Today "Hello" magazine were photographing Toyah in our home here in Deepest Dorset. The photos are stunning, quirky & lots of fun. This issue should be published in 3-4 weeks.
Sven the photographer brought 3 assistants, and we all went for lunch in the Village Inn opposite. Martin the Barman is currently on holiday - he has gone to visit his family in Leicester. A good lunch still, but Martin the Barman is the heart of the inn.
I have been reflecting on the ongoing level of animosity which continues to resonate from the very early days of my professional life. I have also been considering part of the recent Sid Smith interview where the Sidney presents two different basic views on Crimson, from the points of view of the Crim characters and "their" Crimson.
One view is that the right people were at the right place at the right time. To simplify, this suggests that the musicians make the music.
Another view is that there is something "other" which is King Crimson, and which brings Crimson to life. To simplify, this suggests that the music makes the musicians.
How to reconcile these? Over fish pie in the fabbo wonder pub just up the road, sister establishment to our Village Inn, I put an approach to Toyah
Whenever something remarkable takes place, where we know something special is going on, when magic is in the air, this goes well beyond what is possible & available to the musicians. But, for this magic to appear, for this special act to enter our world, it needs the right people in the right place at the right time. Both are necessary.
The difference lies in the source of the action. Is it in the musicians? Is it in the music? For me, no debate necessary.
Responses, Sooner Later:
We experiment when we decide to experiment. That's it.
RF: Expect nothing.
RF: Expect nothing.
Would any one who had attended the 'Trey Gunn Band' concert give a review? I just wanted to know what to expect before I see them.
RF: Oh.
RF: It's true: I'd prefer enthusiasts. Fans are fixed in their wants. Enthusiasts have flexibility. Fixity, in a moving time stream, is a form of living death.
We are a problem lot, aren't we? We criticize every lineup, the equipment the band uses, and attempt to insert new members (read: vocalists) into the band. We take stray phrases uttered by members and blow them seriously out of proportion. I'm sure we are a continual source of amusement (not to mention irritation) in our ET and guestbook postings.RF: If you (singular & plural) wish to spend valuable time & energy discussing not very important subjects, this is your time, energy, responsibility & concern. You have the right to what you pay for, & the currency is not money.
The main concern for me is where this impinges on my life & work, & the damage done by dopey commentary. It creates an atmosphere of delusional understanding which undermines the music, its performance, the musicians playing it, and its reception by audients.
I don't mind if someone's dopey & on their own territory: that's not my (microcosmic) business. I mind when someone walks into my domain, believing they have "the right" to be there on the spurious assumption that they have "the right" because they have the right, and then delivers ill-considered, under-informed, disconnected & one dimensional judgements on complex situations and authentic concerns.
At this point, the dope becomes dangerous. The "atmosphere" is polluted, an opportunity is spoilt, and there begins a series of unnecessary repercussions which disturb what might be taking place, and/or about to be taking place.
The dangerous dope is not a "bad person": they are a dopey person. In my world, I don't mind someone who's dopey if they know they're dopey. Then, their commentary is attenuated by the knowledge of their ignorance. Then, they no longer seek to assume understanding of the motivation, decisions & choices of experienced players, with aims which go beyond the professional; who work in conditions which are not based on supporting the musical act; and on that basis offer helpful one-dimensional fixed solutions to multi-dimensional actions & events which are ongoing & unfolding in the face of massive intentional & unintentional opposition.
I can face my enemies cheerfully: the battlelines are clearly drawn. But I would rather that those who consider themselves to be my friends do not undermine & cripple the notional object of their support; and then continue to believe that they are my friends, expecting & demanding the reciprocity which friendship invites.
The "dope who knows they are dopey" has a great deal to contribute: a clean, discriminating & impartial reporting of their subjective position. In time & with practice, this might even become objective. And "a point of seeing" may appear to anyone, regardless of their experience.
A performer needs the support of their audience, and this is not possible where the support is helplessly uncritical, fawning & flattering; all of which undermines performer, performance & audient. "Critical loyalty" is genuine support.
