Facebook is not an ideal platform, for anyone interested in giving thought to the comments posted there, of Apologia Pro Vita Sua. The postings to date are collected here in a Diary entry, with more accurate formatting and links.
APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA
31october-8november2024
31october2024
John Richards: Robert, I love you; your sort of cerebral, standoffish ways; your voice all caught up in your throat, avoiding the belly, belly laughs, the guts; your avoidance Vega iota maybe spawned by being on the spectrum maybe; but stop answering questions with more questions! That’s a ruse to control the conversation without adding to it.
If you are going to host these supposed dialogs, then engage in a dialog and cut the patriarchal controlling ask another cutesy question.
Or just have some integrity and STOP these one sided unfeeling games you play with the people who post here.
RF: As a generalisation, the form/manner in which most comments/posts are framed act in such a way to prevent me responding to them. For example, Mr. Richards' comments above.
Similarly, many questions are presented in such a way that they prevent an answer being given: there is a level of assumption within the question which denies an answer. I often respond: What is the question you are trying hard not to ask?
So, how to get past all of this? That's a question for me, not Mr. Richards.
Recently, there have been many good posts on the overall subject of how to engage with an artist that we love. This is also a question for me, as with many of the posters.
I am currently working on a reply, and considering how best to present my views on Audience Engagement to those many posters who have taken an interest in the subject.
For which my gratitude.
Very simply, for this post: there are four qualities of engagement. Each quality of engagement has different strategies of how to engage. I have been intentionally examining/employing different strategies since 1980.
Two of these four qualities have been constantly referenced in the recent posts. The two qualities not referenced are those which are my primary focus, in music and in life. When I do refer to these, there is often a reaction along the lines - this is WooWoo!
Hence my difficulty in finding a form of words that convey my strategies in engaging with "fan" approaches. There is a much easier and direct form of expressing these ideas - consult the music. What touches you in this music? Do you have any idea of what it took to get this music into the world?
Clearly, a longer subject and one I am beginning to address.
1november2024
Rules Of Engagement.
I engage with goodwill.
If someone wanders into my world, head placed where sunshine never falls and comments on the weather, good to be prepared for rain.
We are responsible for our comments.
We are accountable for our actions.
We are held publicly accountable for our public actions, including posting and commentary.
We are not asked to passively accept any idea / comment presented to us.
Rather, we are encouraged to test ideas and comments we find surprising: to establish the veracity, or not, for ourselves; and to adopt a position of healthy scepticism while participating in a spirit of critical goodwill.
Opinions are of little value if not drawn from direct experience.
I engage with robust good humour.
1november2024
I
Embracing and engaging our common humanity: recognising, acknowledging, affirming.
Attention is all we properly have in life. To give our attention to what is necessary, to direct our attention to what is in front of us that we have to do/discharge/honour, is already a big ask. But where there is necessity, there must be a response. Otherwise, things fall apart. For the performer, it is necessary that they attend to the performance – their performance, their performing with others, engaging the audience, the performance as a whole. Why? Where the performer is a musician, so that Music may enter our world.
When Music walks in the room and the performance comes to life – what is my experience of this? This is no longer music being played by musicians, audients having a good time – this is another world opening to us, where we are somehow the same person.
For anyone reading this thinking - It’s WooWoo Time and cosmic horseshit! – simply consult your experience. Have you been in a musical situation where your life has been re-directed by the inexpressible/inexplicable power that came into your life with Music? If your answer is no, then our conversation is limited. Otherwise…
If this is within your experience then, whatever words we may choose to use, it’s something like Music is a higher power speaking to us. And there is something higher within us that recognises this, resonates with this, and perhaps may even respond. And that this something higher in the Music, and in the musician, is not apart from this something higher in the audient. I am describing the background to musical performance in the 1960s that re-directed my life, and which had a powerful influence in the wider culture – Music can change the world!
