IAAD VII: EYE OF THE NEEDLE DIARY

Week 5

Monday February 10 2025

11:30am

An intentional day off yesterday. Interesting night’s sleep. I did awaken at about 3am, and had that “oh, no, not this again” moment of dread. Fortunately, was able to get back to sleep in a matter of minutes (2 songs from my Robert Johnson playlist). The second half of my night’s sleep was a jam-packed dream extravaganza with heavily surrealistic overtones. Woke up early, with my alarm, and lay in bed an extra 10 minutes in a state of gentle bewilderment.

Up. Morning stuff. Time for my IAAD guitar practice before my first student’s arrival. As I made coffee I pondered what that practice might be. The little voice I heard on Saturday about paying attention to what I was avoiding was still hanging about. What I’m avoiding is The Guitarist Inside. Not because I don’t like it or don’t want it, but because I’m really very bad at it, and I don’t have a clear sense of how to practice it. What are the Guitarist Inside Primaries, please? Because that’s the level I’m on with it.

The other option for Phase 2 that I was pondering was to revisit all of the early GC repertoire. Not necessarily with the same kind of detailed attention that I’ve been applying to Eye of the Needle, exactly. But bringing it back into my hands. There is a very clear continuum to the material that emerged in those early years. Theme I led into Theme II, which led into Theme III, which was Eye of the Needle. And that in turn led into Theme IV and so on.

So as I sat down, still not sure what I was going to practice, it occurred to me that this was actually one single practice. The early repertoire can give me practical material to work on, and while I work on that material I can practice the Guitarist Inside – specifically the holding Wish in the breast, and lord have mercy, but also reminding myself of the larger pool of practices – and just see what I can notice. From that perhaps a path forward might present itself.

Last week when pondering all of this I had been thinking specifically of beginning with Third Relation, but as I sat down this morning it occurred to me to begin at the Beginning. So, Theme I, then. I have never been particularly adept at the high melody bit, so a good piece of practical guitar work there. Pulled out the score briefly to make sure I remembered all of the bits. Good. Warmed up a little with the basic arpeggio. Took a quick look at the bass – a part too easy to overlook, just 4 whole notes, but much to take into consideration when playing it.

Then onto the melody bit. Warmed up my right hand on open strings in the cross-picking pattern this part uses. Then played the part slowly. Some question about where to play one note – the score says one place, common sense says another. Ultimately stuck with the score, but I’m open to a change.

Once up to tempo, brought in the Exercise of Contact At A Distance, specifically connecting with the participants on the IAAD, as a way to facilitate holding Wish in the breast.

Then something remarkable happened. The face of Frank Simes popped into my awareness. Not part of the course. Not someone I ever think about. In fact the last time I saw him was March 30, 1985, at the final meeting of the first Guitar Craft course. Frank was the one real “player” on that course. And for our final performance, in the original “ballroom” at Claymont Court, it was Frank and Robert playing this part. What followed was a flood of faces, some with names but others not, the 19 participants (including Robert) of that first course.

There I was playing this part, pretending to hold Wish in my breast, and a direct connection to 40 years ago arrived. A few more Presences, some with faces, one in particular with a name, followed along. The Claymont residents supporting the course in the Kitchen, in the House, as well as more direct contact.  

After I completed my practice, I retrieved the names of the guitarists on that course. Some missing names to go with faces I had seen, some names I still can’t place. 

Thinking I may be onto something here.

GC US1 – March 25-30, 1985

1. Robert Fripp
2. Roy Capellaro
3. Randall Chiurazzi
4. Chris Cousineau
5. Richard Drews
6. Chris Ebneth
7. Andrew Essex
8. Claude Gillet
9. Curt Golden
10. Mac Hart
11. Bryan Helm
12. James Hines III
13. Chris Kirby
14. Marvin Meng
15. Jeff Mercer
16. Peter Racine
17. Scott Robbins
18. Frank Simes
19. Mark Vermette
20. Barbara June Appelgren
21. Yoga Teacher
22. Frank Sheldon (I didn’t know his name yet, but his presence in the audience was remarkable)
23. Residents in the Kitchen and Dining Hall 

Tuesday February 11 2025

7:30am 

Up exceedingly early, by design. Who books a student for 8am?

