… I sat in my room one evening and watched a BBC Young Musician final. Headphones on, as always. https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-36279467
There was Jess Gillam. I ended up completely in tears – as in “I died and went to heaven” – when she played “Where the bee dances”.
The rest of the world had disappeared. There was just this piece, this performance. Nothing else.
Portsmouth and its relentless ugly hate, greed, utter misery, violence, its stupid glorification of hate, greed, corruption and violence and all the rest of it had disappeared completely and no longer mattered in any form, way or shape. It no longer existed.
And this, this exactly probably is the perfect embodiment of the explanation why Portsmouth and I never got along. Something like this is so many trillion lightyears away from the place, it’s completely irreconcilable.
I don’t know what made that performance so stellar, so immensely moving, but nothing else comes to mind that comes close. She played her heart out, Jess did.
The orchestra outdid itself too, obviously inspired by her.
I can no longer listen to it, and watch it, but some of you can. Nobody in Portsmouth will. That I know.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0443pnj/player
(Jeez, just the memory brings me to tears.)
(I was thinking that I also walked out in a daze after having watched “Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence” at the Tuschinski theater in Amsterdam, which ends with this piece by Ryuichi Sakamoto (of which there are several versions, some with David Sylvian), and of course, that was a very moving film… It also has David Bowie in it, by the way. Jess Gillam has played that too, so those of you without BBC licence can listen to this studio performance instead, though it certainly is not the same.
