#304, Hotel Most Acceptable, Toronto.
A good call to David at DGM HQ. We have received two offers for re-licensing the KC catalogue. The complete King Crimson catalogue is currently in two parts: the historic EG/Virgin KC recordings (mostly studio) and the DGM KC issues (mostly live). One offer is expressive of a professional lack of interest, the other is keen and has figures to match. Neither is perfect nor, as currently framed, acceptable.
It is interesting to witness the abyss that has opened in front of the mainstream music industry, with most commentators acknowledging this to be the actuality, including those within the industry itself. And yet the ongoing steady motion forward, as if everything were sweetness & light.
Q. How do we avoid a catastrophe?
A. Three-to-six months prior warning.
Q. How do we effectively direct the course of our lives?
A.
New reading this morning: In Search Of Zarathustra: The First Prophet and the Ideas That Changed the World by Paul Kriwaczek (Knopf 2002).
Now, to begin packing & then to guitar practising.
23.00
The Crimbus is leaving Massey Hall for Hotel Most Acceptable, Toronto. The remaining Crim check-outs will then board for an overnight drive to Detroit.
Despair is not a friend of mine, but is certainly a close acquaintance.
I have found myself, recently, beginning even to look ahead and find a wish to engage with a professional future within Crimson. And tonight, with the heart missing from another performance of which I was an integral part, I found myself unable and (this is new) an unwillingness to fill the distance between potential and actual. Perhaps it is only arrogance that I might feel it possible to make the attempt, and I am exceptionally unwilling to accept that any situation is unable to be saved. Yet tonight, I felt that was the way it was. It was that way.
The soundcheck was straightforward. We continue to refine & fine-tune details. Each day Pat moves his game incrementally forward, and this shows.
We began the performance punctually. A good proportion of the audience wandered in from the bar over a period of 3 songs. Among ourselves, the band commented afterwards on how many late arrivals/incomers sit in seats at the front, rather than the back. A lack of attention in the band unseated the first piece - The ConstruKction Of Light - to a small degree. To me, it was a great degree because it represented a lack of care. Life is like that, but Crimson is not. Then the first of the evening's flashes went off & flashes continued until the end of the show. Not a lot, but ongoing and sufficient to indicate that rock performance in our contemporary commercial culture may no longer be able to achieve what is of value to me. And then, there it was - an emptiness at the heart of the performance. Usually this indicates violation, although there are other causes.
It is not necessary for me to like my work. I do not have to enjoy it very much, although occasional joy is necessary for us to keep actively engaged within any line of endeavour. Like & dislike doesn't touch what is real. Joy does. Joy is when the part of us that recognizes what is real, finds itself present in the real world. This is a convoluted way of expressing what is the simplest of simple.
One can have joy within a situation that one dislikes: joy is qualitative, refreshing, cleansing, redemptive, renewing. But carelessness renders nascent joy stillborn. And this really really pisses me off. I have come a long way, spent a lot of time, undergone a lot of joylessness, getting to this place to have a small shot at what is right, and then having it pinned to earth.
The Schizoid Band are about to play in Russia. I found my dread of playing in Eastern Europe returning tonight. If a sophisticated town has little effective interest in maintaining integrity in performance, what will happen when people are in desperate need of music? Will the hunger translate into mass photography & bootlegging? It's not possible to tell people how to behave, even inviting co-operation with the audience sets off reaction; and Crimson performance norms are as different as the band itself. So, it may be that an alternative musical future took a large step towards me tonight.
Agnus Dei by Thomas Tallis is playing in Mobile HQ here at the back of the bus. I am that much in need of help.
"Even genius requires a competent technique."
