Robert Fripp's Diary

Bredonborough.

19.43

Rain began, again, around 09.30 and persisted until the early afternoon.

The Minx, booked to headline a show tonight in Bury St. Edmunds, as part of the town’s festival, called at various points throughout the day to relate stories of unmoving traffic on the way to the gig. Then, she called with news that the festival site was waterlogged & her performance had been cancelled. She is back & very disappointed. Attempts to find an alternative venue, even for an acoustic set, failed; the open-air site wouldn’t have drained sufficiently to allow people onto it; backstage was precarious. So, the show was pulled.

Abroad-persons will probably be unaware that England has had rain for much of the past 9 days, although the sun is presently shining fleetingly through cloud banks, with dramatic effect in the garden.

Dramatic Clouds…

Garden Wall I…

II…

III…

On the DGM Live Guestbook…

May 25 Diary:: Posted by TheMarkedMan on May 26, 2006 "When you hear music, it’s gone... lost in the air... you can never capture it again." Eric Dolphy circa 1964

As a player who has long argued against recording live music, there is much here that resonates with me.

The very attempt to capture a quality, as if it were a thing & material object, prevents it being "captured". A quality escapes our attempts to pin it down. Rather, when we abandon the attempt, and enter the moment, the situation has just changed: the moment becomes available to us. The question is then, are we available to the moment? This is a practical question, and available to practical answers.

A moment may be transitory, brief if measured by the clock; but a qualitative experience takes us into the eternal. Like, do we remember the first embrace with our Love? Do we recall the opening notes of ... (enter a title of your choice). Even, how can we forget a passing smile of a Mother’s love?

So, what do we do to remember a moment which is, in its nature, ephemeral? There are techniques, and forms of practice, to help us develop a deeper relationship with transitory events. Exceptional events, which present themselves unbidden, impress themselves upon us, regardless of our practice or experience. A qualitative experience, an entry into creative time, by definition puts us into a different relationship-in-time with the moment.

The fragility of the creative moment, its delicacy & vulnerability, its richness only-to-be-held by letting it go, is a tragedy of the creative life; and also what makes it real. So, a reformation of the statement…

When you hear music, it’s arrived, and present in the air… you can never capture this moment, and it will never return. But the quality of this moment is eternal: you may embrace it & carry it with you, as it is also embracing & carrying you.