13 January 2011

Four Years Ago Today

From the first page of the liner notes to the reissued 1st and 3rd editions of Exposure:



... When the Muse descends, we know directly (one aspect of) the Creative Impulse and its inexpressible benevolence. This is the life-giving force that maintains all audients and performers who continue, despite all evidence to the contrary, to return to the place where Music opens itself to us. When we find how many participants in our musical enterprise, even good people with the best of intentions, act to close the door on the Benevolence that seeks to walk in and embrace us, in that moment we know pain, grief, loss. When good people further declare their consumer rights in the event, then we know despair ...

So, what happened in 1977 that returned me to the life of a working player? At the beginning of July, David Bowie and Brian Eno telephoned me from Berlin and asked if I could play some hairy rock guitar on a record David was making with Brian. From this, everything changed: a beginning again, again.

Exposure was an autobiography of sorts, a statement of interests and concerns. My life changed direction in July 1974 following a terrifying vision of the future. Now, three decades later, I find that I underestimated the extent of radical change that is presently under way. In 1974 my response was terror. In 2006, I trust the unfolding process.

May we know, and trust, the inexpressible Benevolence of the Creative Impulse.

Robert Fripp
January 13th, 2006
DGM HQ, Wiltshire
England



I knew from the liner notes on the original LP that Fripp had intended Exposure as “the third part of an MOR trilogy with Daryl Hall’s Sacred Songs and Peter Gabriel II”; only this year, though, have I heard the Sacred Songs album.

Impulse on, Mr Fripp!

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