Discipline

Q… When I met you at San Cugat and you talked about finding yourself walking towards the ballroom to take over a session from Luciano. And you've written recently about responding to 'gentle urges' even when you don't know why. Your recent diary entry seemed to evoke some kind of surrender to mystery - in the creative process at least - and I realise the message has been there for a while in different bits of your work. Fripp practice isn't about becoming a control freak.

So in conclusion it seems that discipline is necessary to bring you to the point where you know you have to abandon the internal 'disciplinarian' - at this time, for this purpose. Fine, but will you ever know when you've reached that stage, or is a matter of trial and error?

very brief answer: a discipline enables us to direct what is lower & submit to what is higher. this implies that our "normal" sense of who we are & our experiencing is in between.

we need to get to know what is "lower": our automatic functioning of feeling, thinking, physical mannerisms & behaviours. this comes with self observation. we construct a "new person" inside us that is oriented towards looking over our own shoulder (division of attention). the observer is formed in the personality, but is an instrument that we use to widen / deepen our experiencing (eg listening to ourselves when speaking). when we know the animal - character/s we inhabit & how it does things, by enaging our attention, our functioning can become more efficient: ie less energy is used. (cf alexander technique: less effort used in physical motion).

we can't know what is "higher" because our knowing is "lower" than this; but we can learn to become an efficient, effective instrument at the service of "higher impulses" & develop a sensitivity to "promptings".

how do we get to know "higher impulses & promptings"? play, experience, having fun, trying things that whizz by, spontaneity. discrimination, judgement & trusting our feet when they go walking. they have a different flavour . sometimes, this is/are quite unmistakeable experiences when a higher something or other leans over and gives us a push, shouts in our ear and/or blows up in our head or heart with corresponding physiological effects. (it is especially valuable to develop a sense of the action of Grace in small things, and very easy to miss them when they happen). being near more experienced people & breathing the air they breath can also produce beneficial effects.

then, when we have a sense of what is required of us, we can direct the animal we inhabit to get on with it, whether it likes it or not, wants to or not. and if nothing in particular seems to be required of us, then we take care of business until the order comes through.

a discipline enables us to direct what is lower & submit to what is higher.

we learn to play a musical instrument, and play notes & repertoire on it. but the notes only become music when we submit to Music. so, the discipline is to hold ourselves in place, relaxed with the attention engaged, available & calling upon the Muse. musicking is what we do. Music is when we are done. if the musician speaks of their music, as if it belongs to them, it probably does & i'm on the way out the door.

I used to think of your approach to practice as primarily one of discipline and control. A matter of imposing will on both the external world (punctuality, tidiness, logical exposition of thought) and the internal (strengthening the 'watcher', directing attention in unfamiliar ways, conserving energy in the face of distractions like newsstands).

this is a good, concise description of part of it. something like, this is the active part of a discipline. the other part, is being responsive. (the third part is doing nothing but being done).

Does it mean the basement can take care of things itself? Nearly everything in our lives can be / is run by the Basement, completely automatically. terrifyingly so.

a wave from estonia...