The Guitar Circle I
Guitar Craft 25th Anniversary Completion Course
Special Project: The Orchestra Of Crafty Guitarists III
Convento La Pace, Sassoferrato (Ancona), Italy
The bell from the church across the way rings 1-2-3 1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4-5 1 at 6am. I hear this every morning, 45 minutes before my alarm goes off, and 47 minutes before my backup alarm goes off. I slept through the night, and though I sense that there were dreams, all detail evaporated as soon as I woke up, just before those bells rang. I felt rested, but lazy, and getting up felt like a terrible concept. Only the desperate need for a shower overrode the inertia. It is another foggy morning in Sassoferatto. From the moment I awoke I have had Mel Torme’s voice in my head;
“I was a stranger in the cityBetween that and the closest thing to a “hot” shower one can expect here, I am now prepared to step into the last day of Guitar Craft.
Out of town were the people I knew.
I had that feeling of self-pity.
What to do, what to do, what to do?
The outlook was decidedly blue.
But as I walked down those foggy streets alone, it turned out to be the happiest day I’ve known.
A foggy day, in London town, had me low, had me down…”
8:46am
Day 9,131 of Guitar Craft. I don’t have that kind of information rolling readily around my mind, I had to do the math. Basically 25 x 365 + a handful of leap years.
I am being just the tiniest bit facetious when I observe that the biggest difference between my morning sittings now and my morning sittings in 1985 is that now my back doesn’t hurt. I actually solved that one in 1986 with the help of a couple of Alexander teachers. I believe Mead Andrews was one of them. But even dropping the self-deprecation, it is true that I am just as susceptible now to flights of distraction and associative thinking as I was back then, and it is folly for me to imagine it is otherwise. It is not unheard of for me to suddenly notice that 45 minutes have passed and I have barely scratched the surface of my morning’s work. This morning was a pretty good one, happily. Good focus. I moved through the exercises with a level of clarity and relative ease, only rarely having to reign my attention back in very far. When the time came for the exercise of Contact at a Distance, however, things got very interesting. I walked methodically through the names and faces of those who have declared themselves on the course, AAD, as I do every morning at the end of the sitting. From there I moved on to sending good wishes to a number of people who, although they are not participating, or at least not participating officially, feel very important to me in terms of the arc of Guitar Craft history. This actually includes a number of people who have moved on to something else or have simply left the picture, have passed on to indifference, and even a few I know left Guitar Craft in a cloud of negativity and, in at least one or two cases, outright hostility. Most I have long ago lost track of. Given the age my peer group has entered, I can only assume some of them are dead. The parade of names and faces was astonishing. Many I had not thought of in years. In truth I really only wrapped the exercise up when the room had largely cleared and I was beginning to make a spectacle of myself sitting alone while everyone else was off to breakfast.
Holding all of those people in my heart today.
9:28am
Sun!
11:28am
Still sun! And, before long I will go out into it for Tai Chi.
Seattle team met with Robert this morning. A little slow on the ingress, but once things got rolling a really excellent and free-flowing exploration of readdressing the group aim and the ways kick things up to the next level. Everyone involved and a great sense of potential and possibility. Some reflection on the work so far with the Orchestra, which was a very useful tool or strategy for getting us to a place where we might have a fresh way of seeing our own work, as if with innocent eyes. This is a very difficult point of view to attain, much less maintain, but when we can get there only good things come from it.
3:03pm
I tried to avoid it, but they keep coming after me, so unless I totally blow it at the 3:30 rehearsal, it looks like I’m performing Schizoid Man at Tea.
9:06pm
Schizoid Man not only passed the audition, it is now the encore for tomorrow night’s gig. Yikes.
Sent the following email out to the Seattle Guitar Craft team, and a few others:
Just a few moments ago, at 8:31pm here in Italy, on March 25, 2010, Robert placed "The Hat" on his head and declared that we gratefully acknowledge 25 year of honorable work in Guitar Craft completed, and that Guitar Craft no longer exists.
Cheers from Italy. The Orchestra has its dress rehearsal in just a few minutes, and performs Friday night.
Curt
Dress rehearsal in the Convento La Pace, Sassoferrato, Italy
Curt, this isn't about your journal, but it is a *direct* reaction to your journal, so I thought it would be ok to post. Feel free to delete if you don't think it fits.
ReplyDeleteSomething odd has happened to me. It started about eight years ago, in 2002, when I attended a Guitar Craft course in Santa Barbara, CA. I had played around with making music before, in a variety of ways, but on the third night of this course a particular exercise caused me to change my relationship with music in a very fundamental way – I switched (in my own personal point of view, not in any material way) from being a consumer of music, to becoming responsible for the creation of music. Others who were at this course have all confirmed to me that this particular evening guitar circle was quite powerful for them, too.
In any case, after that evening I felt an internal sense of responsibility for assisting in the creation of music. I still love listening to it, too, of course, but this new layer was added to my psyche. And in the context of Guitar Craft, it soon became apparent to me that my clumsy playing was not the highest value contribution I could make to music. I could volunteer to help with the cleanup after each meal, freeing people actually able to play the guitar to go do so. I could chose not to take up a 30-minute 1:1 time slot with Robert Fripp. I could keep questions to myself, and let those who would really benefit from the attention of the instructors have that attention.
Yes, I heard it when Mr. Fripp said that sometimes the circle exists to support one member, but I had no interest in being that, needy, member, because I now felt that I was supposed to orient my actions towards seeing music made. None of this was at the level of conscious clarity with which I present it here – this is how I see things in hindsight.
I kept my guitar after the course was done, but I never played it. In the eight years that have passed I might have tuned it a dozen times, and played a C-major scale ½ as often as that. I have composed and played some music on keyboards & computer (some of it “for” guitar, and thanks to Logic, sounding like guitar), but the actual guitar just sits there.
Surprisingly to me, when I read Curt’s diary of the final Guitar Craft course, at which Robert Fripp declared Guitar Craft “honorably completed”, I was suddenly drawn back to my guitar. I tuned it again, and played some C-major scales. And I have this feeling that perhaps I can actually create a practice now.
Now that Guitar Craft has been completed, I no longer worry that my own playing will be a distraction or weight getting in the way of Guitar Craft. Who knows if this will last, but it is kind of cool for the moment.
Rick Bunker
Jenkintown, PA
April, 2010