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Callyphygian said:
"What form was the diary in when you held it in your hands.?
Was it the blue Victorian guard book? Were the pages full of writing?"
"What form was the diary in when you held it in your hands.?
Was it the blue Victorian guard book? Were the pages full of writing?"
when he proudly handed me the diary to look at.
Now, it has been said by some that the diary is black
and by others to be blue,
I remembered it to be a very dark blue
and it would have been cleaned extensively since then,
as it would have had the prints of all those involved on it.
In a photo that I recently saw of it, it now looks more blue than black.
The faded gold bands on the front gave it an air of class,
but on closer inspection, it reminded me of a blank ledger,
that was simply being used as a scrapbook.
There were four triangular photo holders on the inside
cover, that were stuck onto untidy blobs of white glue.
There was no picture in the holders, but Steven told me
that there was a picture of a soldier originally there.
He said he still had it and had thought about putting
another photo there, but needed a real photo
to go there and he didn't have one.
He said he would leave the corner pieces there 'as another mystery'.
When I told him that actual old corner photo holders
were not the same as the ones in his diary,
he simply peeled them off with a shrug, and let the glue globs stay.
I don't know if afterwards he cleaned those glue marks away or not,
but to me the glue looked like a opaque synthetic compound.
I mentally laughed to myself at the time that he thought that
anyone would ever fall for his hoax.
I didn't say that to him as I didn't want to hurt his feelings
as he thought it was a work of art.
Without going into the details again, as I have done previously here,
it is the very diary that is in the hands of Robert Smith today.
The cut pages, the words, the poems, entirely.
Cal: "Was the decision that Robbie would be the watchman made in OZ, or in the U.K?"
Was Robbie Johnson initially a friend of Anne Grahams or Mike Barrett?
Did Steven Park meet him through them?
I believe that the watch was promised to an enthusiastic Robbie
before Feldman even came on the scene.
Feldman later agreed, after meeting him, that Robbie be the watchman.
We have been told that there is no link between the Johnson's
and the Barretts, but by whom? Feldman.
Cal: "Was Park partial to the odd blast of Ganja, by the way?"
I do know that while Steven was writing the diary around the early seventies,
an artist friend gave him a large block of black hashish,
which he became quite fond of.
He said that it helped him write parts of the diary.
I told him that the 'assassins' used hashish before their murderous missions.
He looked at me pretty stoned and just said,
"I don't know how they managed to get off the couch."
His abode was alcohol though and here he found his comfort level.
It would also become his master over time.
Cal: "..as a singer, what numbers did Park used to sing - and do fragments of any of them exist in the text of the diary?"
of the diary together from his imagination: Songs, movies, books, etc.
After the initial written pages of Steven's were cut out,
to make way for Feldman's updated version to be entered into it,
some of those 'funny bits' were probably ousted with 'more appropriate'
text put in their place.
I do remember Steven laughingly telling me that there were those in the diary.
As a singer he wore his old, but well kept, grey mohair suit on stage
and would sing songs like 'Delilah' and 'The Green Green Grass of Home'
and other such creepy songs that gave me the shudders.
I could never quite get him into something more upbeat and although
he tried, he had this vision of himself as a Bobby Darin or Elvis Presley
or someone else besides himself.
I offered him a chance to record with me the last time we met,
but he was so engulfed and silenced by the diary by now,
that he was paranoid about being 'noticed'.
That was the paltry excuse he gave me anyway.
I figured he just didn't want to run the risk of one more failure.
His future was with the diary, come what may.
Regards Cal,
Steve Powell
sun25may2008
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