Morning routine in the dark and cold. A cup of coffee and straight to the guitar. Warmed up with the melody bit from yesterday’s work on Theme I. Feels like something worth putting into rotation in my practice. All of the cross picking I’ve been doing during this project is beginning to pay off. Then on to Theme II. Other than reviewing the bass line to be sure I remember it correctly, not much new here. It’s the Fourth Primary, something that quite regularly shows up in my warm-ups. Remembering it in context a bit different, though. If I were to put it on a looper, it would be a good place to practice improvising, but at the moment that feel a little outside the Phase 2 work. Beginning tomorrow I’ll be tackling considerably more technically demanding material and I don’t know how much time that will require. Moved on to Eye of the Needle. Once through each of the 4 parts, straight in at performance tempo. A couple of days off from it seem to have brought it back to life. Guitar 2 is still not performance-ready. But all in all it felt rather solid.

Moving on to the Guitarist Inside, I went back to Theme II. It felt that this was simple enough that I could practice working with a number of the forms that have been discussed. As I repeated this simple musical pattern, playing each note with as much presence, intention, and care, as I was able, I experimented with several of the possible modes of the Guitarist Inside. The limb rotation a pretty obvious one and it works quite nicely. Even so, I still get distracted and my mind wanders, and I rarely make it through one complete cycle without at least one “wait, where the hell am I?” moment. But I persist. The Sixty Point exercise was an interesting one. Unless I plan to play the piece for a very very long time, this one needs to move at a pretty quick pace. And I got lost in all the same places I do when practicing this as part of the sitting. Certainly worth looking further into. Touched on the Collected State exercise. I found that the simple form settled in pretty easily, but the more traditional form as it is presented for the morning sitting would be a big challenge.

As with yesterday, I used the Exercise of Contact At A Distance as a vehicle for holding Wish in my breast, and breathing out Love. And again I began with whichever names and faces from the IAAD I could easily call up.

Obviously, surprises are only surprising once, but yesterday’s surprise appearance of the characters from the first Level One was much on my mind as I worked. As Theme II had arisen shortly before the first Level Two in 1985, and it was on that project that I encountered it for the first time as anything more than just the Fourth Primary, I intentionally brought that performance team to mind as well today. This manifested in the form of a near-cinematic collage. Because of the intensity of that course, all of the players are firmly burned into my memory. Their faces and most of their names came to me readily. And, to be honest, finding a little Love to exhale was no effort whatsoever. The folks contributing from outside the Circle were a little more difficult for me to conjure. Barbara June and Toyah were obvious. Eric (the Hero) Kahan as well. Pretty sure that Debra and Susy were part of the support from the community. But I can’t specifically remember if Frank was active on that course. Did we still have yoga? What other community members contributed? I’m a little sad I can’t remember more detail.

 

Time to go to work. First student shortly, and it will involve both Patsy Cline and T-Rex in NST.

GC US9 – December 1-14, 1985

1. Robert Fripp
2. Terry Blankenship
3. Roy Capellaro
4. Jon Diaz
5. John Durso
6. Andrew Essex
7. Tony Geballe
8. Claude Gillet
9. Curt Golden
10. Mike Gorman
11. Trey Gunn
12. Bryan Helm
13. James Hines III
14. Danny Howes
15. David Mazza
16. John Miley
17. John Novak
18. Mark Tomacci
19. Barbara June Appelgren
20. Eric Kahan
21. Toyah Wilcox
22. Debra Kahan
23. Susy Hawes
24. Frank Sheldon*
25. Residents in Kitchen and Dining Hall 

* 2:15pm – had to get confirmation from Tony on that one. 

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11:30am

After the lesson, a short laundry list of to-do’s. Some involving preparation for lessons later in the day (like refreshing the slide solo in What Is And What Will Never Be). But pertinent to this project, unloading a bunch of “notes to myself” that come up while I’m practicing, for things I need to do “later”.

The first was to dig up the video of the GWU show in 1985, where I know there is a close-up of Robert playing Theme I, in order to put to rest the nagging question of where that one note is actually played. Hint: the score is correct. Now I can practice the part without that question hovering.

Another was to go into my files, find what writings I do have about The Guitarist Inside, and collect them all in one place. I found this morning that I was grappling during practice time with questions about the details of the exercise, as well as the available forms and variations. Things I should be clear about before I begin. Most of what I have in disparate forms has been collected in The Guitar Circle, so I went there first and did a little cutting and pasting into a single document that I can have open at all times for reference. The only other useful thing I found were some notes I scribbled down after a meeting in Tepoztlán in 2015. 

This should make the Guitarist Inside aspect of practice in the coming days a little less fuzzy.

