18.00
Seminario San Jose, Gandara, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina.
Already music is here. The concerns of professional touring, such as playing in unsuitable or inappropriate venues with high ticket prices in Europe, release dates, distribution of monies & publishing shares, have no place here. Rising after a siesta, and a call to The Horse in Telford, I sat with a cup of coffee (which once had probably been hot) on a chair outside the dining room looking through to the courtyard which is at the centre of this Catholic seminary. The Kitchen Team came in on Monday to prepare the facility for the influx of students on Friday to Guitar Craft (Argentina) V. They are performing this evening and have been preparing & practicing this afternoon. The sounds of acoustic Ovation guitars bounce around the walls, rooms & corridors of the building. Music is here. The music business is not. How to express the joy in this? Clean. Direct. Available. Present.
Probably members of the public have little, can have little, experience of the presence of music when the act of music has been mediated by commerce. How else is performance organized? Well, probably on a small scale for & by amateurs. The music industry presents entertainment & extravaganzas very well, but not events where music is the central focus. And if the industry were able to organize a musical event, then photography + autography + taping would kill off any possibility that was left. Perhaps I should accept, there is not a sufficient genuine commitment to the musical event in our (Western) culture for what I wish to achieve. If I did accept that, I would get on and organize my life according to different ground rules.
After the cup of coffee, looking at the grapes hanging from vines in the courtyard, guitar chords continuing to bounce off the walls, I went into the church attached to the seminary. It is also the parish church for the village of Gandara. For some musicians, music is God. This is not my position. Stand face to face with music, and see what is behind it. Then this becomes a practical matter. How to stand face to face with music?
We begin where we are. So where are we? Almost never in the moment. In Guitar Craft we begin our first morning by doing nothing. The injunction is: do nothing, as much as you can. Perhaps we are fortunate and, suddenly, might find ourselves where we are. In that moment we are present, even perhaps available. We look out the window and see the garden. The sun is shining. What a difference this is, to the artificial light in the basement! Then we're back: we've fallen into the basement. Home again. But if we were touched by the sun, our life in the basement can never be acceptable or comfortable again. We have to find a way to build a ladder out of our this prison, formerly known as home.
So, once again, here we are with a Guitar Craft Level One. Always the same. Always different. Always the first time. We have had 4 courses in the Seminario San Jose. The last one was in November 1996.
Professional developments: on Monday, back from Tokyo, I spoke to Richard Chadwick regarding the venue for Crimson in Prague. The first time Crimson played there (1996) we got shafted by the venue: the Hall of Culture, capacity 2800. This is too big for Crimson to develop intensity, too big for the details which are a necessary part of KC repertoire, too big to connect with the audience, the audience too far from the musicians to sense their humanity. So the public got shafted too. Another dismal show from a tour of mostly dismal & inappropriate venues, and mostly dismal shows. Perhaps the performances from that tour were kinda OK, kinda professionally adequate, not bad. If so, then Crimson failed. When Crimson plays a kinda OK show, it means the show was feeble. OK is not good enough to merit all the difficulties and grief involved in Crimson going on the road.
Do the other guys hold the same views? Probably not, and for various reasons. A good professional knows that most (at least) European venues suck. So why get distressed? A good professional knows that ticket prices are high. So why bother? You get onstage and play the best you can. People cheer. You get paid. You go home. You can't change the system, but you can play well. Anything more than that is unrealistic. Which is why my life as a touring musician is close to hell. I find it very hard to accept conditions which nominally support the performance of music but which act to undermine it. Regrettably, with the active support of many in the audience. I walk onstage to engage with the audience, not protect myself from those who claim their "rights" to act as they want, regardless. When audience & players are not even on the same side, life is hard.
Back to Prague. This time round I asked for a smaller venue. The audiences in Prague (and Warsaw) got a bad deal last time round, so for this tour I've done what I can to get better venues. In Prague we have a 1200 seat capacity. Ticket sales were strong: 65% went very quickly. So, the promoter offered another venue, with 2500 capacity. How could anyone say no? More money, more people, everyone happy? This is a typical example of how potentially good things go off course. I said not for me.
One of the main lessons I've learnt as a professional is this: you do shitty things for as long as you do shitty things. Then, one day you say no and you do one less shitty thing. No one - management, agency, record company, road managers, tour managers - will change the way the industry works for you. However much any of these people aim to protect your interests, for as long as you do shitty things, you will continue to do shitty things. So, when one day you're offered something which is not right, you say no. That's when it changes, and not before. Otherwise, you will continue to have a shitty professional life.
