mundane:
Damaged my left hand last week, mainly middle finger, by accidentally
hitting the banister on the stairs whilst rolling up my shirt sleeves.
and, of course, on the pineal gland:
Nights have been sticky and interrupted by bouts of insomnia
and perversely lusty dreams. Apparently these are a result of the
sun shining on the pineal gland on the top of one's head.
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