I have seen musicians of my close acquaintance playing to the gallery, allowing themselves to be seduced by an overwhelming public acclaim. And I have seen them in later years, somewhat lost, because their public lacked discrimination when it was needed & loved them not enough to tell them the truth at the moment that the telling of truth was necessary.
Yet, we as fans give a lot too. We purchase new releases, merchandise and concert tickets, spending money some of us can ill afford. Sometimes we have to travel long distances to concert venues, making overnight arrangements that cost more money.RF: Agreed & accepted.
Then once the concert begins, we must worry that someone will take a picture, wave a tape recorder around, shout out something stupid, and Fripp will walk offstage.RF: Yep. We all lose.
We're not sure how to act. Should we sit quietly and listen? Should we mill about, talking amongst ourselves, the band providing nothing more than background music? If I got up and danced, would Fripp be displeased?RF: Do whatever is right, in the moment.
If possible: act rightly, spontaneously, cheerfully, consensually, courteously, joyously. Then, don't give a hoot about Fripp. Otherwise, act naturally, politely & have fun. If you wish to be quiet, be quiet. If you wish to shout & cheer, shout & cheer, even boo & hiss - but at the right time.
If you are in the moment, photography and recording are not an issue: this will put you outside the performance and the moment available to it; so these are not options available to you.
If you intend to photograph and/or record, you're at the wrong show. Or, more accurately, you're at your own show. So, you're in the wrong place: better to stay at home. If you are dopey enough to arrive at a Crimson / Fripp venue knowing this, there will be repercussions which affect everyone, and for the worse.
If you believe that buying a ticket gives you the right to anything more than admission to the venue, save your money.
If you believe that buying a ticket gives you the right to proscribe or determine the performer's behaviour, save your money.
If you don't like TCOL, save your money.
If you can't get over Bill & Tony being somewhere else that night, save your money.
If you go to the show, knowing that you dislike significant elements of this stage in KC's life, then save your money.
If any of this applies to you, then spend your money knowing that this is your responsibility & no-one else's. But better that you save your money.
If any of this applies to you, do not believe that I welcome your presence at any performance of which I am a part. Thank you for your past interest, apply your intelligence, and now move on.
What I mean by that is, move on.
I can't think of any other band that stresses its fans out more than KC! Yet we keep coming back for more. Fripp is probably the only musician I admire that I have no desire to meet in person. I'm sure I'd say the wrong thing & he would spit on my shoes.RF: Agreed: better to trust music than the musician.
RF: Too true.
RF: So, how may we use "every waking" moment within "the circumstances of (our) own lives to manifest the sacred?
Everything is at least potentially sacred; every work we undertake is at least potentially a sacred work, and particularly works of service.RF: Agreed.
This is also how I understand the "Kitchen Craft" service of advanced Guitar Craft. Mr Fripp speaks-writes of bringing the same quality of attention to humble chores that one wishes to bring to musicking. While agreeing with the substance I would phrase it differently and describe it as recognizing the service of preparing food for others and cleaning for them as neitehr more nor less a sacred chore than the service of bringing music into the world.RF: Essentialy, agreed. In the kitchen, life dies that life may continue. This is real. This is sacred.
1. Those who, like me, spend too much of our time in the basement (as evidenced by our spending time in pursuits like this) begin with a basement quality of attention, which leads to a basement quality of perceiving.
2. With a basement quality of attention, it is very difficult to perceive the "stairs," or indeed even to perceive that our attention and perceiving have a basement quality. But sometimes we are offered a glimpse of something beyond our basement.
2.1 To perceive that we are dwelling in a basement is, then, a necessary (but not sufficient) step in the process towards moving upwards.
2.2 To perceive the stairs, we must move our quality of attention and perceiving in an upwards direction.
2.3 But, to move in an upwards direction, we must first find the stairs.
3. Though this is worse than it at first seemed, it is better than it now seems. There is hope.
3.1 Efforts to find the stairs often turn out, afterwards, to have led us a good part of the way up the stairs before we even realized that we were climbing.
3.2 Because we were climbing without realizing it, we did not understand why our stumbling-around seemed to require more "work" than usual. We lose hope.
3.3 Having first recognized ourselves as in-the-basement, our next perception is "it's getting worse!" at precisely that moment when it might get better.
