Walter had called me afterward; he said he was pleased with the way things had gone. Crow hadn’t liked the primitive and arty music demos. They were full of electronic twittering and white noise interspersed with strange discordant piano. But Walter didn’t really like what he’d done either; he was still struggling to make music out of what he had written down. But he said Crow had taken it all seriously. With the descriptions of the soundscapes on his lap, reading and listening at once, Crow was the first to read and hear a crude approximation of what was going on inside Walter’s head whenever he tried to write a song.
“The best part,” said Walter, “was that Crow asked to take a copy of the essays home with him. He wanted to share the entire thing with Selena. He said she would love it.”
Blinded. There is only sound. Blinded by light. Burning light. All around there are small whirring creatures, mechanical, sounding like sophisticated mini-robots, but with clockwork motors inside them, slowly, steadily running down. Massive airships, driven through the whistling breeze by buzzing motors that seem far too small for the job. Flying geese, honking and squawking territorially, like the real thing, but obviously powered by some kind of complex multigeared engine. They swoop, honk, and crash, one by one. Small ships, pressing through the ice floes. Grinding to a halt, then being crushed inevitably by the encroaching ice. Tiny insects, also powered artificially, buzz, flap, zing, and whistle through the air, bouncing off windows, walls, then spiraling to the ground. Mechanical men, as real as men, walking sedately with a flowing and even gait across the roads, their slick, mechanical hydraulic motors hissing and fizzing almost imperceptibly. Artificial voices, having conversations about art and life and emotions and feelings, the phrases slowly becoming incoherent and unraveled, the language more absurd. The sound of an approaching Ice Age, the increasing hiss of freezing wind and crackling frost. Finally, a small snow sled, unmanned even by a mannequin robotic controller, out of the control of whomever once guided it, careers down a frozen street, skidding on the black and white ice and smashing into a tree. A few more feeble revs of its petrol-driven engine, a few more slurs of its caterpillar tracks, and it dies. A trio of singing penguins, or ostriches or emus, or some such upright walking bird, with absurdly feminine voices in uneasy harmonic approximation, trip down the street, slipping and sliding, giggling and laughing, their song a kind of crazy laughter in itself. They are stopped by something unseen; their singing ends with the little surprised and disappointed noises of children interrupted in a favorite game for bedtime: ah, oh dear, oooh, ooo-ah, poo, pah, bah, no, etc. This is the last we hear of the mechanical world of a fridge door, an automated gate, and a computer-controlled toy car. It is in fact the end of the toys, of the robots, the non thinking, non feeling machines; we are hearing the last of our little helpers. Helpless.
Selena told me that Crow had taken the soundscapes back to his house, where she waited for him, ready to fuck his brains out if he was ready. He threw them to her as he walked in.
“There you go, sweetheart,” he taunted. “Your beloved Walter’s latest brain farts. Actually, I must admit it isn’t half bad.”
I would learn later that Selena had known exactly what to do with the soundscape descriptions. She has confessed as much. On reading them she said she knew someone who might be able to help guide Walter.
“Siobhan will be thrilled to get her hands on this stuff,” she said to Crow. “She’ll know how best to develop them.”
Crow let her make copies of nineteen or so pages, and she—and it seems obvious now—sent them to her literary sister. She would know people. In her days at the BBC she would have built up contacts throughout the world of the arts as well as journalism.
When first reading the soundscapes Siobhan knew straightaway that Crow couldn’t really help Walter. Frank Lovelace wouldn’t help, while Steve and Patty Hanson would try to turn them into a rock opera or something. And Floss was too busy with long weekends of dressage, or maybe un-dressage if the gossip were true.
Siobhan was another who still loved Walter and still hoped to see him rise again. No doubt she despaired of me and my clunky attempts to inspire and focus my godson with embellishments of his madness and its potential, and she did indeed know what to do.
“Selena,” she said excitedly on the phone. “Can’t you see?”
“See what?” Selena was baffled.
“Walter’s father Harry,” she said. “He’s fucking perfect for this.”
What an act of genius! Harry. When Harry called me a few days later, after he’d received the package from Waterford, he was excited at seeing what extraordinary creative outpourings his son had come up with, and was already beginning to think about how to contribute. Harry realized his son had at last done something that he could be a part of, that he could understand and develop, and—beginning with organ partitas reminiscent of some of the most extreme music he was ever asked to perform—started to compose orchestral scores. Harry Watts, organ supremo, for once in his life could do something for his son that no else could. He could compose serious, dark, audacious, and fearlessly accurate and impressionistic music that would bring to life what Walter had described. A gift from father to son.
“This stuff is nuts,” he said, “but it’s beautifully written. It’s audacious. Parts of it are rather sophomoric, overdone, but it’s been easy to use the descriptions as briefs for music. I have already composed the first three pieces. I’m using organ of course, and conventional orchestra and choir, and some unusual instruments that others have used before like thunder sheets and so on. I’m having a ball. I am connecting with my son emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually for the first time in my life. Move over, Louis! God bless you!”
It was a poignant time for me. Within a little over a month not only had Harry composed the bulk of the most clearly described soundscapes, but also made stunning orchestral recordings of them. As an organist, orchestra leader, and choirmaster he had everything at his fingertips. He told me later he had spent around thirty thousand pounds on it all.
“The least I can do,” he said with a laugh. “I’ve taken it out of what I am leaving Walt in my will.”
In early 2012 Walter sat to listen for the first time. I was there with him at his studio when he finally listened to all the pieces as one, but it would probably be impossible for me to try to explain his reaction. Suffice to say he was transported. His father knew what he had been feeling, and had captured the immense intensity of his strange connection with the fearful folks of Sheen. The recordings were literal transcriptions of what Walter had written, music made from what he described. Of course it might not have been exactly what Walter had himself heard, but it was damned close. Father and son had connected, perhaps in a kind of hell. But a hell of art, science, social conscience, and political empathy for the people of west London with whom they shared their daily life.
And so there was a second listening session in the garden room for Crow, who was quite proud of the solution he had engineered for Walter via Selena. I attended, nervously. Anxious to mediate if needed.