Starbucks ,Salisbury.
An online poster has suggested that he is rational, well-educated & enquiring, and therefore unable to accept the existence of "supernatural capacities" (paraphrased).
Rationality doesn't prepare us for the irrational, although a sense of proportion is valuable & reflected in a concern with/for form. A concern with form leads us to consider natural & unnatural proportion, natural proportion to arithmetic & geometric form and unnatural proportion to what is arbitrary. The main differences between natural & unnatural form are the necessary and the essential, and to make this distinction is to make a qualitative distinction. To make a qualitative distinction is itself a relatively subtle action (however we might understand that). The operations of Grace are intrinsically irrational (i.e. utterly disproportionate to what we deserve) and, by definition at the very least, beyond the rational mind. But, fortunately, Grace is not beyond our ability to experience, and this in itself is an example of Grace in operation.
A good English public school, until recently, trained its students to administer an empire; and part of this education was to recognise minute differences in degree & status. A good Western education prepares us to function successfully in a Western world with Western mind-set, values & worldview (e.g. a Newtonian view of science). The Western verbal-intellectual mind - material, partial, dis-integrated, arrogant - grants access to a world where the "supernatural" does not exist. And because it doesn't exist, therefore it can't exist. (Henri Bortoft's essay Goethe's Scientific Consciousness, reprinted in The Wholeness Of Nature, is a classic statement of the limitations placed on our experiencing by the WV-IM).
Reason is admirable & worthy of cultivation, and contributes to the development of discrimination. Discrimination is a necessary quality in life & absent in the True Believer (cf this Diary for 20th. May). But reason is not an instrument that can be applied to what is, by definition, beyond the exercise of reason; for example, a direct insight, or point of seeing, revealed instantaneously in the creative leap. One might as well use a telescope to examine a culture & then deny the existence of bacteria. Reason follows the creative insight; reflection follows revelation, and is servant to it.
So, rationality & a Western education, even reason, are not a sufficient qualification to pass an effective judgement on the operations of grace, qualitative distinctions & subtle actions. An education that necessarily & inevitably predisposes us to deny the possibility of anything that cannot be "proved" by physical /observation examination is not a sufficient education to judge "immaterial" actions (while noting these are material in their own domain).
Western education doesn't educate the body, nor does it train the feelings. It mostly educates the mind in a partial fashion, directed towards a limited range of functioning. Within that limited range, the "success" of the WV-IM is staggering. It can place a bomb (mostly) accurately on a building after flying for 500 miles. WV-IM can't make public transport punctual, affordable, safe nor conveniently accessible; but getting trains to run on time is not quite as dramatic or attention-attracting as large explosions.
There are schools where education is available to train the subtle faculties. These would conventionally fall under the heading of, for example, ashram or monastery, although the qualifications for entry are not quite the same as for Yale, Harvard, Oxford & Cambridge (and I am not demeaning that particular set of qualifications) while being very much the same. A friend of mine was trained at the same establishment that educated Mother Meera; their exceptional capacities (which I have experienced and witnessed) would be dismissed out of hand by rational, reasonable posters to the Guestbook. But our rational, reasonable, Western education predisposes us to consider the ashram not quite an education.
Nor would the ashram be the first-choice education to prepare us for the City of London, Wall Street, a captaincy of industry, or the world of the entrepreneur. But, if business were our particular vocation, a business training would be part of our functional training (noting that our functional training only addresses function) and the ashram provide us with the training to persist in a pressured & unsympathetic environment.
21.31 DGM HQ.
It's that time again! Yes, The Late Shift with David & Robert. We are listening to the recent KC show at Anaheim. This is the show that died on the inside, its lifeblood mysteriously ebbing away.
Many years of listening to KC bootlegs & archive tapes suggests that the magic present at hot live shows - even when angels descend on chariots of fire blowing trumpets of gold in our ears - may not be recorded along with the music. Kind of:
the magic was in the space & between the people & the music; the music was only one of the ingredients that contributed to that magic; the audible music is what got recorded; the record of the magic is in our experiencing of the event, and remains with us to the degree that we were present in the event.
Shows that have had the heart kicked out of them may even yield "good" performances on tape, but in that particular space at that particular time that the music was being played by those particular people to that particular audience, something was lacking. Perhaps the audience failed to hear what was available, perhaps the players failed to connect with what they were playing.
What an astonishing band this Crimson is. And the beginning Soundscapes are quietly astonishing - they have a presence within them. David has created a poor man's surround sound: the Anaheim board-mix in the front speakers & the audience in the rear. The sound is good-quality bootleg: you smell the sweat, duck some flying clams, breathe the air & shout long live the King! At least, that's what I'm shouting. What a pity then that the King's future is severely prejudiced by assassination attempts on a daily basis.
Almost every venue Crimson plays is poorly designed to present music; even, not designed for music at all. Accordingly, the sound in the Anaheim supper-club hall is el suckeroo to the max. So, one has to listen through the sound to find the music. Here in DGM SoundWorld David has created a good simulacrum of what-it-might-have-been to have sat in that strange venue in Anaheim.
Now the guitarists are slowing down in TCOL. And dropping notes. But it doesn't seem to matter. Happy powers along. Elektrik has a driving urgency. Eyes Wide Open doesn't work. This is one of the very few Crimson pieces that is stronger on record (in both versions) than live. Now the slab metal guitar solo on Facts of Life. I have no idea how Adrian manages to sing and play simultaneously. ProzaKc Blues in strong, broad strokes. Adrian's throat singer is, well, singing from his throat into TPTB. Now Fripp's solo: something was lost in the middle of this - he got an arrow in the heart. This is the first time I have sensed this evening, in this recorded music, what he was suffering at the time: this is where the show began to die. LTIA IV is not quite.
22.50 Overall, an accurate snapshot of the band at this particular time in this particular place with this particular audience.
To begin our evening: David has shown me an e-mail from a reliably sour & hostile former Crim - Bleater The Sour. His latest letter, in respect of the recent out-of-court Virgin settlement, is reliably sour & hostile. While impugning DGM's honour, he suggests he will accept his share of the money - so that more needy former Crims can receive their share. He would himself prefer to "(turn) this matter into a protracted dispute, which I can afford to do -- ".
My question is, why? I can understand dispute, of sufficient & necessary duration to honourably resolve a grievance. But why "protracted" for its own sake? Bleater's grapes make sour wine indeed.
23.30 D&R are discussing DGM future plans.
"We also learn by osmosis."
