En vermell texte seleccionat per Recopilació III
Music from the darkness
Cap a finals d’any, Mike reapareix per la presentació del seu nou LP. El seu canvi d’aspecte i de personalitat eren radicals. Cabells curts, cara afaitada, nou vestuari i bona disposició a parlar amb els medis.
La raó per aquest canvi dramàtic va ser un curs per millorar l’autoconfiança al que va assistir Mike el juny. Aquest curs, Erhardt Seminar Training (o Exegesis), consistia en 4 dies dedicats a eliminar traumes, pors i altres psicopaties dels assistents. Mike va afirmar, anys després, que va ser com començar de nou sense tots els traumes de la seva infantesa. A nivell físic i, d’una certa manera, musical el canvi que va operar Exegesis en Mike era evident. Una conseqüència evident del curs va ser el seu matrimoni de dues setmanes amb Diana Fuller, la filla del instructor d’Exegesis.
Així doncs, Mike treu al mercat el 24/11 el seu 4t disc d’estudi, i el seu primer disc doble, titulat Incantations. Va fer servir lletres com el poema Hiawatha de Longfellow o l’Himne a Diana de Ben Jonson, torna a comptar amb la percusió del grup africà Jabula; Pierre Moerlen, David Bedford i els seus germans Terry i Sally.
Incantations és un àlbum de proporcions èpiques que va arribar a ser de platí abans d’aparéixer a les botigues, encara que va quedar al lloc 14 de les llistes de vendes UK. La resposta de la crítica va ser mixta, cosa gens extranya donada la llargària de l’obra. Les primeres versions de l’LP tenien una versió diferent del Hiawatha final de la cara 2.
El període nadalenc va portar dues novetats. Per un costat una edició especial en picture disc de TB. Per un altre, una obra retrospectiva anomenada Take Four, que va sortir el 1/12, només a UK. Aquesta obra és particular en alguns sentits: és el primer single en 12” de Mike, i a més va sortir en vinil blanc, amb un adhesiu que deia “Virgin Records is dreaming of a withe Christmas!”. Curiosament, l’edició en 7” contenia les mateixes cançons. Les peces conegudes eren Portsmouth, In Dulci Jubilo, Sailor’s Hornpipe i l’única inèdita fins llavors va ser Wrekorder Wrondo.
Segons Music from the Darkness, Faerie Symphony és del periode ’78. Cal comprovar data d’aparició.
Man and his music
Al 1978 Mike es persuadit per algú a millorar encara més el seu desenvolupament personal, atenent a un curs terapèutic anomenat Exegesis o Erhardt Seminars Training. Malgrat que ho va rebutjar inicialment, finalment ho va veure com una manera de segellar els canvis que ja havia fet.
Al mes de juny deixa d’enregistrar i va assistir al curs. Aquest va esdevenir un poderós element que va transformar la seva personalitat reservada i introvertida, i conseqüentment la naturalesa de la seva música.
EST era quelcom de moda a UK.
Va tenir lloc a un saló d’un hotel de Londres, durant 4 dies.
Els assistents havien de soportar, voluntàriament, estar absolutament controlats durant el curs, impartit per un ponent que els humiliava constantment, mostrant-los que eren els únics responsables de tots els seus traumes però que intentaven enganyar-se i excusar-se ells mateixos.
Durant una de les sessions hi havia una meditació on els assistents havien d’imaginar-se una bonica platja. A Mike li devia agradar aquesta imatge, perquè la va adaptar a la portada del seu proper àlbum.
Algunes de le activitats que van desenvolupar tenien un objectiu fortament catàrtic.
El resultat que es volia aconseguir era un desenvolupament de la consciència de les pròpies neurosis, aumentar el sentit de la responsabilitat i l’autoconfiança, i assolir una estabilitat personal. Però en alguns casos, especialment aquells amb marcades tendències maníaques, es desenvolupaven deliris de grandesa, idees peregrines i actituds exageradament expansives. Mike va desenvolupar en certa mida aquests símptomes.