 

Wednesday February 12 2025

11:00am

Already and oddball day. No professional obligations until the afternoon, so I allowed myself to sleep in a little, which is to say I arose at what would generally be my normal time rather than the much earlier beginning I have adopted for this project. Went through my morning routine as usual, pushing away the feeling that I was running late and needed to be in a hurry. Breakfast before guitar, which is also something of a divergence from my practice on this course.

Began with a little gentle right hand, and then moved on to the Theme I “melody” which I am adopting as part of my warmup. It’s beginning to come along. Still takes a few repetitions before my right hand settles into the pattern, but it is more or less there and improving. From there to the exercise known informally as the Third Relation Exercise, an A Minor triad arpeggio played with cross picking over 3, 4, and 5 strings. As my work for today is a review of Theme IV, aka Third Relation, it seemed prudent. Plus it’s a good exercise and one that I am going to add to my warmup going forward during this project.

All in all, about 15 minutes of that. I then pulled up the music stand and opened the book to Third Relation. It has been some time since I’ve played the piece, and in the case of some to the lead variations, perhaps decades.

Guitar 4, the bass, first, since this is the part I most often played in performance, and the easiest doorway back into the music for me. Simply read through the part, reminding myself of the details, transitions, and nuances. While motoring through the rocking D Minor bass line I caught myself using a different fingering in one particular place than indicated in the tab. And while my ancient muscle memory would be happy to default to the indicated fingering if I asked it to, the 72-year-old guitarist addressing this piece in 2025 is pretty sure his fingering makes more sense, and for the time being I’m going to listen to that guy. If I’m going to do more with this piece than merely work through it as material for this project’s study, I will in all likelihood come back to this part as the one I’m most likely to be able pull into performance shape.

Then to the various leads. There was a time when I had all of these available in my hands, but there are multiple layers of rust on them now. Didn’t make any attempt to actually play through these parts, but simply read through it section by section. At almost every turn the same sequence of events. Read through it, phrase by phrase, figure out the fingering, the rhythmic timing, and right hand requirements, puzzled because none of it seems familiar. Eventually get it well enough that I can hear something that I recognize. Then my hands suddenly take over and I have this cheerful feeling of “Oh! There it is! I remember that.” Finally the inherent technical challenges of each phrase reveal themselves and I have this gloomy feeling of “Oh… There it is… I remember that.”

Went through this cycle over and over, working through all of the variations of the part. Some come more readily; the “dancing 5’s” and the descending sections. Others feel like I have never heard or seen them before in my life; the upper octave variations in particular.

I was in the house when this piece was born. Some part of me knows all of this stuff, but damn it is buried deep.

By the time I completed all of the parts, the hour was gone and I felt like I hadn’t really gotten any actual practice other than the warmup. And absolutely no Guitarist Inside. I was feeling like a slacker. So I put on the metronome and worked on the bass part for another 15 minutes. That was enough to get it into the world of the possible.

Going to put this bass part back into my regular practice rotation, although I have a lot of doubts that these old hands will ever be able to get this material back up to performance tempo. Fortunately, for Phase 2 at any rate, that is not part of the aim.

At least another day on this one before I move on. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

4:15pm

Had a free hour this afternoon, so I decided to make up for the lack of calisthenic work this morning. Jumped into the Beta-test version of “The Practice Room” just to see what it’s like. I think it’s going live today or tomorrow. In any case, it was odd to see myself on the computer screen as I practiced. I mostly ignored it. I can report back to the team that it works, but I’m not sure I grok what exactly it’s for. Maybe that will become more obvious later.

General workout began with an old standby octave scale exercise, since the bass part of Third Relation requires a bit of that. Began with the generic version and then tweaked it to mimic some of the picking patterns the bass part requires. From there to an extended workout with the “Third Relation” exercise, cross-picking over 5 strings. After about half an hour of that moved into running the part, looking at shaky transitions, and in general cleaning it up and speeding it up.

I like getting the workout, and I sure need the workout. But I’m quickly coming to the conclusion that “Phase 2” isn’t about getting parts up to performance condition. It has more to do with reexperiencing this material that I haven’t played in some time, as I did this morning. And then putting some aspects of it into my practice regimen to use as material to practice the Guitarist Inside with. The “Third Relation” exercise, for instance, with the 60-point Exercise. Or the descending sections with the Circle of Sensation. I need material to play that is challenging enough to imitate actual playing situations, but uncomplex enough to give me a fighting chance to observe something about how these practices work on me when I’m actually engaged with them. 

