Glen Row
an Art of Dying fragment
Pretty much half-way between Edinburgh and England and not too far from Peebles lies Innerleithen, a small Scottish village. Some might call it a town, I’d call it a village, or did back then at any rate.
And a little south of Innerleithen lies a row of cottages called Glen Row which in the early 1970s was home to the members of The Incredible String Band.
I spent a New Year’s holiday there in 1972–3 (straddling the years as it were). This, to put it mildly (the cliché is very apt here, so forgive me) was a dream come true for me.
Ever since the summer of 1968 (when I first encountered them) Mike Heron and Robin Williamson had been not very far from gods to me, especially Mike. Also, they were a big part of the reason that I joined Scientology (and later the Sea Org) when I did — late spring 1969, my friend Eric had told me (as I was grappling with the to join or not to join question) that they (he knew I revered them) were Scientologists now and that kind of closed me, so to speak.
Also, Heron’s lyrics (in particular) supplied not only the impetus to my Light Experience but also constituted my lifeline for the year following the light, for whenever my certainty flagged (as it did often enough) I’d play a String Band album again, and listen to the lyrics, and remember that drizzly but light-filled morning, again and again — restoring faith.
Put another way, Mike and Robin were spiritual friends and gurus of a sort; I knew that they knew the truth (they sang about it) and I took deep comfort in that knowing.
In October 1972 I went on a mission (an assignment) to HAPI (Hubbard Academy of Personal Independence, the Edinburgh Org) to fix this or that. Shouldn’t take long. However, what was supposed to take a couple of weeks dragged on into months and by this time I was running out of 1972, not much of it left.
Now, I had met my hero Mike Heron on the Apollo in 1971 — he had come there for auditing — so I wasn’t a complete unknown to the String Band. Still, I knew none of the others, i.e., Robin and his wife Janet, or Susie, Mike’s girlfriend; nor did I know any of the other members of the String Band commune as it were (who also lived at Glen Row), roadies, helpers, and such.
Sometime between Christmas 1972 and the new year Mike and his girlfriend Susie Watson-Taylor visited HAPI for some reason or other and at some point, during their visit we got to talking. Mike was glad to see me again and asked how I was doing, while Susie (a really wonderful person who was to become a true and dear friend — now passed, unfortunately) and I hit it off right away, as if we’d known each other for ages (as in lives).
Before they left to go back to Glen Row Susie discovered (don’t know how the subject came up) that I was to stay in Edinburgh over New Years, and had no plans nor anyone to celebrate it with.
In Scotland, by the way, New Year’s Eve, aka Hogmanay (I didn’t hear it correctly at first and called it Mahogany for the longest time, much to the chagrin of my Scottish friends), is (my friend Rae told me) by far the bigger holiday of the season, out-distancing Christmas by some miles. That’s another way of saying that to spend it alone is more or less inconceivable.
Susie, though not Scottish herself was up on the Hogmanay issue. She had a quick word with Mike and then turned to me and, “Why don’t you come down to Glen Row and spend New Year’s with us?”
Well, to say that there was absolutely zero arm-twisting involved would be telling the truth.
I was delighted to accept, and promised to get down there as early as I could on New Year’s Eve — I’d leave Edinburgh as soon as we had closed things down for the day in the Org.
Yes, I should have asked Flag’s permission to take a day or two off to visit the String Band, but, as I recall, not wanting to risk a denial, I never asked — the guiding principle here being that it’s easier to ask forgiveness later than permission before.
By an almost pitch black five or so in the afternoon, I had left HAPI and was on a bus going south to Innerleithen. Being this late in the day of New Year’s Eve, I was one of only a handful passengers. Old bus, too. Good enough to last all the way though, and by six I’m stepping off the bus at Innerleithen. Not sure whether I took a cab or hitched a ride from there to Glen Row, but before too long I’m knocking on Mike and Susie’s cottage door (Glen Row was, and probably still is, a row of five or six small cottages) and Susie opens and gives me a hug and welcomes me. Mike, behind her, is beaming a welcome as well. He had (and probably still has) the greatest smile.
Stepping into that warm and light cottage, my feeling is hard to convey, but it’s along the lines of: imagine your favorite movie star; imagine receiving a personal invitation to spend a day or two with him or her (or them); imagine being greeted at the door and shown around the palatial Bel Air house, “and this is your room for your stay here.” Things simply are not real yet, as you trod along, dropping your jaw at pretty much every turn. I’m not exaggerating. I was in the home of my hero, and I was loved. Looking back only four years (say, New Year’s Eve 1969), this would have been if not inconceivable then at least a virtually out of reach dream.
Now come true.
I don’t remember what we talked about specifically, but I do remember that Susie (who was a good flautist) gave me her flute as a present.
I slept very well.
I awoke very happy.
We were to have the first breakfast of 1973 with Robin and Janet so we walked a couple of cottages down and soon sat down around the fireplace and the crackle, sparkle of the warming fire drinking tea and coffee.
After breakfast Mike played us a couple of songs he was working on, and Robin, too, played an absolutely wonderful song (which, once it was released on their next album didn’t sound half as good — over-arranged, in my humble opinion — as it did that New Year’s Day morning by the fire.
Then Susie or Mike or Robin asked me to play something, so I did.
I am nowhere near the musician or guitar player that Mike and Robin are, but the occasion somehow lifted me above my own mediocrity and spun angel dust on my fingers. I don’t think I’ve ever played and sung a song so well. They loved it.
They, let me reiterate, they, my heroes, my virtual gods, loved it. I didn’t come off of that cloud for days.
As it happened, Robin and Janet needed to go into Edinburgh that afternoon, and since they had a car, or borrowed one, I caught a ride with them.
Hugs to Susie and Mike, and thanks again so, so, so much for the flute and for the stay, and off we went.
When I returned to England in the summer of 1974 I met the String Band again on several occasions; in fact, we grew to become very good friends, so good that Mike (via Susie, I’m sure) invited me to play guitar on the album he was currently working on, the one called “Mike Heron’s Reputation”. The track I played on all the way through (I still listen to this every now and then) is called “Singing the Dolphin Through”, a song that was later covered by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band.
My 15 minutes.
Unfortunately, Susie and Mike were to eventually split up and Susie actually joined the Sea Organization sometime in the mid-1980s.
By 2005 or 2006 she had contracted stomach cancer and she died from this in the fall of 2007.
I spoke to her a few times that fall, and we even made an appointment to meet one day. I showed up at the appointed time and place, but she never did. She was undergoing chemo at the time and, who knows, perhaps she didn’t want me to see her in her current, ill, possibly emaciated condition. Perhaps she wanted me to remember her like she was back then, in the 1970s, the loveliest person alive.
And that is how I still remember her.
© Wolfstuff
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