Remembering Tommy.

1969, I was twenty six sharing a flat with Sam Wanamaker’s daughter in Highgate, babysitting little sister Zoe and dating their Swiss au pair Anne Marie. And The Who released Tommy. Later at the famous London folk club, Les Cousins, the guy singing was wailing about his ex, Cherry, who was, well sitting next to me. Looking back it was verging on the exotic but at the time it was just life. And I listened to Tommy. And that line, “See me,    feel me,    touch me,    heal me” reverberated in my emotional space like the tingle of a feather touching my own deaf, dumb and blind kid. Not of course in the usual sense but somewhere I knew life was at arms length even though I was in the midst of it. I was immersed but not getting wet. I’ve recognised that distance time and time again from some fear, some impinging belief, some involving abstraction, always knowing a closer connection was possible. And listening to Tommy somehow summed this all up and gave a lift to the possibility, that is until some toe rag broke into my flat and stole it. This is The Who playing it live in Los Angeles in 1989, one amazing hour of musicianship. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX0fOyoyOlE Art is always elusive and the narrative of Tommy is no exception. It’s confusing because to the deaf, dumb and blind their processes of understanding cannot reach it. It exists as a flavour, a taste, a blurred emotion, as conflicting images that in seeing resolve themselves, in hearing make sense without understanding. Much later in therapist training we tried to unravel the processes of damage, of help, of resolution and sure there are endless books on the subtle mechanics of it all but for me at least in the end it comes down to art and the reckless rock and roll energy of Tommy, “See me,    feel me,    touch me,    heal me”.