11.00
Driving snow is blowing past on the other side of the secondary-glazed window. Life without secondary glazing is tough, let's acknowledge.
This is the first day-off - day-off since I arrived in Nashville. Devil Throat is now a cold, but lingers. There is little catch-up time on the road, particularly when there are more shows in a row than Crimson Standard Operating Procedure allows for (four). We have done six & five. Adrian continues to be a Mr. Sniffy, although it doesn't hinder his astonishing singing.
A call to the Horse has made my day again.
An ethernet-online flurry by ethernet, the only way to go. This from someone who has gone online at 8K (in Argentina). Complementary ethernet is one strategy being adopted by American hotels, competing fiercely for a dwindled business trade. An entourage staying for several days is therefore a significant client.
The business world of America has changed, radically, since The Event. This is because living in America has changed radically since The Event. I would have little sense of this were I to be living full-time in Bredonborough & commuting to DGMHQ. But I was in Basement Belewbeloid on September 11th. & I have been traveling extensively in the US since then.
From an English/European perspective, mainland USA suffered a terrorist attack, an appalling one, but nevertheless a terrorist attack. England knows IRA attacks, Spain ETA, Germany Bader-Meinhoff, Italy the Red Brigade, France Algerian dissidents. So, there is a level of ongoingness with the possibility of attacks. This is not a discount, not a complacency; not an acceptingness. Simply, no surprise. My own windows at No. 7, Deodar Road, Putney were rattled by an IRA bomb on Putney bridge in 1974. Crimson looked down from were Air Studios on Oxford Circus (January 1974) as the streets were cleared following an IRA bomb warning.
But, here in America, for Americans, the world has changed. This change is irrevocable. I don't believe that this sense of everything is now different has been fully appreciated outside America. This change in perception will set in course a series of repercussions and reverberations that will continue for decades. I present this as the view of an impartial observer, one who travels widely; one who wishes for people in all places the best that they might wish for themselves.
I have also had fun this morning making Fripp's head bob about (ouch!) by the transcript of the Sanctuary press conference that is posted on the King Crimson website. He is an irritating presence and my life would be much happier if he went away. His disappearance wouldn't make any hostile commentators any happier though - they would find someone else as an excuse to vent their negativity. Thus energy-exchanges and equilibrations continue, intentionally, accidentally, habitually & otherwise.
Dribbling gently continues.
15.32
Shops on 16th. Street - the main drag in Denver - are closing because of the weather. The Land-of-Tents airport is also closed. Now I am returned from the the snowy blasts of downtown, a mass of e-mail is becoming about-to-having-been sorted; and strings are changed. Anyone remotely interested in stuff - my present strings are D'addario, the tuning CGDAEG, the gauges 052, 038, 024, 016, 012 & 010.
20.54
Dismal dining to the accompaniment of a shrieking woman of the thirty-something kind.
Downtown Denver has almost completely closed down, except for hotel restaurants. The first I tried, a block away, had shrieking women in the entrance porch. This shrieking masqueraded as laughter. I didn't stay there for very long at all. In the restaurant of this hotel, where the bar was pressed into service as a de facto restaurant annexe and I was sitting, another thirty-something woman was also shrieking. That is, shrieked while pretending that this was laughter, for the whole hour that I was sitting nearby.
I wondered: was there a connection between the shrieking women? Laughter functions as an energy-release mechanism when we hold contradictory information and/or beliefs (this is clearly simplistic, but this is a diary). Holding contradiction results in friction. If we are unable to contain the "heat" resulting from that friction, we might laugh (there are other possible responses). If we are caught in a situation of exceptional contradiction, we might shriek. I am wondering why there was so much shrieking within one block of downtown Denver this evening.
22.27
Devil Throat has become a full-blown sniffling cold.
"We recognise in others what we know most deeply in ourselves."
