Patricia leaves with plans to market Brother as a speaker. She has left strict instructions that I get to work, edit and prepare recordings of the talks / discussions with audiences after Soundscape performances, and send her some material very very soon.
My Sister has always been an unqualified supporter of her Brother's work. Without her personal and practical help over many years neither DGM nor Brother would be here now, continuing to present themselves to the world. In the early, and hard, days of RF as aspirant professional musician through to the appalling days of the EG litigation, the bottom-line support of both my Mother and Sister was a vital, crucial, reliable foundation.
So, to slightly anticipate the announcement on Miss Patricia Fripp's website, let it be known that Robert Fripp is now available for speaking engagements, lectures, presentations, on his own or with his Sister. There may well be marketing opportunities for interested attendees to buy stuff.
Sister is able and qualified to talk to any group or meeting. I'm not sure whether anyone would be interested in listening to me speak unless they have been touched in some way by music associated with my name . But, firstly, I respond to encouragement and, secondly, my Sister has told me what to do so I'd better obey her.
13.30
The music playing is a Soundscape from the G3 tour, currently visiting the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium on September 30th. 1997. Mike Kenneally is soloing and Stu Hamm is laying down the bottom end. A flurry of Flying Kenneally! Go Mike! This man's talent is severely underrated.
Dual archiving is underway: Soundscapes and Mr. Bennett. The material, historically, goes back to 1948. One paper is a transcription of pupils meeting with Mr. Gurdjieff in Paris. Another transcipt (1951) is of a meeting which includes Mr. Bennett, Jane Heap, Kenneth Walker & Madame Tracoll. They are discussing the future, and whether "The Work" should move outwards into the world, or remain within the circle: "Bennett is like a queen bee," says Jane Heap.
At Sherborne House, I was given responsibility for the tape store - probably because guitarists who made records were assumed to know something about cassette and reel-to-reel tapes. The main task was preparing tapes to be transcribed by other students during their office shifts. I suggested editing and making available Mr. Bennett's talks on a large scale: tape sales on a small scale were underway before Mr. B.'s death in December 1974. To date, 53 talks have been released.
My responsibility for the tape store is not yet discharged. In time, all the original cassettes and reel-to-reel tapes (going back to the 1950s) will be transferred to the digital domain and ready for the needs of a new generation. The tapes from Mr. Bennett's visit to the Shivapuri Baba in Katmandu (1962) were on tiny spools running at 1 7/8 ips (professional quality begins at 15 ips and, for current analogue standards, 30 ips).
20.18
The Expurgated Revelations of Hulbert Frott continue to unfold without further insights to "Harts' Parts In Britvic" (several of them) ...
Any unhealthily earnest and overly serious enthusiast is directed towards the Diaries of Norbert Fragg. Norbert's diaries lack the ongoing character of this Diary - they are fragmented - but clearly indicate the personality of their author.
In the background Soundscapes wern and twist: these are from "The Joint" in Las Vegas on October 1st. 1997. On this day Chris Murphy learnt to ask of fans seeking autographs and / or photographs: "Why do you feel the need to radically fetishise the inherent and delineated meanings of Robert's music?". (Cf Lucy Green). G3 were playing The Joint and John Sinks, Chris & I were in the staff restaurant of the Hard Rock Hotel.
Chris, the apartment-mate of Steve Ball in Seattle, was on the road with John and I for the first time. Educated by months in the back of a van with a (relatively unknown) touring group, Chris was becoming even more familiar with the fallen state of musical life in our culture.
The next morning John Sinks, Chris & I were at the airport, checking in our baggage on the curbside. The skycap looked at my passport: -
SC: "Are you THE Robert Fripp? Can I have your autograph? My friend's a big fan - he'd love it!".
RF: "Why does your friend feel the need to radically fetishise the inherent and delineated meanings of music?".
SC: "Yeah! He'd love it!".
He got the autograph.
22.34
John, Chris & G4 have moved to the Celebrity Theatre, Phoenix, Arizona and it's the 3rd. October. The Celebrity has a circular revolving stage, in the centre of the audience. King Crimson played here with Spooky Tooth in 1973. Two of the Teeth were up for their 12 / 13th. consecutive night without sleep, they told me. Actually, I believed them. Mick Jones, formerly of Nero & The Gladiators and later of Foreigner, was their guitarist at the time.
While chromatics bleep, and supporting clouds ambiguously hover, I am beginning to organise my heap of photographs. These, primarily a record of house and grounds evolving through building work and planting over several years, became a growing pile throughout the years of the EG dispute. The materials are gradually becoming ordered.
My Father was a very keen photographer (an irony this, you note). I have his photographic archive, along with all his genealogical research on the Fripp family. The photos go back to Patricia & Robert's early years. Before his interest in still photography, from around 1942 Dad took 8mm home movies. The only known footage of GIs in Dorset (about 3 seconds) are from Dad's movies. Other topics: Arthur & Edie as a newly married couple (they married on Christmas Day, 1939); my Sister and I as babies and little people; Grandfather Austin (former Sergeant Major in the Royal Marines) returning by train to Wimborne Station from training newly enlisted recruits in the early years of the Second World War; Uncle Bill visiting us at Central Avenue, Corfe Mullen, back from six years in a German prisoner of war camp (from which The Great Escape took place) with his newly born daughters, cousins Anne & Sue.
And Sister has telephoned from New York, en route to San Francisco. She has finished reading her thriller, a sure sign that her holiday is over, and is now geared up to be wildly productive on the second leg home.
"An artist acts with the assumption of innocence within a field of experience."