EST va alterar tan radicalment Mike que la primera cosa que va fer quan va acabar el curs ens ho demostra: va casar-se amb la germana de l’impartidor del curs, una jove noia de la que se sap poc. Mike es va adonar del seu error al dia següent, i en dues setmanes va aconseguir el divorci, compensant econòmicament la seva exdona.
Mike va tornar a la tasca d’enregistrar. En aquesta ocasió va produir, mesclar i fer d’enginyer per dues peces de David Bedford, qui estava col·laborant amb Mike en els arranjaments corals i musicals d’Incantations. Les peces varen ser enregistrades a Londres i després portades a Througham. Star Clusters, Nebulae and Places in Devon, composada originalment el 71, i The Song of the White Horse, del 77, encàrrec per un programa de la BBC, Omnibus. Virgin va rebutjar editar l’àlbum.
Mike també va tornar a treballar al seu àlbum el mes de setembre, però ara és el Mike post-EST.
En aquest nou àlbum, Mike explira noves formes musicals, respecte als treballs anteriors.
En primer lloc, Incantarions està basat pràcticament tot als teclats. Hi ha parts de guitarra, però sovint en un segon pla, amb un paper rítmic. Només en determinats moments pren un paper protagonista. El treball amb els sintetitzadors està molt influit per l’estil Bedford, reinterpretat per Mike.
Una altra innovació va ser la incorporació de dos poemes, l’Himne a Diana, del poeta isabelí Ben Jonson, i extractes de The Song of Hiawatha de Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Incorporar poemes a obres musicals també és molt de l’estil Bedford.
La primera part d’Incantations comença amb un arranjament de Bedford pel Queens College Choir, així com cordes, trompeta i parts de flauta acompanyant. A través d’aquesta composició complementa i fa de balanç el sintetitzador de Mike. Les flautes varen anar a càrrec de Sebastian Bell i Terry Oldfield. A les seccions següents trobem un instrument protagonista, sigui la flauta, el sintetitzador o la guitarra, complementats pel bodhran, palmades, [timpani], [sleighbells], etc.
Des del punt de vista de la composició, Incantations també difereix dels anteriors treballs perquè les peces musicals s’alternen més sovint entre elles, o fan un reprise després d’intervals llargs. A més, les peces són més llargues i lentes, potser en excés, per omplir un àlbum doble.
La segona part ve protagonitzada pels extractes de The Song of Hiawatha, cantats per Maddy Prior, precedits per la percusió tribal de Jabula. Algunes edicions primerenques de l’àlbum es diu que aparentment tenien una versió alternativa de Hiawatha.
La tercera part és lúnica on la guitarra de Mike prevaleix, gràcies a un llarg i intens solo. Desafortunadament, amb un treball de guitarra d’aquest pes, els sintetitzadors repetitius que segueixen el solo perden tot l’interés.
Totes les cares d’Incantations s’obren amb una variació d’un tema tranquil i suau. La cuarta cara comença amb un sintetitzador amb so de flauta al que s’incorporen vibràfons de Pierre Moerlen. Es diu que Mike va enregistrar això i la part de guitarra amb vibràfons de la part 3 després de l’EST. En cert sentit, el propi Mike va confirmar això quan va afirmar que eren les úniques parts del disc que expressaven quelcom profund d’ell, inclús més que les seves obres anteriors.
Cap al final de la cara entra la veu de Sally, uns “aah”s més prominents que les veus en segon pla dels seus treballs anteriors. El sintetitzador reprén el tema de Hiawatha però el que es canta és l’Himne a Diana, per Maddy Prior. Finalment, intervé la guitarra de Mike, palmades, [sleighbells], disminuint fins acabar l’obra.
Incantations ja no és una obra catàrtica com les anteriors, més aviat mostra un sentit de pau interior. Hi ha també una cohesió musical més accentuada, així com una certa unitat musica, posiblement gràcies a l’omnipresència del sintetitzador. El so també és més clar i distint, perquè ja no hi ha tant overdubbing com a les obres anteriors.