Thursday February 13 2025

1:30pm

The way my schedule is laid out today, I had to split my practice time into two half-hour sessions. The first just before my first student of the day, and the second after lunch. Early morning remains my most productive practice time, at least for the material I’m working on now, by far.

For the early morning session, began again with the melodic line from Invocation. It is getting easier for me to jump into this one, which is good, but it is also just quirky enough that it doesn’t respond well to autopilot, which is also good. Followed up on the plan formulated yesterday, to work with isolated segments from the repertoire I’m looking at, and experiment with the various forms of the Guitarist Inside. So once I had this one up and running I added the limb rotation. Dismal. It seems I can do one task or the other, but not at the same time. When I stick with the rotation, my playing goes to hell. When I correct my playing I completely lose track of my limbs. The Sixty-Point Exercise was the same – only worse… I get lost on that one even when it is ALL that I’m doing. The Collected State has promise, as it moves in its own time. I suppose that’s technically true of the rotation and 60 points as well. It is not necessary to marry them to the time set by the tempo and arrangement of the music. Eye of the Needle does include that wrinkle, but that level of precision may only be necessary when a group is doing the exercise in unison. More study needed.

Moved on to the “Third Relation” cross picking exercise. I’m okay with this a very moderate tempos, but as I approach performance tempo it gets pretty painful to listen to. Once in the groove, again experimenting with the same three forms of the Guitarist Inside, with pretty much the same result. Only worse since I’m less reliable on this guitar part. Switched to the bass line in D, which I am comfortable with, and had a bit more success, but only incrementally.

Fired up Zoom and into my day.

The session after lunch was more or less the same. Same musical material, but experimenting with different forms of the Guitarist Inside; holding the feeling of Wish in the breast, the circle of sensation, and a bit of the Exercise of Contact at a Distance, sending good wishes to the IAAD team. That last one isn’t exactly part of the Guitarist Inside, although I don’t know of any reason it shouldn’t be. But I was using it as a kind of surrogate for the practice of extending the feeling of Wish out to my friends in the circle.

All in all the results were the same as the morning. No real success in maintaining quality in my guitar playing while giving the inner work the attention it needs. Plus, my playing is worse in the afternoon, evidently. I think that once professional obligations and the noise of the world in general creeps in, focus is just a lot harder.

Tomorrow is another day.

Friday February 14 2025

8:45am

Happily back in the early morning groove today. Up at 6am, morning routine. Brew a cup of coffee and head for the guitar.

Largely academic morning. The first 15 minutes was the Invocation and Third Relation warmups. Moderate tempo, but very solid right out of the gate, which is encouraging. Throughout the warmup I worked with the Circle of Sensation as a way into the Guitarist Inside. As with yesterday, this one shows some promise for me. 

From warmup into Calliope. The book on the stand, and I read through it slowly. Began with the “Bass” parts (G3 and G4); bass in quotation marks since, like Third Relation, that part leaps about between the high bits in counterpoint with the leads and the growling low bits of definite bass. I find the score for this a bit confusing. Or, alternately, I’ve always found this piece a little confusing and the score doesn’t help that. Either way, it took me a while to find my way through this. Muscle memory definitely present as it all came back. Something that isn’t in the score that I have a very distinct memory of is a mirror part in the bass line of the E Major section. I really don’t know if this is something that was toyed with and dropped during the composition’s evolution, or if we just missed it when doing the transcription. But my hands play it readily enough that I clearly put some time into practicing it at one point or another.

Consulted some recordings, but the only “official” recording of this piece is on Get Crafty, which is distinctly lo-fi. Everything else is bootlegged. Settled on the WMMR recording. This was the League shortly after returning from the first Level 3 in Cranborne. Dragged the mp3 into “Transcribe!” so that I could slow it down a bit, which allowed to play along even with my rusty chops. This definitely helped to get me back inside the piece.

Then on to the Leads. As with all of the material I’ve looked at so far, when this music was first emerging I learned and practiced every part. And at one time or another I have played every part in an ensemble of one kind or another. But early on I found myself more than a little irritated with the prevalent undercurrent of that very common guitarist conceit; that the “leads” were for the high flyers, and if you’re not up to that you should play the bass. Anyone who has ever heard Invocation or Aspiration or Eye of the Needle with the bass line butchered knows what nonsense that is. So at some point during this period I decided I was going to become Master of the Bass Lines.

