Ragtime for Tommy

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The illustration is Pablo Picasso's 1919 title page for Igor Stravinski's composition "Ragtime for Eleven Instruments" which is a work of insight and genius originally composed as a piece of music for the street, for the amusement of poverty stricken Russians who couldn't afford to go to concerts.

As depicted by Picasso it's a wandering line that has one end beginning within the musician's hat and unravelling at the other end with a guitar's dangling string . . .

I often reflect on what might have been when Stravinsky and Dylan Thomas discussed composing an opera together. But sadly Dylan died before the work could begin.

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Tommy was what you might call a syncopated, or off-beat cat. Sometimes here, sometimes there, but there was always a kind of harmony to his comings and goings. He would habitually turn up on special days and anniversaries. He'd greet you like some unexpectedly sublime moment.

Or now and then he'd snub you and strut by with his nose and tail in the air, as if you'd committed some grave offence. Some mornings he'd look as if he'd spent the night in a coal cellar or maybe he'd have a mysterious new scratch or a wound to one of his ears or to his nose.

And now he's gone. It happened this morning as he was crossing the street that a car suddenly ended the last of his 9 precarious lives.

Tommy will be sadly missed in our neighbourhood.

Tommy (2000-2014)