Friday, July 26, 2013

an open letter to robert fripp


fripp,

this is david.  i'm talking to k.c. and you.  the universal guru,/the perfect fool trumps you.  music came to me only when it cleared you out of the way.  now, i play tabla.    listen: david, passion, grace and fire lives.  discipline is dead.  it must plague you, the way that baffoon destroyed that perfect order and beauty, which you didn't (or couldn't) protect.  good!  i would have traced your every (dualistic) step.  then, you have to give so much discipline over to deal with the drummer (the flip side!) that you can't call your masterpiece discipline but have to revert to old scratch, the k.c.  see: hamlet, compare hyperion to a mildewed ear (paraphrased).  what a mistake/[you] didn't take/a feather from his pillow.  and you would like to believe you got things the way you want them, and maybe it's true, but for that name, which dedicates it all to the dark lord.  how could you?  in one fell step, all your starving, dedication and discipline just became bragging.  shame. 

is it out of line to compare you to hitler?  your music is peopleless, like his art.  when you invite others in, there is bound to be conflict.  you must control, that will solve every problem... more control, more discipline, harder, faster, longer... o, brother.  hiel frippler!  dirty-dozen-disciples staccato-stepping in line behind, bicycling to where?... if only he would let us goose step through the tulips! 

i will tell you why i should hate you, not that i do, because i don't, but you, the iron maiden for criticism, the blank-wall stoic that pretends to himself that his music is for everyone else (merely because you don't visibly react to it emotionally, and you sit like a soldier at attention) knows that in reality it's just another circle-jerk in honor of the evil one.  so, let the master take the criticism, right?  you should be ashamed for the way you treated me.  maybe you saw the enmity between us when i didn't even know it existed.  or, you created it.  i was in awe of your music, discipline.  it seems you only wanted me to say "hello."  i said much more, and you shunned me with a rather clever dismissal.  teacher?  maybe.  anyway, the experience stuck with me.  i wanted to understand what you thought, how you saw the fan who was sycophantically talking with you about the music industry, as if he could know anything compared to you, but you could not appreciate the spirit in which my hand and my respect was offered to you.  it was because the statement you made with your music was so powerful (obviously, the power got up, brushed itself off and carried on).  you denied me the door to music by standing still in opposition. why?  o well, fine.  but you misjudged me.  you could have seen me as your friend, but instead you provided me opposition.  fine.  here it is back, after so may years because i feel i understand it now.  i should have rejected you and your music the moment you rejected me.  i would have found music much earlier.  you pretended it was because you didn't want me to place you above me, but in reality you didn't want me to believe i could place myself equal with you!

i thought your mission was to bring music into the world.  you wax poetic about it, but your feigned emotion is fraud.  you have to create emotions because you don't feel them like other people.  you have had to make feeling like a human being second nature to you just to get along in society.  you hope your secret will never be discovered, but your are transparent in a way you do not appreciate because of your lack of primary emotion.  your defenses are legion.  but your secret is out.  this is the best explanation for how you can worship satan without realizing that you have committed a fatal error.  how will it end?  he will betray you.  you know it.  it's obvious to any wise person.  it's his nature.  like the scorpion that stings the back of the frog who was kind enough to carry him across the river, he will turn on you.  he's the serpent.  and even if he doesn't betray you, how will you ever back out of the deal?  he'll stab you in the back.  it's obvious.  and you involved all of us in your deal.  but we were unwitting.  you will be punished. 

know this: i saw you in ft worth, and i saw you get some karma in my favor.  a member of the audience threw a paper cup full of ice, clear from the back of the house, where you had walked, and it hit you squarely on your spacious forehead.  you hesitated... what just happened?  you thought how to react.  i could see it on your face.  you couldn't react naturally.  i see it clearly now.  you had to think to react.  amazing, you had to think how to react about being hit on the head.  to think... discipline has ruined you and your music.  and you try to fake it by demanding that your songs need to be done in a few takes.  artificial spontanienty.  you crave sontaneity because it has never really happened for you.  john mcglaughlin can play the same thing a thousand times, and it's spontaneous every time, no hesitation, no sloppy fingering, and i'm sure his right hand is virtually never at a 90 deg angle to the string.  he's faster and he creates on the fly.  you plod and think twice. 

truth is, you got some of your own back.  of course, i was aghast at the time.  you rejected me, but i still loved you.  i felt ashamed for ft worth and hoped you would come out for another encore.  i had no idea it was for my benefit much later on to remember the moment of truth i saw.  i want to make this clear: i had nothing materially to do with the projectile that was lobbed at you, and i think it was a stupid thing to do, but it was clearly you getting your own coming back, and i'm glad i saw it.