What I can say 55 years later, is that this potential for something higher within us all to recognise and see other, brought together by the power of Music, continues on. This recognition, acknowledgment and seeing of what is higher in each of us, sometimes takes the form of – I am Thee, Thee is me. This recognition, acknowledgement and seeing, is of what is higher: Who we really are.
It is not an acknowledgement of what we are, the parts of us that live in the Basement, that have the right to do whatever they want without responsibility, repercussion and the effect on others - It’s all about me! I come first! – that is, the manifestations of what is lower/lowest in us: the manifestations of egotism.
So, what to do when the parts that live in the Basement, that have the right to do whatever they want without responsibility, repercussion and the effect on others, the manifestations of egotism - seek to pull our attention away from what is necessary, from our aspiration for what is higher, from our wish to be? What to do when lower forces become disruptive?
Seeking to be recognised and acknowledged in our terms, is a demand to be seen as we see ourselves: more What-We-Are than Who-We-Are. Who We Are acts on us, but quietly. Without a place of silence within us, these calls are mostly unheard. But part of us know this, leading to distress, anxieties, problems in our dealings with others, mostly of whom are also bumping around. And these are the decent people.
What happens when we bump into the indecent sort?
IMO the overall theme of discussion seems to centre on this: embracing and engaging our common humanity: recognising, acknowledging, affirming.
2november2024
Embracing and engaging our common humanity…
One of the ongoing frustrations of my life is good people, seeking to engage in human contact person-to-person, do so in such a manner that any real contact is impossible.
Michael Dornbier: Had you been at least, 'acknowledging' that I existed...even looked me in the eye...when I approached you as you were sitting alone out in the venue (Ballard, WA LoCG) before the show...
To acknowledge another, we have to see them. This requires that we are present, and have sufficient attention available to make a connection with them. This requires also, that the other person is present and attentive. Two points: presence, attention.
Presence
I
How to be present? The development of presence begins from a Still Point. Within this Still Point, there is room for Silence to enter. With practice, I may become quiet, relaxed and open. This state is governed by the quality of my volitional attention.
I cannot bring about Silence. But if I am quiet, I find a space where Silence may come to visit and be present within me.
Without a Still Point, a higher quality of action is denied us. Action remains subservient to activity. Room for the freedom of choice and direction, moving from Presence, escapes us. This is the world of our everyday life, of constant reaction, disruption and noise.
II
When we are present, there is Presence. This is tangible and may be sensed by others.
How is this?
Presence is the coherent energy field which surrounds the body. More accurately, Presence is the energy field within which the body is contained. Presence, at a certain point of intensity, can become independent of the body, as if it has an existence of its own. When a person with Presence walks in the room, even if our eyes are closed, we know this. We sense this. Perhaps, we feel this.
In practical terms, how do we develop Presence?
We begin with sensation, to directly experience the presence of life in the body. Am I alive? How do I know I am alive? What is the distinct quality of being alive in this body? Sensation answers these questions.
Then, we strengthen the life of the feelings: we put aside the negative and prepare a place for the positive: Wish, Hope, Faith, Acceptance and Love.
Then, we differentiate between sensation and feeling: the life in the body and the life of the heart. Then, we bring them together. This blending of sensation and feeling, and perhaps something more, gives rise to a particular and distinct quality of experiencing ourselves. We are experiencing our Presence.
Monday 30th. September, 2024;
Middle England.
https://guitarcraft.com/presence/
Attention is a natural property of the angels. The good news: attention is also possible for us. The bad news: but not naturally. More good news: we may develop the power of attention.
But only if we Wish.
3november2024
To engage with others requires that we are available to engage.
Simple, unadorned comments where KC, and other music associated with me, supported people in their lives - good times, bad times, and times in between – these I cherish. They support my life, which has itself had some batterings.
