Robert Fripp's Diary

Bredonborough.

14.35

Rising at 06.46 and over the road to World HQ I…



II...



… for morning reading I…



II...



Onto computing.

11.56    Paper organizing in the Home Study.

14.44    On the DGM Guestbook…

Photos
:: Posted by hakram on February 29, 2012
Please do remember, Mr. Fripp, when fans snap your picture, we are just excited to see you. It is we, the fans, who put you where you are. We, so-to-speak, fund you. I went to an Allan Holdsworth concert. I snapped pictures, talked with him, shook his hand, etc. I even recorded the concert. I was treated with respect. It was a nice experience. I felt removed and distant when I saw you and Belew opening for Porcupine Tree in Boston a few years back.
I’m sure it’s annoying to be mobbed all the time, but that’s the price of fame. I would think that you’d be a little more grateful and gracious towards your fans.  We do, after all, put food on your table.  A couple of old sayings come to mind: Don’t criticize your fans with your mouth full and/or don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
Disillusionally Yours, Mark Holmes

There are precedents for this posting, and responses to it, over many years (please see the ET and DGM archives); including my doubt that posts this dopey and publicly-presented are for real. I’m not sure whether the aim in posting is to provide an easy target for other Guestbookers / myself to comment on how dopey the (purportedly serious) comments are. However, on the assumption that Mr. Holmes comments are as they appear, prima facie…

MH:    Please do remember, Mr. Fripp, when fans snap your picture, we are just excited to see you.

HRVL:    When WillyFred is excited, he pisses on my feet. So when I’m excited, I can do the same to fans, my excitement a sufficient justification?

Debating with anyone who argues that uncontrollable urges are sufficient explanation for uncontrollable behaviour, is not likely to be profitable. Lets hear it for Reason and the Enlightenment!

MH:    It is we, the fans, who put you where you are

HRVL:    Yes, this is very true: I am retired from public performance.

MH:    We, so-to-speak, fund you

HRVL:    More accurately, you funded management, record companies, promoters and agents, and all their employees (not including roadies, engineers, drivers and cars, sound and light companies, tour ‘bus operators, airlines); all of whom passéd on a small proportion to the band/s (and sometimes not) of which I received a proportion in turn, usually between 15-25%. On a solo SoundScape outing, I was usually given 100% of the tab; no proportion of which was passed on to Mr. Holmes, nor to any other excitable fans with consumer rights.

DGM/KC catalogue income is professionally-successful (ie it supports a living but not a retirement-plan), larger than when Virgin was the record company, and proportionally much-much larger than the Grief that was E. But currently record-income (therefore also publishing income) is extremely-prejudiced and negatively-impacted by file-sharing and piracy. Licensing income, such as with Mr. West’s Power, suggests that reliance on record income per se, and therefore reliance on the passions of fans such as Mr. Holmes, is both something of the past (for the non-star working player) and in any case, for several reasons, a folly.

As the son of a small provincial estate agent, my personal wealth is based mainly on the distortions in the UK property market. As the son of a Welsh-miner’s daughter, I never believed that anyone would support me in my old age, middle age, nor any age at all. Hence a work ethic, and savings in the form of a personal pension, does more to support me in my post-mature years than Mr. Holmes with an army of his friends and family members, on a good year or ten.

Mr. Holmes claims that our relationship is based on commerce; and, as a recipient of Mr. Holmes patronage, he has rights to make demands of me, personally and professionally, in any form he chooses to exert; even where this goes directly against my publicly (and frequently) expressed contrary-views. But, if we are not both parties to an agreement, obviously, there is no agreement between us.

Where we demand rights and deny obligations, we assert Entitlement. We have rights where we accept matching obligations. It follows that we may claim Consumer Rights only to the extent that we recognize a consensual professional-relationship, with matching rights and obligations. Fripp as Working Player is obliged, for example, to turn up at a performance and discharge his function at least competently, hopefully honourably. In return, Mr. Holmes and his kin may enter the venue, stand or take a seat, and listen. It is hoped that the performer is reliable in discharging his function, and that the audient is receptive; which does not imply sitting quietly with tight lips, unmoving. Mutual courtesy is a hope, and an aspiration for some.

Where these professional rights are extended on one side without consent by the other - performer taking-advantage of audients, audient making unilateral demands of performer - difficulties arise that often become problematical. Mr. Holmes’ rude post, with its one-sided audient-assumptions-of-consumer -Entitlement, is an example.

There is an entirely different qualitative-relationship possible between artist and audience, to that as indicated by Mr. Holmes; one not mediated by commerce. Here, it is a required of the artist that they are True. For the relationship to come to life, there is also a requirement of the audience; part of which is that the audience lets go of its expectations and demands, and enters the available Moment: which has never been here before, although it is eternal. This is unlikely without practice and, most likely, also training. Demands such as those of Mr. Holmes have lethal effect on qualitative engagement, and show how easy it is to bring about the poverty of so much performance in contemporary culture.

MH:    I went to an Allan Holdsworth concert. I snapped pictures, talked with him, shook his hand, etc. I even recorded the concert. I was treated with respect. It was a nice experience.

HRVL:    It is a case for celebration, that Allan has a new friend for life. And Allan respects Mr. Holmes. I expect he had a nice time, too.

MH: I felt removed and distant when I saw you and Belew opening for
Porcupine Tree in Boston a few years back.

RHVL:    You should have come backstage and had a beer with us.

MH:    I’m sure it’s annoying to be mobbed all the time, but that’s the price of fame.

RHVL:    I’ve never been part of mobbing-all-the-time, but have been subject to ongoing, excessive and intrusive demands at public appearance for over three decades. (This is not the time to discuss the shifts in performer-audience relationship since 1967). But the solitary, determined fan is often more difficult to engage than several fans and enthusiasts together; where there is more likelihood of at least one person being available to manners, reason, even courtesy. Mr. Holmes provides a good case of why fame is not something I have much exerted myself to achieve.

MH:    I would think that you’d be a little more grateful and gracious towards your fans.

URHVL:    But then, Mr. Holmes has not been in my position; so has no experience on which to ground his thinking. True, Mr. Holmes’ sense of Entitlement and demand for attention does not give rise in me to a spontaneous feeling of gratitude.

Grace is a wonderful thing. More accurately, not a thing at all: a quality that moves between and among us all. But, if our head is placed where Entitlement lives, even were Grace to come up and bite us on the butt, we’d probably not notice. But if we did, we’d heave the right to take Its picture and ask for an autograph.

MH:    We do, after all, put food on your table.
URHVL:    Which was then spat upon.

MH:    A couple of old sayings come to mind: Don’t criticize your fans with your mouth full…

URHVL:    Full of crumbs.

MH:    … and/or don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

URHVL:    Were Mr. Holmes to extend a hand of generosity, who knows what response he might receive in return?

MH:    Disillusionally Yours…

URHVL:    Please, be disillusioned. Please also, embrace what is available: which may not be quite what we expect it to be, and might be even richer by far than anything we expected. But, it will not be what we did expect.

Meanwhile, I continue to pay off a largish-mortgage. Mr. Holmes should clearly give me more money.

17.13    An afternoon of paper. To the Piddle and a little sorting of stuff at Barbara’s cottage…



19.59    Evening shopping. Dribble.