The first interview & photo session of the day is now at an end. Robert Palombit (Music Maker) has been interviewing me for 20 years and brought with him several photos taken on his visit to Fripp World HQ in Wimborne (1980). Thought from the interview: in England comedy is the new rock `n' roll.
12.48 The Artist As Camera Meat, Take 2, at an end.
14.15 Gert van Veen of Volkskrant has left, with 1 hour and 8 minutes of interview on his Sony DAT recorder.
14.59 15 minutes of Gigster Catnapping and I am restored in readiness for Erik Voermans & Jurriaan Hage.
Cat-napping is a technique I acquired on tour with Peter Gabriel. Peter's gig in Los Angeles (March 1977) was at The Roxy on Sunset; two shows (and a knife thrower as support). The band had come in from the East so, with three hours time difference plus a late second show, Dusty Rhodes was one tired guitarist. In between houses, Dusty slept on the floor of Peter's dressing room cupboard.
This technique keeps me going today. After 15-20 minutes I awake refreshed. Anything longer, like 90 minutes, I get up exhausted.
15.24 The third photo session of the day is over. The light for this one was super-intense, so out came the specially prepared Super-Gigster Shades: prescription sun glasses. This protects my light-sensitive eyes while sharpening a meaningless blur into recognisable objects. With light as bright as on this session I simply close my eyes and "look" into the camera.
18.42 Your Diarist has returned from tortellini & salad. A pile of exotic restaurants extend in all directions from the American hotel. (Almost anything is exotic to someone from 1940s' Dorset).
Common to every public place in the Netherlands is the constant ingestion of puffery inhalables. Once the traveller's snapping whipcords have propelled them from their airplane, the acrid bite of smoke contracts nasal passages; their hair begins to acquire the tired fragrance of someone else's foul & smelly habit. In the conference room for today's interviews, the hotel's declamatory "no smoking" sign on the side table was equitably counterbalanced by matches & ashtray on the main table.
I don't seek to control the smoking of others, but neither am I prepared to suffer the consequences of smokers' pleasure & addiction. Hooray! for America and US airlines. Setting foot on continental Europe is like walking into an active ashtray. (Air Iberia stewardesses have been known to light up under the "no smoking" sign).
Erik & Jurriaan, the last two interviewers, kept me at it for 90 minutes: one on my left hand & one on my right. The physical disposition made this more like interrogation than interview. I plead "not guilty" in contrast to the English music press, where an artist is guilty until proven guilty.
A telephone to Diane at World Central brings me up to date on activities at World Central, and then off to the Dego Pumperie.
23.05 Saunerised. And tired after writing a draft letter to Bill & the Crims regarding my suggestions to re-Crimsonise the psyche of the innocent public.
"Don't be helpful: be available."
