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Sport 32: Summer 2004
Lucien
Lucien
Lucien—slouching, lounging, woollen-hat-wearing, carefully expressionless, nearly twenty-two—is on the point of leaving. Lucien's on his way to Paris.
When he plays he bends and sways, backwards mostly. He's very tall, and is, when you look closely (you need to look closely), beautiful, along surprisingly conventional lines. A classically handsome boy who's gone, successfully, for geek.
Off-stage, not playing, Lucien sits hidden from view at the back page 97 wall, half watching the crowd, half gazing blankly into space. On-stage, not playing, he will stand half watching the others, half gazing blankly into space, completely unselfconsciously cradling the sax in his arms, as you hold a child: it's about the same size as a small child, too.
At the first of the IAP gigs at Blondini's—Miguel Fuentes is playing; the band is being both filmed and recorded—Lucien arrives late and tired; he has been at a rehearsal of his own band for some hours. Jonathan lends him the Volvo to go home and change. Fifteen minutes later Lucien reappears in the cathedral-like foyer of the Embassy wearing the most dreadful grandfather-esque woollen vest over a checked shirt; even Jonathan has dressed for this one, in a pretty grey suit, a white shirt open at the neck, and a pair of heavy black Clark Kent glasses that do not seem, actually, to frame any lenses (we make no real concessions here; we are Artists even if we do know how to look elegant is the message received, if it isn't the one being consciously sent). Jonathan, standing chatting with a mix of the doco crew and the groupies, leans over the balcony to check it out and groans aloud. ‘I'm charging you for petrol, man,’ he yells down the stairwell. Lucien looks up and grins, unfazed. —Maybe Lucien's the true Artist here. Maybe, on the other hand, he either absolutely lacks personal vanity, or absolutely lacks personal taste. —And maybe it's simply that he's not quite twenty-two. One can delight in deliberately dressing badly, at twenty-two. Fuck you is the message received here, if it is not the one being consciously sent.
For Lucien, who hates the unblinking attention of the lens, who will scowl and blank his face and hunch his shoulder away, is a riveting subject, an unwilling natural. The one time he does dress—this is at the Matterhorn; no one else has bothered—he moves from looking like someone out of Dr Seuss, only taller, to looking like Frank Sinatra, only more handsome: he plays leaning against a pillar in his Rat Pack suit with his feet crossed at the ankle, by the angle of his head against the pillar manages to tilt his slouch hat slowly down over his eyes, and catching the gaze of one of his pretty girls will give his rare transforming smile. ‘God he's cool,’ the key camera will say, amused and admiring, watching the footage of Lucien's interview (we unfortunately must deal with the Dr Seuss woollen hat here, but we do get a pair of avaiator-esque yellowy transparent sunglasses).
page 98At the last break of the Embassy gig, the band will retreat to what passes for backstage. It's a little room, windowless and airless, off the lefthand entrance to the cinema: there's a small red plastic toy car, out of a Kinder maybe, and apart from a battered two-seater sofa and a couple of chairs, almost nothing else. They smoke a joint in here—this is jazz, remember. Lucien slouches on the sofa, with his mouth half-open and his blue woollen hat over his eyes, watching people dryly. It is impossible to know whether he's actually taking anything in.