Robert Fripp's Diary

Bredonborough Home Yippee The Minx

19.32

Bredonborough.

Home! Yippee! The Minx is baking Tasty Wonder Bread of Joy & Regularity to sustain me until the next journeying away.

The Washington>Heathrow flight was full & the reading light for my seat not working. Not good on a long-haul. We landed ahead of time in a grey London. A taxi to Chez Minx in Chiswick, then tubing to the Japanese embassy on Piccadilly to fill in a visa form.

My instructions were that I had to do this in person. So, 17 hours of journeying & a night without sleep, I found myself processing a visa application in the centre of London, the first time a personal application has been necessary in 25 years of visiting Japan. The first visa-person suggested I return on Friday morning to collect the accredited passport. Well, I don’t live in London, and even if I did, there is a GC event in Dorset on Friday. But the passport could be posted if I had a stamped, addressed envelope. Well, I didn’t, so set off down Piccadilly in search of a post office and/or stationery supplier, pitifully tired & wondering: after 37 years of prominent work, has it come to this? The answer was clear: yes, you have.

Eventually (I do not include the excitements & adventures of obtaining an envelope & stamps) I returned to the embassy be told by the next visa-person that I didn’t have to be there in person, but a representative could have applied for me. The booking agent in London, meanwhile, had visited the embassy website & confirmed, yes, the applicant did have to be there in person.

So, without sleep, tired, wanting to get home for 3 days rather than 2, there he was: hoofing it around Piccadiily doing office stuff.

Home just after 16.05, the Minx back from her own work filming 2 tv shows in London, just 10 minutes before me.

20.15  The DGM Guestbook has this…

Halloween Diary entry:: Posted by rrukrigl on November 07, 2006

So why do we have RF taking a photographs of children (presumably not his own kin)?

It being Halloween should be irrelevant.

I wouldn’t ask this of 99.99% of the populace, but after having read untold RF interviews where he has decried having his photo taken by strangers (presumably fans and not during a performance/meal-understood that those are taboo), I’m sensing a wee bit of hypocrisy.

If I’m wrong, please clarify.  Thank you.

Interesting: why the assumption of hypocrisy by Mr. Rrukrigi? Why assume the negative?

If we recall the lengthy commentaries on the subject of photography, and put aside the issue of preternatural sensitivities (does the action of one person within an event have effect, and if so can that effect be sensed & felt by others within the act, even where there is no apparent/direct sensory information available to support their perception?), the point never replied to by asserters-of-their-photographic-rights (to my knowledge) was this: is the photography consensual?

So, the prime question of the Halloween Monster Wee-Bit-Of-Hypocrisy Pix Question seems to be this: were the Beasties asked permission to be photographed?

Cf from this Diary 3 days ago re: the talk at York University on January 31st. 2001…

At 19.30 Tony Myatt asked the audience not to take photographs or record the talk. Before I walked onto the platform, I asked an autograph hunter waiting by the stage entrance to "excuse us, please". He didn’t move. My Wife had a word with him and he left. So much for the efforts of the young university security man entrusted with the task of protecting the performance space.

The talk lasted for around 45 minutes… Questions were invited, and several good questions were asked. Then, the flash. It was the autographer from backstage. I had planned to take a camera to the talk in case of violation, to flash back. But thought: no, this is absurd. This is a formal talk at a university.

How much is lost through these small actions. How we kill those we claim to love & undermine that which has lead us to them.

So, in return, a question to Mr. Rrukrigi: why did he assume the negative?

Now, an early night with The Minx – yippee! cubed.