Robert Fripp's Diary

The skies over Mount Juliet

My morning's reading is a new book from John D. Barrow - "The Book Of Nothing: Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas about the Origins of the Universe" (Pantheon 2000). I turned the last page of Professor Barrow's "The Artful Universe" yesterday morning. The final main chapter is "The Natural History of Noise" with this first sub-heading - "The club of queer trades: soundscapes". No argument there.

Our first day's rehearsals reminded us of how many near misses it's possible to find for notionally the same note. Like, if C# is the prescribed quality, then why not try C instead? After all, you don't get much closer than that. In the Western system, that is. Adrian and I have an ongoing dialogue about just how many Crimson srutis we can insert between C and C# before the aural result is quite horrible. Yesterday we applied this dialogue to a new defining about-to-be-becoming Crim power classic - "Level Five" - with excruciating results. The fine hairs of my inner ear went to the Crimson barbershop.

Part of my recent correspondence refers to how discovery and invention is made. The creative process is quite mysterious, n'est-ce pas? How do radical, transforming and transformative notions come into our mundane world? Even, how do really good, simple, fun ideas pop up? And when does a simplistic mechanical inversion of the materials at hand give way to something qualitatively distinct, and novel? My interest in discipline is primarily this: how may we hold ourselves in place (in this case) in front of a creative download?

There are functional aspects to being in a creative process: what do we do? These are steps that may be learnt, and practised. This is a "will" aspect: will we "do" this or not? It is fascinating to look at decisions being taken, or not, within us. And there is a "juice" aspect to this: I may know what to do, and I may have decided to do it, but am I able to hold myself in place in front of the opening door? In the literature, this is referred to as "being". We might consider this in terms of the quality, quantity and intensity of our available personal energy supply. This gives us conceptual & practical handles on whatever we might understand as of "ontological concern".

But, ruminating gently last night, reflecting upon the personal discomfort & hopelessnesses involved in bringing back information from visits in the creative process, I found myself considering:

1. Necessary downloads: where broadcast information is being made available to the human zone. Then, it's up to whoever is tuned in to the broadcast to bring it back home; perhaps with several "discoverers" returning with the same idea around the same time.

2. Blocked broadcasts: where we keep trying to tune into programmes which appear to be (experientially) jammed. Are we just not able to maintain the frequency? Is this information being withheld?

We have probably all heard music that we'd rather had been mislaid on the way down. I'm inclined to the view that a significant proportion of modernist composition doesn't fall into the 1/f-spectrum. On the other hand, let's also recall Mozart's "too many notes" & Ludwig the Grumpy's Ninth Symphony - a "long, confused, and artificial production" (Leo Tolstoy). Without doubt, King Crimson's output would rank high in the popular charts of rock music that got flanged while descending.

But music can be ignored, in the main, if it is not to our taste, and its functional repercussions in our own life can often be attenuated. So how about the discovery of atomic energy? Was this a good broadcast to have tuned into? The internal combustion engine? Genetic manipulation? These downloads aren't going to be unlearnt in a hurry. And what for quantum computing? As a global position, I trust the unfolding process, although not blindly.

But this morning, these issues are not my concern: I have more pressing a matter to consider - is it feasible to find 43 graduations between the Crimson C and C#? We use 8 on a regular basis, and for some, maybe that's enough already.
 

Response To The Guestbook:

This is towards the wish-lists of additives to the Virgin / EG and DGM Crimson catalogues & "why not include various live recordings from the DGM archive on the re-masters?" thread/s, and is taken from the diary for Monday 9th. November, 1998, written at my Sister's house in San Francisco:

I report once more upon a common misunderstanding: DGM, RF, KC has no control at all over any of the KC & related catalogue prior to the EG Records' sale to Virgin in 1991.

So, to questions like "why doesn't DGM release `Earthbound', alternative mixes / takes of KC classics, etc.".

The first reason is that we have no effective control over / access to the material.

There is a good second reason. My interest in addressing the past is to:

Anything which goes further risks nailing the present flat and disengaging the available future.

There is a good third reason. The number of committed enthusiasts who have a high level of interest in the past is less than those who are interested in the present.

I am grateful to all who take an interest in KC / RF related work but have no intention of being glued to work, however potent, of 25-30 years ago. One of the reasons for the work's potency was the lack of expectation and demand placed upon it."

10.56
Today is Iris Belew's 16th. birthday. I heard the singing above my head, and was then brought down some birthday cake before joining the Team Belewbeloid for gooey celebration.