Malgrat tot, Incantations no trenca radicalmente amb aquestes, incorpora les innovacions citades, fent un treball més subtil i refinat, per ser escoltat amb atenció.
Empés per l’entusiasme post-EST i havent finalitzat el doble LP, Mike s’embarca en nous projectes, musicals o no. Va prendre classes de vol, malgrat la seva pot a volar, potser per superar també aquesta por. També va canviar la seva imatge, tallant-se els cabells, afaitant-se i posant-se una arracada, tot d’un estil new wave. La seva indumentaria va esdevenir més formal, molt en l’estil de la que portaven els que impartien EST.
José Cantos
Post-EST Mike esdevé extremadament expansiu en la seva relació amb la gent, concedeix entrevistes a tothom, si bé sovint també es detecten afirmacions fruit d’un deliri de grandesa.
Tant va desaparéixer els seus complexes que fins i tot va aparéixer un a una revista, fent poses d’escultures famoses com El Pensador de Rodin o el Discòbol, amb un disc d’Incantations.
Nom de la seva breu dona: Diana Füller, filla del professor.
Incantations va sortir al mercat a finals del 78.
Mike tocava encara molts instruments però no es va precisar quins. Col·laboraven Mike Lard [¿?], trompeta, Pierre Moerlen, bateria i vibràfon, Maddy Prior, Sally Oldfield i El Cor del Queens College, veus, Sebastian Bell i Terry Oldfield, flautes, Jabula, tambors africans, i David Bedford, director de les cordes i els cors.
La foto de la portada està feta a les Balears on Branson tenia propietats.
Incantations era un treball llarg per un sol disc, i curt per un doble; encara que per molts era aburrit i empalagós, la crítica el va rebre bé, ja que estava en la línia dels treballs anteriors però introduint novetats.
Hi ha trets de música medieval, però també de música minimalista, ja que Mike coneixia la música de Terry Riley i Philip Glass.
També en aquesta època és el moment àlgid del punk, i Virgin aposta decididament per aquesta música, sobretot Sex Pistols, una forma ràpida i segura de fer diners, deixant de banda el tema de la qualitat. És un preàmbul de l’allunyament i enfrentament entre Branson i Mike.
Italian Fan Club
Al seminari, a Mike se li mostra que en comptes de reprimir el seu pànic, l’ha de fer fluir fora d’ell. Va ser com un segon naixement.
Karl Dallas va afirmar que era més dur entrevistat a aquest nou Mike que al neuròtic d’abans.
Lloc 14 a les llistes UK.
Changeling
Professor EST: Robert d’Aubigny.
Va amb Rosie, parella de Sally.
[Nota: 1978, Mike tenia una mena de relació amb la filla de Keith Critchlow, durant un temps. Té a veure amb Reflections? No tenia una altra noia llavors?]
Pre-EST 1978: Willy encara viu amb Mike, però Mike l’anima a continuar la seva vida, i aquest marxa a USA per començar una carrera com a fotògraf.
Qui va assistir a EST va ser Barbara, la dona de Paul Lindsay, la qual va quedar molt satisfeta, i Paul va animar a Mike.
La intenció abans de fer Incantations era crear un ambient màgic diferent al rock en format clàssic de TB, el cèltic de HR, o l’africà de Ommadawn.
[Evitar parlar d’EST abans de la composició inicial d’Incantations]
Durant la composició d’Incantations, mentre Mike anava a la recerca d’inspiracions druídiques, Keith Critchlow presenta Kathleen Raine, una poetessa, a Mike, encara que Mike no va trobar un ús per aquests poemes [Però la lletra de la part de Reflections d’Incantations, The Shining Ones, és d’ella, d’un poema anomenat A Spell for Creation]. Aquesta recerca sobre el paganisme antic el va portar a la deesa Diana, i , casualment, al poema Hiawatha de Longfellow, tots dos element entrarien a la seva obra.
La pujada de la mode del punk també va fer que Mike fos un blanc a atacar per les crítiques, a revistes com Melody Maker. Això va afectar molt a Mike.
