The Beatles again – and then of course, who can forget Eric Clapton’s version in the tribute concert for George Harrison? An absolute classic. (I’ve always said that’s the soundtrack I want at my funeral – “Concert for George”. No-one could possibly stay sad listening to that music.)
The lyrics of the song seemed pretty meaningless at first, as was the case with so many of the songs in those days – look at “Hold you in his armchair, you can feel his disease” from ‘Come Together’, or my favourite, “Someone left the cake out in the rain, I don’t think that I can take it, ‘Cause it took so long to bake it, And I’ll never have that recipe again, oh noooooo” from ‘Macarthur Park’!
But George Harrison said that he wrote ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ based on the Chinese I Ching, the Book of Changes, which says that “whatever happens is all meant to be and there’s no such thing as coincidence – every thing that’s going down has a purpose[1]”.
I look at the world and I notice it’s turning
While my guitar gently weeps
So, just as the song had a meaning to him, so it does to me. I majored in Speech and Drama at university – Screech and Trauma to the always-annoying yobbo Agriculture students there at the same time (never let it be said that we don’t all have our stereotypes and prejudices). In our third year we had to choreograph a movement set to contemporary music for a dance and this was mine.
Hearing the song now brings back no memories at all of that particular dance, but it does remind me of a host of other experiences. Arriving at university for the first time after a two-day train trip from Bulawayo, being in a hostel for my whole three years of undergraduate study, early morning lectures, late night parties, coping or cramming for exams and either passing or repeating! Writing about a time is really good for evoking memories and as I write now, I can even smell the canteen and taste the fresh white bread with peanut butter and syrup that we got every Thursday!
Everything was different for me because it seemed as if life in Rhodesia had been rolled in cotton wool – I had lived 18 years inside a bubble and the early 70’s exploded onto my consciousness when I started university in South Africa.
I loved it but years on, also thought how much more I could have made of it. Too late and regrets are pointless I always think, and there is still more than enough to remember.
I was chosen as a drummie but gave up because you had to get up too early to practice, I took part in beauty contests, wet T-shirt boat races in Durban harbour, screamed at rugby matches, went out with both the buff and bony.
I had my moments of what I remember as brilliance – organising a float for one Rag procession with the theme of Movies, called ‘Gone with the Wind’ so we needed to do absolutely nothing except drive around on an empty flat-bed truck – and disaster – failing Introduction to Roman Dutch Law, touted as being the easiest first-year course on campus. And I changed.
After two years I finally came to understand politics in South Africa and what apartheid really meant. I met student leaders and activists. I read more deeply and listened to different music. Rugby parties turned to endless discussions on the differences between Communism and Socialism, Marxism, Leninism or Trotskyism. Red wine instead of beer. Clean-cut body builders became hairy, bearded hippies. It was all still fun but different fun.
So all in all, why change anything?
Every mistake, we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps
[1] Beatles, The (2000). The Beatles anthology. Michigan: Chronicle Books
And then again ... 