Baptist Camp Lebanon NJ Good

Posted by Robert Fripp
25 Mar 2005
Friday, March 25, 2005

Baptist Camp, Lebanon, NJ.

06.09

Good Friday.

Rising at 05.20. Curt was in the bathroom before me, for the first time, and heading out the door with Tony shortly afterwards. Going downstairs, Sandra was carrying stuff to her car. Departures are already well underway, the first scheduled for 05.00.

On this day, twenty years ago, the first Guitar Craft course began in West Virginia. What is Guitar Craft, on this Easter Day, twenty years later?

Primarily, GC is a focus for developing a personal practice: one of developing a sense of personal presence, the space around us, and our relationship between the two. The primary means for this are silence, music, the guitar; and the ways these come together for the individual, small Circles and the larger GC community.

Silence is a powerful contributor to many GC courses, particularly where they are held in facilities with an established tradition of prayer, reflection and meditation, such as seminaries, monasteries and places of retreat. Silence also seems able to penetrate facilities less obviously supportive of quiet time.

Those who attend courses come from all walks and conditions of life, many of whose normal working conditions are not externally, nor overtly, encouraging of personal endeavour. The challenge, when leaving courses, is often this: how may I carry this quality of silence with me, and hold it close inside the noise of daily life?

How is it that music appears, as if from nowhere, bringing hope to a despairing heart, food for hungry ears, life to a tired spirit? Music even manages to spring from the instruments of beginning players with little executive capacity, experience or musical talent.

GC guitar techniques have developed over 20 years of application & refinement, following application during 27 years of playing & performance, in a wide variety of contexts & spaces, on four continents.

Personal practice is necessary to apply, internalise and develop the material presented; but a striking feature of Guitar Craft is the degree to which this is undertaken within groups, small, large and even very large.

Currently, there are a growing number of Guitar Circles of varying sizes that meet regularly, sometimes under difficult conditions, throughout the world. Together with non-playing participants drawn to GC practice, these comprise the body of the wider GC community.

Introductory courses to the New Standard Tuning and Guitar Craft are held regularly in different countries, made possible & available by the increasing experience of those involved in Guitar Craft since the earliest courses.

Today's 20th. anniversary is not the important one, for me. The major shift is coming next year, with the 21st. anniversary. The value of today's birthday is as a sounding-bell to alert us to what is coming, that we might prepare for the shift to the next 21-year period.

When we reach almost-the-end of a process, it seems to reach back & draw us towards it. Something is required, but not a lot. A clear picture of what is required for 2006, which would begin the next 21 years of Guitar Craft life, is now available. By holding this picture, we allow its power of attraction to draw us towards it.

The course planned at Lunlunta (Mendoza, Argentina) for April 2006 effectively celebrates the 21st. anniversary & (potential) completion of the first generation of GC activities. The proposed 2006 Summer School of The Virtuous Circle Project in England would be the beginning of the second generation.

09.22 Breakfast with Bob & Veronique, Patrick S & Debra joining us. Old friends re-connecting & re-calibrating, learning from each other & together.

Now, a suitcase is looking at me, waiting to be closed.

14.03 Red Carpet Club, JFK, NY.

A quick visit to Hollywood Video for a few cheap DVDs of guaranteed high action & horror, and a few promised laughs, then back to collect bags for a punctual departure at 11.00. Alan & Barry dropped me in front of the United Terminal at 12.35.

Once through security, neither of the two Hudson News shops had an FT. Antonio's Italian Table had no spinach & cheese calzone as promised, so I settled for a modest vegetarian lasagne. The cheesecake was more modest even than the lasagne, verging on humility. A call to the Sistery Person cheered my post-lunching spirits. Now in the Red Carpet Club, I am pleased to report that Trey Gunn's generous Christmas present, of a TVBgone, works very well. And a Red Carpet Club apple, hygienically wrapped in polythene, had no discernible flavour of apple with a slightly bitter edge.

A full flight in Cattle Class to London boards at 18.15 & carries me back to Tiny Willcox, Slinky Minx.



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