Silence is a friend to Guitar Craft, and its visits a precious gift to the courses. This is where the distance between the real world and our everyday world suddenly closes.

The real world is as available to us as we are ourselves available; that is, to the extent that we can bear to be present to what is real. This is a question of being. Nearly everything we believe ourselves to be is unreal, and when our fond beliefs of who- and what-we-are become clearly revealed as what they are, merely puff and flutter, we may find the insight hard, even terrifying, to bear. How easy to type these words.

The real world is not what we imagine it to be. This is because it’s real, not imaginary. It has a distinct quality, a taste, that in time we learn to recognise when, and if we’re lucky, this distance closes.

In the Silence, there is also help. We are made a gift, to the degree that we are able to receive it. The gift is in this: we are given what we need. This might be in the form of necessary information, it might be a deposit in our bank account, it might be an investment in a piece of work to be undertaken.

There is no compulsion to accept the gift; although if we do, this becomes a beginning point. A gift remains in motion and, in accepting a gift, we recognise that there is also a responsibility that comes with it, although accepting this responsibility is not compulsory. Money in the bank is there to be used and/or invested; and we might choose instead to have a party.

Recognising and accepting a gift freely-given, a Crafty recipient treats it as a loan, knowing that no debt collector will ever arrive to demand repayment. After all, a gift is unconditional: a gift to be repaid is not properly a gift.

Robert Fripp
Wednesday 29th. September, 2004
Casa de retiros Nuestra Señora Del Tránsito
Lunlunta, Argentina