I have experimented directly with various ways of engaging with audients, and those who have taken an interest in my work, since Frippertronics at the Kitchen, NYC, Sunday 5th. February, 1978 through to Soundscapes at the Winter Garden, World Trade Center on Friday 10th. December, 2010.
https://dgmlive.com/tour-dates/1231?artist=2&year=1978&liveshow=on
https://dgmlive.com/tour-dates/2331?artist=2&year=1978&liveshow=on
https://queernewyorkblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/robert-fripp-soundscapes-live-at-winter.html
https://dgmlive.com/tour-dates/2603?year=2010&liveshow=on
Mark Fenwick of EG opposed the small-scale, human-level performances of the 1979 Frippertronics touring with the Exposure album.
MF: They’ll see the Emperor has no clothes!
RF: The Emperor has no clothes.
Four Forms Of Engagement
Four Forms Of Engagement: The Basement, Ground Floor (England, First Floor US), First Floor (England, US Second Floor), Roof Garden.
The Basement: Characterised by fixity: opinions, behaviour and all forms of conduct, beliefs and thinking processes, prejudices, like and dislike. This court is ruled by egotism. Anyone that does not acknowledge Me is an affront. It is a lonely place because Little Me does not see beyond itself. Perhaps this why attention is demanded: to persuade myself that I Am when, at a certain level, I know i am not.
The world of fandom: You do what I want you to do because I have the right! Any right! I give you money! I only want to say hello! I only want to say thank you! What I really want is for you to acknowledge that Me is important.
Engagement is characterised by rudeness, unkindness, dishonesty, non-consensual actions which are then justified. What does my behaviour need your agreement? It’s all about me! And because it’s all about me, you have no say in the matter! It’s nothing for you to give me your autograph – it’s only a little thing for you! Photography! Autography! Viddying! Recording! You can’t stop me anyway!
Young emotional life of whatever age.
Ground Floor (First Floor US): We are aware of each other. Engagement is governed by manners and politeness. Adult engagement.
The First Floor (Second Floor US): We are conscious of each other. Engagement governed by courtesy. Engagement is intentional. An outcome of practice over years.
The Roof Garden: Encounter. We recognise each other through and within each other. An outcome of practice over many years.
How to deal with Basement engagements?
From my own experience…
Run away.
Decline to engage.
Block.
Seek to raise the frequency level…
One technique is to present a shock to the person making a demand, to “loosen up” the fix on what they believe they want (when something far more valuable may be available).
The application of reason: to present arguments as to why the demand is inappropriate.
To behave otherwise.
To make a gesture.
To give a look.
To make a joke.
To make an unexpected comment.
To challenge the reason for the demand.
To call out the assumption.
Sometime this has had (what I would subjectively judge as) a beneficial effect: human contact became available, if only for a moment.
Is inappropriate conduct “forgivable”? Every hour of the day, every day of the week.
Is inappropriate conduct excusable? Rarely IMO.
Is inappropriate conduct defensible? Rarely IMO. Although frequent in my professional life. There seems to be a process:
Outrage may persist for years, in recent online examples, even some for 35 years.
4november2024
Is this the right time?
These are my generally applicable criteria for engagement: time, place, person, circumstance. For example, is this the right time and place for these particular people to engage in this particular activity?
This is my specific criterion for engagement while in performance-mode, where my attention is directed towards walking onstage and rocking out: does this support my performance?
In developing presence, being here in this moment, now, and knowing if for a certainty, requires the development of volitional attention. A practical difficulty, especially for those whose practice takes place in the everyday world, where personal relationships and simple human engagement are increasingly mediated by commerce, social media and technology, is that our attention is constantly being drawn from us.
A musician of presence holds themselves in place, their skills and experience available, that Music may directly play the musician. If the musician’s presence is diminished by their attention being taken from them, Music’s entry to our world is undermined.
How to protect our attention being taken from us? Because if it is, I become less present. If I become less present, I become less able to honour my role as musician.
My attention is attracted away from me by soft forms such as television, advertising, scary headlines generating fear, and allowing myself the associations that follow. In a sense, I consent to this. I allow my attention to be drawn. How to deal with this? To strengthen my practice of Presence. This is difficult, but only difficult.