Mike va rebre la visita de Branson i de directius de Virgin per veure com anava el seu treball, del que havia elaborat uns 20 min. Era el moment de la Virgin-Punk, ja no era la Virgin-Rock Progressiu Hippy. Opinen que el treball no és comercial. Mentre Mike intenta crear quelcom nou, la premsa l’atacava cada cop més, i Virgin retirava les seves obres de les botigues per posar punk al seu lloc. La inspiració inicial es va anar apagant fins convertir-se en una feina, com va passar amb HR. Mike va decaient, bevent i deteriorant-se mentalment. Louise Critchlow el deixa perquè s’ha tornat molt agressiu. Terry se’l porta de viatge per Itàlia i Grècia per animar-lo, però sense gaire èxit.
El seu pare es casa amb una alemanya anomenada Helga, i això encara el subleva més.
L’única persona que li queda a prop és l’enginyer Paul Lindsay, que vivia al costat. La seva dona Barbara, blablabla.
La filla de qui fa el curs, Diana, visita a Mike per explicar de què va, i ell accepta.
Després d’EST se sent lliure, eufòric, i amb forces per tot, exorcisat dels seus dimonis interiors.
Concedeix les entrevistes a tothom després de la tornada de Menorca.
La revista on apareix un es deia Sounds.
Diana era germana de Robert d’Aubigny. Va ser una reacció instintiva, va durar tres mesos, i poc després va començar una relació més sèria i estable.
Sense la paranoia i els dimonis de Mike, ell veu que allò que impulsava la seva música ja no hi és, i ara ha de trobar d’on treure la força, una nova musa.
El que queda per completar Incantations ho fa per força i a desgana.
La foto de Cala Pregonda, a Menorca, la va fer Carlos Moyse, un amic paraplègic de Branson que vivia a la zona. Va ser feta 2 mesos post-EST.
Mike Oldfield: A Rare Interview With The English Guitarist, Studio Wizard, and Composer of "Tubular Bells"
Guitar Player
1978
What is the focus of your latest album, 'Incantations'?
It's got quite a lot of Irish drum - called a bodrhan. It is used for a basic sort of rhythm track--a percussion track. And it's got some choral stuff on it; some of vocal lines are based on words from the poem 'Song of Hiawatha' by Longfellow. And there is music going with it. There is quite a lot of tuned percussion, such as vibraphones and marimba, and also a lot of guitar - mainly electric solos. There is also acoustic bass guitar and electric bass.
Are you joined by other people on this project?
I have a string section on it, as well as a choir in a couple of parts. And we are planning to do it live, eventually; perhaps we may even bring it to the United States.
This is the year of the expanding man...
Karl Dallas - Melody Maker
November 25, 1978
What Scientology did for Chick Corea (and John Travolta), Exegesis is doing for mild, retiring Mike Oldfield. He puts the stare on KARL DALLAS
"EXEGESIS, n.Exposition, esp. of Scripture". - Concise Oxford Dictionary
I CAN'T stand it! Mike Oldfield has been staring at me piercingly with those steel-blue eyes of his for a minute or more, it seems, challenging me to look away, and I just can't.
It's a stupid kid's trick, this, trying to stare someone down, but when Oldfield started it, like a fool I accepted the challenge.
So there we sit in silence in this trendy Fulham food joint, staring at each other, while the rest of the company shuffles its feet in embarrassment.
Eventually, the photographer, Barry Plummer, breaks the tension by packing up his gear and preparing to leave. Oldfield breaks off from this visual arm-wrestling to say his goodbyes and I take a breath - the first, it feels, for an eternity.
This new, self-confident Mike Oldfield is a lot harder to deal with than the old, elusive neurotic.
pages.
Afterwards he told Branson "That's the last interview I shall ever do." When a young man is shifting so many units of a single, cheaply produced album, he can make a decision like that and make it stick.
Mike had once explained to me during that single, revelatory interview how his most exquisite, agonisingly beautiful melodies had been produced as a kind of self-therapy, not so much to express how he felt at the time of his deepest, most paranoid depression, but to give him something to cling on to, something to change his mental state in the way he wanted it to go.
