Understanding.

PQ: You are attributed with saying: Understanding is what you can take onstage.

R: Yes. So your next question is likely to be - what is understanding?

PQ: "Understanding is a three-legged stool" is also attributed to you. What is understanding?

R: Firstly, we know our subject, or particular field of endeavour. Secondly, we have a feel for our subject. Thirdly, we can do our subject. That is, our capacity is performative: we have executant skills.

An example, I play guitar. I know what is involved in playing guitar. That is, I know how to play guitar. I have a feel for playing guitar. I can play guitar. So, to the degree of my understanding, I understand guitar playing: I know, I feel, I do. Understanding is a three-legged stool. When I walk onstage, I carry my understanding with me. As is sometimes expressed, understanding is embodied.

PQ: Would you also say that you take your discipline onstage with you?

R: No. At this point, my discipline takes me onstage. It is also true to say that I take my discipline, my practice, onstage with me. Once again, at this point my discipline is embodied.

 

https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/articles/features/10_robert_fripp_quotes_that_will_make_you_think-83154
PQ: How does this relate to being a working musician?

R: We apply the three criteria – know, feel, do – and apply these to musicianship. Do I know the music? Do I feel the music? Can I play the music? Where this is so, there is a degree of understanding.

In craft traditions, there are considered to be seven degrees, or levels, of understanding. The first degree, in this example, is where we take music onstage with us. With growing experience, dedication, and a commitment to serve the music, we may reach a point where Music carries us onstage.

PQ: You have moved between a small “m” – to serve the music – and capital M – Music carries us onstage.

R: Our beginning-understanding of music tends to be specific. Our focus is on the particular repertoire we are addressing. As our understanding, and practice, deepens we begin to recognise that Music is intelligent, something like “Music has a life of its own”, which inhabits all forms of music. In a word, the innate, ipseic quality of Music is universal. In this sense, Music is alive to the extent that it inhabits all those who are engaged in musicking, to adopt Christopher Small’s term. At which point, not so much that – we know music – but that Music knows us. This shift in how we experience Music is traditionally attributed to the sixth and seventh degrees of understanding.

In our contemporary Western culture, for those players going into “popular music” and mainstream professional life, musical training emphasises the executant and performative skill sets, and focuses on the player earning a living – “how to succeed in the music business”. Both of which are necessary IMO, but can result in an unbalanced player. From what I know of music education in, for example, Eastern schools and traditions, the emphasis is on developing our inner relationship with Music, cultivating our responses to Music, rather than using music to serve our professional aspirations.

In Guitar Craft and the Guitar Circle, there are an increasing number of professional players, but these are in the minority. A primary aim is to develop a balanced engagement with music. For example, Doing Nothing. To find and develop a Still Point within us, from which action moves. Without this, our playing moves more towards activity than action. Within our Still Point we find a Quiet, which welcomes Silence when it visits, and within the embrace of Silence we may find Music whispering in our ear.

Sometimes, more is done by Doing Nothing. Sometimes, more is said by saying nothing.

A competent player is asked to have the capacity to lead, or solo; accompany, or respond and support; and be tacit – to do nothing, actively. In my professional life, there are only a few players who have had this capacity. More significantly, I’m not sure how much those few have recognised the necessity of developing a Still Point, been willing to accept this necessity, and develop it throughout their field of practice.

An outcome from all of this: in our contemporary Western culture, developing a balanced musical life is more likely to take place outside the professional world IMO. Perhaps as an amateur, perhaps as semi-pro. In both of these cases, your musical choices are free of paying the rent and feeding your family.

PQ: Is this why you told the Daily Telegraph – “if you love music, become a plumber”?

R: Yes. Or become a brick-layer, an electrician – doing something useful which your community needs. You will always have employment, and this will support your musical life.

My Wife tells me off for this. She insists - follow your dreams. This is also true.

PQ: How do you know what you know?

R: Thank you for demonstrating the operation of Monkey Mind. A constant stream of associated thinkings and questions, bouncing along from one to another without giving time to hear any answer already presented. Endless. Exhausting. Nevertheless, a good question. Even better, a good question on another day.