A Recluse Loose Aboot This Hoose
Further to Monday night’s incoherent gamming about Scott Walker on Radio Ulster.
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The first observation that an initiate would make, in the 1980s, the 1990s, the zero-zeros and the nows, is that Mr. Walker is a recluse. One doesn’t see him around all that much and, goodness, he doesn’t offer interviews with any frequency. The two go hand in hand to make the point, for he does not push his palm into the lens and shout that he’s too busy with the pop records to babble with the press; we simply do not see him and we seldom hear from him either.
Of late, and by of late, I mean over several decades, his records saw release at intervals of eleven years. His interviews came as thin and slow. On the face, it seems like poor promotion, that, once a decade, he appears, sweaty-palmed and pale-faced before Muriel Gray or fidgety and uncomfortable with Verity Sharp, but for what more promotion could we ask? He is available to speak about his records from the moment his records are available.
However, an artist, now, is meant to push themselves as the product, so must live in a state of perpetual promotion. They must be always available, because they, themselves, are always available. As a result, they must become adept at the art of seizing opportunity. And, if Mr. Walker will not seize it, media outlets will do so on his behalf, for an interview with the reclusive Scott Walker comes along only so rarely. It is a treat for them, which will stand aside from the slick and savvy of everything else, by showing a man in great discomfiture, smiling politely, and laughing, nervously, at his own half-jokes. For a moment, ineptitude becomes a sort of brilliance, in the sense, at least, that it shines and obscures all besides. If one is very lucky, he will say that he’s not a recluse and that he does the normal guy stuff that normal guys do.
The disabling, upsetting thing about Scott Walker is that he’s right. When set before a camera, he reacts uneasily, stumbles over his words, blanches round the eyes and reddens in the cheeks, as so many of us would. He is set up, then, as an eccentric, because he appears unfit for the job he seems to want to do, a job that requires one have a modicum of eccentricity to succeed. When a person of seemingly regular ego, if irregular taste, is placed in the limelight, they cringe a little or run for the safety of the shadow.
Famously (and, gracious, there lies the irony), Mr. Walker’s first flee was away from the glare of stardom to a Catholic monastery, the home of those more self-consciously humble than you or I, although, like Durtal, in J.K. Huysmans teratology, he was drawn there by a love of music; he had gone to learn Gregorian chant. Yet, this is often read as the punchline of the joke, as if the responsibilities of the pop star were mostly non-musical and any interest in theory at all was akin to dressing up kittens in human clothing: uncalled for, but harmless. His descent into reclusion and eccentricity is thought to begin when he gave himself most forcefully to the elements of his trade and, again like Durtal, this was only the beginning of a long journey of dedication and humility.
His recent difficult work, then (Climate of Hunter, Tilt, The Drifting, And Who Shall Go to the Ball?…), is the result, though not the conclusion, of this dedication. One can see how it begins, with the Mr. Brel tracks on Scott; an attempt at bare-boned emotion and viscera. It took him to slowly shed the baroque arrangements to get there though. Or, through his dedication, he found different ways to say what he knew. Or he learned different things, so said the same thing in different ways.
Brian Gascoigne, Mr. Walker’s in-studio orchestrator, has spoken of Mr. Walker’s commitment to feeling the emotions that he hopes to sing and capture. If live performers, he added, kept themselves to the same strict regulations, they would jibber, madly, in the corner and never play at all. This partly explains the long delay between releases (of course, nobody really wants to release them). To capture genuine emotion, to organise and record an affecting atmosphere takes time and it takes effort, which seems to fly in the face of the notion that authenticity is attained by spontaneity, that one just leaves the tape rolling, catching the blood-splatter and jacket buttons on the scratchboard. Of course, both can be true.
Either way, the result will be used up by the consumer. Whether or not an emotion has been caught genuinely or has been simulated, normal guys will do the normal guy stuff of listening to records and allowing them to induce emotions and dramatics in their lives. It would make no great difference to them if the performance was recorded in one glorious, green moment or had Mr. Walker waited five years until he felt suitably melancholy. Their desire, and expectation, is that each moment of their life be filled with the emotion of others, standing in for or running concurrent to their own. Ultimately, they choose which emotions have been accurately fixed and which are deserving of such. Perhaps not Mr. Walker’s funereal bleakness.
This is partly what makes the sales on these albums: their unsaleability. And, this too, is what makes Mr. Walker a pop star: his quotidian qualities. His reaction to fame, that of shyness and withdrawal, is perfectly normal. But, as he releases records that are not perfectly normal, the reaction becomes mysterious. As a result, he becomes a figure of attention by not wishing to become a figure of attention. By continuing to release records, he insists on being a figure within pop, even if what he now produces is hard to call pop at all. However, the nature of pop is exposure, turnover, availability, all things that Mr. Walker is not and neither are most people. But, by failing to live up to the properties expected of a pop star, Mr. Walker normalises what it means to be a pop star, thus making his transgression compelling, even when the transgression consists of nothing more interesting than a grown man groaning awkwardly before a camera.