My attention is taken from me without my consent: this is problematic.
If our primary aim is to serve Music, then any attempts – ignorant, careless, unknowingly, knowingly, intentional, et al – to undermine the process of Music being realised though any performance within which I am directly involved, is likely to piss me off. Anyone who comes into my space, and undermines my capacity to be present and honour the performance, is likely to experience rejection.
There are degrees of intrusion, such as misjudging the conditions of time, place, person, circumstance.
Fan: I only want to say thank you! I only want to say hello! I only want…
Q: Is this the right time, is this the right place, is this the right situation?
Where the agent acts intentionally, knowing their conduct is non-consensual, and especially where hostility is involved, are occasions where I move to defend myself. The widely-accepted industry injunction is: Protect The Talent.
7november2024
Questions, questions…
I am setting my affairs in order, a mess after decades of outer movement and touring.
My present stage, in the process of a life, is one of recapitulation: to digest my experience in the past that it may inform, direct and nourish my tomorrow.
So while I am measuring / weighing the past, with the aim of releasing me tomorrow, today I am in between. To re-enter my experience of before requires of me that I enter my experiencing now, in this moment. That is, I must strengthen my presence in this very moment: recapitulation requires that I am present, now.
I address the mechanics of the past, who was involved, what took place and where, the fact and function of the What. The How is also necessary. What was the actuality that enabled an event to become what it was?
The Why, the value of an event, re-experiencing the past to inform, nourish, liberate, lift and invigorate me today, to prepare my tomorrow – wow! This is a different bag of bananas. I discover “past” events that are more present to me today than they have ever been. When I return and re-enter into them, I sometimes find that answers, guidance, information are available with which I was unable to fully engage at the time but which part of me somehow knew to be of value. And here they are, still with me.
An intentional event persists in time.
A creative event keeps going for even longer than that.
My gratitude to those who take an interest in my work sufficiently for them to visit this page. I suggest we have more in common, more that brings us together, than not.
Many questions come in to FB. Some, I read and feel my heart sink. I feel pulled down by questions that are multiple, indirect, unclear, unkind (to whoever it may be), rude, hostile opinions and criticisms masqueraded as questions. There are sites better available, and seemingly welcoming, for the expression of nastiness. Progressive Ears, Reddit, KC fan sites, prog music sites – head on over.
Goodwill is a quality rarely available without cultivation and practice.
I would have thought it clear, to sharp-witted visitors and those of some acuity, that my attempts at courting popularity, obsequiousness and flattering commentary, have failed so utterly that this may not actually be my aim in having an online presence.
7november2024
House Rules Of Engagement.
We accept responsibility for our comments.
We accept accountability for our actions.
We accept public accountability for our public actions, including posting and commentary.
We are polite.
Questions that are easily answered on the internet are better answered on the internet.
We are not asked to passively accept any idea / comment presented to us.
Rather, we are encouraged to test ideas and comments we find surprising: to establish the veracity, or not, for ourselves; and to adopt a position of healthy scepticism while participating in a spirit of critical goodwill.
Opinions are of little value if not drawn from direct experience.
I engage with goodwill.
I engage with robust good humour.
If someone wanders into my world, head placed where sunshine never falls and comments on the weather, good to be prepared for rain.
If these House Rules are unacceptable, best to go elsewhere.
Alternatively, to borrow an expression from my old buddy Adrian Belew, colleague of many years: Take a long sip of my ass.
8november2024
In seeking to raise the frequency level of engagement…
In seeking to raise the frequency level of engagement, in order to see the humanity of the other person directly, I have used different approaches at different times, places and situations. For example…
Michael Dornbier: …I approached you as you were sitting alone out in the venue (Ballard, WA LoCG) before the show…
Often I go out into the auditorium/performance space, collect myself, feel the energy/spirit of the place, and tune the air to welcome in the performance.