19.40
Hernan Nunez met me at the airport with his driver Claudio, aka The Terminator. Claudio was a marine on the Belgrano when it was sunk by a submarine of the Royal Navy. He was one of the few who survived & is an official Argentinian hero. Claudio is a small, gentle & tough man who is unstoppable when in committed & directed action. Hence his appellation.
Argentina is a wonderful place; mad, passionate, corrupt (by Western standards), humanistic, flexible, alive. I love it here. Buenos Aires is a music city par excellence. But if you have little money, life is cripplingly hard. There is a huge gulf between the wealthy & the others. The middle class has been squeezed during the past 4 years. The knock-on effect of Mexico's currency crash on Argentina was considerable. Life is a negotiation with necessity. But here there are riches which don't have one peso + one dollar tagged to them, like, children are a welcome part of the family, and each a gift from God. This is distinct from the English position, where children are a punishment for unprotected sex.
Networks of family & friends are essential, necessary. When a Crafty in Buenos Aires died of cancer recently at the age of 46, leaving his octogenarian parents behind without support, other Crafties went to see him before he died and told him that they would provide for his parents. So, he could fly away unburdened. This gives a flavour of the Guitar Craft community, and only hints at the power present within our network. My life as a professional musician to 1984 - characterized by antagonism, hostility, avarice, self-seeking, politicisms, self-regard, arrogance, dishonesty, exploitation, delusion & self-deception, drug & alcohol abuse, manipulation, and occasionally music of an extraordinary & sustaining power - was a necessary preparation for Guitar Craft. Exactly how & why I continue to learn today. But in Guitar Craft a sacred space & time opens, within which the proper concerns of the aspirant musician, and human being, may be addressed. How this may be is beyond me. That this is true, I can have no doubt.
Music is a field of benevolent, living intelligence that wishes for us more than we can bear to know. But there is no force in this, rather a radically neutral availability on permanent offer. Music is as available to us as we wish it to be, a gentle necessity. If we wish for this, we have to make ourselves available to music. To make ourselves available, we begin where we are. We begin in this moment, doing nothing. From there, we move to doing something.
20.34
A tasty dinner of calzone, prepared by the Kitchen Team under Mr. Ugo. Mr. Ugo is a film maker, and I know him better by his Guitar Craft name: Mr. He-Has-More-Hair-On-His-Face-Than-He-Has-On-His-Head.
One of the 92 e-mails awaiting me on Monday/Tuesday came from my essence brother Peter. Peter & I have been connected since group meetings at Randolph Road, the Bennett house in London, in 1974. We went to the fifth year at Sherborne together and were both Morris men in the Sherborne village troupe. Afterwards, we undertook a farming experiment in Cornwall, near Godolphin House, in 1978. Jack Willis, my godson, was christened in the village church. Peter & I went to visit the Stavravouny Monastery in Cyprus in 1979. Since then Peter & I have been involved in various adventures. Peter is the artist of "The Angel Of The Presence" which is the opening page on the DGM website, and the cover to "Three Of A Perfect Pair" is based on a larger painting of Peter's.
Peter was ordained last Sunday in London as a Deacon in the Russian Orthodox Church. This is the culmination, & a beginning, of a journey which began for Peter in 1973. Sadly, I didn't learn of this until Tuesday, but I had felt that something was in the air. This is a joy.
Also part of that expanded moment, connecting with JGB & Sherborne: on Tuesday I called Ben Bennett at Bennett & Luck in Islington. Ben was my first movements' teacher in 1974, and introduced me to a series of exercises which were part of the Sherborne corpus. Ben & I discussed the present status of the JGB tapes, for which I have an ongoing responsibility dating back to Sherborne V (1975/76). There are 53 published audio talks which James Tomarelli of Bennett Books in Santa Fe is looking to make available once more. My present concern is to transfer all the archive tapes & cassettes into the digital domain, ready for the next generation. The existing JGB cassettes are now 15-25 years old, and it's time to make this remarkable resource available again; primarily for study groups, but also for the public where appropriate.
JGB remains a Black Sheep for many in the Gurdjieff Society & orthodox Gurdjieffians. I have been told that some Society members secretly listen to the published JGB tapes. Wow. Wild things. There are only 6 people left alive who worked with Mr. Gurdjieff (I was informed 19 days ago by one of them).
21.30
The Kitchen Team have made a short performance in the auditorium. I helped prepare the space by rearranging furniture & adjusting the lights.
"Sometimes God hides."
