Robert Fripp's Diary

The Basement Chateau Belewbeloid Rising

06.46

The Basement, Chateau Belewbeloid.

Rising around 04.30, accepting the inevitability of awakeness, more accurately, not-being-asleepness.

When one has just landed from traveling west, there is a wonderful opening. All of the stuff, accretions & solidifications of repercussion & effect, are suspended for a short time; perhaps 1-3 days. I find that, within this opening, I am able to see possibilities as when Fripp was a young player & traveled relatively lightly. A high price was paid for this relative traveling-light: EG Management took care of my business affairs. This freed me up to follow the promptings of creative insight, before the tab arrived that took 14 years to pay off. Now, there is a trade-off: to address more fully the thingness of my professional life, and respond more fully to the courtesies of professional & social arisings, there are limitations on following-through the promptings of possibility.

But, that is not the prime concern for The Guitarist As Old Goat. Working within the mainstream often felt like pushing a deeply-felt conviction upon an industry that was largely careless, while declaring the opposite to be so; a public that increasingly developed consumer attitudes & personal rights to behave as it wanted, and weighed-in against a player who disagreed; and musicians whose default OS lead in a variety of directions (and away from the centre as I perceived it). This is no longer part of my personal brief, nor is it presently required of me.

Q:        Alright then: why did Old Whiner put up with so much grief that he continues to bleat about it?

A:        Because, for many years, I felt it was required of me to present (the music that was presented) within the wider context of popular culture; this for various reasons that no longer have currency in my life.

New reading of the morning: Michael Kennedy’s Portrait Of Elgar (OUP 2nd. edition 1982) OUP.

07.22  Sid has posted this in yesterday’s DGM Live blogspot…

Mr. Monkey is describing a dreamscape that features a Crimson performance: Most of the audience was unhappy with the kind of performance they got… It was a fucked up dream. Actually, it sounds unnervingly like real life.

08.29    Workstation Nouveau…

Decoration: bathroom painted in two shades of Belew Blue…

… with artwork: The Drunken Man…

21.41    A day in Nashville & its environs, returning to The Basement with a re-vibrated computer, various bits of software & hardware, a new (ancillary) Happy Gigster Wonder Wheelie; without various items of laundry & dry cleaning.

Dribble.