Responses To The Guestbook:
1. Mike Black ([email protected]) 11-Aug-2000 08:39 GMT New Jersey, USA
Michael quotes:
"For the real amazement, if you want to be amazed, is the process. No one has the ghost of an idea how this works, and nothing else in life can ever be so puzzling. If anyone does succeed in explaining it, within my lifetime, I will charter a skywriting airplane, maybe a whole fleet of them, and send them aloft to write one great exclamation point after another, around the whole sky, until all my money runs out."It is like this in music: sheer wonderment that we might be sitting on a stool with a guitar in hand when, suddenly, music appears.
The capacity to "be amazed" on call, as it were, is a function of true mastery (would mistery be the feminine equivalent?).This is the assumption of innocence (amazement) within a context of experience.
2. aaron de Glanville (aaron [email protected]) 13-Aug-2000 22:41 GMT
<I'm struck by Mr. Fripp's detailed engagement of the inflammatory post by E.K. (in much the same way as I am his responses to similarly "dopey" posters on ET). One must point out the irony of lavishing such a thoughtful response on such a brief, crude comment (complete with bad spelling and syntax!). One could almost think that he would rather communicate with stone-throwing teenagers than a deeply respectful and appreciative fan--it certainly seems to be the former that he flatters with the most attention.>RF: But could not quite "almost think that" this is the case. So, if we assume that little of Fripp's life is arbitrary, that there might even be intent behind this long series of responses to "dopey posters", what does Aaron think the aims / motivation / intent might be?
3. Dan'l Danehy-Oakes ([email protected]) 11-Aug-2000 15:50 GMT
<The interesting point, for me, is that there seems to be nothing that we, as concert-attenders, can do, beyond bringing our own attention to bear on the moment at hand. To (as some have suggested) keep watch for those who bear cameras and tape recorders, with the intention of preventing them from carrying out their various nefarities, is precisely to distract our own attention from the moment and its potential for musicking: and so puts us in the category of those not contributing whatever we can to the moment.>RF: So the question is: how may we properly behave within an audience, particularly an audience at a King Crimson performance?
I have several comments & suggestions to make on this, but what is the view of potential members of a Crimson audience to this, please?
<(On the other hand, if an idiot with a camera or recorder manages to bring himself to my attention, if/when KC arrives in the Bay area, that person will receive one-and-only-one warning: if he continues, he will need a proctologist to find his equipment...)>RF: A fortunate effect of technological development, then, is increasing miniaturisation.
4. Jason M. Scruton ([email protected]) 11-Aug-2000 18:23 GMT U.S.A.
<What is missing (I feel it's absence) from those who try to discuss performance is a form discipline in practice to hone an ear primed for "points of hearing" (I realize as I typed the phrase, I have no clue what this means, but it feels right to call "them" by such a name).>RF: Jason's hunch is right: there are different qualities of listening and of hearing.
Listening is part of the musician's discipline. It's not possible to guarantee that a "point of hearing" opens to us. It is possible to prepare for that possibility; and it is possible to present ourselves as available to the moment. This doesn't happen by accident: this is a matter of training.
"The musician has three disciplines: the disciplines of the hands, the head and the heart."
