Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Prog SEPTEMBER 2022 - by Grant Moon

ROBERT FRIPP: THE GUITAR CIRCLE

A dazzling collection of the King Crimson star's high-minded writing.

In 1975, Robert Fripp - looking inward, in the thrall of Russian philosopher George Gurdjieff - ditched King Crimson and headed to a spiritual institution in Sherborne, Dorset to further his research into thought systems. He soon resumed his musical activities, but his deep affinity with loftier matters informs all 560-plus pages of The Guitar Circle.

This extensive collection of writings on the art of guitar playing is culled from Fripp's correspondence, blogs, journals and presentations since his first Guitar Craft course, held in 1985, and evolving into the Guitar Circle in 2010. Thousands of students - or 'Crafties' - have enrolled internationally (including Crimson's Trey Gunn and Bill Rieflin) to learn his approach to his instrument.

It's a holistic one. Learning to play guitar through the Guitar Circle is, Fripp writes, "a way to develop presence: [...] being here in this moment, and knowing for a certainty that we are here, now." Mindfulness and 'The Power Of Now' are mainstream ideas these days, but they resonate all the more powerfully when delivered by a bona fide genius.

There's some extremely precise practical guitar advice in here: the optimal positions for arms, hands, fingers, spine; the correct way to finger notes; thoughts on practice and live performance. But Fripp's credo nurtures the discipline of the 'hands, the head and the heart', and is as much about the internal approach as the external playing - being receptive, listening. Fripp contends that a life is the sum of a series of small moments, and the way we do small things - such as holding a plectrum - speaks to who we really are.

It's heady stuff ("Commitments to an aim within an inappropriate structure will give rise to the creation of an appropriate structure") and heavy on the aphorisms ("Honour necessity; honour sufficiency"). When Fripp writes directly to Crafties - on everything from diets and active meditation to the struggle against mediocrity - his tone is encouraging, warm(ish), with the placid objectivity of a Zen master.

Glimpses of the bloke behind the brain are few, but fun - getting booed by Eric Burdon at the Whisky A Go Go; tolerating an avid nose-picker over a long-haul flight; his dim views on "incessant yammering"; his dad telling him - when he quit Crimson for Sherborne in '75 - "You're throwing away your career!"

He wasn't, and this lofty, fans-only tome proves he was on the right path. Much like A Year With Swollen Appendices by Fripp's coeval Brian Eno, The Guitar Circle is an enlightening deep-dive into a massive mind.