Coming into the space, coming into the room, engaging our active attention and coming into ourselves, coming into the event, we now come into the process.

Coming into the process, we begin where we are, moving from a Still Point.

Any process has three stages: the beginning, the middle and the end. Each of these three stages also has three stages, giving nine distinct qualitative points: The beginning of the beginning, the middle of the beginning, the end of the beginning. The beginning of the middle, the middle of the middle, and the end of the middle. The beginning of the end, the middle of the end, and the end of the end.

The beginning is half of the whole, according to Pythagoras. So, a sound beginning will take us as far as the middle. In the middle is the Great Divide: too far from the beginning to go back, too far from the end to go forward – this is the Liminal Zone of any process.

Each of the three main stages have their own Liminal Zones: characterised by ambiguity, hazard and opportunity. There is no inevitability, no guarantee, that the process will succeed merely by continuing in motion. There are weak moments at certain points in the process, when the process may go off course. These ‘weak moments’ require intervention, adjustment, and re-direction to maintain the trajectory of the process.

There are three qualities of time at work in a process: sequential clock time, eternity and hyparxis, or Creative Time. We may experience these as one thing after another, synchronicity or potential, and the Timeless Moment.

Creative Time is timeless. This is where decision, choice and commitment have effect within a process. Which we bring to bear on the ‘weak moments’ to adjust and re-direct when the process is likely to go off course.

Creative Time is non-causal. In Creative Time, the end may reach back and set the beginning in motion.

There are three qualities of ending: a finish, a conclusion, or a completion. With a finish, something is lost. With a conclusion, nothing much has changed. With a completion, there is a new beginning.

A characteristic of completion is transformation. Something is not what it was as it began (noting that neither is it otherwise). A particular quality has entered into the process, which was either not there at the beginning, or was a potential waiting to be actualised. The transformation is ontological: there is a change in being. For example, sounds become notes, notes become music. Instrumentalists become musicians. Even guitarists who began tone deaf and with no sense of rhythm.

A learning process has the three primary stages of injunction, application and verification. We are given instruction, and may or may not be willing and able to receive it. We apply ourselves to internalising, and making our own, what we are taught. Then we present our work to those sufficiently qualified to judge the quality of our work. In the verification, or assessment stage, of our nine distinct qualitative points: Point Seven is validation. The question is, does this work? Philologically, is this strong? Point Eight is verification. Philologically, is this true? At Point Nine, the process ends. This may be a finish, a conclusion, or a completion.

A Musician’s Process. The first overall stage is learning the instrument. The second overall stage is learning the notes, the repertoire. The third overall stage is learning the music.

In the first overall stage: The beginning of the beginning, we act on the instrument from the outside. The middle of the beginning, we move inside the instrument. The end of the beginning, the instrument becomes an extension of our body.

In the second overall stage: We play the notes. We move inside the notes. The notes move inside us.

In the third overall stage: We play the music. We move inside the music. The music moves inside us.

A Performance Process. The beginning of the third overall stage is when the audience walks in the room. An ideal audience is sufficiently competent to judge the merits of the performer. For the performer, there is nothing like exposure to public ridicule to galvanise the attention.

There are seven levels of geographical validation and verification: domestic, local, regional, national, international, global and interplanetary.

For a performer, we begin playing at home to friends and family. If our mother and favourite aunt think we suck, then good to take up a career in plumbing, or bricklaying, or some other useful work in the community. Some people laugh at the notion of interplanetary performance: record companies incorporate interplanetary rights in their standard contracts.

So we may ask, is it possible to conceive of a performance which has cosmic resonance? Which makes a contribution to the stars?

An alternative take of the title track to Robert Fripp's solo album, recorded at the Hit Factory in New York in 1978.

A different version had been recorded in Holland in late 1977 for Peter Gabriel's second solo album, part of the conceptual trilogy of records produced by Fripp in 1977-78.

The NY Trilogy: Sacred Songs, Peter Gabriel II and Exposure.

