One Thousand and One Days…
Words 65 · RF@80 Series.
Photo: King Crimson, House Of Blues, Disney Springs, Orlando, USA.
Today is the third anniversary of this Diary. This Diary is three years old. My analogue diaries go back to a Letts’ schoolboys’ diary when I was eleven years old. It sits in a box in an attic in Deepest Dorset with many other journals and diaries.
In some traditions, challenges of an extended duration are presented to its students & disciples (those who aspire to acquire the discipline on offer). This is in contrast to challenges of an intensive nature when ten minutes may, experientially, seem to last a lifetime or longer.
Forty days is a considerable period to honourably meet an ongoing challenge. So, how might one year be? Or three years? Even, if we might consider it possible in principle, a lifetime challenge? What could we know what a lifetime challenge means until, possibly, we are at the end of our lifetime challenge? If this seems quite a long time, perhaps three years might give us, at least, a taste of what is involved. We would learn something of our frailties, and our capacities.
One formulation of this exercise in living is to undertake a challenge for One Thousand and One Days. Sometimes the rider is added: “however long a thousand and days may be”. How long is time? is a longer topic. For the purposes of this online Diary, 1001 has been three years.
Now, at the end of this period of extended challenge, I have moved on from where I was at the beginning; literally and metaphorically. I am presently better positioned to meet my responsibilities and aims than I was on the day this Diary began. The music industry is also a very different place to operate - for several reasons, not the least of which is technology. I am also in the same place, personally and professionally. What is different is my relationship to that place: this is the strong sense of moving on.
We are always where we are, but we don’t often know where that is. A personal aphorism (that was first presented to my long-time Wimborne friend, Alan Cosgrove) is this:
If we’re going from A to B, better to know that we’re at A.
Most of our sense of ourselves is delusional. If we hope to reach our destination, then better to know the point of departure. So, where are we? There is no room for self-deception here, but to bear what we are is not pleasant. To know the poverty of our nature, for even a point shorn of duration - in a flash - is an awakening to terror and hope.
Where we are is (also) how we get there.
And where I am (in Deepest Dorset) is also 45 miles West of where the Diary
began. Today, where I am QWERTYising is some 4,500 miles West of that.
Also this morning, reflecting upon the completion of this challenge, a bright idea flew by. I will return to this idea and look at it, to see if the idea is only bright or
shining. A shining idea is hard to deny.
[Excerpt from RF’s King Crimson Touring Diary - July 21st. 2001]
involved. We would learn something of our frailties, and our capacities.
One formulation of this exercise in living is to undertake a challenge for One Thousand and One Days. Sometimes the rider is added: “however long a thousand and days may be”. How long is time? is a longer topic. For the purposes of this online Diary, 1001 has been three years.
Now, at the end of this period of extended challenge, I have moved on from where I was at the beginning; literally and metaphorically. I am presently better positioned to meet my responsibilities and aims than I was on the day this Diary began. The music industry is also a very different place to operate - for several reasons, not the least of which is technology. I am also in the same place, personally and professionally. What is different is my relationship to that place: this is the strong sense of moving on.
We are always where we are, but we don’t often know where that is. A personal aphorism (that was first presented to my long-time Wimborne friend, Alan Cosgrove) is this:
If we’re going from A to B, better to know that we’re at A.
Most of our sense of ourselves is delusional. If we hope to reach our destination, then better to know the point of departure. So, where are we? There is no room for self-deception here, but to bear what we are is not pleasant. To know the poverty of our nature, for even a point shorn of duration - in a flash - is an awakening to terror and hope.
Where we are is (also) how we get there.
And where I am (in Deepest Dorset) is also 45 miles West of where the Diary
began. Today, where I am QWERTYising is some 4,500 miles West of that.
Also this morning, reflecting upon the completion of this challenge, a bright idea flew by. I will return to this idea and look at it, to see if the idea is only bright or
shining. A shining idea is hard to deny.
[Excerpt from RF’s King Crimson Touring Diary - July 21st. 2001]
👏👏🧡