Our meetings had become almost a sort of encounter group old boy's night, in which we reminisced about nervous breakdowns we had known, and how we were coping with the world today.
Then, suddenly, one day, all that changed. I got a call from a somewhat startled Virgin Records press office to say that Mike had suddenly arrived in town and announced that he wanted to do some interviews. We met, had a very cordial lunch in the creperie around the corner from Portobello Road, and I was pleased to see on how much of an even keel he seemed to be, but the conversation was mostly of a personal nature. Nothing of great musical consequence emerged, so I never bothered to write it up.
And now here we were again, and everything was different yet again. I hardly recognised this clean-shaven, fresh-faced young extrovert who flung his arms around me as I got into his Rolls, who sat with his arm draped protectively round my shoulders as he told me how he had been posing for photographs meant to look like the statues of Auguste Rodin, how he was thinking of buying himself a Lear Jet (cost: two million dollars), how he had taught himself to fly, dismissing as "rubbish" stories that he had accidentally wiped clean the tapes of his new album when it was almost finished, and denying also that he was thinking of going to live in Brittany.
"No," he said, "I still live in Herefordshire. But really, I've leart to live wherever I happen to be."
"you mean, in the here and now?"
"Exactly."
As we waited to be served in the restaurant, the games began.
"OK," he said, "Ask me some questions."
I protested that this was hardly the time and place, knowing that informality could blow the whole thing, that the way to procure revelations was to set up a more formal, structured situation with real questions, and, maybe, real answers.
This was hardly likely with Donna Summer screeching "MacArthur Park" down my right lughole, so I demurred for a while, asking for time.
"Right," he said, briskly, looking at his expensive multi-dialled analogue watch. "We'll do it at 8.30. That's precisely ten minutes from now."
He switched his attention to Denise, who turned out to be a model and a children's author, a gentle young woman who seemed torn between a fascination with his undoubted charisma, and a resistance to the overpowering nature of the personality he was laying on all of us. I knew exactly how she felt.
What in hell, I wanted to know, is going on?
"For a long time," he said slowly, in the measured tones of one dictating a business letter, "I was determined to have a very bad time in order to work out a few things, including my childhood. I have now completed that process, and have chosen to have a good time.
"I have chosen to express myself beyond my emotions because I'm fed up with emotions. I'm fed up with being a romantic" - a reference to an earlier part of the evening, when I had described him as a romantic, and he had denied the charge - "and I am just going to express myself and if the people want to hear me expressing myself, they will. And if they don't, they won't.
"It's not something I need to do. It's something I'm choosing to do."
Something you want to do, I prompted.
"Not really. I'm choosing to do it."
What was it in his childhood that he'd had to work out so traumatically?
"My relationship with my parents, my mother's and father's relationship to each other, everything. I was also responsible for that as well."
Sorry?
"I've chosen that to happen as well. I'm responsible for everything now, rather than saying it's all happening to me, and he did it and she did it, it's nothing to do with me. I'm totally guilty, and everything was totally my fault.
"I'm totally responsible for everything, so if I choose to have a good time,I will. And if I'm with somebody who's really nasty to me, it's also my fault, because I'm continuously creating reality at every moment."
"I'm exactly the same person . I'm just looking at things from a different viewpoint."
What had caused this transformation?
"I wasn't getting anything out of having a bad time. I was having a bad time in order to prove that people are a load of arseholes, I was an arsehole and nobody loved me and I hated everybody. I proved it over and over again, until I wasn't getting anything out of proving it anymore.
"So a couple of years ago, it was about the end of "Ommadawn," I started to make a decision to go the other way, to get off all that, to find out about that side of me and get off it. And to be myself, without all the bullshit."
It's a tough trick to do on your own. And I had noticed the whole evening the same sort of disturbing alienness that I had seen in other friends who had turned to Scientology, or to the Guru Maharaji, and in Communists who had turned to the Church - the hard, burning fire of the convert, disorientation replaced by certainty, the unerring confidence behind the eyes that had drilled into mine at the restaurant. As i suspected, this turned out to have been a component of Oldfield's recent history.
