Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Robert Fripp - let the power fall

So finally get down to the keyboard after yet another holiday party which to say the least is getting a bit tiresome but listening to a little Vince Guaraldi is calming my Christmas nerves. I guess it takes Charlie Brown music to do it - follow the muse I say! This post is really about Robert Fripp and his collaborations with Brian Eno - but ultimately about Fripp (not Charlie Brown).

Kazys has a post recognizing the amazing team that is Fripp/Eno and their enormous and graceful forays into ambiance, distortion and feedback, which Kazys rightly aligns as issues confronting network architects (See netlab) and by extention many artists making their way through our current wave of mutilation. If you don't know Evening Star you should buy it - then go for the lesser works - No Pussyfooting, and Equatorial Stars. They're good if you're a real head but Evening Star is the one -seminal art and an aural pleasure. Think of the soundtrack to Richter's Atlas or a subdued Butoh performance. It is a true space to think and feel - in other words it is art.

But this isn't a record review! What has me most enthralled is a link by Kazy's to Fripp's manifesto - Let The Power Fall. I'm just reading this for the first time so I'm pasting this here.

Let The Power Fall
By Robert Fripp

I
1 One can work within any structure.
2 One can work within any structure, some structures are more efficient
than others.
3 There is no structure which is universally appropriate.
4 Commitment to an aim within inappropriate structure will give rise to
the creation of an appropriate structure.
5 Apathy, ie passive commitment, within an appropriate structure will
effect its collapse.
6 Dogmatic attachment to the supposed merits of a particular structure
hinders the search for an appropriate structure.
7 There will be difficulty defining the appropriate structure because it
will be allways mobile, ie in process.

II
8 There should be no difficulty in defining aim.
9 The appropriate structure will recognise structures outside itself.
10 The appropriate structure can work within any large structure
11 Once the appropriate structure can work within any large structure,
some larger structure are more efficient than others.
12 There is no larger structure which is universally appropriate.
13 Commitment to an aim by an appropriate structure within a larger,
inappropriate structure will give rise to a large, appropriate structure.
14 The quantitive structure is affected by qualitative action

III
15 Qualitive action is not bound by number
16 Any small unit committed to qualitative action can affect radical
change on a scale outside its quantitative measure.
17 Quantative action works by violence and breeds reaction.
18 Qualitative action works works by example and invites reciprocation.
19 Reciprocation between independant structures is a framework of
interacting units which is itself a structure.
20 Any appropriate structure of interacting units can work within any
other structure of interacting units.
21 Once this is so, some structures of interacting units are more efficient
than others.

This is enormous so I won't try to make sense of it at the moment but plan to revisit it quite soon as certain posts recently seem to be hinting a similair thoughts.



2 comments:

MarkS said...

Thanks for the 'Manifesto'. Read it ages ago on the album-cover and never quite forgot about it.

Anonymous said...

I have the album too. And are quite intrigued by reading that on the back. However you made quite some mistakes there. Perhaps you may want to review it and repost?

:)