Better to sign autographs and posture for photography…
Monday 14th. December, 1998; DGM World Central, Broad Chalke, Wiltshire; 21.50
Guestbook Responses:
"Professional" philosophising is not for me.
Although seeking to understand my life and living of it, and therefore life and the living of it by others, is ongoing.
"Professional" musicianship is not for me.
Although seeking to understand the nature and the power of the creative impulse expressed through music is also ongoing.
This leads me repeatedly to experience, and recognise, that basically decent people continually seek to undermine what is of value in their musical lives; and defend loudly their rights to do do so.
Any performer of wit and intelligence declines to interact in any meaningful fashion with their public, knowing full well they are doomed to be overwhelmed by a clamour of dissentient voices.
There is no way one performer can debate with a public, or listening community, where the accepted "listening" practice is fundamentally undermined by egotism, reification, fetishisation and a demand for personal attention.
Better, for an easier life, to smile and humour the audience: sign autographs, posture for photography, deliver humorous anecdotes of famous friends and exciting adventures.
A philosophy is not a practice.
A practice contains / enshrines a value system, a code of ethics, and is a way of living one's life.
That is, a practice contains a "philosophy" but is not restricted by it.
A philosophy devoid of a practice, generated only through cerebral processes, is a frightening construct.