"Eventually, in june this year, I used a three-day course, a three-day seminar called Exegesis, which I used to definitely cement the change firmly."
Here, perhaps, I was being a little dishonest, because I didn't tell him something that had bothered me even before we met: namely, that I had heard his new double album and I didn't like it very much. Nor, I suspected, would many other critics.
I approached the subject obliquely.
Since, I said, the hard time he had turned his back on had also produced music which had brought him world acclaim...
He interrupted me: "Yeah, but I used that, you see. Before I made 'Tubular Bells' I knew it was going to be a success. That was even a conscious knowledge, that was. The pattern I've been repeating is to first make people like me, and then make people reject me, which was exactly what I was doing with 'Tubular Bells' and 'Hergest Ridge'."
So "Hergest Ridge" was the rejection; what, then, was "Ommadawn"?
"Oh, I had to make people like me again. But then I'd done my game with those two. 'Ommadawn' wasn't part of the game, especially the end of side one. That was a release of negative energy, of absolute frustration, which I'm fed up with."
So the critics who didn't like "Hergest Ridge" - and I was roughly in a minority of one in actually preferring it to the flawed work of genius which had preceded it - were right in rejecting it?
"Sure. I get exactly what I want. Because I'm continuously creating reality, all the time, I can't go wrong. Everything that happens to me, I'm totally responsible for."
Let's freeze the frame a minute right there. If Oldfield was a philosopher, we could get into a learned discourse on the theories of Bishop Berkeley, who reckoned that the outside world was the product of subjective perception, and no more real than our ideas of it. If he was just an ordinary guy, we might start thinking we had a very sick boy, here.
But he is an artist, and, as Freud said, "If a person who is at loggerheads with reality possesses an artistic gift, he can transform his fantasies into artistic creations instead of symptoms. In this manner he can escape the doom of neurosis and by the roundabout path regain his contact with reality."
Which is precisely what Oldfield seems to have been doing. I remember talking about him with someone at Virgin and asking how he was. "Oh", I wa told, "he's in a terrible state, because he's just split up with his girlfriend. So naturally he's started working in the studio again."
But what, I wondered, if instead of acknowledging the unpleasantness of some parts of the outside world, and using music to alter his consciousnessof it so that the world actually becomes more bearable, he learnt to tolerate it in all its horror, because, after all, it was just his consciousness playing games, what then?
What, for instance, i suggested out loud, if the critics didn't actually like "Incantations"? If "Hergest Ridge" was meant to provoke rejection, and "Ommadawn" a reconciliation - and the fact that the third album sold more than the second might indicate it was successful in acheiving it - what was "Incantations" supposed to do?
"What I intend is for me to totally express myself, and to put that into 'Incantations', which I acheived in a couple of places - the flute solo and the vibraphone solo on side four. I acheived the closest I've ever come to self-expression.
"Many people will have a lot of resistance to it, which they'll be responsible for, too. If they want to hear it, they will. It will be very, very rewarding for them, if they do want to hear it. If they choose not to hear it, that's also fine.
"But whatever happens to 'Incantations' will be perfect for me. I'll be responsible for it."
We spoke for a while about the album, why it was a double (apparently because he felt guilty about not producing anything for three years), the reason for devoting the bulk of one side to a chant, by folksinger Maddy Prior, of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Hiawatha," to the echoes of previous works, like the female chant over the drums of Jabula in "Ommadawn" which recurs on the new one.
"I must explain," he said, "that the most important parts are the flute solo and the vibraphone solo, and the guitar solo which is next to the vibraphone part. The rest of it is a load of rubbish."
Really?
"And all my works have been a load of rubbish."
By what standards?
"By standards of me fully expressing myself, rather than expressing my hang-ups, my happiness, my disappointments, my pride, what I thought of myself, all that sort of rubbish."
