Los Molinos, Guitar Craft, January 20th, 2004.

Robert Fripp asks the question to the gathering of around sixty participants, 'What is your aim for the course?' I replied that my aim was yet to clarify. Whatever I may write or say will seem inadequate, but after a poor night's sleep as the end result of a long period of time before this Guitar Craft course, at 14-00 on Wednesday, January 21st, I told Hernan Nunez and Robert Fripp that I'd decided to leave the course less than a day into it. I packed my suitcase and left immediately. Alain (sorry if I've spelt your name incorrectly) drove me to the station which took me to Madrid with a flight to London as nothing was going to Liverpool. I write these lines in a small hotel on the Euston Road with a train back to the north tomorrow. My aim had finally clarified. I told Robert that I'd decided to suspend all activities to do with King Crimson analyses, orchestrations and Guitar Craft. Following the release of the Musical Guide on In the Wake of Poseidon and, perhaps, completing the second half of another one on In the Court of the Crimson King, I will rest for a while.

I have made this decision for one reason only: the unconscious isn't on the side of this work although, consciously, I have greatly enjoyed it and learnt huge amounts from it. I also hope others might have got something from it. I have also enjoyed playing New Standard Tuning guitar over the past few months, and know that with time, patience and intelligent work I could probably be very reasonable at it. But, music is more than enjoyment. My nightly dreams, which emerge from a something greater than ego, have made it clear that my own creative work, as a composer, must be taken ever more seriously. The main problem is that I still have problems in respecting the voice(s) and wishes of the unconscious. I write about it, talk about it and, often as not, choose to ignore it. In September I dreamt that I was playing the guitar in a GC circle. My guitar neck snapped in two. My wife came home a week ago saying she'd been talking to someone who knew of someone whose guitar neck had snapped in reality. In December I heard a voice say in a dream, 'You do not have the time for Guitar Craft.' There have been others such as one where a door closed on King Crimson and I walked into a washroom to clean myself up. Two nights before I flew to Spain I dreamt that I had sent two of my compositions down a garbage disposal shute thinking it was a postbox. Two women asked me if I knew that it wasn't a postbox. I feel that by continuing work on KC and related projects I am running the risk of consigning my own work to the rubbish heap. When I spoke with Robert yesterday he also voiced concern that my own work may be submerged if I continued along the current road of endless activity.

I've always tried to be modest about my creative work. I've felt that the saying, when asked, 'I'm a composer' sounds a little pretentious. However, the time has come to face the probability that the work has a life of its own. In today's world few people belive in 'inspiration.' It's too easy to piece music together using analytical means to do so: piece that here, and that there etc. rather than allowing what emerges to emerge magically and spontaneously. We all begin where we begin. And it's quite right in some instances. Take Beethoven's method of painstakingly reworking sketches until they were right. I am not disputing that, but suggesting that perhaps the impulse has to be pure; has to burn; has to resonate beyond itself; has to be 'muse' generated. It's clear that the majority of music today is ugly. You know if a muse has been at work when you hear it. It picks you up and feeds your soul. But we live a post-Postmodern age. Say no more. Muse-ic comes from somewhere deeper. To write it takes energy. A lot of energy: physical, psychic, intellectual and emotional.

It's true that we need technique to allow our music to breathe in time, as it were. Nowadays we're led to believe that anyone can have a go. Of course, that is at the back of modern education and I applaud it. (Or, instead, is economics at the back of modern day education? Not the place to go into that now.) But, there is more. Composing is a calling. Music is a calling. Perhaps this shows where my sympathies lie. Romanticism is uncool in today's world. Interesting, though, that the Lord of the Rings has cleared up at the box office and in the best sellers lists.

Currently I have two pieces in mind: a music theatre piece; a piece for orchestra. However, I haven't been approached by commissioning bodies to provide funding. Perhaps commissions aren't required for these two pieces to exist? Some of Holst's best work was uncommissioned. As I flew back to London from Madrid last evening I wondered whether or not I'd made the right decision to leave the GC course. But then memory played its part. As I left Los Molinos a GC Level 2.5 group were playing Hope on the lawn. While I talked with Alain on the station platform we mentioned Hope Street in Liverpool. As if to reinforce these two 'hopeful coincidences' someone on the planne was reading a newspaper with the words 'cultivates hope' written in giant black capitals.

I read Paulo Coelho's book The Pilgrimage on the journey. These words from it hit me. 'The word peccadillo, which means a small sin, comes from pecus, which means defective foot, a foot that is incapable of walking a road. The way to correct the peccadillo is always to walk forward, adapting oneself to new situations and receiving in return all of the thousands of blessings that life generously offers to those who seek them.' Robert Fripp said to me yesterday, 'It is impossible for artists to lie.' I have pulled the wool over my eyes for a long time. The time has come for it to be removed. As at other times in my life transition and transformation lie in wait, but waiting is perhaps the hardest thing to do.