Love Sunshine

L'Allegro (at last)

Milton fans among you (?) would have seen this one coming, but none of us would have expected it to have taken quite so long. When I was embracing my inner melancholic (what do I mean inner?), and attempting to find some virtue in the climate that has seeped soddenly into our souls, I was hoping to flip it over as soon as the sun shone. As soon as the sun shone.... erhem.... But then it didn't, and it didn't and it didn't. And then it did, but I, of course was not here, was in fact selflessly suffering grey skies in Spain so we could have sun here. But now it is shining, and has been for about 4 whole days. So all is well with the world, and I'm walking on sunshine. Which prompts me to complete my dreary diptych on climate and creativity.

Sunshine may very well not be so conducive to art as rain is in this country. Walking on Sunshine (which is by a British band), is a lovely record. It perfectly sums up a sentiment in a burst of aural glee, with bouncy brass as yellow and shining as the old current bun itself. But no one could accuse it of being art. Club Tropicana - fun and sunshine, there's enough for everyone - is to, say Morrissey's rain-soaked melancholic musings, what a Club 18-30 holiday brochure is to Gerald Brenan's South of Granada, or Laurie Lee's As I woke up one Midsummer Morning (about the Costa del Sol before a hotel appeared). The Wham! (the ! says it all) song and video, is of interest principally to testify to our naivety back then in believing George Michael had even a passing interest in the ladies.

Sunshine turns our heads, and turns off our creativity. Perhaps. But not entirely. For a start, old habits die hard. Shelley's poem, 'Stanzas Written in Dejection Above the Bay of Naples' is a case in point. which opens: 'The sun is warm, the sky is clear, / The waves are dancing fast and bright,/' And describes a scene a travel brochure copywriter would weep to be able to describe. But old Percy B. continues:

Alas, I have nor hope nor health
Nor peace within nor calm around,
Nor that content surpassing wealth...
Nor fame nor power nor love nor leisure -
Others I see whom these surround,
Smiling they live and call life pleasure:
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

Good grief. Pull yourself together man. Stanzas written in dejection above a slag heap in Bolton I can accept. Spring 1818, Keats spent in Devon with his dying brother Tom. They had hoped to be in Lisbon, but couldn't afford it. It appears to have rained every day for about 6 weeks. Shelley, loafing above the bay of Naples on a sunny day, looking on one of the most glorious sights in Europe still, is feeling sorry for himself. And as for not having leisure. An Etonian aristocrat whose idea of a day's work was wearing a big blouse and penning a few grumpy lines while on permanent holiday (sorry exile from the political oppression of Britain) has no sympathy from me. But it does show you how deep the melancholy runs. It takes a while for the clouds to burn off.

It didn't take David Hockney long, if I may stray into another medium. He flits off to America in 1961, and comes to live there in 1963 drawn to southern California. 1963 is the year Summer Holiday came out, during the worst winter of the 20th century. When Cliff was singing about going where the sun shines brightly, and going where the sea was blue, our David was delighting in those very things, slapping 'em down in pure acrylic colour and turning the dream into art. We can do it. Grey misery might spur us into art, and, on the whole forge finer productions; yet it also spurs us into a desperate need to escape. And when we do escape we have eyes ready to see it and souls ready to engage with what we see. Like sunflowers kept in cellars, we only need someone to open to door to make us shine...

Right. That's quite enough pretentious bombast for one day. There are some sunbeams out there with my name on them, and the only canvas I'm going to be colouring today is the one stretched on my scrawny frame. Exits stage left humming Walking on Sunshine.