Failure to Fracture Preorders Open
Failure to Fracture: Learning King Crimson’s Impossible Song is a book about how I spent 22 years learning how to play one song. Think about that. One not-famous and uninteresting guitarist spends thousands of hours—yes, thousands—alone, practicing guitar in an attempt to prove only to himself that he is capable of overcoming something. There are no stakeholders, there is no money, there is no fame, there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, you do not pass go and you do not collect $200, and the song is a pretty brutal listen. No publisher in their right mind would put this book out.
And yet, here we are. You can preorder my new book today at FailureToFracture.com. It is published by Stairway Press, an independent publisher based in Arizona. Unbelievable.
I was 16 years old in 1998 when I started learning Fracture. I was 24 when Robert Fripp (King Crimson’s guitarist who composed the song) somehow found my personal website and recognized my work. I was 33 when I spent a week with Fripp and his “guitar buddies” in rural Mexico to acquire the skills I lacked in performing Fracture. I was 34 when Robert wrote on his website, “Fracture is impossible to play” and cited my work again. I was 38 when I was finally able to perform the song in its entirety. And I was 39 when I held my 3-pound, 320-page book in my hands. In between all those years were many, many frustrating hours spent alone with the guitar, aggravating my wife with “mosquito music” and constant unpleasant playing.
Why is this a book? Who knows. The book sort of happened by accident.
The beauty of life is that it needs no understanding. The book exists only because I started typing on night in February 2020 and wrote 5,000 words a day for a few weeks. I never presumed there was an audience for it, but humans value a story of accomplishment and achieving the impossible. Apparently, there is also a publisher that values this sort of esotericism and is willing to take a chance on weird musicians. People want to know about someone who breaks past physical, mental, spiritual, and musical limitations—taking years and years of practice, giving up, starting again, and giving it his all.
And then there’s Dave Woodruff’s incredible design work! Oh my! When I finished writing the book, it was in a boring ol’ Google Doc. I handed it over to Dave and he said, “I want to try something,” which led to the most unbelievably-designed guitar book of all time. There is no guitar book, or music book, that looks and feels like this. It is truly unbelievable. A triumph, even. It is yet another testimony to the fact that this book should not even exist. It is absurd and ridiculous and wonderfully real.
In the immortal words of Steve Jobs:
Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.
I never thought I was doing anything special. Fracture is not the weirdest song I’ve ever attempted to learn, but it’s the most elusive. It wasn’t until the age of YouTube that I found thousands of other players also working on the piece. The song is like Mount Everest, but can only be found in the listener’s ears and not on a map.
In the first few days since opening preorders, we’ve sold copies to Canada, Mexico, the UK, Australia, Japan, Sweden, Russia, Norway, and 20 different states in the US.
When Fripp wrote Fracture in 1973, I doubt he had any idea it was a song that would live for decades. He wrote it as a challenge to himself. He said it represented “the fracture and disintegration of [his] personality.” He wrote it, performed it, and moved on to other music. It did not take him 22 years to learn and perform it. It was an expression of himself and his capabilities. Was it challenging for him? Yes. Even for Fripp, who wrote in 2016:
it took a year to bring my practising up to speed, as it were;
and four months directly and specifically on Fracture.
my Wife had quite enough after a few weeks, so i had to lock the door to the Cellar;
where i practice.
So, if you’re ever thinking, “Should I pursue this idea? It seems crazy and like no one would ‘get it,’” let me assure you that there may be no idea that’s too crazy and esoteric. If I can write and release a book about spending two decades learning to play one song, you can probably get away with whatever you’re creatively considering. The fact that it took me so long to get to where I am suggests that I am not even good at what I was trying to do, and I still did it!
The chances of requiring 22 years to accomplish one small thing may be low, but even if it takes 30 or 40 years, I’d suggest you do it if you can continue finding value in it and teaching yourself something.
