My life as a professional musician is a joyless exercise in futility.
Linguistic philosophers continue to argue that probably music is not a language, that is in the philosophical debate. Another point of view is to say that music is a very profound language.
So, you can set up an orchestra down this end of the railway station playing one particular area, and simultaneously at the other end something completely different going on. And in the middle they meet, or not, depending.
Now, if King Crimson accepts responsibility for innovating its own tradition, you can’t accept responsibility for the audience. And there is an enormous tangible weight of expectation, which comes from an audience attending a King Crimson concert.
Then certainly for a musician timing becomes something that is immediately accessible as a concept, because it’s a necessity in ones everyday performance.
What we hear is the quality of our listening.
To me, Bill’s musical heart is in Earthworks, in the jazz they are playing, in the acoustic kit.
I recommend my students not to be professional unless they really have to be. I tell them, ‘If you love music, sell Hoovers or be a plumber. Do something useful with your life.’
In terms of an identity, an identity reflects an individuality, by definition. And, if there is a quality present, it is recognizable and it can be named. If you can’t name it, it means you don’t recognize it.
The aim is freedom conscience and truth.
The concern of the musician is to play the music. It is there demanding to be given sound to.
When a record company makes a mistake, the artist pays for it. When a manager makes a mistake, the artist pays for it. When the artist makes a mistake, the artist pays for it.
And if you are playing in several meters at once, there has to be a – not a rigid – but there definitely has to be a reference to a common pulse in the band.
Performance is a vehicle for entering different worlds of experiencing.
However, in modern conceptual frameworks there is a more sophisticated view. I would say that the act of music exists in several worlds simultaneously.
What is necessary is possible, what we want is expensive. What is unnecessary is unlikely.
Business logic and musical logic are utterly incompatible.
The science is in knowing; the art in perceiving.
The quality of artistry is the capacity to assume innocence at will, the quality of experiencing innocence as if for the first time.
Me and a book is a party. Me and a book and a cup of coffee is an orgy.
The way we describe our world shows how we think of our world. How we think of our world governs how we interpret our world. How we interpret our world directs how we participate in the world. How we participate in the world shapes the world.