Now hang on a minute. If these are not what makes a person himself, if we are not the sum total of our experience, but something above and beyond the life we lead, then how can we be said to have an existence?
"They are part of myself, they are in myself, but they're just very unimportant parts of the mechanism which carries me through my life. It's OK to express them, but I've found a direct means of expressing me as a being. It's your choice whether you decide to see things like that or not.
"It's fine, whatever you think, but I see myself as not my body, not my mind, and I'm expressing that essence of me.
"I've still go tloads of hang-ups, but I carry them like baggage, if you like. I don't think I am the hang-ups. If you like, I am the context within which there are hang-ups, rather than being the hang-ups."
But the hang-ups had been responsible for producing some of his finest music - as, for instance, the swirling clouds and cypresses of Van Gogh were the product of his schizophrenia. Or so, at least, I had understood from previous interviews.
"I used them as evidence to support whatever I did," he replied. "But whatever I've done has been a choice I've made. I'm coming from a position, now, that there's no such thing as an accident, no such thing as a mistake. Everything I've done, everything I do, everything I get has been totally and exactly what I wanted, and totally exactly what I've created for myself."
This began to sound very much like the est session I went to, which similarly promised insights it was impossible to explain to the unconverted, which also offered images of boundaries to be crossed, doubts to be shed. We were talking, weren't we, about Exegesis.
"Yeah. It started at nine o'Clock in the morning and finished at about 11, 12 at night. You listen to this guy talk to you, and you do variuos processes with a group of about 230 people in a London hotel. It starts on Thursday night and it finishes on Sunday.
"What it is, is all your hang-ups you experience to the full, get them out of the way. It involves destroying a large part of yourself, which you obviously have an incredible resistance to doing, because a lot of you has to die, literally die.
"And beyond that is you, what you really are. I've taken charge, I'm at the controls, I'm not a passenger any more."
So who was driving before?
"My mind, my hang-ups were driving me. My hang-ups, problems, repetitive patterns of manipulating people. You know I used to be very quiet and reticent and wouldn't say anything: a perfect way of manipulating people. Beautiful."
But what if his greatest work was produced by his hang-ups?
"That's impossible. Because hang-ups are completely mechanical things. You have experiences when you're young, even when you're old, and you record them, like tape. They're completely mechanical things, and a mechanical thing can't create anything. It can only make decisions.
"Like you have this pile of reasons for, and this pile of reasons against, and it can work completely automatically, like a machine.Things that come from me, as a being, an entity, are total creations. They don't come from anything, they're free choices, they're not like hang-up things.
"I don't have to do anything, at the moment. Honestly. And I don't care whether you believe me or not. I don't need anybody's approval. I'm choosing to make it work for me, which I don't have to do by making music and going on the road. I'm choosing to do that.
"Otherwise there's no point in being alive. I'd quite happily just die, you know? There's no need to get ill. A lot of people think you've got to get ill to die. You don't. You just stop playing."
Playing?
"This game we're all playing."
The Music?
"Everything."
Did calling it a game mean it was unimportant?
"No, No, no, no, no, no. Otherwise we wouldn't have chosen to be alive, would we? It's a beautiful game.
"You see, the game I'm playing at the moment is the biggest game you can play, which is the game of not playing games, being totally honest. It's amazing, to not play games, to have nothing to defend.
"Yet it's still a game."
If "Incantations" wasn't a commercial success, critically and/or saleswise, would he still regard that as perfect?
"Sure." Didn't he mind? "No."
"I'm just playing a different game. It's a bigger con because it's a bigger game I'm playing.The only thing that's not a con is switching off and full self-expression.
"But in a way, switching off is self-expression. If we were to sit alone together and just look at each other, we'd switch off, but we'd also begin to express ourselves to each other."
Like our game of staring each other down; he'd certainly expressed himself then, and I wasn't sure I liked the person he seemed to be, then.
"Once the tour's finished, I'll get back into the studio again.
"But it's not a necessity any more."
But that wasn't so much different from the Old Mike Oldfield, so how much, really, had changed?
"Nothing."