3.3.1 This is a form of "the dark night of the soul," and leads many who have begun the trek up the stairs to abandon the trek. The basement quality of attention has led us to perceive our efforts to improve as making things worse.
3.3.2 Carrying on despite this "feeling," struggling on in this manner leads us by hope through hopelessness -- as good a description of the functioning of faith in daily life as we might need.
4. It is a quality of faith (note I do not say faith in any specific X) that allows us to continue the path out of the basement which begins at the perception of being in the basement.
4.1 The quality of faith involves trusting that our glimpse of a non-basement mode of existing was valid and remains valid even when we no longer can perceive the glimpse.
4.2 Hope grows in and from this faith when we carry on and struggle in the hardest direction, not because it is the hardest direction, but because it is in opposition to the easiest direction (which we know leads us deeper into the basement).
4.2.1 That is, difficulty is not in and of itself a sign of progress upwards, but excessive ease is a sign of retrogress downwards.
4.2.2 Though sometimes there are easy moments in the progression upwards. (Often these occur just after the moment when we thought we could continue no longer but did.)
5. So much for faith and hope. Charity is unspeakable at the basement level.
5.1 At the basement level we have no charity to offer; we can only accept it.
5.2 The condition of accepting without giving is humiliating.
5.3 At all levels, charity that is not mere sentiment is terrible, apalling.
6. And when we have struggled out of the basement, we may find that what we have struggled to is really just a higher basement, and the whole struggle is to do over again.
7. In fact, this usually happens.
RF: It's not quite like this. And as an attempt to get out of the basement, the effect of this line of reasoning is to make it more comfortable.
RF: It's not quite like this.
This carries the danger of not recognizing the garden floor, or even the penthouse, when we achieve it.RF: This is not a journey we set out upon without the help of someone who has been there before us. Then, they act as our guide so we begin to learn to recognise what they recognise.
Is there a real "penthouse"?RF: Does this matter to Daniel? If so, what is Daniel prepared to invest to find out?
Or is each level the basement to another level, which appears the garden level to one within? I suspect the latter, at least as far as what can be achieved in the finite span of an earthly, mortal human life. (But this suspicion may not sufficiently allow for grace.)RF: Thinking alone doesn't present an answer: this is a one-dimensional approach to (at least) a three dimensional problem.
But the quick answer is, no.
RF: What is Jim's interest in this? Why "in regards to the (perceived) negativity"? The positive postings currently outweigh the negative. So, why the interest in the negative? (This is of itself a clue).
Guitar Craft is not a suitable topic for careless, wasteful, ill-informed and dopey commentaries which typify much of ET (and increasingly the Guestbook). Guitar Craft is a direct and practical engagement with the energies necessary for the act of music to take place. It is not available for projection and basement imagination: it is available for practical work that connects us directly to music's power.
Is it possible for these energies to be wasted / misused? Yes. Gossip & empty chatter is a good beginning.
Unless you have been on a course, and it has come to life for you, nothing can be said. I can tell you about a rose, describe it, even show you a picture of a champion. Until you have tasted the scent, you are unable to know what a rose might be.
Save your time, Jim.
RF: Guitar Craft is one available approach.
RF: If J-F isn't sufficiently interested to travel to New Jersey, Guitar Craft is probably not for him. If so, better to forget Guitar Craft and have an easier life.
RF: No. There were many different courses underway simultaneously. The course each of us attended was primarily determined by our capacity to be present. Another way of putting this, our capacity to bear contradiction & suffering & joy all at once.
Another was of putting this: the course was running on several floors of the Guitar Craft House (in my view, all of them). Our individual ability to move between the floors governed how "much" of the course we attended.
Judgement, rigid expectations, and the Law of Reciprocity were apparently operating on both the faculty and the student side of the equation here, or so it would "appear".It was apparent to me at the time that our failures in the exercises were the result of Robert skillfully giving us a lesson in "failure" so as to give us an opportunity to expand our awareness, and let-go of expectaions and judgements.
RF: Clever guy, that Fripp.