Robert had been approached to produce a Hall and Oates record prior to his Sherborne House retreat. That collaboration did not happen, but when Robert moved to New York in February 1977, he and Daryl Hall became further acquainted and a friendship developed, leading to Fripp’s role as producer on Hall’s Sacred Songs solo record.

Seeing the Ramones with Daryl Hall, January 7, 1978.

Recorded at the Hit Factory in 1977, RCA Records intervened to delay the release of Sacred Songs, fearing the art-rock approach would harm the “blue-eyed soul” musician’s commercial career. They also objected to his being the featured vocalist on Fripp’s record, reducing his contribution to only two songs. This led to Fripp recruiting other vocalists to replace Hall’s parts. One such track was Exposure, where the final version features the vocals of Terre Roche.

Original and replacement vocals on the track sheet.

Robert Fripp joins David Singleton to discuss working with Daryl Hall in greater detail.

Download Robert Fripp @ 80 Vol.6 Exposure (Daryl Hall vocal).

To listen to Babs and Babs follow the Spotify playlist: Robert Fripp @ 80

Or listen on the official YouTube channel:

In my view, the only way to accept the responsibilities & difficulties which the world presents to us is through a practice; that is, by acquiring a discipline. Surprised? What actually happens is, that the discipline “acquires” us. Then everything changes. Everything. What was impossible for us is still impossible for us, but not when the “discipline” is doing the work. The “discipline” can only do the work if we provide it with the vehicle. Then, this becomes a practical matter: how may we become a vehicle?

[Excerpt from RF’s King Crimson Touring Diary - June 26th. 2000]

To perform an act with quality is to juxtapose the worlds of the conditioned & the unconditioned. When quality is invited to enter an action, and enter the world of things, it then “spreads” & becomes available to others, to the extent that they are able to respond & accept.

[Excerpt from RF’s King Crimson Touring Diary - September 14th. 2000]

It’s time to move on.

If we have any grudges, resentments, ill-feeling, even well-based and “honest” grudges, resentments & ill-feeling, it’s time to let go of them and move on. If we have been treated unfairly, and this has never been acknowledged, it’s time to let go and move on.

The creative future is so close to us that, if we stumble in allowing it into our lives by seeking to address the past, we will fail the future. If we accept the creative future, the hold of the past will miraculously lessen of its own accord. We will find ourselves part of an unexpected & unforeseeable unfolding present moment, which will through its own process address the “past”.

So, let’s move on.

[Excerpt from RF’s King Crimson Touring Diary - September 14th. 2000]

We are always where we are, but we don’t often know where that is. A personal aphorism is this:

If we’re going from A to B, better to know that we’re at A.

Most of our sense of ourselves is delusional. If we hope to reach our destination, then better to know the point of departure. So, where are we? There is no room for self-deception here, but to bear what we are is not pleasant. To know the poverty of our nature, for even a point shorn of duration - in a flash - is an awakening to terror and hope.Where we are is (also) how we get there.

[Excerpt from RF’s King Crimson Touring Diary - July 21st. 2001]

1. Reality begins when we are present: personal presence.
2. Only when we are present with ourselves, may we be present with others: social presence.
3. So, there are different qualities of presence, personally and socially.

In which case, what is our intention?

[Excerpt from Robert Fripp’s June 27th. 2020 diary at dgmlive.com]

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.

[Excerpt from Apologia Pro Vita Sua – Robert Fripp’s November 14th. 2024 diary at dgmlive.com]

Music so wishes to be heard that sometimes it calls on unlikely characters to give it voice, and to give it ears. This wishing-to-be heard calls the Performance Event into manifestation, where music, musician and audience may come together as one, in communion. This communion has six different forms of being and experiencing itself. These forms, or principles, are simultaneously present within the performance. These are the Six Principles of the Performance Event.

The First Principle of the Performance Event:

When people get together, something happens.

When people get together with music, something remarkable happens. This something remarkable has an emergent quality. The Creation continues being created.

The Second Principle of the Performance Event:

In a performance, things come together, mysteriously, and go better than we might anticipate or deserve.

