I
Stewart Gunn: Clearly an anniversary of some import. But, Robert, time to let it go and enjoy your wonderful life, and wife, without strife?
RF: A seemingly sensible suggestion, one accepted in the good spirit which I feel Mr. Gunn intends. And thank you, I do enjoy my wonderful Wife.
Strife is an inevitability within the Human Condition. I engage with strife, with conflict, with adversarial conditions, because experience suggests this is the best way to equilibrate disorder. Seeking to avoid the problematics increases the difficulties which they generate. Engaging in a straightforward fashion, we see them coming. The repercussions, not addressed, may creep up from behind. The question for me: how may I turn this seeming disadvantage to my advantage? Noting that, the greater the seeming disadvantage, the greater the possible advantage. Endless Grief is one example of this. But there are no guarantees. Some situations are just too fucked.
The present stage of my life is one of putting my affairs in order. Not so I may die, but that I may live more fully. Part of this is - stuff. I have lots of stuff. I have a responsibility to this stuff, and to those surviving me with their own responsibilities towards my affairs. I do not wish for these good people to have to sort, organise and tidy the material results of my very busy life.
There is also a large pile of non-material stuff. A great deal of experiencing and some experiences, which I also seek to put in order. If I don’t address this now, then it will be the first piece of work I have to address immediately after my death. But my instruments of function won’t be working – hey! I’ll be dead! Simply, there is non-material stuff that needs to be sorted now, that has to be sorted now, before I fly away clean, clear and easy. How? By recapitulation. And Endless Grief has its own, very stinky, filing cabinet that needs to be sorted. There is in place a legal settlement, from September 1997, following some six years and seven months of conflict. But there is no resolution. There is no completion. There is not even a finish. Endless Grief remains unfinished business.
Endless Grief is also a report, to those who share my interest in the mechanics of how we live our lives. This is my wider subject for recapitulation. The personal mechanics of individual musicians, how those mechanics work within the context of a group. For example, King Crimson. The mechanics of fans, enthusiasts, and audients. The mechanics of the music industry. And, taken together, how the mechanical operations of musicians, audients and the industry bang together within the potentially cosmic act of musical performance.
The mechanics of our lives is not Who-We-Are. So who and where are we, within all of the messiness? As I mentioned above, better for me to do this now, while I am continuing to breathe. Because it will not going away simply by the fact of my dying.
II
A note on the letters: the first letter to Mr. Stanger, in the compilation assembled for publication of Dear Andrew c. 2006, is dated June 15th. 1991. The following letters became increasingly straightforward and copied to a growing list of recipients, both within the industry and without. This spread the word, and provided detailed information on the operations of The EG Way (Mr. Alder’s term), to various interested parties. These parties included EG artists who were prevented from commenting by gagging orders, an EG norm in conducting business. By these two letters, of February 24th. 1992, the correspondence was acquiring some notoriety.
