Space Music drifts behind me from the Sunrise Theatre, Sunrise, Florida on October 16th. 1997. This was the final date of the two G3 US tours that year, the most personally enjoyable touring I have known. Encouragement, personal & professional support, are not abundant qualities in my life as a Working Gigster.
11.07
Off to World Central...
14.30
The final 12 minutes of Space Music from the Sunrise Theatre, Florida is gorgeous. A pastorale more redolent of England's green and shrinking countryside than Florida at any time of year. Perhaps the guitarist is longing for home and, tomorrow, he'll be going there.
Responses, Sooner / Later, to the DGM Guestbook:
1. When we live in the basement, it is probably impossible to conceive of what life might be like were we to live on the garden floor (American first floor, English ground floor).
On the garden floor, we might venture out through a patio door, over the threshold, and into the garden. But, whether within or without, we wouldn't be able to see over the well-established yew hedge into the countryside beyond the garden. So, as far as we know, from the perspective of a ground floor dweller, the extent of the world is the end of our garden.
If we lived on the second floor (American), first floor (English), we would have a very different perspective: our small garden is not, as we had assumed, the full extent of the created universe.
And if we lived in the penthouse, we'd know the world was bigger even than that; and that when we reached the horizon we'd either take a leap and fly, or fall off the edge of the world.
From a cellar-dweller's point of view, were we to imaginatively project or extrapolate what the world could be like beyond our cellar, beyond our own direct experience, we might conclude that it is dark, damp, and that the earth is covered in concrete.
From a garden-floor dweller's point of view, were we to imaginatively project or extrapolate what the universebeyond our garden might be like, we would probably conclude that "it's like our garden, but bigger".
Until we move upstairs we don't / won't have a broad enough area of vision, seeing, or simply enough data, to be able to venture anything more than an underinformed & seriously compromised subjective projection / opinion.
If I live in the cellar, and haven't visited upstairs, I will probably conclude that a garden (if I have somehow learnt of such a concept) is just like my basement floor, a stretch of concrete, but greener. The sun is like my spotlight, but much brighter (I hope not too much brighter, because it'll hurt my eyes). The wind is like a fan, but with a greater variation of speeds.
In my cellar, because I have spent a lot of time thinking about all manner of important things, I have some valuable opinions about gardening and how to improve the operating procedures of gardeners. After all, they've been too busy gardening to learn what I know, just by thinking.
Perhaps, in my basement, I have a cellar-dweller's computer. I log on to several gardening sites and know lots and lots of Latin names for plants. I may never have known the fragrance of a rose, but I know long names for several of them! Like, Rosa Gallica Officinalis & Rosa Dopus Pratticus.
But a gardener knows the fragrance of a rose, with eyes closed. This fragrance is impermanent, yet eternal. A nose knows a rose knows a rose.
2. Bryan Helm is a Dozy Lump.
Sid Smith is a "fat bastard" (personal & public declaration of such) and was a Hell Boy For A Day.
Therefore, Sid + Bryan = possible friends.
Best wishes from Robert to both, & the Helm family.
And the Fat Dozy Bastards would be a Hell of a duo.
3. Mike KeNeally: mea culpa! mea culpa! Respect! Respect!
4. David Mathis:
John Bonham had no involvement with any Crimson recording. But...
In November 1968 the about-to-be-becoming King Crimson were buying gear in the equipment district in the Charing Cross Road & Shaftesbury Avenue area of Central London. Michael Giles and I went into a shop opposite Foyles (Sound City, I believe). Robert Plant and John Bonham were also in the shop. At the time they were members of "The New Yardbirds" (about to be renamed) and I had just seen & heard their third gig at The Marquee Club (Page's amp kept blowing up).
Mike sat at one drum kit and John Bonham at another and, for about two minutes, the two drummers played together and exchanged shots. I recall the impression that they were listening to each other, and not competing.
5. Joe Anstett:
"Why do you feel the need to fetishise the inherent & delineated meanings of music?".
Under this flag Joe presents his answer to the question "why a public signing of Deja VROOOM?": "Money".
A. Joe is well informed. Actually, better informed than I am. From where I sit (a mid-Victorian Davenport desk with the prominently displayed sign "Venal Leader & Shameless Marketing Weasel") most of what I see are outgoings & bills. These are my concerns:
Costs of air tickets and hotels for King Crimson members and DGM related personnel who have to be specially flown into Los Angeles.
Hire of facilities.
Time / costs of DGM staff and office to liase / coordinate prepare the event.
One week of my time + jet lag margin on return.
