15.17
Practising sometimes allows for reflection. One of the subjects of my consideration during the past few days, following responses to the Guestbook, is bootlegging & those who affirm their right to serve its noble cause, is that no answer is possible to basement questioners. Why is this, I wonder? Possibly several reasons:
Back from morning cappucini at CafÈ Lorenzo. Jason Elliot is my reading today. Now, to practising. Basement questions proliferate, like hydra heads. Basement questions are unanswerable in basement language: they require the language of (at least) the garden floor. In the basement one is deaf so unable, anyway, to hear any answers in whatever language. If answers to basement questions do appear on the garden floor, we have to get out of the basement to reach them. When we are on the garden floor, basement questions mysteriously disappear: they are somehow unable to follow us into the sunlight. Life on the garden floor is therefore more straightforward.
I also note that basement posters strenuously assert the right to live in the basement, even to extol its virtues - I can do what I want in the basement! True enough, in basement terms, I suppose it is a form of freedom to be able to put your head up your butt. But there are dangers to living in the basement. Accidents take place regularly & frequently. We stumble around and trip over constantly, and wonder why we keep tripping over the same obstacle/s.
Some basements have a greater danger: a trap door, which sometimes falls open. This is a terrible gateway: it leads to a world below even sleeping humanity. Various traditions refer to this by different names. In the tradition of St. Lorenzo, it is called hell. According to tradition, this place has many interconnecting chambers marked by names such as cruelty, horror, bleakness, despair.
Bad enough that sometimes, from the basement, we fall in. Worse still, that we might allow this trap door to remain open to our own world.
In this town, in this country, sitting and looking at the shattered & partially restored monument to St. Lorenzo's faith, I pondered the unanswered (unanswerable?) question central to the history of at least three continents this century: how was it, in this place of refinement, culture & civilisation, that hell emerged and found a place to exist on earth? And with consequences so appalling that the repercussions have not yet been stilled.
Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy.
23.07
A supportive audience undermined by a few of their number. An evening of punctures spoilt the performance. What a pity. For ticket prices this high, better we are allowed to deliver more than the adequately professional. But you can't tell people how to behave. Perhaps I should simply accept that what I wish to achieve in performance is not possible in our performance culture, & just aim to be a good professional.
What is harassment? Does it include a man who waits outside the hotel entrance for two days & pounces upon you whenever you enter or leave? Then stands in the front row of the show? Then waits at the entrance of the hotel for your post-show return? Where is Chris Murphy when I need him?
We have heard back from the Austrian promoter. Although the show in Linz had a poster with the Schizoid face, he denies that any other promotion is based on a "reformation of original artists" & "greatest hits" scenario.
Crimson factoid from Trey: on Amazon TCOL has fallen to 20, and Trey's album has fallen from 600 to 3000.
