Train Leaving Matsumoto En Route To Tokyo.
On this day in 1984 my Father flew from this world. On this day in 2003 the Crims are hurtling towards a series of performances in Tokyo.
At 04.00 this morning, when I woke suddenly, it was very quiet; particularly quiet for a room overlooking railway tracks. Then, for most of the remaining 4 hours before A Happy Gigsters' Loud Alarm went off, a series of dreams that shared the characteristic that I believed myself to be awake while experiencing them. This is what most of normal life is, except we may not carry a reliable alarm clock.
Lobby call for 09.35 and the Crim party walked to the railway station one hundred yards away. The return journey to Tokyo provides another opportunity to catch up on e-mail. From one e-letter to a correspondent --
i have had confirmation that the european tour is a go, although the details at beginning & end are still to be finalised. this has been an exceptionally difficult one to organize..
a measure of fear, if not quite dread, accompanies me when anticipating this tour. we are setting off into strange territories where performance practices are not quite the ones i find most supportive... hiding is my current active strategy for most of our touring: were that it might be otherwise.
we will be playing recent & current repertoire, so this won't be a greatest hits package, more a current-thinking-on-what-it-is-to-be-crimson. the listening may be challenging & i'm not sure i would describe the evening as entertaining!
13.32
Hotel Acceptable, Tokyo.
Yippee! A room with a bed and Ethernet access! And with enough room to open two suitcases & a guitar case simultaneously!
21.27
Why not? As in, why not play an F#-C chord when the rest of the band is happy with F-B? Why not re-write an ascending string line in Dangerous Curves so that none of the notes fit with the accompaniment?
More interesting even than this: to be aware of the presence of King Crimson standing, enveloping the band. Probably, more accurately, a sense of the creative intelligence that gave rise to the music & which the music embodies. This was interesting. I have recently had the sense, several times, of Level Five embracing the band while we were playing it, and this was essentially an extension of that. Why should I be experiencing this, I wonder? Perhaps --
Partly, because I/we are now moving to a point where the notes are sufficiently inside the bodies that we are more available to the music.
Partly, we are now better able to embody the spirit that gives rise to us/the music.
Partly, I/we am/are getting better at what I/we do.
Partly, I am continuing to give myself permission to do whatever I need to support my performance.
Partly, may we have faith in the inexpressible benevolence of the creative impulse.
This evening, for the first time, all the Crims were working with in-ears and/or headphones. The in-ear system doesn't quite work for me, but headphones are straightforward. I have many years experience working with cans in studios, so this was not a giant leap. I lift the left headphone, to better sense the ambience onstage & in the room, while the right gives me aural proximity in real time (the house comes with time delay) to my Band Buddies.
A supportive & generous audience. Japanese performance practice, for Crimson, inclines towards restraint during the performance & a possible eruption at the end. This approach is diametrically opposite to the standing-at-the-front-and-whooping US model, and works for me just as well in an entirely different way. With a quiet audience, the dynamics are given full opportunity to be, well, dynamic.
Masa Matsuzaki from WowWow & Tami from UMJ, were both at the show last night. Both were in San Francisco, and felt last night was the better show. I agree. I enjoyed the venue at SF, but that particular performance was punctured.
Good & tasty sweet bean-treats were waiting backstage, the kind that have the softness of my Wife's lips. I explain to the band that when I miss my Wife too much, I hold these bean treats gently and kiss them. The band looks askance at this comment & seems increasingly to consider me perverse, if not quite perverted.
In the van, on the way back to the hotel, I remarked that 56 is old for a person in this kind of life, but that 57 (next month) is simply absurd. I have already outlived Mahler by five years and wonder what he would have to say on this. Ade has no doubt: 57 is a fine age to tour the world with Crimson.
Meanwhile, we are persuading the young Japanese woman that translates for us to adopt the Crimson honk. So far, she has honked only occasionally and without enthusiasm, as if this were a silly thing to do. In encouragement, we helpfully attempted a spelling of this for her. Eeerrrgggghhhhhhh! was one suggestion, honKc another (with a silent K & c).
"The only contribution we make is the quality of our work."