i have now learned not to listen to your offerings to the dark lord.  don't bother to deny that they are offered to him.  the name dedicates it.  i know enough about magic(k) to see that for myself.  and unfortunately, you cannot escape.  and therefore, neither can we if we choose to audit you.  you should be ashamed of yourself for feeding that force in the world.  what good did you think would come of it?  your magick and your spirituality nearly killed me.  it put me in the hospital for three weeks with 23 broken bones, in rehab for months, in bankruptcy due to demands of the subrogation of the insurance company who paid for the whole stay and renigged after, demanding the money from me.  there is more, but that will suffice to give you a flavor of my tone.  be glad i don't hate you.  but spiritually, i intend to utterly destroy you, obliterate you, wipe you from my psyche and my soul and renounce you for the evil you are.  spiritually, i.e.,.

my feelings dawned only recently. even after my near death!!!  i hadn't connected it all.  i wanted to be sure.  so, i listened to more, love cannot bear, it might have been, in the car.  very dangerous.  without knowing a reason why, i looked to my left.  it was just in time to see a tradgedy in a minor key that would make the dark one smile with pleasure.  a mockingbird slammed by a hurtling, mile-a-minute, two ton projectile kinetic energy weapon was sent flipping uncannily and darkly comically in the air to land in a heap.  at least he was killed by the music(k), put out of his misery and accepted back onto the loving arms of the light.  i was only tortured.  how human of you, i.e., fripp.  cunning.  maximize the pain you reap with your dark offerings to the evil one.  imagine how many victims there must be!  carnage.  what do you get in return?  ask yourself: how long will it last, and what will the consequences be?  jesusatan will say to you, by your fruits i know you.  get thee behind me, satan. 

o, & it's amazing to me that no one sees it.  they're laughng at the fool now.  but tell me fripp, who is the fool in this court of bondage, domination, submission and capricious malice, otherwise known as discipline?  ... and it's all in my imagination.  huh!  perfect masquerade.  great deceiver.  evil pride rears it's head, fripp?  feeling powerful?  evil glory.  enjoy it now.  in god you trust, but your redemption is void, no legal tender.  the audacity to compare redemption to finances, it's so crass it's evil genius.  it is such an inadequate metaphor that it mocks parable.  and with such authority and assuredness, you write it as if he will never feel differently.  our cynicism is too high a price to pay. 

here are the reasons i should hate you:

1. your spirituality: king crimson is a name for satan, according to r&r lore, a name chosen by you, the fripp (what a pretentious and ego-ridden self-moniker) to honor the fallen one due to a "brief flirtation with satanism."  what is a brief flirtation with satanism?!?!  do you mean a spiritual crash-and-burn due to a moment's inattention and succumbing to deception?  maybe i can't prove this is so, but i have no problem believing it, based on deep listening i now regret.  once a satanist, always a satanist.  you can't live that down.  he's in you, a part of you fripp... but i don't need to tell you that.  you must feel it.  it must eat at you like an insidious parasite.  i know it does.  but you rededicated it all to that demon when you cranked the power back up again.  incidentally, everyone i have known who has worshipped, admired or otherwise placated, pledged allegiance to or adored satan has regretted it.  how can you expect such a relationship to end happily?  what kind of promises can be worth the price of such a betrothal?  what kind of bad faith allows a believer to walk into such an obvious trap?  what did you get in return for it, fripp?  it's certainly not david bowie's career you're at the helm of, nor john mcglaughlin's, for that matter.  where's all the money and fame?  more projects in the market place, the drive to 1984, that's what you need, a real break out, something to make it big.  result: neal and jack and me gets played on the radio twice... mtv plays sleepless a few more times than that.  you don't even want to stick to the deal you made. you're not even happy with what you got in return.  no wonder your gates of paradise protect a barren wasteland of regret where god hides from you.  i would too!  i wish i had!!!

don't say he doesn't exist or that it makes no difference.  i know better, as do you.  whatever force is behind the archetype (or the demon) it will never let you go, and there is no greater power.  you're just listening his b-side now, married in a christian church.  what a sham?!  perfect masquerade.  great deceiver.  after my near fatal auto accident, which happened while listening to the power to believe (in jesusatan?), it became quite clear to me that spiritual principals and powers were at work.  the song playing was dangerous curves, in fact.  the hit and run car was red and had a bumper sticker with a depiction of satan, your old pal, fripp, the crimson king.  ok, fripp give your own spirit to a demon, (or whatever other theological term you want to use for him) but have the decency to fully disclose.  but that would ruin your treachery, wouldn't it? you advance masked, don't you, red two scorer?  but any demon knows you must state your purpose in order for it to come about.  and i heard you say it, in the psychic realm, in the biomorphic field, in whatever the shared-consciousness ether may be called.  unbidden, "this is war," you said.  since then, it has been.  this is war. 

