DGM HQ A cold day
09.54
DGM HQ.
A cold day along the valley. Morning reading…
10.34 On the DGM Guestbook…
Deep Questions about Fripp Aphorisms
:: Posted by DeVito on February 01, 2012
"A lie divorces who we are from what we are."
But what if we are a liar?
Then we are not.
Off to the second funeral of the week.
18.54 The DGM Parking Lot I…
II...
… and to Gravel Hill to celebrate the life of Bertha Stevens…
… the widow of
Bernard Stevens the composer, and Mother of Cathy Stevens. Cathy is well known within the GC Team as Alexander Teacher, viola player and Wild Card member of The OCG III. The picture of Bertha was taken last November.
A moving, musical service with performance by Cathy and Udo, and recorded music of Bernard.
Then to Don Hardyman in Richmond Park and back to DGM HQ for a kitchen discussion with David over cake I…
II...
First topic: a way forward in one of the DGM distribution territories where there has been a problem
Second topic: my difficulty in accepting that the music industry is fundamentally corrupt, through and through. I know that it is, but I can’t quite grasp that the corruption is all-pervasive and endemic.
When I first moved to London in 1967, went back to visit my Parents in Wimborne and told my Father that the Metropolitan Police were corrupt, he would not believe it. Actually, he couldn’t believe it. Arthur Henry Fripp could not grasp the notion of a British institution, nominally supporting the common and public interest, was bent from the top down.
Operation Countryman showed that my Father’s faith in institutional propriety was ill-placed. Today, the implication of malfeasance on a global scale, without concern by Power Possessors for professional responsibilities towards their clients (at the very least) in the industry of which I remain a part, is too great for me to take on board. It’s rather like saying that we can’t trust a bank manager, or a chartered accountant, or a financial adviser, or the Treasurer of a well-established charity, or a politician, or a journalist on a national newspaper… or a policeman.
What to do? Other than redeem the fallen nature of humanity in short order, best suggestion from our kitchen meeting is to set up professional / political / institutional mechanisms that provide transparency and accountability. Like, who and how many of those within the deeper recesses of The Royal Bank Of Scotland get paid more than Stephen Hester? Who is responsible within Universal for determining their policy of providing UMG downloads of material to which they do not have copyright permission?
There are good people working within the music industry who gravitate there because they love music. There were and are, no doubt, good coppers in the Met. So, how to act against gravity? (First step: to be present. The answer then becomes a practical matter).
Obiter dicta: the current position and power of bankers, their seeming-invulnerability a little dented by the knight-stripping of Fred Goodwin; or, as The Sun put it on the front-page headline, Once A Knight Fred. But the public sacrifice of one former Power Possessor isn’t quite radical reform.
And a call to my Sister, who continues to be boggled by the sheer dishonesty that permeates the institutions of my professional life; noting that institutions are structures that permit actions decided by people within those structures. In other words, self-regulation is not an option. Institutional mechanisms to provide transparency and accountability the next step forward?
A call of good wishes to a member of the GC family who is going into hospital tomorrow for a major procedure.
Good news of the day: David is in DGM SoundWorld I. He has returned to the Creative Process.
23.36 An evening computing. Now done.
DGM HQ at night…
