Robert Fripp's Diary

A young cat is the

11.10
An e-flurry is underway. Part of this is Sidney Smith related. Yesterday Sid sent 3 more chapters in "The Unpleasant History Of King Crimson". These chapters deal with the later stages of Crim and, in response for sending them, comes a question --

A fair question from the Sidney. My response below. Were this answer to have been given at the time, no doubt it would have provoked even more hostility from the English music press than I/we attracted at the time. Today, at age of 55, I am perhaps allowed to take a mature interest in matters that attract mature consideration.

Adrian's title.

My explanation would be more technical: the progression from dyad to triad, from opposition to reconciliation, from man + woman to family: father - mother - child.

The artwork is a reduction from a painting of my essence brother Peter Willis, which is his presentation of a reconciliation of Western & Eastern Christianity. At a very difficult time in my life I was visiting him in Cornwall, and the painting was on the bedroom wall. It spoke to me. The painting is now in Dorset. Front cover has the two elements, representing the male & female principles. The back cover has the third element drawing together & reconciling the preceding opposite terms.

In a sense, this is a continuation and development of the Tantric cover art to LTIA which presents the male & female principles. The geometry behind the sun & moon, if you draw it out, is precise and formal. The form behind Peter's painting is more intuitive, rather than prescribed by a tradition. However, Peter's icon painting is defined by the formal prescriptions of that tradition.

Hope this helps!

11.36
New reading for the morning: Anthony Blake has sent me his most recent writings on Systematics - they are becoming increasingly lucid and valuable; and "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy And Its Consequences" by John Allen Paulos (Hill & Wang 1988). The latter was acquired in an erupting bibliophiliacal tumescence in Hillsboro Village yesterday afternoon, following rehearsals.