Robert Fripp's Diary

Wolfie the Great is with

22.26

The Late Shift tonight features guest star Pat Mastelotto.

We are listening to ProjeKct Four's second night in San Francisco. O listening community, wait until you hear Pat's batterie on this. The book of Crim drumming is about to be rewritten.

Your Diarist has just returned from a round trip to London, delivering my Wife's repaired car to her and returning with the borrowed garage vehicle.

Our today at DGM World Central has been a day of accounts and paper. Mr. Big Cheese Accountant visited from London to undertake a detailed examination of our figures. Only music (from P4) at the end of the afternoon was enough to revivify my spirits from the experience of dying in the mundane. That, and a brief visit to Don Hardyman in Bournemouth for a remedy to vestibular neuritis, are the highspots of my day.

This is the first accountant, in my entire professional life, in whom I have full confidence that:

1. My interests are being represented / protected;
2. Mr. Big Cheese is on top of his game;
3. Mr. Big Cheese is ahead of my game.

Stories of the other three accountants in my professional life are salutary, and worth telling at the right time and place to the right persons.

Yes! Another highspot of my day: the amazing rhythm section of T. Lev & Pat Mastelotto powering along.

A fax from Tony today: he continues to await definitive touring plans from Seal.

Guestbook Comments:

1. Arica Institute: perhaps read William Patrick Patterson's "Taking With The Left Hand" (1998)?

2. Happy Christmas John & Joan.

3. Guitar Craft in the UK?

Wildly unlikely. Fripp doesn't have a voice for the English. Neither do the aims and ethos of Guitar Craft sit easily in an English context.

This leads to a discussion of what "English" might imply: like, for example, the affectation of mediocrity; not "getting above yourself"; continuing resonances of class distinction; a culture permeated by envy, negativity & passivity. We might add to that increasing bureacracy & central control, following the Continental model.

4. Studio albums (eg "THRAK") as "real" albums: how are studio albums "real"?

Studio albums are artificial, "unreal" constructs which (usually) function as establishing or defining the score, rather than a performance of the score. Both studio and live performance albums have their place.

Your place, my place?

5. Does objective art exist?

Yes, but it's not like "art" as we know it. Objective art has nothing whatsoever to do with "self expression", for example. So, we may find ourselves looking at a building which is an objective presentation of (shall we say) eternal principles without realising that this building is "art".

A clue: objective "artists" are commonly anonymous, and objective artworks are (typically) the product of a group, or team, or school of "artists" working together.

Another clue: objective art has a functional component. The "artwork" is not a cerebral construct detached from the practice of living; although reflection and mentation is also part of the function of the "artwork".

Another clue: objective art carries a "charge". We may experience this viscerally, although our feelings are particularly responsive to the "message" or "information" presented by / within the "artwork". We may find our feeling responses to "objective art" to be complex, even simultaneously contradictory. Like & dislike, happy & sad, have nothing to do with this.

Example: in 1979 the Town Hall in La Grande Place, Brussels, reached out and sang to me.

Example: there are forms of dance which I consider to be objective artworks, but they fall outside the realm of aesthetics and our commonplace discussions of "the beautiful".

Example: in 1981, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, I looked at, and saw, Picasso's "Guernica" and wept. But I don't consider "Guernica" to be objective (universal) art; rather subjective art (a particular or limited point of view) of a high order.

Clearly, all of this says more about Fripp than whatever objective art might be.

23.52

Chris Murphy has joined us as a P4 "X-chayn-jiZ" squerns into action.

This afternoon Jacob Heringman attempted to travel here from London on the same South-West train that ignominiously dumped David Singleton & other passengers last week in Basingstoke last week. Jacob didn't arrive at the scheduled time.

00.01

Your diarist is feeble and about to dribble, so I shall leave the Late Shift to David, Pat & Chris.