10.55
Rising 06.20. Morning Exercise walking down the cold garden.
I Advance Masked – Day Thirty-Five…
Maureen ahead of me in Tesco.
Morning reading…
… and listening: Ligeti and Finzi. Not quite getting a rhythm.
Further listening and recapitulating Music For Quiet Moments and diaries of the time. Today, re-visiting Mendoza, Argentina, a favourite and much-missed town, at the beginning of June 2007 with RF & The League Of Crafty Guitarists.
DGM Diary for Friday 1st. June, 2007;
Hotel Quite Acceptable, Mendoza…
A member of the GC community has e-written expressing some concern that the proposed not-for-profit Guitar Craft Institute of Research & Practice may follow the fate of a number of other comparable bodies into becoming a rigid, arid and fixed orthodoxy of GC true believers, a distant echo of living Guitar Craft.
From the reply…
It is a requirement that any not-for-profit body presents itself as a formal institution, which is why the RLH was run as "a business" - distrust altruism, but you can trust people who want to make a buck! For practical reasons, it seems the best current approach is for the Guitar Craft Institute of Research & Practice.
Any institution is an external structure, created that an internal grace may have a form through which to enter the world. Any institution will seek to perpetuate itself, rather than continue to exist as a vehicle for grace. This is a contradiction, but a necessary one. The danger is that the institution persists when its time has gone…
Much of my professional life has been directed towards creating an appropriate structure for music not-professional-in-its-intent to enter the world. An inevitable struggle results and is ongoing. The various structures only work when they are hands-on and accepted as part of the work. We would not be touring Argentina now were it not for Hernan promoting and arranging it himself: the professional characters have all said that our approach "is not possible!". Well, they're right: it wouldn't work for good professionals.
The quick overview: formal structures are a necessary limitation and tend to work for as long as the founders are actively engaged. Left to their own devices, they will inevitably go off course.
The original GC Services was a disaster, and cost a lot of money. It's driving force was a man who went mad... Nevertheless, it facilitated early GC developments, which were necessary. NB the GCS office was geographically a long way from where I lived.
Guitar Craft: when various Crafties talk about GC, it's mostly Level Two cluelessness - commentaries of witlessness based on misunderstanding. Even from very good people.
This particular (proposed) GC institute is well-named, a particular concern for me. The name states the aim and, with a clear aim, the direction is set. For as long as I am geographically and personally close to its centre of operations, it is a goer (as with RLH). If it goes off course, it will cease to exist.
Q: How should GC be best represented in the world?
A: By the quality of our work. Good work is tangible. It emanates. It has a flavour we grow to recognise, and use as a benchmark against which to set our own efforts.
00.27
A full house, supportive and generous, although the incomprehension for Soundscapes was tangible. Hernan confirmed my sense of this, noticing fidgeting in chairs and restlessness. Good incremental additions by The LCG to two of their pieces, following on from last evening’s rehearsals, and they rocked out.
An announcement was made, prior to the performance, re: photography and recording. This was written by RF just before doors opening. The usual announcement by a venue-person tends to be along the lines of:
This is forbidden! If you do this you are bad people! This is wrongness! Obey this edict! Or your fallen natures will be shown before men and karmic retribution will fall upon you immediately if not shortly afterwards!
Just about the kind of announcement that would have any decent person heaving in their seat while puling out a mobile phone with camera that they had no intention of using. Our announcement was translated by Kabusacki.
Wonderful post-show catering by the Govinda Vegetarian Restaurant I…
II…
18.57 Returning to today in Bredonborough, lunch by the back door…
Giving myself permission to walk-away from an overwhelming in-box, to the Cellar - twice! - and assume the title of Working Player: guitarist.
Watering. We are blessed to have a garden, especially at Times-Such-As-We-Are-In. The garden, in return, requires our attention; currently, watering. A contemporary and personal take on Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Déjeuner_sur_l%27herbe…
… by the artist Althea Wynne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Althea_Wynne. Althea and her husband, Tony Barrington Brown, were exceptionally kind to us on our first Christmas at Reddish House in 1987 when we knew no one in the area. Althea, Tony and their families invited us to join them for their Christmas.
The Rite Of Spring is also by Althea Wynne…
"Listening is a craft.
Hearing is an art."
