At the beginning of lunch, the Kitchen Co-ordinator asked for the nasty, horrid fluorescent lights in the dining room to be switched on. I asked that they be immediately switched off. They were not necessary: daylight with blue sky and sunshine provided more than a sufficiency of light; and they cast a nasty, horrid shine onto everyone and everything.
This is an example of where rules and regulations, if strictly adhered to, may be inappropriate. The application of the creative intelligence is necessary in novel situations.
In Mutiny On The Bounty (1962), Marlon takes over the ship and sets Trevor Howard, the captain, adrift. When Trevor gets back to England and the Royal Navy have a committee to investigate the mutiny, they find for Trevor. He is, after all, captain.
But the committee notes that the rules and regulations of the Royal Navy were written in the expectation that an English gentlemen would be appointed captain of a Royal Navy vessel. An English gentlemen was expected to provide this element, of creative adaption, to rigid and proscriptive rules, in order to fairly meet the variety of situations that life unfailingly presents. The Royal Navy knew, when writing the rules and regulations, they could not cover all possible arising situations. The English gentlemen, in this context, represents the creative element. The committee noted that, in this particular respect, the Royal Navy failed; i.e. Trevor is not a gentleman.
How, then, to know right conduct in a situation, even a situation in which we have never found ourselves before? For the first time, I presented this as “the aim of Guitar Craft”. There may be different ways of formulating this, but it stands. So, here a formal presentation:
The aim of Guitar Craft is to know right conduct in all situations, even situations where we find ourselves for the first time.
This is one of several possible formulations of the prime Guitar Craft aim: the development of conscience.
Robert Fripp
Saturday 25th. January, 2003
Villa Mercedes
Los Molinos, Spain