Jocelyne, John Le Carré, and me!

A lovely piece in The Guardian by Nick Cornwell, John Le Carré's son, about the creative partnership Le Carré enjoyed with his wife Jane, put me in mind of my extreme good fortune in being married to Jocelyne, whose role in my work is strikingly comparable:

"For as long as I can remember, my parents have been defined by the work they did together, and by a working relationship so interwoven with their personal one that the two were actually inseparable. ... her listening, absorbing, only occasionally responding, but always with immediate effect.. Only they knew what passed between them and how much she reframed, adjusted, trained the novels as they grew. It was part of how it worked: he produced, they edited; he burned, she fanned. It was their conspiracy. ...At each turn, fresh problems to be solved, ..All along, at every step, was Jane, recalling the first moment of inspiration to refresh a tired passage, or asking whether a given phrase really reflected the intent she knew was behind it."

Replace 'novels' with 'musical compositions' in the above paragraph, and read 'Jocelyne' for 'Jane', and you have a vivid encapsulation of the situation here in West Jeddore. Though the initial work is solitary, the stage at which I show Jocelyne what I've been doing is crucial. It is a continuing blessing, and my music would not be the same without her.