| I WAS
ASKING MYSELF: "Am I asking too much?" "Oh, our attitude towards other groups isn't one of malice, it's one of disappointment..." Piccadilly, Autumn, 1995. "No one can ever accuse us of distancing ourselves from real life, or fans, or society, because we were utterly distanced from the world when we were not pop stars, so now, in becoming pop stars, we actually move closer to the rest of the world..." Orlando, a pop group. "There's definitely a gap for a band who say something to people in tiny towns whose lives and families and friends just do not say enough to them..." I'd been tapping a teaspoon on a tabletop, and then I stopped. "Only a small minority of our "audience will ever really believe in what the group is actualy about, the rest won't get it at all. But we don't feel too bad about that." Oh? "Because it'll be the first time ordinary people have appreciated anything we've ever done..." Tim, elegant and merry, has odd eyes that roll in perpetual astonishment, and perverse, serpentine fingers. Friends of his Methodist preacher parents once held a prayer meeting for his soul. Vocals. "I grew up in Upton, near Bournemouth, at a comprehensive that thought it was a public school, in a village that thought it was a town. One of my first memories is of my parents driving me through London, along what must have been The Mall, because I clearly recall seeing sculptures in the middle of the road. And the only sculptures where I lived were in the shopping centre. Sculptures of tortoises." Dickon, skittish and driven, has odd eyes that hide things and a spectral, hallucinatory charm. He became interested in music primarily through the sleeve art on New Order records. Guitars. "My childhood was spent in Bildeston, in Suffolk, which was a typical sleepy English village, and the most exciting thing that happened was a juggernaut rolling through to deliver supplies to Stowmarket or Hadleighon a Thursday afternoon... but every once in a while my parents would take me to London - I'd always lived in this town where nothing happened, now, suddenly: a place where everything happened!" Orlando, the dysfunctional duo, don't really get on, and they are waiting (in the) wings, and they're helplessly and deliberately creating THE MOST FRAGILE AND ROBUST SLOW-BURNING SOUL AND LEAPING UP-UP-UP-UP RUNNING IN THE EYE OF THE SEA BROKEN/FEARLESS EXOTIC HEART MUSIC, and they're tenderly and so very fiercely in love with TLC, Quentin Crisp, The Supremes' "Some Day We'll Be Together", Virginia Woolf, The Beach Boys' "God Only Knows", that elusive object of desire and the songs of Jimmy Webb, and here, now, they're crashing through cappuccinos, and elegant Tim smiles his brandy-butter smile and driven Dickon gabbles: "We've both lived our lives on the outskirts of society, first by accident and then, later, by design: there comes a time in everyone's life where you have to do on purpose what you used to do by mistake. If people say 'oh, the trouble with Dickon is, the trouble with Tim is' - then you must start to accentuate these things, develop your character, so at least there is no more confusion." They're well aware of what separates a mule from a mare.And why they are separate. "We believe in discipline" says Tim, merrily. "There's an essential link between discipline and romance, because if you're undisciplined, then romance can only be destructive." Dickon nods... skittishly. "I mean, we're both pretty much celibate at the moment. Through choice. Loneliness is only what happens when you think too hard about being by yourself." Driven! "Everything we do is honest. Everything is meant. Everything is intentional." They are precisely the right distance away from being a little too good for this phantom/ phantasmagoric old, new world. Dickon: "We want this to be contagious!" A frost of nonsensical trembles. Tim (smiling): "In one respect, Orlando is about trying to make all the friends you never made before. Or reclaiming the ones you lost when they decided their parents were right." Elegant, skittish, merry, driven, contagious, etc. "Intelligence is a curse when you're young." That vision. That fist fight intensity! Orlando: a name to wear on your heart/arm, this long winter coming. |
  |