Michael Dornbier: ...just to say, 'Thank you'...before being accosted by two big ass dudes…
It is an axiom - Protect The Talent. I note that most attempts and efforts to provide “protection” and “security” for the artist fail to do so and often generate unfortunate repercussions, even the opposite to that of the originating aim: enabling the performer to perform without disruption to their process. Rather than bringing people together, security can keep them further apart. Resentments are generated, often reasonably IMO, regardless of punter expectations.
Conventional security at rock shows is problematic, for several reasons on several levels. Only a few examples…
1. Security personnel are not usually subtle operators and require clear direction and handling. Example: KC 2014-2021.
2.
i) Security personnel have their own agenda; eg regular security at specific venues are more interested in protecting the perceived interests of the venue than the interests of that night’s performers. The local punters will keep returning to that space and get miffed if their entirely reasonable demands made of the artist, and expectations of how the artist responds, are frustrated - specific examples at KC shows: no viddying, no photography, no recording. The artists won’t be back for at least two years, the punters will be back next week. Whose interests are security most likely to protect? Example: KC at Toronto Massey Hall 2003.
ii) Individual security persons using their access to artists to bring friends back-stage for selfies et al. Contemporary examples available.
3. Security staff are toughies out to provoke a punch-up. (Example: KC Bristol Top Rank 1972. Although I seem to remember this as Cardiff, which would have been the Capitol Theatre in either 1971 or 1972. The security staff threw the PA speakers down the stairs to help KC roadies pack up our gear).
4. Individual security persons refrain from engaging in confrontation with members of the public. I have no objection to security staff protecting their wellbeing in front of threatening behaviour. (My physical wellbeing has also been threatened: 30th. or 31st. October 2000 following the KC show at Park West, Chicago. A car of audients followed us back to the hotel and when, in the hotel forecourt I declined autography, Pat Mastelotto had to restrain the enraged audient from following me into the lobby and punching me out).
5. Disruption to other audients and the performance through the operation of security.
No security staff are authorised to speak on my behalf, including those at Ballard, and Robert Fripp does engage, but not where this prejudices his performance. The form of engagement is not necessarily in the form demanded by the innocent - who only wanted just to say “Thank you”.
Fripp was afraid of having his soul stolen…
Posted on FB 11march2022: Andrew Spitzer: A signature is a talisman, and Fripp was afraid of having his soul stolen.
At Washington Square Church with The League Of Crafty Guitarists, April 11/12th. 1988, of two young men, probably teenagers, one reached out and touched me as The League Of Crafty Guitarists were promenading past them in a confined space. He turned to his friend with laughing face and a – I’ve done it! – look, as if they had set themselves a dare: the task of touching Fripp. These two young men had come to get me (I believe not maliciously) and they did. My experience was of energy instantaneously leaving my presence. In the traditional form of words, I sensed a loss of virtue - "Somebody hath touched me: for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me".
This is one of the subtleties of performance life, actuality and not imagination.
Historically, online reports of how I experience the attention of those who exercise various rights over my person have been met with disbelief (primarily by those who are exercising these presumed rights). An example, photography, much of which in my professional life has been predatory. One criterion for assessing this: how many photographers, knowingly requested to refrain, have continued snapping away with the intention of contributing to the performance?
But perhaps this is simply another example of Fripp’s cosmic horseshit.
Joan Bull: Women understand this concept especially.
Leslie Stevens>Joan Bull: agree :(
Entering the performance space…
We enter the performance space intentionally. For example, paying attention to the first footfall over the threshold.
The Four Primary Injunctions…
The First Injunction, when entering a performance space: Define the space. It is sacred.
The Second Injunction: Organise the space. That is, introduce a higher level of order to the conditions we find.
The Third Injunction: Protect the space. There will be many with attitude who seek to draw on the energy of the event, and pounce when sensing vulnerability.
The Fourth Injunction: Hold the space. This determined by the quality and intensity of our presence.
"If we wish to know, breathe the air around someone who knows."
