Robert Fripp

“Remember, remember, the fifth of November.” That’s when fireworks and bonfires mark Guy Fawkes Day in England, November 5th. That’s the day newly-weds Robert Fripp and Carol Burtin Fripp were rubber-stamped ‘LANDED IMMIGRANT’ at St- Bernard-de-Lacolle, Quebec. Admitted to Canada, they spent thirty-some years producing television, independent of each other, for three networks: CBC, TVOntario; and, for NHK-Japan they re-worked Japanese-language documentaries into English for export television markets.

CBC-TV’s This Land series sent Robert to remote places to film interesting tales; to the prairies and Nova Scotia for Country Canada; for fisheries tales to Newfoundland; and a six-part Cities on the Sea series explored settlements in or on water. Robert pulled together 360 episodes of CBC’s weekly, The Fifth Estate — investigative television, sometimes variety beyond belief, for 11 years.

At TVOntario, Carol produced a live, 90-minute current affairs weekly, Speaking Out. Her guests were often luminaries, such as Linus Pauling (Vitamin C); James E. Lovelock (the Gaia hypothesis); Betty Friedan (‘The Feminine Mystique’); Dr. Benjamin Spock (Baby and Child Care); Dr.Nathan Pritikin (the Pritikin Eating Plan); David Jenkins, Bishop of Durham, (the Immaculate Conception: “You can’t keep a Good God down.”) and theologian Hans Küng. Speaking Out ran 15 seasons.

A book list began. In the sciences: Spirit in Health: on shamanic cultures; and healing and therapy deep in prehistory, long before modern medicine. Then came The Becoming (UK) and a later edition, Let There Be Life (US/CDA): these included sixty-plus essays on the Cosmos, and life’s evolution. Next, a commercial venture, IBM Visions, a marketing magazine series on computers for science and engineering research. A book list needs fiction! Wessex Tales splits 40 stories evenly into two volumes, set in Dorset, England. In Power of a Woman, Eleanor of Aquitaine dictates memories of her long, turbulent life. Then comes Design and Science: this coffee-table book covers work by renowned designer Will Burtin. Major themes are 1/ communicating knowledge and data visually, and 2/ Burtin’s scientific approach to information design. MENU shows these books. My book list on Amazon book list shows them, too.

At the age of nine, Salisbury Cathedral’s choir recruited me to chant, sing and read, often in Elizabethan English, for five years. I remembered that language well enough to learn it better decades later. That’s when I wrote Dark Sovereign, a script for film or play. It’s in my same book list, ready to compete against Shakespeare — fluently, in his Tudor/Elizabethan English.

Regarding Dark Sovereign, LinkedIn carries a post. It reads: “For the first time in over four centuries a living author challenges Wm. Shakespeare directly by writing a competing play in the Bard’s English. Yes, fluent Tudor English. Robert Fripp’s counter-attack, Dark Sovereign, restores factual accuracy and a touch of common decency to the reputation of King Richard III, four hundred years after the Bard destroyed him.” In life, Richard was a mostly-decent man cut down for ever by Tudor defamation waved aloft by William Shakespeare.

Plunge in. Explore strange caves. robertfripp.ca awaits. Reader, may your Fates and Fortunes treat you kindly. / RSPF

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Photo: Marilyn Peddle, North Dorset, England, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons