Robert Fripp's Diary

The personal focus of my

The show was 45 minutes away in a sports field. The acoustics in the open air seem to be working for us better than most of the venues. The audience were generous & supportive in the main, and the venue less attractive than yesterday's for the photo session. Ade's voice is holding in. Overall, for me the show had a centre and a heart, despite the ongoing violation.

16.55
Hotel Is This What You Call Eternal Youth?

Driving from Rome airport towards the city Trey joked as we passed a hotel with the absurd name of Hotel Shangrila. Any hotel with a name like that was clearly a Turkey For The Traveller. Then we pulled into the entrance and checked in. I had already looked at our itinerary & knew that this was it: yes! another hotel chosen by our Italian promoter.

For a place nominally celebrating eternal youth the blush of youth has somewhat faded, but without quite the patina of character that time bestows to replace it. In the 1960s this would probably have been quite a happening scene. The unintentionally hilarious 1960s postcard views of the Shangrila, printed on the in-room info brochure, capture a sense of that optimistic decade now long distant in the Shangrila's own timescale. We have four hours here this afternoon, and all of tomorrow morning. Laurie has been trying to get an answer to "why this hotel?" from the promoter. It's 40 minutes from the gig, impossible to know that this is Rome, and near to the airport when we have no rush to get there. The band has their own answers to this question.

But a good read and cappuccini in the outside cafÈ area. From my lunchtime reading this: "It is precisely in unconscious involuntary manifestation that all evil lies".

Then to snooze, shower, shave, & time still available for reflection.

To the basement audient, a professional performance is paradise.
To the discriminating audient, a surpassing performance is paradise.
To the connoisseur, a professional performance is disappointing; a basement performance is hell.