Robert Fripp's Diary

16.49

16.49

World HQ.

A day of progressing building work, both moving-forward & catching-up.

Today’s meetings involved plans for constructing bookshelves & converting garages; curtains; picture framing, including the framing of two diagrams in Eno’s own hand. The first: how to generate Frippertronics (with 2 Revoxes); the second: how to generate skysaw guitar (with a VCS3). Eno drew these for me in 1977ish.

Part of yesterday’s ordering-of-stuff day was to pull, from a box in the kitchen, a framed extended-Exposure-word (spoken under the Exposure title track, letter by letter, by Fripp & Eno; written as an instruction-score in the Hit Factory during a session in 1978); and carried from the kitchen to the cellar.

To The Cellar…

On the walls leading down are hung various family items, treasured by my Sister & myself. One is a photo of my Mother & Auntie Evie as children. When they were both visiting Reddish House in April 1992, I knew this would be the last time they would visit Reddish together, and asked them to sign the frame…

Auntie Evie was born in 1912, Edie in 1914, and both were brought up in Aberbeeg, a small colliery village up the hill from Abertillery. Local employment was centred on the Six Bells colliery. Welsh mining-village life centred on the Chapel… and, in keeping with Chapel temperance tendencies, my Mother delivered a certificate-winning lecture on the perils of alcohol…

From the walls of my Mother’s childhood home…

My Mother’s Mother, probably c. 1910…

These, and other personal joys, I see each time I descend into the cellar. Into the cellar…

Exposure I…

Looking right – what’s that? It’s the original Pete Frame Family Tree that once hung on the wall of EG at Blenheim House…

Looking left: a barometer (that once hung at Red Lion House) & also brought down the stairs yesterday…

Back up the stairs to the Room At The Top, where I am currently working. Artwork by Belew …

On the opposite wall, groaning shelves…

18.55  Today’s e-flurry has been complicated by the continual crashing of AOL, although made possible once again by Firefox.

Several posters to the guestbook of DGMlive have enquired as to whether Sunday All Over The World & Frippertronics tapes will be made available for download in the near future. The quick answer is, it depends what you mean by near. Now that the very worst of Endless Grief repercussions have stopped unsettling our existence, the weight of its bad history lifted, DGM aims to maintain a balance between catalogue (historic), archiving (past-creative) & new (future-creative) projects.

Sid’s picture (Ask Sid II:: Posted by Sid Smith on Fri., Jan 6, 2006  Picture This) of a very small firm, punching well above its weight, is accurate.

David Singleton’s work at DGM is mostly unknown, uncredited, under-appreciated & unrewarded. He also has 4 children & is a governor of the village school (the recipient of School Aid). David is 43, generally leaves DGM HQ late, and has a highly creative sense that his duties at DGM have consistently thwarted. I am 59 and have never had (what I understand as) a personal life. After 20 years of marriage, I’d like to begin to see my Wife on a regular basis. I have an ongoing responsibility towards Guitar Craft, my proper work in life; would like to play with various musicians of past, present & future acquaintance, in addition to solo Soundscapes; see old & new friends before they die (as happened with 3 of them in 2002 when I was abroad, and earlier this year with Aunt Phyllis); a vast amount of material waits to be ordered & arranged that, when I fly away, settling my estate & affairs is simple & straightforward; and more is required of me before I am buried according to the rites of the English church, and this necessitates ongoing reflection, learning, researching, studying & advancing my capacity.

No complaints: I am grateful for the expression of interest in my past work. Frippertronics will be made available for download in the near future.