Robert Fripp's Diary

Shepherds Bush Empire London To

17.24

Shepherds Bush Empire, London.

To The Stage…

From The Stage…

Crash Barrier...

This has been wisely provided to protect the Soundscape performer from fans & enthusiasts who, driven to ecstatic fury by multiple bleeping & droning, seek to escape the coils of gravity-bound existence, leap onstage and express themselves in dance. Another interpretation: the barrier is there to protect the performer from angered fans who had rights, by virtue of spending their hard-earned pay, to get stuff signed - and they only wanted to say hello, anyway – yet whose innocent desires were cruelly unsatisfied by That Awful Man.

Showtimes…

A sleepful night. Throughout the day, throat pain moved down the scale from excruciating to great. Alex & John successfully changed vans this morning, from a modest-but-unacceptable to a modest-but-acceptable with second-row seating. They drove to & from Gloucester, collected me in Bredonborough at 13.15, and then to London.

We arrived in good time. A walk around the block: Shepherds Bush is very much an area in transition. Several posho bars & cafes mingle with the very-much-not posho cafes & neighbourhood food providers (restaurant is too grand a term). Very cosmopolitan with an accompanying sense that this is not yet a settled home for many of the perambulators.

Returning from the block, near the stage door: a prowling Nicolai from Russia in active radical-festishising of inherent-&-delineated-meanings mode; proving once again that once we have determined to eat we’ll bite, on whatever prey we’ve selected, regardless of kindness, courtesy or the promptings of conscience .

In the dressing room, there is a cornucopia of provision, save for a kettle. There is only one kettle: it is in PT’s dressing room & I am invited to share it.

A Cornucopia of Provision…

20.38    Just offstage.

A supportive audience, with restive elements, as one would anticipate from a standing floor with bars on both sides. I couldn’t trust the audience to step very far, but they were supportive of moderate treading. St. Peter’s church last Saturday, in comparison with the conventional spaces since, made very clear the tangible effect, of concentrated presence within the audience, on performing.

Shortly to Bredonborough, en route to Manchester tomorrow.