should i thank you for finally declaring it?  you had been bombing my psyche with destructive forces for years, but i believed in you.  i remember getting a bunch of kc albums from a women i loved in high school.  she never loved me back, either.  i thought this is something i should have nothing to do with.  it was nothing i could put my finger on.  so, i went a-head(phones) and listened.  now the evil fruit is mature.  maya. 

you will never live your betrayal down, no matter what your faith is now.  christianity is just another form of satanism, but you're already clear on that, aren't you fripp?  perfect masquerade.  great deceiver.  i imagine you must be laughing to yourself... or not. 

archetype, demon, antichrist, evil, call it and consider it as you will, there's no question about it, it's a force for the worse, not for the good.  or, fripp, are you a good satanist who believes there is only the one?  sometimes god hides, and satan pops up looking like a puppet buoying up and down behind a single bush in a vast field of empty barren regret, forlorn self-pity and grief on show, never mind that it happens to everyone, listen to my self-basting torture.  torture yourselves with me.  s&m&b&d.  you know what i mean, don't you, fripp?  what a performance.  huh!...  alienate yourself and wallow in self pity for everyone to see.  and you don't think you play the artist?!  huh!  our cynicism is too high a price to pay on the first day, but your performance on the first day was nothing if not cynical (what a disappointment that offering was after that prayer of a solo on wave, but you prima donas sacrificed music yet again in the moloch's belly of over inflated egos and souls overcoated with pride and self-importance.  you were really phon[y]ing it in).  shame!  you ruined a beautiful opportunity with your pride and arrogance.  though i don't know much about what actually happened, i know enough to see this.  you both acted like spoiled children, and the music suffered.  and we lost out.  now, david's music is dead from the same self-absorption.  you disappoint me, deeply.  and you shrug it off, it's only a career, what meaning does it have?  and we devoted audients drop off one by one because you "artists" can't stop your wanking yourselves off in public, and we want to watch the spectacle.  shame.  you talked such a good game on this score too, you and eno, so cerebral.  huh!  but he knows his limits.  you...?  not so much.  you exceed them, and your lack of practice and polish is always obvious.  your regimented efforts to fix it don't affect it.  so, there! 


2. you can't choose your audients:  your heart must be quite hard and cold.  you clearly lack natural empathy like a sociopath or a narcissistic personality.  what a demeaning thing to say, arrogant, patently foolish and untrue.  you clearly unchose me by saying such a calloused thing about me - and to me (if it's about your audients, tht includes me, and i read it.  so, it was addressed to me to take it to heart.).  how could you not realize how insulting that statement is to anyone who audits your music.  do you really not care for us?  what bald-face arrogance in the face of those on whom you depend for your livelihood!  you've chosen your audients by choosing the music you play.  and you taught me that!  how ingognizant can you be of how you insulted everyone who ever listened to you, and you cannot see the emperor's folly, the tyrant being overthrown, the toppling, top-heavy dictator who cannot control his own court?  shame!  and how ignorant (or self-deceptive) of the consequences of your own actions you are.  what did you expect?  all your feigned emotion is clearly fraudulent. 

3. discipline:  regimented, music in a rat's maze, orthodoxy, soul-killing, stress! from which i am now barred by a common sense of self-worth and decency and by allegiance to the good.  the quality of the music can ultimately never be defined, but you title your offerings, tack them to the bulletin board of our psyches, plant your seeds of pain and despair, reap suffering and unhappiness in the name of r&r.  shame.

4. your guitar cult of personality:  need i say more? 

5. you're still sloppy:  despite all your discipline and practice, (in the old days) the old kc with the misplacement of fingers, the hesitations, the swaggering, drunken braggart with his panicked picking and power chords that can't really pull off the lick he's contemplating, though he tries. and it's all fusion-metal cum trendy artrock crap, taking itself way too seriously, pretending to be king, and  the sloppiness is still there.  i can hear it, and i don't even consider myself a musician.  all your herculean efforts, and your attempts to hide it with rapid-fire repetition in rancid, warmed-over aspic.  bore/me, please/he's a dinosaur/mediocre.  honestly, it's not as good as you want us to believe it is, not as good as you believe it is.  your right hand was the good one.  no wonder you paid such dear and tender attention to its role in your playing (with yourself, or circle-jerking for the dark lord).

6. i loved you for your genius:  more's the pity.  more fool me/bless my soul. 

7. you're just looking for a friend: dallas 1981...  remember me?  am i in that infinitessalia-saturated diary of the fripp's?  remember me.  i'm no friend of yours. 

sincerely and in cold blood,
sarva david