I
How to bring about an inclusive, equitable and loving society?
A finer quality of functioning, or frequency level (conscious, creative, loving), generates new forms of social organisation, supportive of an ideal society.
Some forms of organisation are more conducive than others in raising the quality of society’s functioning.
So how to go about this?
To shape and model the external forms of society from the outside requires power in the world – wealth, position, influence.
To model a culture from the inside requires that we develop our inner lives, a personal harmony of heart, head and hands, to an intensity of being that has effect on the outside world. This requires a personal practice.
The process is of an increasing approximation to the ideal. Cf Let The Power Fall (below).
Our discussion points seem to be:
approaches to performance practice;
audience engagement within performance;
forms of social organisation apparent within performance;
heckling.
Within a performance, where does the authority/power lie? In conventional discussion: The event is negotiated between the participants. The terms are musician/performer, audient, director/music industry.
The intrinsic/implicate power within the event itself – the performance’s own wish to be – does not factor in conventional/academic discussion.
II
Performance
If we could understand performance, we’d know how the world works. Something like, the Creation as performance.
How does an impulse of inexpressible loving benevolence, that wishes to give itself away, enter our world and move directly into our experience? Moving from the noumenal to the phenomenal, the unconditioned to the conditioned?
The Creation is a big thing. Performance is accessible, available to our participation and experiencing.
II
Heuristics Of Performance
A performance is dynamic.
A performance is impossible to control.
You cannot tell an audience how to behave.
A performance can take on a life of its own.
A performance wishes to be.
A performance event is a negotiation between all parties to the performance.
A performance is constrained by the practicalities of the event: time, place, person and circumstance.
Music has its own contributory power, but its presence in a performance may be constrained and disrupted.
There are different qualities of performance.
A performance of genius has global effect and persists in time.
A genius audient enables the performance to be.
A performance may present a model of an ideal society.
A performance has the potential for the participants to directly experience what is highest in them, by analogy what is highest in us all, and so what is Highest.
The primary responsibility of the performer is to be true.
The audience has the right, perhaps even a responsibility, to remind the performer that they serve the music.
III
Overall Criteria For Judgement
Time, place, person, circumstance.
Different cultures have different performance traditions, forms and conventions.
Performance spaces bring their own spirit and characteristics, eg in the European concert tradition the auditoria modelled social class. Performances in churches, clubs, bars, amphitheatres, sports stadia, burlesque theatres, open air music festivals have varying feels specific to the spaces.
Audiences reflect their wider culture. Latin and predominantly Catholic cultures – eg Spain, Italy, Mexico, Argentina and Chile – have very different performance cultures to those of the US, UK, Europe, Scandinavia and Japan. Currently under discussion is how the role, position and treatment of women varies within different cultures, and the effect and relevance of this for gender equality within GC. Cf an initiative by a pal of mine, Tahir Shah… https://scheherazadefoundation.org/aims/
The outer forms of social organisation ideally support our inner lives.
Our inner lives influence the outer forms of society and the overall culture, a reflection of our inner harmony.
The comments below continue on from my response to a discussion between several members of The Guitar Circle attending the course in Argentina, Monday 15th. – Sunday 21st., April 2024.
IV
The Guitar Circle
Nothing is compulsory, but some things are necessary.
A primary aim for me on courses is to support conditions where attendees can explore who and what they are, their responsibilities to what is right in their lives, within a space that allows for experimenting with varying personal approaches to their work. This assumes a commonality of aim and goodwill, implies that the space is open and safe, and the explorations of others are mutually supported.
The bottom line is tolerance. A higher line is to place ourselves in the position of others.
As Guitar Craft developed from local to regional, national and international, and into the Guitar Circle, with over four thousand attendees historically and several hundred currently active, our forms of organisation have developed to deal with the practicalities. These include the setting up of courses and projects, communicating, financing and planning, now on three continents.
The Guitar Circle is not an organisation, but to act in the normal-abnormal world the Circle needs organising. There are different kinds and qualities of organisation, with conventional models available. Loving models are yet to be more widely established. One specific model, which does not fit GC well, is that of the professional organisation. The primary aim of a professional organisation is to maintain itself and the interests of the Power Possessors within it. The Guitar Circle, when its work is completed, will disappear. But although the Circle not a business, it must be businesslike.
Some forms of organisation are more supportive of an ideal society. A group or community, acting in goodwill to serve a common aim, will modify and adapt its form of organisation to increasingly approximate to the ideal.
Where people come together, inevitably there is disagreement. Political action is the craft and art of managing and reconciling disagreement. Inevitably, within GC there will be political arisings. In political life in the normal-abnormal world, the final step in managing disagreement is compulsion: legal, economic and military.
Within GC nothing is compulsory, although some things are necessary. The GC House Rules are the closest we get to setting norms of behaviour. The Rules present guidelines necessary for participation, define the limits of behaviour, and introduce GC culture to courses. If there were no Guitar Craft House Rules, there would be no Guitar Craft.
Cf the Elizabethan Settlement of late 16th. Century England: believe whatever you like, but behave according to the polity’s norms of orthodox conduct. In GC, we are not asked to accept what seems to be GC orthodoxy. Rather, we are asked not to believe anything unless questioned and tested within our own experience. So, even the House Rules are open for discussion and modification as the GC environment changes through time, place, person and circumstance.
Conflicting beliefs and worldviews are inevitable and contribute to GC vibrancy and dynamic, subject to politeness, courtesy and goodwill. The different cultures interacting within GC bring a rich diversity of opportunities to broaden our own worldview, and possible disagreement when the worldviews appear incompatible.
If we share an aim and engage with goodwill, the possible becomes possible. Sometimes the impossible becomes possible.
V
Robert says…
Since the beginning of Guitar Craft, I have stood in front of God (whatever God may be for me) and accepted responsibility for GC activities. This has given me the freedom to act in the confidence that, if a tab arrives, I pay it. And if not paid in life, then upon my death.
I accept that the person at the top (even in a flat hierarchy) sets the tone for the culture of the undertaking.
There has been a change in the nature of my role, between Guitar Craft and the Guitar Circle. Guitar Craft was a way of craft, with an instructor directing the work of the students, some of whom in an earlier time would have been considered apprentices. The courses were small, localised, and I was directly involved with all attendees, pretty much full-on.
I do not control the activities of The Guitar Circle.
It is necessary that this is so.
It is not my aim to tell people what to do.
Although I could.
Very few who ask for my advice want to hear it.
If they do, they get my best shot.
This hasn’t made me friends.
And I have real friends.
If you have something to say in the moment, say it.
Don’t wait for Robert to say what you think he should say.
He might be waiting for you.
I have a high tolerance for dissent.
One of my prime functions in GC is to hold the space open.
A second prime function is to hold the forces together.
A third prime function is to keep the process in motion: to unfix things when they’re getting stuck.
A fourth prime function is to see and hear people.
Whatever we think is going on, probably isn’t.
I cultivate the attitude that what is in front of me is an opportunity.
When my feet go walking, I follow.
Robert Fripp
Edited for online publishing from
Collective Engagement
September 17th. 2024;
Middle England.
