Category: karenmoller

I first saw the Soft Machine and Pink Floyd (their first gig) in 1966 when they played at the Chalk Farm Roundhouse, a launch party for our International Times newspaper. The two groups, virtually unknown, were paid a mere two pounds fifty for the evening. The orgaizers of that event had ripped the boards away covering theentrance of that huge derelict building that had been abandoned since the electrification of the trains. There was no staircase, only a narrow, rickety step ladder at the entrance. When I arrived a long line of colorfully dressed hippies were slowly mounting that fracile strucure and disappearing into the semidarkness. Wow! Was the only word possible to describe the interior. It was a ruin of ancient iron, rotting timbers that smelt of mildew soon replaced by the scent of marijuana. An attempt had been made to clean

Not long ago, I came across an old sketchbook filled with drawings, literary quotations, and conversations that I had noted in 1959, the year I arrived in Paris. Many years had passed, but I had not forgotten that book and the notes I had made in the hope they might provide some guidance on how best to live my life. Leafing through the pages, recollections flooded back in jump cuts, images here and there, snippets still fresh in my memory. I began again to gather and copy phrases that captured my attention. The first that seemed to hold particular relevance for me were the words of Gertrude Stein: ‘Artists and writers must live abroad to be fully alive to their inner feelings and able to express themselves.’ I mentioned to Cyclops, my friend of those early Paris days that I’d