Interactive version of Oliver's Poetry Garret
Images of India
Wednesday, 1 August 2006, Blog 24
Leamington Garret
I met up with my photographer friend Jason Tilley. His story is an interesting one. He was a successful press and advertising photographer until three or four years ago, at which point he decided to sell everything: his house, his car, and most of his other possessions, so he could travel in India for three years taking black-and-white photographs.
Jason returned about a year ago, his funds exhausted. Jason had taken hundreds of amazing images but the intensity of the experience had changed him.
He seemed very different from the Jason Tilley I had worked with in the 1980s at the Coventry Evening Telegraph, and found it very hard to adapt to life back in Coventry. We met up at that time, with fairly disastrous results.
Gradually over the past year, my friend has seemed less down in the dumps. He came over to the Leamington Garret last week and we went out to the Jug & Jester for a couple of beers. As usual, it turned into the full gallon and we talked and talked and talked.
Despite our very different experiences recently, I feel I have much in common with Jason. When I first knew him, he was an 18-year-old Cov Kid with a natural talent for photography who took pictures for my thrice-weekly pop column on the Coventry Evening Telegraph.
We had a great time interviewing and photographing pop stars including James Brown and Prince, and, in his Coventry Evening Telegraph days, he did not appear to suffer from the same restive angst about life that I always have done. Methinks now he does. In spades.
We discussed how lonely life is. Even though there are nearly always people around me, I feel it strongly. I am alone in a crowded world. I was surprised Jason also expressed the loneliness of his existence. He is good at forming relationships with women. Yet one can feel utterly alone while in company.
He said relationships did not matter any more. He just wanted to complete his Indian project. This is his life's work. I admired him because I could see it was all that really counted for now. He has put his art first and absolutely needs to succeed.
His work is stunning. And, yet, it is surprisingly hard for other people to see this. Jason says he has managed to get some well known photographers to endorse the project and a selection of his photographs are also displayed on the the Photography Blog. They look superb.
When you see all the suffering his subjects have been through, it is not surprising that taking them cost his a chunk of his soul. Now he wants to go back to India to complete the project. He should - and must - do it. Jason Tilley is creating something historic.
After the obligatory kebab and chips at the take-away opposite the Jug, Jason and I returned to the Leamington Garret. We sat on the roof outside my bedroom, smoking his roll-ups and voicing deeper and darker thoughts. I was alarmed he insisted on sitting on the wall.
It is about 100 foot down, a sheer drop, with concrete at the bottom. He could not be persuaded otherwise. We talked of the madness of life in India and it made me think of all the horrible/wonderful things I saw in Ecuador. These are places where there is no safety net.
I commend Jason's photographs to you. A good selection of them are displayed on the interactive version of this blog. I thank him for permission to publish them. Obviously, they are his copyright, so if you interested in promoting them elsewhere, please email him through this site or Photography Blog. He is a masterful photographer and deserves a huge break.
Apart from this special blog, I cannot resist a little round-up of what else has been happening:
My flatmate brought home Taxi Driver on DVD. Watching it reminded me of what a great movie it is.
* Here, in reverse order, are my favourite 10 scenes:
10. Travis (Robert De Niro) driving through the burst fire hydrants in New York City,
9. Another taxi driver in the coffee house bullshitting about his sexual conquests with female fares,
8. Travis teasing the Secret Service man, giving him the wrong address and then the slip,
7. His first sight of Iris (Jodie Foster), the schoolgirl hooker who he decides to save from a life of prostitution,
6. Travis driving the presidential candidate and telling him that the human scum needed to be washed off the streets of New York City,
5. Travis walking into the campaign office and super-confidently and successfully asking out the beautiful Betsy (Cybill Shepherd),
4. The very moving reading of the letter from Iris's grateful parents,
3. Travis inspecting an impressive selective of firearms and buying the lot,
2. Travis taking Betsy on their first proper date - to a pornographic movie with the predictable reaction from her,
1.The big finale shoot-out in which Travis blows away the pimps, rescues Iris and emerges from hell as an all-American hero. Cool! Taxi Driver is a great film!
* I cycled for five miles through a thrilling lightning storm the other morning. It was incredible. The forks of lightning seemed all around the mountain bike. The water was coming down in rivers. I could not see, it was so heavy. My eyes were full of it. For the first time in my life l think, I was literally soaked to the skin.
* Bad things have been happening in my life recently so grim I cannot disclose them. I do not know what to do. I felt desperately sad today. I hung around at the work, trying to finish off various projects. I am on holiday from Friday (4 August). I am finding life hard going.
It has been a bad year personally. After work, I cycled back to the Garret exhausted and decided to treat myself to a curry. I rarely eat out but I thought it might lift my spirits.
I went to the Millennium balti house, near the Jug & Jester, where drinks are unbelivably cheap. (75p for a beer, 60p for a short). The food was also good. Afterwards, I had a pint up town in Moo and watched the younger generation while catching up on my reading. I had no desire to talk to anyone or do anything but be on my own.
* What has been happening in the Middle East has not helped. Clearly, innocent Lebanese people have been butchered by the Israelis. Having spent time in the Holy Land, one cannot but feel desperately sorry for the civilians caught up in this conflict. The Israelis feel it is their God-given right to give these people many children included the mother and father of all kickings.
When I stayed in Jerusalem, I was informed by a liberal rabbi of how extreme the mainstream of Israeli public opinion is.
And in a club in West Jerusalem two pretty Russian Jewish girls told me how much they hated the Israeli Government for its extremism. In that bar on that night, a young man was knifed to death by one of his own, in an argument over a girl. He had seemed a nice chap. I had been talking to him just a few minutes before his violent demise.
I read in the papers this week that Sir Stephen Wall has criticised the Prime Minister Tony Blair for his soft position on the Israeli violence. I agree.
It is appalling that Tony Blair has effectively condoned their butchery. I worked with Steve at the Catholic Church and was impressed by his integrity and honesty.
As for Tony Blair, how did it all go so wrong? I remember that after he became leader of the Labour Party, the newspaper I then worked for asked me to interview him at his home in Islington.
It was all arranged through his PR people and I duly went round and had a pleasant chat about the New Labour project, his background, family and so on. After an hour, somehow we got talking about music and his own little student pop career.
The interview was drawing to a close and I said that I wished I had been musical. Tony Blair said he did not think it really mattered and that music was in itself a reward regardless of how you regarded your own musical talents. I thought that it was very decent of him to say this.
So, perhaps too enthusiastially, I suggested we perform a number together there and then. Obligingly, he vanished and returned with his guitar and we ended up standing up, with me belting out the lyrics of Bob Dylan's Mr Tambourine Man while Tony Blair strummed along, also doing some backing vocals. A quirky occasion!
It all seems so long ago. So much water has flowed under the bridge.
Big Ken
Flashback to Tuesday, 9 May 2006
Leamington Garret
6.24pm by 'The Clock'. I can get really good reading from it in good weather with my glasses on. Sometimes in the dark, I am making a wild stab at it, and, yet, it is so more romantic telling the time this way than by looking at the clock on the computer (which I have taped over).
On the way here, I heard, on Radio 4, the Six O'Clock bongs of Big Ben, and, I thought that this wonderful Clock in Leamington Spa desperately needs a name: Big Bill, Big Wen or Big Ken.
I have only a few minutes to write today, as I am going over to Meriden to see my old friend Jason Tilley and his current girlfriend.
I intended to just go for an hour and come back, but when he said he would cook me supper and with the weather being nice, I thought I might as well make a night of it, bring some booze, and take up their kind offer of staying over.
On the morrow I shall doubtless be nursing a massive hangover!
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