SOME CASUAL QUOTES OF FRANCIS
If I was a musical composer I would study melody and try and find out how to write a good song with just 3 notes.
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The Perfect Master doesn’t have to do anything…. everything was done in the beginning. He has only to be.
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The most important element of music is the melody.
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F. was a methodical worker. He would awake very early, prepare a cup of tea and sit quietly for about an hour before he organized some toast and tea. At 9.00 he would go to his study/bedroom and commence work. At about 10.30 he would emerge and would have a cup of tea (and cake if he were lucky) and a chat if anyone was there and then go back. At 12.00 he would come and have lunch, usually a cheese and chutney sandwich with a cup of tea. At about 1.00 he would siesta for an hour or so, get up and have more tea and disappear for his afternoon session from 3.00 to 4.30 (depending on the daylight) and then do an evening constitutional walk. If someone else was there they would prepare dinner, usually a vegetable stew of potatoes and pumpkin and greens and whatever else was available. Then maybe there would be some serious smoking and music listening in Baba’s House (if someone else was there) or reading a book. Then a cup of coffee with powdered milk and bed.
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On occasions he mentioned when he emerged after sitting at his desk all day trying to write that he hadn’t succeeded in writing a thing…. Not even a line.
INCIDENTS WITH FRANCIS
When I first arrived at Avatar’s Abode and met Francis I was conscious of my spiritual ineptness. But luckily I had forgotten to hide my pouch of tobacco from my shirt pocket for when Francis saw it he asked if we could have a durry (smoke) together. Sitting on a couple of stones outside Baba’s room.
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Patricia was in charge of the few gardens around Baba’s House and asked Francis to water the garden outside Baba’s Room. I was returning from the Rouse’s house and found F. standing there with a hose which, because of low pressure, was not exactly cascading over the flowers. As I approached he muttered to me “You wouldn’t catch Burton (Sir Richard, explorer) doing this!”
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Francis mentions many artists in ‘Stay With God’. He once admitted that he had been a bit presumptuous to do such a thing. But he was a “connoisseur of vintages, tone, rhythm and line”. Out of the blue one day he said to me ‘Shostakovich was a ‘boy-o’”, a term he used for an artist of top quality. I also introduced him to Django Reinhardt with whom he was very impressed.
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F. had piano lessons in his younger days in Melbourne but had to give it up because his hands were not big enough to span a ‘tenth’ and therefore he couldn’t play Liszt. He also had an anecdote about one of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. He said that as he crashed down on the keyboard the teacher would say “Minor, Mr. Brabazon, minor”.
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F. used harmonium when he was with Baba in India. He composed his songs with it and used it to accompany himself when singing to Baba. He brought it back to Australia and it sat on the stage outside Baba’s room where he would occasionally play for himself little pieces of Bach and Bartok as a relaxation. After a bit of persuasion he agreed to perform a duet with me for the Sydney anniversary. He would play the harmonium and I the guitar. We decided on a couple of small pieces of Bach’s and possibly a Bellini tune and we practiced a couple of times but his hand had slowed. One day he said that he wasn’t going through with it. “I have a reputation to maintain” he said.
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When I started tuning F. words I was of course a bit of a maverick. I say a bit because sometimes I got it right. One example was my tuning ‘People’. My first tune was simple and classical. It even had a small fugue. A few years later I thought that the world should hear these words but I naively thought that the tune I had was not good or big enough so I made a new tune. This one was much grander with percussion, flutes etc. and electric guitars. I imagined a stage production with dancers. It was a very strong tune with lots of rhythm. After we’d practiced it a few times in Baba’s House F. came up to me at the end and said that he did prefer the original version. That was all he said. But I knew that he meant that the 2nd version was too pretentious and affectatious. This was an important lesson for me all through my composing life. Small is beautiful in every way.