Robert Fripp

Robert Fripp's Diary

Saturday 11 December 1999

The Little Horse is still

10.53
The Little Horse is still on stage: they are due down at 17.15 UK time. It's a considerable relief for me that the show is going well, and Toyah's happy in the cast & production. Probably it's more nerve-wracking for me than for Toyah. I needn't tell anyone in a committed relationship that we are never apart from our partner. Inevitably, necessarily, even at a geographical distance we pick up on the states and conditions of our joined-at-the-heart.

Saturday is the morning when those of us within Guitar Craft extend ourselves to each other and make contact at a distance. Sometimes, surprisingly, a face appears in front of our inner eye and we know that this person is also extending their good wishes in our direction.

11.09
Ken the Hero of Sound has arrived for another day of werning & twerning. After two hard days, and another Great Divide, it's a satisfying feeling to have another Crim stomper recorded and soon to be presented to hostility, acclaim, ignominy, avoidance, insults, looks of anger as the wife leaves the room, and delight.

This morning, as yesterday, I have sacrificed my reading time to Guitar & Pencil Frenzy. In those matters which touch upon and involve me (personal & professional) I sense that larger currents have changed direction, whatever that means & implies. Flows are flowing after several years of blockages. I have one last blockage to deal with, this connected as with so many others to the collapse of EG.

11.35
Pat, Trey & Bill arrived. The Rhythm Buddies are beginning the recording day on "Frying Pan". Adrian is upstairs in Word Frenzy mode for the same.

13.12
Pat & Trey's groove pocket from last Sunday has turned into quite a beast. Pat gave me a CD burnt from BPM's latest editing & it moves. This is a new area for Crim and one I welcome.

16.10
The Rhythm Buddies are working in the garage with Bill, editing and fine tuning "Larks' V". Adrian & I have been overdubbing the Chromatic Contrary Motion sections, and the Power Riffs. Adrian is now working on the verse sections, which require him rewriting a guitar programme.

Thank you for the responses & references on the Guestbook which refer to Prof. Stacey's book. My personal mailbox has also received some comments, including from a brainy pal whose specialised field is computing. His comments follow:

Brainy Pal: Hello Robert, I was reading your diary....

RF Diary: "The system produces patterns in behaviour; it consists of a network of agents driven by iterative nonlinear feedback to produce unknowable outcomes that have pattern. Complex adaptive systems have an inherent order that is simply waiting to be unfolded through the experience of the system, but no one can know what that order will be until, in fact, it does unfold in real time. In certain conditions, left to self-organise in what looks like a mess with no apparent order, agents interacting in a system can produce, not anarchy, but creative new outcomes that none of them ever dreamed of" (p.13).

The patterns are always there. Usually they break down into collections of fairly simple patterns. The outcome may be known in advance.

Anyone agree with the view that King Crimson looks like a mess with no apparent order but produces creative new outcomes that no-one ever dreamed of? One (for Orn) which follows the above:

"The price for (this) freedom is an inability to know the final destination or to be in control of the journey".

Brainy Pal: Partially true. If one can practice containment than the combination of actions can be empowered to a desirable/intentional conclusion/completion as opposed to a controlled to and artificial one. Of course this is all part of the "randomness" of being here. I've always viewed God as being able to see the process(es) at dimensions beyond our perception. Hence my simultaneous acceptance of predestiny and free will.

RF Diary: "The process of extraordinary management is a creatively destructive one that may ultimately lead to replacement of at least some parts of the current dominant schema" (p.195).

Brainy Pal: Annihilation can be an appropriate action in context.

RF Diary: "Potential and effective complexity together amount to a form of bounded instability" (p.285/6).

Brainy Pal: Containment can form a sort of boundary but it bounds the instability without polarized control. Multiple processes interact by contract and the protocol that they understand in communicating with each other. This protocol is the language and semantics by which the contract is put into action, or put another way, the mechanism by which a response is stimulated between contracting processes. Having an overview of the processes and protocols can help produce a known outcome. Addressing multiple frames of reference without judgement is important. The art of containment includes assistance in providing content and parameters for the protocol.

16.20
Frustration: I've been unable to get direct answers from the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury: their answer machine is on so the stage door isn't answering & I can't blow my Wife a goodnight kiss. Pooey pooey.

19.02
Adrian, despite heroic overdubbing, wasn't able to nail a solo which rendered him hazourdous without a Stadium Buddy. So, he'll throw one away another day. BPM & Trey are doing wonderful, terrible things to the end of "Larks' V" in the garage. The Stadium Buddy measurement chart, available to all group members to place an order of appropriate dimension, is on display in the studio. An additional size - the Hooter Johnson - has been added to the list.

19.35
The garage is closing down for the evening. The guys have had enough.

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