Robert Fripp's Diary

Bus Dismal, Outside Venue, Anapolis.

13.21

Rising at 09.30 and into the day. Notes To Self  written yesterday at breakfast in Hotel Acceptable, Washington, where a flying-bastardy-thing bit me on the back of the neck three times.

I

The outside world is outside. It has no hold on our shared sacred space inside these walls. The liminal zone, the in-between space, is what enables the outside and the inside to come together, to permit movement from one to the other, to accommodate each other, to negotiate the space. It is neither one nor the other, And it has its own recognisable quality.

II

Music is the cup which holds the Wine of Silence.
Sound is that cup, but empty.
Noise is that cup, but broken.

The noumenal entering the phenomenal, the unconditioned entering the conditioned, the non-existing entering existence. The impossible finding a way of moving into possibility.

Music is a liminality between the impossible and the possible.

III

How do we know that Music is real? Because there is a part of us which is as real as Music.

Music is not in the notes, it is between the notes. What we recognise as real is not the notes, it is the space between the notes. What we recognise as real is the Silence from which Music arises.

We recognise what we know. What we recognise is part of us: that’s how we recognise it. So, that part of us which is resonant with music, is resonant also with Silence.

IV

Silence moves into sound through music. So, part of us comes from where Music comes from. This is the spark within all of us. This is who we are, in distinction to what we are. What we are is the animal we inhabit, its patterns of thought and feeling and behaviour that carry us through life.

V

Discipline is how we develop a relationship between who we are, and what we are.  A side effect of this is to become effectual in the world.  By becoming effectual in the world, we develop a relationship between who and what we are.

The primary aim of developing a discipline is that who and what we are can speak to each other, to have a conversation. What is the point of who we are and what we are speaking to each other? So we may accomplish what we were born to do. We may realise ourselves in this life by completing the work we were born to undertake.

VI

A discipline holds together all the different parts of who and what we are. A discipline is all-embracing, all encompassing. A discipline is the whole of our life, and how we live it. Each and any small act is indicative of our discipline: how we hold our pick, how we get out of bed in the morning.

VII

Simply: what is real within us recognises what is real outside us.
When this is so, there is no separation.
When there is separation, we have discipline.