The Fruit's What It's About

So Dead Beat gets a call from Hitchcock (see Hitchcock - The Secretive World of Character).

“What’s all this about D.B.?” he asks. “I wasn’t even with you, and even if I was, I don’t stromp.”

“You said what you said Hitch, you can’t back away from it now.”

“D.B. I said nothing although I have plenty to say.”

“You sounded adamant. Passionate about your movies…”

“Hold on a minute, D.B. did you say movies? I don’t make movies I sing a bit, that‘s all.”

Turns out I got Robyn Hitchcock on the phone, not my old friend Alf.

“Oh well I say, now that you are here, any words of wisdom?”

“Listen to my songs.”

“I do, I do,” I assure him. “But for my avid readers keen to make it in the writing world.”

“This then: The fruit’s what it’s about.“

“Say what?”

“Artists tend to present you with the best side of themselves, and you think, “Wow, there must be more to this! I want to meet the goose that lays the golden eggs! I want to meet the Wizard of Oz! I want to meet the tree that produces this fruit! But actually the fruit’s what it’s about.”

“I don’t always understand your lyrics,” I tell him, “but the fruit I get.”

Okay you heard it from Robert Hitchcock first. Keep the tree out of your work, the fruit’s what it's about.