It took me several years of engaging with this principle before I appreciated how much the performance itself wishes to become, to move from potentiality in an eternal moment to actuality within the timestream.

The Third Principle of the Performance Event:

Each performance is unique.

We have never been here before, nor will we be in this moment again. How we collectively engage determines the event.

A performance may take on a life, character and spirit of its own.

The Fourth Principle of the Performance Event:

Any one performance is a multiplicity of performances.

Each of us has our own experience. So, this performance event is as many performances as there are participants. If our experience has an intensity, governed by the quality of our free attention, it remains with us. So, we may return to our experience, perhaps even in ten- or twenty-years’ time, and interrogate that experience. Which may give us answers to questions of which we are presently unaware.

The Fifth Principle of the Performance Event:

The possible is possible.

The possible is possible, because it has to be. In practical terms, an event is governed by contingency: personal and impersonal, inside and outside, subject to the overall conditions of time, place, person and circumstance.

The transformational aspect of performance is governed by the degree to which we are able to be present, and to be who we are. We participate in the performance to the extent that we are able to be who we are. It is possible to be who we are. So, the possible is possible.

We begin with the possible and move gradually towards the impossible.

The Sixth Principle of the Performance Event:

The impossible is possible.

This is the principle I love the most. The possible is not enough, although I am increasingly respectful of simple competence. Engaging the impossible is to call on what is highest in us. So . . .

We begin with the impossible and move gradually towards the possible.

Of the Six Principles of the Performance Event there is a Seventh Principle. The Seventh Principle resides within Silence, so of the Seventh Principle little is spoken. Were I to offer a few words, perhaps . . .

May we trust the inexpressible benevolence of the Creative Impulse.

Alternatively, the simple proposition. . . When I am, here, now so is God. Whatever the God of our understanding.

And now, may we return the Seventh Principle to Silence.

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.

[Excerpt from Apologia Pro Vita Sua – Robert Fripp’s November 14th. 2024 diary at dgmlive.com]

My dispute with EG began in April 1991 & was not finally settled until September 1997. In January 1997 I signed our out-of-court settlement. In the same week, with a little time available following the cessation of active warfare, I turned my attention to clearing our cellar of the boxes of papers which had rested there since we moved here in December 1987. One of the first papers I pulled out of a large, damp box was the original Willowfay Agreement between King Crimson & EG, and which proved my case! I had been too busy fighting to search for the documents which proved EG did not own the copyrights they’d sold. I held the proof. And continue to hold the proof.

A personal lesson from this: sometimes even the pacific must fight. Which implies that the pacific must, inevitably, be prepared to fight. I believe it was Gandhi who commented that fasting was not a technique which would work against a tyrant.

[Excerpt from RF’s Diary - July 1st, 1999]

How to become present? Our most immediately available way-in to the moment is the body. There is a distinct quality of experiencing the body from the inside which is, conventionally, referred to as organic sensation. I use the term – the electricity of life – because this more accurately describes how I experience living inside the human animal that carries me around.

[Excerpt from Robert Fripp’s December 6th. 2021, Tokyo, diary at dgmlive.com]

Expectation belongs to the Automatic world, anticipation the Sensitive, holding a Wider Present Moment the Conscious.

[Excerpt from Apologia Pro Vita Sua – Robert Fripp’s November 24th. 2024 diary at dgmlive.com]

A discipline will confer upon us the capacity to keep going and we will find that the very difficulties and challenges that come to us are opportunities to refine, develop, and substantiate our practice.

So, we keep going. But, the only payment, ultimately, that we receive is for music itself. The rest of it may never come, or it might, but it’s not really relevant because we know that we are being true, in this life, to what it is required of us.

So, we refine our practice and we keep going.

[Edited excerpt from Englishmen Abroad at City Winery in New York, September 23rd. 2022]

[Excerpt from Robert Fripp’s King Crimson touring diary. December 6th. 2021. Tokyo]

We’ve come into the space, come into the room, and now we come into ourselves. We engage our free attention and move inside our bodies. Let’s say, into the right hand.

