I'd been having a couple of thoughts about "Impostor Syndrome", so I'll tie that into a music documentary I just watched, called 'Lost Songs: The Basement Tapes Continued', made in 2014 about the recording of the album 'The New Basement Tapes' which involved five artists - Elvis Costello, Jim James, Rhiannon Giddens, Taylor Goldsmith and Le Marquis de Mumford - coordinated by T-Bone Burnett, to record new tracks from a stack of old lyrics Bob Dylan found from the Woodstock 'Basement Tapes' era.
The doc was shot by the sam Same Jones I mentioned in my last post. I listened to, and enjoyed, the album at the time but hadn't seen the film before. It has a voiceover from Bob D himself, as well as Robertson Robertson, talking about the original basement recordings, which Jones juxtaposes (alongside some slightly corny pretend grainy footage featuring lookalikes of Dylan and the Band) with the two-week recording period in 2014.
Although it's primarily all very cordial and promotional, there are some interesting undercurrents relating to the expectations of each musician, how prepared, collaborative and confident they all were.
In any case, if you have a negative opinion of Le Marquis de Mumford and his merry band of filial ersatz Americanists, as many do, it's worth watching this doc, as he comes across very well indeed, both in terms of his character and his talent.
But anyway, it struck me that he's probably a very good example of something that I think is very prevalent among a certain type of ex-public schoolboy (not the worst kind, by any means). To me, it seems self-evident that having gone to public school leads to a certain kind of impostor syndrome, a certain undercurrent of "everything i achieve in life owes a great deal to luck and circumstance, and anyone from a state background who has achieved the same as me unquestionably deserves it more and is, by definition, more qualified".
E.g. with me, I have gone through a lot of my life thinking "why would anyone be the slightest bit interested what I have to say on this topic?" ... and yet, the point is, as people who know me know, I am hardly, in many circumstances, shy of giving my opinion at great length and volume.
That's the dichotomy that I think accompanies many public school boys with a smidgen of self-awareness - "Well, I'm a bit of a phoney and only here by pure luck, but, hell, I've got the confidence and sense of entitlement to impose my position/opinion, so I will" ...
Le Marquis de Mumford seemed, from this brief glimpse of him, to embody this contradiction, this kind of well-meaning, well-to-do bohemian, who is insecure and nervous, up to a point, but then confident enough in his own skin to come up trumps. It is also to be said for Mumford that his empathy and his bonhomie and spirit of collaboration really shine and probably do more than anything else to bring the project to a pleasing conclusion.
Anyhow, I've more to say here, I was just about to turn left into how professional football is Britain's only true meritocracy (or near as can be) but I've hit 500 words, so that'll have to wait for another day.
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