Pat & Chris are vibrating away with P4, and I'm listening to the World Financial Centre, first lunchtime show, for John Schaefer.
The At A Distance Course initiated by the Seattle Guitar Circle, which began on the 14th. November, completes today.
This is from a recent posting to Frank Sheldon of the Seattle Guitar Circle, in respect of that project, and is presented here as a Blast From The (Present & Ongoing) Past:
Inaugural Letter to the Second Guitar Craft (US) Level Three.
August 29th. 1989.
Claymont Barn,
CHARLES TOWN,
West Virginia 25414.
Dear Team,
Just below the surface of what we call our day-to-day world lie riches. The "surface" is how we see the world and believe it to be. If in a moment this overlay, this veneer of interpretation, lifts we find a new world. Not a new world of clever intentions, political theorising and utopian devising, but a new world - the real world. We may like it, or not, but it is not a fiction. If we dislike it, then at least we have something real to dislike, if we may.
Probably, everyone here has experienced a lifting of the veil of everyday perception, and has some sense of what is behind it. Most of us have had some sense of this at a Level One course, and this is an aim of the Level One: to enable a direct experience of what is real within the musical life, and our individual lives.
An aim of the Level Three course is to establish a personal practice sufficient to bring ourselves and the real world into closer relationship and accord. Actually they are not apart, but in our normal state we are not present to it. Our work at Level Three is to practice the making of efforts. When we bring intention to bear upon an habitual or mechanical activity, our state changes. When our state changes, we have an opportunity. When we have an opportunity, we have another opportunity.
There are different kinds of efforts, and it is necessary that we learn to distinguish between them. Otherwise, we make the wrong kind of effort, and lose an opportunity. We are different kinds of people, and each of us finds greater ease or difficulty with a different kind of effort.
There are three areas within which we make these efforts of different kinds: physical, mental and emotional. This is what is meant by the expression that a musician has three disciplines, of the hands, the head and the heart. Each day we should place some demand upon each of these faculties. Each of us is unbalanced in our development of these faculties, and the harmony of their operation.
But, we begin by doing nothing. While we are doing nothing, we watch ourselves doing nothing. It is crucial that this observation of ourselves is impartial. We see ourselves as we would a well-loved friend. We make no judgements, we accept ourselves as we are, and no mistakes are made - save one: the failure to remain impartial. As long as we maintain our impartiality we are outside, and observing this creature within whom we live. Otherwise, we become enmeshed within the creature and its concerns.
As participants within this course, we have three areas of responsibility:
i) Ourselves, and our personal work;
ii) The house, the property and the community of which it is a part;
iii) Guitar Craft. Guitar Craft involves all the people that have a measure of commitment to this project, and the power behind Guitar Craft's appearance in the world. We may call this power the power of music, or the operation of the muse. But when we stand face to face with music, we see for ouselves what lies behind this particular quality. When we have seen this for ourselves, in this finer sense, we also have a responsibility to what lies behind music.
When this is a real idea, and not just a bright idea, the three responsibilities are the same responsibility. In Guitar Craft we refer to this responsibility in the principle: Honor necessity.
18.25
Adrian Belew has been suffering with Devil bug all week. Ade continues to sound pretty feeble.
"Assume the virtue."