But I digress. As I worked through the Lead parts they came back to me swiftly. I also remembered very clearly why I knew from very early on that they were not my destiny. Ingenious, but treacherous. Fun, up to a point. And certainly a great workout for the hands. But the aim of this particular phase of the work is to reestablish the music for myself, which means knowing how all of the parts go. Whipping all the parts into a state of performance readiness is not really part of the plan. I’ll spend another day with this, focused on guitaring rather than analyzing, and then move on.

Office day at Golden Music Enterprises, and there is lots of tedious but unavoidable work to be done. Also need to go over the presentation I’m making for the IAAD tomorrow morning. And then of course, it’s Valentine’s Day. Off I go.

GC UK1 - September 1-November 16, 1986 - Red Lion House, Cranborne, Dorset

1. Robert Fripp
2. Terry Blankenship
3. Randall Chiurazzi
4. Andrew Essex
5. John Garbarczyk
6. Tony Geballe
7. Curt Golden
8. Ralph Gorga
9. Trey Gunn
10. James Hines III
11. Adam Lieb
12. Lindy Auberry
13. Elizabeth Bennett 

 

Saturday February 15 2025

2:30pm

Summarizing my practice a number of hours after the fact, which is not ideal. But I had to go from practice straight into preparation for presenting the Exercise Of Contact At A Distance, and from there into the House Meeting, and finally a number of essential errands. So now I’m back, and the task of remembering.

Up early, but not excruciatingly so. Took care of the morning routine, made a cup of coffee and headed to the guitar. Paused and considered my plan, which was to have a morning largely of calisthenic work, but utilizing material from Calliope. Seemed like a solid plan, so I tuned my guitar. 

Noticed that it was just coming up on 8am, and remembered that Mika was hosting a guided practice at 8. Thought it might be an opportunity to test out the Practice Room concept, which as of this morning had not yet gone public. I logged into the meeting, muted and video off, muted my computer’s speakers so I wouldn’t hear the material Mika was presenting, but just see a bunch of guitar players practicing. Turned on my metronome and set off on my warmup, the Invocation and Third Relation cross-picking forms I’ve been using all week. 

Warmed up for 15 minutes, hands feeling generally good. But I found the activity on screen distracting. This hadn’t been a problem when I hosted the warm-up hour before my Eye of the Needle presentation. But for that one we had all turned our video off, so I knew people were there but I couldn’t see them and they couldn’t see me. I simply knew I was not alone, and we were all practicing. I also think the fact that they were all doing something together and more or less in unison, while I was clearly not also contributed to this sense of discord. So I stayed online, but turned on my screensaver so I couldn’t see them. In that way this became less a test-run for the Practice Room, and more a specialized application of the Exercise of Contact at a Distance. Whatever it was, though I knew they were there working, I was no longer distracted by them.

Worked primarily on three bits of Calliope. First, the insane 9/8 lead line from the Intro, played on the highest frets possible on an Ovation guitar. This part is simply cruel. And if it was ever possible for these hands on this instrument, both are now far too ancient to do anything but flop about. Took it down a fourth to B♭. Although this makes the stretches even stretchyer, it was at least playable for me. The 2-string skips of the cross-picking are certainly challenging, but not insurmountable. So good work there.

From there I moved on to leads in the whacky interlude. Here again, the string skipping makes it hazardous, and the rhythmic scheme is pretty eccentric. But it is not conceptually difficult. Once I broke it down into 4 discrete bars it became quite clear. I think back in the day when I was playing this more regularly, my approach was to put my head down and crash through it. This morning it became more of a dance, as I believe it was meant to be. Left hand fingerings are tricky to the extent that position shifts need to be swift, precise, and clean. But really nothing anyone who has ever played Killing Floor or Soul Man in the old tuning would find daunting.

Then on to slay a personal dragon. The mirrored bass line in the 5/4 bar at the end of the Interlude. For some reason this has always eluded me. It’s just twisted enough, and enough unlike anything I would play if left to my own devices, that it has always frustrated me. So I tore it apart and looked at the places I always screw it up, and applied all of those little practical techniques I’m always on my student’s backs to work with. And by the end of the hour it was pretty reliable. A little like the Invocation melody line, I think I just need to get this into regular rotation in my daily practice for a while. So I’ll add it into my warmup going forward.

By then in was 9am. Turned off the screen saver and returned to the team on Zoom in time to close the hour with them.

From there: breakfast, a little quiet review of my plan for the EoCaaD presentation at 10. The presentation. The House Meeting. Into my day. And now, into the day off.

Sunday February 9 2025

IAAD – day off

SGC – morning on in a trio format

ONWARD TO WEEK 6