However, from reading Curt's entry: "The never ending parade of duff right hands was predictable, but the disconnection between players and their bodies was astonishing. The lack of even rudimentary skills in rhythm, let alone the ability to count, almost incomprehensible."RF: I expect the sun to rise every morning.
I expect that, following dawn, the amount of light will increase. The particular quality of the light I can't know beforehand. I don't know whether the sun will be shining, whether it'll be raining, misty, humid, warm, hot, cold, although I may have some expectations generated by a weather forecast (conventionally, I expect the opposite to the conditions forecasted).
Whatever the weather, I can never predict the type or characteristics of the clouds in the sky. The sky is always different, each moment unique, although always the sky. (Whenever we are locked in personal whirrings - look at the sky!). It is always remarkable, always changing. And always the same.
It seems the faculty viewed us as quite musically challenged.RF: I don't speak for other members of the faculty.
For myself, as an impartial observer, the quick answer is yes. What I saw was not a lack of innate musicality, but all manner of stuff put in the way of that musicality moving outwards and taking voice.
This places events in a new light.Perhaps Robert and the faculty fail to realize that their judgment and expectations of the level one crowd, had (through the law of reciprocity) a pygmalian effect upon the level one folks.
RF: I don't speak for anyone else, so I'll simply state that more was going on for me than this.
This encouraged synergy in reverse, which left us individually and in smaller groups to find satisfaction on our own terms, and not as a whole group. Thus, the circulations were crippled more by the lack of a formation of a group awareness, than by any counting or rhythm handicaps.And whenever we'd hit a wall, Robert seemed to bail out on us, leaving us to "figure it out" on our own.
RF: What a creep, that Fripp: deserting the Level One & leaving them to come to their own understanding of a challenge!
Further evidence that we were not worthy of the staff's confidence and effort.RF: You were not worthy! You were not worthy! Probably, Fripp egged on a caring and benevolent staff to act like creeps, the heel.
For myself, this withdrawl of the staff's confidence in us had the effect of teaching detachment, and letting-go of judgements and expectations. It was an enjoyable and liberating experience to let-go. Well worth the price of admission.RF: Sounds like a winner, then, after all. Maybe put up the price next time?
I just wonder now,in light of reading Robert and Curt's diaries, if the staff intended this lesson, or if it just "happened" as a result of their expectations and judgements of the level ones and the law of reciprocity reflecting the repurcusions back and forth between staff and student?RF: I guess it must have just happened.
I guess they must have planned it.
Are those my only two alternatives?
In other words, I'm wondering if a skillful staff helped to teach us a valuable lesson in looking without judgement, or if I just on my own salvaged meaning from what was otherwise a trainwreck?RF: I guess a skilful staff helped teach you a valuable lesson in looking, without judgement.
I guess Joseph just on his own salvaged meaning from what was otherwise a trainwreck.
Are those my only two alternatives?
An alternative two choices:
Things are not as they seem.
Neither are they otherwise.
RF: Is this a rhetorical question?
RF: Is Matthew sure that this is a wise decision?
Robert recently made the comment in his diary that he does not need a place in which he likes to work, but rather a place in which his work is possible. This comment pertains to the environment that has existed at shows where he has playedRF: No, it doesn't.
It refers to all, anywhere & everywhere I work. In terms of sequential time, the amount of time I spend on stage is very small.
and he has decided he will not accept behavior from attendants which is not completely curtious in nature.RF: No, I have not.
Courtesy is too much to ask from people, particularly in relationships which are mediated by commerce. I am grateful exceeding should courtesy be offered, but I do not demand or expect it. I hope for politeness & ask for consensuality.
The comment he made in his diary is one of the most ridiculous things i have heard in my life.RF: Matthew should read more.
One may execute work in any place, be it hostile or friendly.RF: Agreed, although the form & manner or working changes in response to the "atmosphere" of hostility or friendliness.
Working in an unfolding moment, such as through improvisation, is a particularly "atmosphere sensitive" strategy. In improv it is often easier to see / hear the visible / audible outcome as influenced by the context (rather than when working from a score, for example).
All things will have an impact on the work in an equally beneficial manner.RF: No, they won't.
In hostile sit
"Music is the architecture of silence."