Coming into the Right Hand. May we bring part of our attention:

Into the bones of the right hand - the thumb, first finger, the second finger, the third finger, the little finger.
Now into the muscles of the right hand.
Now the flesh of the right hand.
Now the skin of the right hand.
Now the surface of the right hand, noticing the movement and temperature of the air meeting the hand.
Now into the whole of the right hand, noticing the sensation within the right hand, this buzzing electricity of life, the pulse and the flow of blood.
Now into the atmosphere surrounding the right hand.

While maintaining our sense of contact, of sensation, within the right hand, we bring part of attention into the left hand. Is our experience of the left hand different to that of the right hand in this moment? Yes! Of course it is. Returning part of our attention to the right hand, we move the energy we find there into the left hand.

Does Anyone Have a Problem Counting to Five? A question: does anyone here have a problem counting to five? While we are counting to five, we’ll clap our hands on 1 and 4. A question: does anyone have a problem counting to seven? While counting to seven, we’ll clap our hands on 1, 4 and 6.

This simple exercise of playing in two groups, one in 5 and the other in 7, is called THRAKKING in Guitar Craft. It was initially introduced as an exercise of health and vigour, and a binding exercise to bring together participants on Guitar Craft courses.

Recorded at Eno's flat in Maida Vale, West London on 8th September, 1972, with Fripp playing his Les Paul through his custom pedalboard, while Eno operated a pair of modified Revox A77 tape recorders, for what would become the album No Pussyfooting.

It was the beginning of a musical collaboration that would lead to Fripp working with Bowie on the Heroes sessions in 1977 and a series of albums and a tour as the experimental music duo Fripp & Eno.

The opening commentary, in conversation with David Singleton, has the full story of how Bryan Ferry's failed audition to become the singer in King Crimson led to Roxy Music being signed by EG Management, which in turn paved the way for one of Robert's most enduring musical partnerships with the band's synth operator, Brian Eno.

Their first experimental foray on The Heavenly Music Corporation was followed a year later by Fripp adding a burning guitar solo to Baby's On Fire on the first Eno solo album Here Come The Warm Jets.

Download: https://dgmlive.com/tour-dates/2850

Or listen on the official YouTube channel:

If I am moved by unmistakeable personal necessity (such as becoming a professional musician; going to Sherborne House; going to Claymont Court); this is not a matter for me to submit to the opinions of others. The question, then, is how to honourably address the repercussions for others of us implementing what inevitably follows from our decision.

[Excerpt from RF’s King Crimson Touring Diary – July 21st. 2001]

The last Crim rehearsal was valuable, and we won’t get much better without an audience. So, exposure to public ridicule is the next step. This makes the performance possible, and real. In a fallen world, reality becomes possible when money exchanges hands. In the real world, performance is sacred. The distance between the two is suffering.

[Excerpt from RF’s King Crimson Touring Diary – July 21st. 2001]

[Photo by Alex Kelley - Guitar Craft January 2001 - Sassoferrato, Italy]

Friday at 19:00: The creative impulse animates whatever instrument is made available to it.

[…]

The insight I was granted last Friday continues to percolate and resonate, and I’m beginning to have a sense of some of its implications. Briefly, and essentially, the insight is the basis for the talk. Rather than sift through a mass of the available information which is already in draft, I have been given something that I may present with my own voice. This has the connection which accompanies parents & their children. The children don’t belong to us, but we have a responsibility to them. And then, having done the best we can to bring them into the world, and prepare them, we send them into the outside world with our love; and let them find their own way. Our responsibility is to bring them into the world, and to let them go. We can’t, and shouldn’t, control the direction they take.

This is the work of any person working in a creative way: to construct a vehicle that becomes a bridge between the available qualitative, and the possible quantitative. The repercussions of that are beyond us. But if we act rightly, we will be able to manage those repercussions.

[Excerpt from RF’s Guitar Craft Journals – January 24th. 2001]