SILENCE

About the time Morrisey put a picture of Charles Hawtrey onto the cover of The Very Best of The Smiths' he said something like "Charles Hawtrey's silence surpasses Garbo's" or words to that effect.  He was absolutely correct.  Charles Hawtrey gets a name check from the Beatles, is more sexually ambiguous than Garbo and more of Morrisey's hetero fanbase will have seen the Carry On films than will have seen The Blue Angel.  I was brought to pondering on this when two recluses popped up this week.

No 1:  David Bowie.  I came home from work on what I didn't know it was his birthday and watched the video which (as it said in The Times, something like, arrived unheralded in the night like snow).  Everybody has a view.  It's profoundly moving.  At one point Bowie was ubiquitous to the pointof invisibility - nobody cared.  He re-entered the public world and retained his dignity - enhanced it.  The song reminds me of 'Heroes', and not for the Berlin references, but for its existential honesty.  Its Georges Melies meets Ashes to Ashes meets End of the Pier meets Lindsay Kemp meets Edwyn Collins.  I really don't want to watch it again as it must diminish the experience, like watching Harry Lime appear out of the dark on watching The Third Man for the second time.  It's here anyway, and if you've not seen it...



No 2:  Mark Hollis.  Slighty less noticeably got a mention in Uncut, as he has directed the track listing of the new Talk Talk compilation, which seems to be less synth pop, more bucolic epiphany post-rock.  Co-incidentally, there'd been a mini season of Talk Talk on the Cultureberg stereo, especially the Mark Hollis solo album.  No wonder he has been silent.  If you go from The Colour of Spring, through Spirit of Eden, Laughing Stock and The solo album there is nowhere left to go except some synthesis of silence and inarticulate spirituality.  Which, to me, is David Bowie, in a dark blue T-shirt, looking out at the world through the camera.