B. Then, I note:
i) The "public" signing is not public. The signing is in a private space (Bonaventure Hotel, Downtown LA), hired, and made available to industry & press personnel, plus invited Club Members.
ii) DGM shares the costs of hiring the space, plus providing tea, coffee and cake, with DTS.
iii) The "public" are Members of the Collectors' Club. Probably all of those attending would buy the DVD / DGM goodies available, were they to attend the signing or not. In other words, DGM would sell as many DVDs / CDs even if there were no "public" signing.
iv) So, as a means of raising money, the DVD presentation / signing is an incompetent and pitifully inept attempt to squeeze hard-earned pay from the open, generous hands of our listening community. If I presented this bright wheeze to DGM and KC as a means of generating money, they might accuse me of deliberate misrepresentation.
C. So, why a public / non-public signing? i) DGM has a responsibility to present its artists' work to the wider listening / viewing community in an appropriate fashion, where possible. On this occasion, we hope to access the wider community through the press.
ii) DGM has a relationship with its customers which we take seriously, but not solemnly, and address personally where & when able. These "customers" I view as DGM's listening community. Their ears are more important to me than their acquisition of our "product" and our acquisition of their hard-earned pay.
iii) I loathe photography & autography: it is (in most cases of my professional experience) demeaning and, as such, a trivialisation of our common humanity. But, I also recognise that a large number of decent people want both.
So, my compromise is this:
Not in the music I play;
No longer in the conditions in which I play;
But in the quality of my life & my living of it.
The injunction is this: act always in accordance with time, place & person.
Autography is destructive within a musical event, as is photography and recording (whether we know it or not). So, I / we put aside dedicated time & space for signings, of whatever degree of publicness, to meet the clear interest of good people.
I enjoy meeting members of the listening community. But, because rewarding and joyful contact between people slides so often into "fetishisation" and trivialisation, no longer am I prepared to take the risk of a performance being undermined through chance interractions. Regrettably. This is a personal loss, and spoils much of my working life.
D. Money.
A reliable sign of maturity is that one has established a responsible attitude towards the acquisition, generation and dispersal of money. A reliable sign of immaturity is that one is unable to recognise this maturity in others.
A quick guide to the quality of a person is to observe their conduct in matters relating to sex, money and the use of time (cf Jacob Needleman's "Money & The Meaning Of Life").
How to work within the market place while being free of the values of the market place? This is a fundamental in the practice of (at least) a musician. My position is simple: I don't play music for money but I take money for the music I play. And for this, as mentioned above, I pay a price.
Money presents opportunities, matched with obligations. What opportunities, what obligations?
I have no reservations about paying my debts, neither do I feel the need to justify my doing so. I have large personal and business debts & obligations from supporting, and standing behind, a company which is part of a future worth realising. If I am right, the listening community will support me / us. Otherwise, not. In which case, my life gets easier.
I note this personal observation: freedom of action is conferred upon the person who picks up the tab; in ways larger and smaller, gross & subtle.
E. For anyone to go public with a posting as witless and devoid of reflection & reasoning as Joe's would suggest that the poster were themself as cynical and superficial as the posting.
If we see in others what we know most fully in ourselves, then in Joe's attribution of venality to RF / DGM I read that:
i) The motivation in Joe's own life is money;
ii) Alternatively, Joe cannot conceive of a moving or driving force in others which is not lucre-driven.
I am not prepared to accept that Joe is as dopey or unkind as he purports to be from his posting. So, I conclude instead Joe is presenting an opportunity to initiate a debate:
a) On the uses of money;
b) On the practice of detachment & non-identification.
If my reasoning is correct, a question for Joe:
What is an appropriate attitude to take towards money?
Alternatively, Joe has figured out how to cream 200 punters on January 27th. 1999 and knows we're clueless. If this is the case, Joe is privy to information not available to RF & DGM's sheep-shearers.
So, an alternative question to Joe:
How do we squeeze those suckers dry?
7. Craft repeats the repeatable.
Art repeats the unrepeatable.
Logical reasoning and deductive argument won't get us through this one.
What is the sound of one mind flapping?
We don't have to live in the world of artistry to know the fragrance of the unrepeatable, but we do have to have visited to recognise the scent. Craft acts from knowing, artistry from understanding, and artistry is a quantum leap beyond professionalism.
Artistry comes with a view of the countryside.
18.56
This evening "Emmanuelle" is on Channel 5. All the sex scenes have pirated extracts from "Larks' Tongues II" and, eventually, I'll discover on my PRS statements a puny sum allocated to my account. This, as part of the out-of-court settlement in 1977/8.
"Just below the surface of our everyday world lie riches."
