Performance is inherently unlikely. Performance in a context mediated by commerce, within a culture shaped by commercial values, is impossible. Yet, for this working player with an ongoing travelling life (other than at this juncture in our uncertain times), something miraculously takes place nearly every night that KC steps onstage. Likely, this something is different for each person in the event and, probably for some, a miracle to be avoided.

My current reading of recent academic tomes, mostly published within the past five-ten years), and addressing musicking as a creative practice, the training/education of musicians, audient involvement in the negotiation of performance practice, the effects of the industry on musical workings, creativity as a social/group activity, and more – at last! are beginning to speak to my own experience. Many of the authors draw on research findings of events that are pretty much part of my daily working life, yet have strangely escaped wide commentary from academia for perhaps the three-four decades of my professionalism.

What do I gain from this reading?

A reminder of what is possible within The Guitar Circle, itself seemingly unknown to educators and researchers.
A reminder of what is (mostly) impossible under professional conditions.
The difficulty of neutralising many of those governing factors and conditions.
A contemporary academic vocabulary available to articulate my experience…

Embodied cognition. Yep!
Plural agency. Agreed.
Distributed expertise and distributed creativity. True.
Core Values (Nicholas Cook 2018): interaction, mutual listening, balancing of individual and collective, care for the other. Wish.

Yet every time I walk onstage, this is left behind, and probably didn’t even make it to the wings. None of this has a hold or purchase on me, nor my playing. Each time is the first time, a moment of innocence where, regardless of all contingencies and factors militating against the moment stepping up, taking us into its compassionate embrace, holding us as we take the leap: the impossible remains possible. Every moment of every day.

Robert Fripp
Wednesday 10th. June, 2020
Bredonborough, Middle England