| index
repertoire:
* eye of the needle
* bicycling to afghanistan
diatribe
preface
part one:
moments with a small “m”
part two:
moments with a capital “m”
preface, take two:
one year and a half later
part three:
first encounter
part four:
preparation
part five:
the ghosts
part six:
the need
part seven:
arrival |
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When
Robert asked me to write about my experiences in Guitar Craft I
pondered for several weeks how to begin. I found the task, to say
the least, daunting, and failing to see how to proceed I bought a
notebook and gave myself the task of writing in it daily. I referred
to it as my Guitar Craft “retro-journal.” There were no rules
about what to write, only that I was to, without fail, write for one
hour every day.
One
of the first things I wrote down in the retro-journal was “March
25, 1985.”As small-m moments go, that was a pretty obvious one. It
was the day that the first ever Guitar Craft course began. It was a
Monday.
As I
was looking at this moment, March 25, 1985, I could easily see the
subsequent 13 years. That’s something at least. The funny thing
was that rather than catapulting forward into the history of Guitar
Craft, from this date I found myself moving backwards through time,
jotting down several fairly specific moments that had preceded it.
Those entries were:
- November
30-December 2, 1984. A “work weekend” at Claymont Court
outside Charles Town, WV. Not one of my proudest moments.
However, one event of significance occurred late in the weekend
when I happened to pick up American Society for Continuous
Education 1985 Seminar Schedule. There, among the Jungian Art
Weekend with Edith Wallace, the 9-day meditation retreat with
Ayang Rimpoche and the Fifth Annual Workshop in the FM Alexander
Technique, was a small item entitled “Guitar Craft” followed
by Robert’s name, and a blurb which read:
“Music
is a quality organized in sound. There are several approaches to
discovering a relationship with this quality. This short course
uses the discipline of craft in making musical sound, the way of
the performing musician. The course is open to plectrum guitarists
of at least three years experience, fluent in the English language
and above 18 years of age.”
[I
had to fill in the exact wording of the item later from the flyer
itself, which I still have in my filing cabinet. But I remembered
the gist. Personally, I can’t use the word “plectrum.”]
- Sometime
in 1970. Heard “In the Court of the Crimson King” for the
first time.
[Okay,
that one felt a little forced]
- March
10, 1968. Saw the Jimi Hendrix Experience. A Sunday afternoon
performance in the ballroom of the Washington (DC) Hilton. After
the show I was waiting out front for my father to pick me up,
and a limousine pulled up. Out of the hotel to the limo walked
Hendrix, Mitchell and Redding along with a few others. There was
no crowd, just me and a couple of my friends and the Jimi
Hendrix Experience. I walked over to their car and put my
(right) hand through the window. Jimi shook it. He had very big
hands.
- February
9, 1964. Beatles on Ed Sullivan. I remember jumping up and down
on the sofa of the den shouting “that’s what I’m gonna do.”
I think I shouted it out loud. I was eleven years old. My
parents have no memory of this, so maybe I just shouted it in my
mind.
[I
had to do some research on the exact dates after the fact. My
memory is not that precise or reliable, as will soon become
evident.]
These
were the moments I scrawled in the retro-journal the first time I
sat down to confront this task. I didn’t really know why these
particular moments and not some others, and I didn’t allow myself
to even ask the question at the time. It was a Friday, so I had a
couple of days off.
The
next Monday when I sat down in the cafe and went to work on the task
I found myself writing a long reminiscence about seeing Sun Ra in a
no-name lower east side store-front performance space in the summer
of 1979.
Couldn’t
for the life of me figure out what that was all about, why I was
remembering these particular moments as opposed to the litany of
obvious Guitar Craft moments. So, my rational brain kicked in
telling me to do something “useful.” I started writing down “significant
dates in Guitar Craft history.”
- December
1985. First Level Two course. “Robert Fripp and the League of
Crafty Guitarists - Live!” is recorded.
- October
- December 1986. First Level Three course at Red Lion House in a
small village in Dorset, England. First electric League
performance (London Virgin Megastore)
- January
1987. The League tours England and Holland. Oh, the road
stories...
- February
1987. The League does several performances in Israel.
These
entries made a lot more sense. More to the point. A lot less
interesting, and, for the moment, utterly irrelevant.
It
was two weeks before I returned to the task.
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