Life is quieter at Chateau Belewbeloid. The sun even shines from time to time. My morning's writing has been productive, metallic, and a CD has arrived with exciting ideas from Pat The Beast.
When I call home to speak to Toyah at Chez Horse in Chiswick I usually say something like "if you're upstairs or in the bath, don't run down - I'm at Adrian's / Jeff's / Deepest Dorset, and I'll call later". After last week's El Crumpo to-the-max at the bottom of the stairs, today (5 minutes ago) I began with an earnest injunction not to hurtle `phonewards - I'll be at Adrian's for the next 3 or 4 hours, and we'll speak soon. At the end of the brief message, just before I put the `phone down, a breathless voice came on: Toyah had been outside, on the street, looking for a camera crew about to arrive. But the streets surrounding Chez Horse are sealed off by police cars responding to a bomb alert, and the houses on the next street are being evacuated.
This morning's reading, Margaret J. Wheatley's "Leadership and the New Science" has some comments of interest to anyone interested in the ongoing process of King Crimson and the collapse of EG. This morning, one particular anyone is the Heartless, Raging, Machiavellian, Vengeful, Uncaring, Moody, Petulant, Political Animal of a Venal Leader. These new attributes are culled from Sid Smith interviewees and added to the insightful comments of Elephant Trumpeters and Guestbook Dumpers. So, page 83 from Chapter Five - "Change, Stability, and Renewal: The Paradoxes of Self-Organizing Systems":
"An open system doesn't look for information that makes it feel good, that verifies its past and validates its present. It is deliberately looking for information that might threaten its stability, knock it off balance, and open it to growth". This strikes me as a characteristic strategy of DGM, Guitar Craft, King Crimson, and the Awful Diarist Too Moody To Be Mentioned By Name.
Cutting back to p.79: "Disturbances could create disequilibrium, but disequilibrium could lead to growth. If the system had the capacity to react and change, then disturbance was not necessarily a fearsome opponent".
A moody interjection: I differentiate between reaction and response. A reaction is mechanical, a response is intentional, carries presence and direction. So, disturbance would threaten a mechanically-operating system; that is, a basement operation. If the system is alive, present, and on its feet, sensing the light & warmth of the sun, a response is possible. This alive & open system, were it to have an effective discipline, would not rely only on disturbances presented by the world - these might stop for a while. So, the disciplined open system would be self-reliant in terms of "disturbances" to its mechanical operation. In Guitar Craft these are referred to as "pointed sticks".
Back to p.79-80: "Prigogine's work demonstrated that disequilibrium is the necessary condition for a system's growth. He named these systems dissipative structures -- They dissipate or give up their form in order to recreate themselves into new forms. Faced with increasing levels of disturbance, these systems possess the innate ability to reorganize themselves to deal with the new information -- they are called self-organizing systems. They are adaptive and resilient rather than rigid and stable".
I have read a selection of the various tomes & texts on practical, managerial & spiritual applications of complexity, chaos & quantum theories, (or at least where these are used as metaphor). I have been struck before by how well King Crimson's strange trajectory is described in these terms: as a "process structure". Taking into account Sid Smith's interviewees, I am likely one of the few to be so struck.
But back to page 83 and a description / explanation of a less open system, and one which I find convincing as regards my understanding of the EG Collapse: "This (the strategy of the open organisation) is so different from the way information is handled in well-defended organisations. In these, only information that confirms existing plans or leadership is let in -- such organizations run down, atrophy, and die".
Back to Sid Smith's tome: I have discovered in Sid's book that EG took actions, and controlled information, in situations that were never referred to me, even though these had significant effects on King Crimson. I note also that Crimson continues, and so do I, but EG do not (as anything other than an empty husk). It did not need to be that way, although it probably had to be.
