inspiration wednesday

the weaver - self-described as; "a farmer's wife living on the eastern edge of the yorkshire dales with my husband and a young border terrier..." (and you know, she's so much more than that!!) proposed a theme wednesday based on who we are inspired by and why. it's a rich opportunity because unpacking the various areas of my life, i find several people inspire and inform my thinking, my aspirations, even to some degree my motivation.

my friends and certainly my family have each provided me with ample amounts of inspiration.

so the challenge for me in writing this piece was to find someone

whose inspiration appears in some way, shape or form across my life.

i'd have to say that the english musician robert fripp would be that person. in part because of his music, which often fills my home, but in a larger sense because of the way in which he has used his life.

robert was born in wimbourne minster, dorset,

a beautiful little town i visited almost a quarter century ago.

he received his first guitar as a christmas present when he was eleven years old.

despite being an extraordinarily gifted musician, he acknowledges that through the course of his life, he has needed to take a number of disadvantages and turn them into advantages. one small example of this can be found in robert's biography in which he mentions that he was tone deaf with no sense of rhythm when he started playing guitar. he is famously quoted when having disclosed this that "music so wishes to be heard that it sometimes calls on unlikely characters to give it voice."

his career as the one consistent element of the band king crimson, not to mention the various side-projects and individual efforts he has produced and or created have all been characterized by a distinctive perception of his role in being a player of music, a unique and often challenging sense of the role of the audience in the creation of music, and the understanding that when properly fulfilled, those roles could lead to the possibility that something extraordinary might take place. something beyond the people involved.

i admire him for his service to music as something far removed from the commercial culture in which it is currently mired. as he brings music into this world it is subject to the expectations of audiences, critics, and those people for whom music is a commodity, "a product", and not an expression of the creative force that binds this universe together. reconciling those disparate world-views has resulted in him spending an inordinate amount of time unpacking the financial abuse that he (as so many musicians) have experienced instead of allowing his music to flow unimpeded.

i respect him for taking his own spiritual essence and placing it in the way of affording common yobs like myself an opportunity to address the more salient concerns of our presence here in this unlikely place. from robert i have learned about a range of seekers and thinkers who have had an enormous impact on my own internal dialogue with which i engage the many worlds of which i am but a small part.

robert is extraordinarily well-read and a terrific writer. more recently he and his sister have shared public speaking platforms in which guise they provide people with a sense of direction in taking their own lives from whatever spot they are in and establishing a discipline from which can grow a deeper understanding of themselves in relation to their own aspirations. i admire him for sharing his own understanding with people who are perhaps looking for a sense of direction and possibly even purpose.

i'm not sure that i can be any more admiring of this person than i have been here, but his impact and effect on me as a human being has been pronounced and is ongoing. if you're intrigued by some of what i've shared and wish to know more then you should know that there's much been said about robert fripp. some of the stronger more useful pieces include zen and the art of fripp's guitar. an excellent book was written by my bloggy mate sid the smith (see my sidebar for a link to his excellent blog) up on the east coast of england entitled "in the court of king crimson" which is well worth sourcing out!!! eric tamm's book on robert (although fairly out of date) contains some compelling and informative perspectives and can be read for free online right here.

i'll end off with a beautiful grace that robert learned while he was in retreat with j.g. bennett in 1974.

all life is one and everything that lives is holy.

plants, animals and people all must eat to live and nourish one another.

we bless the life that has died to give us food.

let us eat consciously, resolving by our labors to pay the debt of our existence.

as a point of departure for reflection, i modify the last line to say;

"let me live consciously to resolve by my labor the debt of my existence."