Robert Fripp's Diary

Bredonborough.

11.41

Rising c. 07.15. Today is Toyah’s birthday. Yippee!

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=565198794133084
https://toyah.net/.

Morning reading, writing…

Recently, I have been reflecting on our individual creative voice. This, an occasional topic with Dr. Andrew Keeling, who characterizes himself as a Jungian; and reading various commentaries along the lines of Art And The Unconscious; cf https://www.academia.edu/14997785/Art_and_the_Unconscious_A_Semiotic_Case_Study_of_the_Painting_Process…

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1400068711?tag=duc08-21&linkCode=osi&th=1&psc=1.

Yesterday I asked Toyah for her views, as one of the most insightful, creative people I know. T’s profound dyslexia has forced her to find ways of processing and conveying her ideas, often in the face of dismissal by persons who process with verbal-intellectual mind. Myself, I engage intellectually with ideas, but second to interacting with the Juice; aka a creative current.

What I call my personal voice, Toyah calls First Voice. I asked her to expand…

FIRST VOICE: I write and l make decisions in my life by what I call FIRST VOICE. This is the very first voice that enters your head when a question needs answering. Let me define “question”... as in a response being needed, to move forward with a notion, a creative urge, a problem or a decision.

The First Voice is the pure voice that responds before an individual’s circumstance can interpret or project onto shaping a thought.

FIRST VOICE is our truth.  Our voice of logic comes from "reward/punishment" experience.

FIRST VOICE comes from our moment of coming into physical being and probably is our "Higher Self" after we pass.

Most people experience this on waking from a long night’s sleep before they remember who they are. So as a creative writer/song writer/ painter/ performer/actress I have always believed the FIRST VOICE guides me to do what the universe intended me to be doing with this life.

On many occasions I have recorded First Voice on paper and gone away from it; eg lyric writing. Then moved away, to make the subject more fashion/trend orientated, only to go back to the First Voice original idea.

BRILLIANT DAY was written in First Voice. It happened in seconds.

Over our nearly thirty-five years together, I have seen Toyah-as-role-model, working against severe physical handicaps, for young and now older women; and read their postings/reports on how T gave them the confidence they needed in their own life trajectories; ie as exemplar.

T is a physically diminutive woman. A little woman. How easy to overlook. With a lisp. How easy to mock. Whose dyslexia enables her to effortlessly provide the English language with alternative renderings. How easy to belittle. And then walk on stage before audiences of between 200-30,000 and, within ninety seconds, own the stage.

I have seen her professional achievements air brushed from history in a breathtaking fashion (examples not given here).

All the while, T continues to write, record, act and perform to a devoted following of “ordinary” people who, quite clearly, have no difficulty in recognizing who and what she is.

Now, something has changed and is continuing to change. I am grateful, and respectful, of Shirley Manson for her recent tweet.

21.56      Celebrating T’s birthday this early afternoon, beginning in the garden…

… and then to present opening and an evening with my Wife.