Prize Giving 2007 Speech by Guest of Honour

Latymer Upper School Annual Prize Giving – 2007

I have to say this is a slightly out of body experience.

Apparently, I’m talking to the Latymer pupils even though I’m clearly staring only at parents and staff.
The Headmaster assures me I’m being ‘beamed’ to the pupils but my question is –
How does he know?  Can he be sure?  Where are they?  Are they still there?
This situation seems to me to be open to infinite abuse.

On my side, you see, I have hindsight.
Assuming there are some students, in some room, somewhere, and if my experience of this occasion still applies, they are not so much listening as glued to a stopwatch because someone is running a book on how long this diatribe will last.

That word. Hindsight.

Tribute to Michael Kamen

A Tribute to Michael – Dukes Hall, The Royal Academy of Music, London

Michael,

Making music. Making Food. Making conversation. Making friends.
Sometimes all at once

I was in his house in LA one time. A table was set for eight. He had me chopping stuff. Without much warning ten extra people came in the door. I panicked. Michael didn’t. He laughed, welcomed them in, as I started redistributing the lettuce.
Suddenly a blind girl was singing, Michael was playing and his spirit filled the house. Like he’d willed it to. Like it has all this week.
Michael the magnet. The fulcrum. No sweat – somehow it would all be OK, and it always was. Your hair is in tufts and Michael just smiles. And smiles. And plays. And we fed the five thousand.

Family, friends, food, music.
Those were the instruments. He was the conductor.
It’s like there was an orchestra inside him and he led us from a question to an idea, from the kitchen to the harpsichord.
Always something to show you, something to listen to, something to talk about.
Like the newspaper said yesterday –
“a monumental ego but with total humility”.
He had the social conscience and he had fun.
He was a grown up and a child.
Who else would have conducted a three hour concert of his music with no interval and be ready for more as we earthlings ran to the bathroom.

I was working with Michael a couple of weeks ago as he scored a silent film I had brought to him.
A familiar scene. The film is playing on two screens. Time codes and flashing lights. It had started on a love scene. Michael is curved over the keyboard, lost in a slow and luscious melody, and I am wondering if I should point out that the bad guy came in the room three minutes ago.
Probably not.
It’ll be alright.

We need the Michael’s like we need air and water. It’s hard to trap them in words on a page. They don’t make judgements, are never cynical – they are a force. They surround us, enfold us and make a haphazard, sensual sense of the world. Our panic, their calm. Our collisions, their lightness. All spirit – like a breeze..
Small wonder his work touched millions.
Lucky us to be able to say we knew him. And if that is the beginning of the long song of celebration, of the determination to live our lives as well he lived his, maybe this is the chorus.

Hey! Mr Tambourine Man. Play a song for me.
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to.
Hey! Mr Tambourine Man. Play a song for me.
In the jingle jangle morning we’ll come following you.

Alan Rickman. November 22nd 2003