LAUNDRY WITH LUDWIG

Out there in the noon-plus sunshine just now getting in some of the dried laundry, one arm filling with sox and underwear, I heard the manic warbler up in one of the cedars fiddling with his old standard (he's so used to it year-to-year he just trills da-DA-da, da-DA-da until he runs out of breath) and when he got into a riffy groove he thought was good, he took off on the da-DA-da-DA-da-DA-da-DA-da-DA-da extended riff that Beethoven sampled in Pastorale. 

The composer, however, went on to do a few other things with the riff in the human fashion, trilling it this way and that, filigreeing here and there to create a composition worthy of the symphonic pantheon, but in the present case the warbler just went on and on da-DA-da-DA-da-DA-da-ing until he was breathless, which is anticlimactic even for a Beethoven fan gathering laundry.

So when the warbler started up again, I unconsciously joined in whistling, and at the right place couldn't help but segue into Ludwig’s delightful version, which I won't romanize here - we all know it - but I tell you, the warbler suddenly stopped short, as if listening to this new and startling version of his anciently popular and splendid melody. 

When I stopped whistling, having gathered all the laundry (the mundane plays a key part in artistic creation; just ask Ludwig’s housekeeper), warbler did a chirpy thing that I can't replicate in mere alphabetics, but to my ear was the avian equivalent of “Wow! That was really something!” It led me to think that he might even be about to alter his repertoire to include a few Pow! additions by Ludwig, which would really be something!

I listened carefully as I sorted the laundry indoors. The silence was pregnant. The feathered master began... sounded great... when he hit the part where Beethoven lifts off into creation, the bird went on exactly as before, right to the end of breath. It was a bit of a letdown, but I wasn't really expecting any more than last time, when I tried to get him to cover just a couple bars of John Lee Hooker.

Like Beethoven, John Lee or any other world-class artist, vonWarbler has his own priorities.       

SYMPHONIES

Before he flies off Crow yaks for a while, likely about me being too near the compost pile for a comfortable visit by his honorable darkness. Then in the last of the gardening light, as I trowel in some lettuces and big beans, the only other is the wood dove-- probably under the eaves, following the litany dove ancestors have perfected over eons...

That familiar ancient incantation sounds soothingly simple to our differently evolved ears, untrained in the deeper aspects of avian taste and striving; yes, simple to our ears, but the longer you listen the less simple it becomes. You begin to sense that that mellow cooing has core densities, intensities and deeper syncopations of the same fundamental kinds that our own great composers are ever seeking in their lifetimes...

Out there upon the cooling air, the song is plain as a gentle hand on a shoulder: simple but uniquely effective, as it was indeed woven over time to be, especially to other wood doves; to them it is as effective as the efforts of Johann, Wolfgang, Ludwig, Igor, Gustav and colleagues are to us, both species seeking the same ancient object: to make a fitting statement into the awesome quiet...

And quiet it is, here in the evening garden, all the more for being the silence that defines those notes, murmured as though to the air itself, an effort begun so long ago and polished all the way to now, when, with the smoothness of time passing, those elegant sounds meet the same need that quickens in seeds...

WALK LOOKING UP

via Reddit

SUI GENERIS

As addendum tangential to the aforegoing, I figure I must also have the largest collection of late 20th century western music on the mountainside, if not in the Prefecture, to say nothing of formats. I have actual vinyl, though I no longer have my turntable; the LP (for the museum-quality term: "long-playing," back from when things had duration worthy of mention) albums are part of my art collection. I have some remnant tapes, but also no player. I have instruments. I am the player. 

I am the only one on the mountain who has ever played Frank Zappa to this air, I am sure. RL Burnside too, and the Pixies, Chet Baker, the Feelies, Van Morrison, Radiohead, Concrete Blonde, thousands of songs... And when I play them, I play them loud, as befits the passion thrust into the notes in the first place, and in the summer with the windows open, the birds love it, especially the warblers.

As the local farmers ride their mopeds up to their greening paddies or come walking up the road with their paddy tools they pass through my broad airy wash of Zappa Pixies Concrete Blonde and although they never actually knock on my door to ask me What IS that album, where can I get it? Who is playing Plastic People or Snake Drive or It's Only Life or Where is My Mind or Still in Hollywood? That sonic baptism is a deeply cultural event for them, one to be found nowhere else in the Prefecture, so it is no surprise that they are muted by the experience. It is a big one.

When they walk into one side of that sonic flux and let it wash over them they do not run for their lives; rather, they walk toward their lives, as though all is now well with the world, if not in fact even better, and when they emerge from the other side of that torrent, richer than when they entered, they are transformed in some way, if only at the molecular level (which includes DNA). One of their progeny may some century hence thrill the world with his or her deeply inspired and unpinpointably original music without ever knowing why.

Like those farmers and their descendants, you heard it here first.

HANDS UP

Upstairs yesterday in all the quiet of a sunny afternoon I looked out the window into the garden and saw what at first I thought was The Baron, browsing quietly on some potato shoots growing out of my compost pile. But his color was more tawnily intense, he had new velvet horns, and it looked like some white spots there along the sides: I went to get my glasses: Yup, it was not The Baron, it was a male that had been a fawn not long ago that we had seen following its mother around, it was Baron II, heir to these great estates. Unfortunately, however, he was even now eying my lettuce, and the garden gate was open.

So I headed downstairs to get my props and be ready to do the Deer Chasing Routine. I asked Echo if she'd seen the deer, she said no, looked out the window and said Son of Baron. Yup I said. He's just a teenager, which is why he's come into the garden so carefree in broad daylight. He sure is a beauty, but he's heading for the lettuce, so I'm ready to chase him: Why don't you go in the back room and make some noise through the screen door, maybe that will be enough. I was expecting some Echo shouting, some hand clapping, maybe some banging on the wall or something, as I prepared myself to go out shouting and making gruff Brady noises, but suddenly from the big speakers we have back there came the top-volume breakout hip hop beat of the Black Eyed Peas, doing Hands Up:

Coming with rhythms to make your head jerk

Hands up

We makin' the whole joint short circuit

Hands high

Touch the sky

Get 'em up

Get 'em up, get 'em up, get 'em up, get 'em up, get 'em up (get 'em up)

We goin' make you move

We goin' make it hot

Elbows above your heads peoples

We holdin' up the spot

and so forth...

Which is way over any deer's head, but an impressive choice for the purpose. That's Echo for you.

At the very first bass beat so alien to his life, spirit and environs, I thought for sure Baron II would leap straight up and prong for the nearest exit, like I would if I were a deer under such circs, or even myself suddenly at a rap concert. That's what he would have done if I had stepped out the door, clapped my hands and shouted-- but then I'm not the Black Eyed Peas, am I.

He wasn't shocked, even though hip hop must have been new to him; on the contrary, he looked more like pleasantly surprised. He raised his head with that natural grace we admire in our arts and gazed toward the source of the beat, that BIG beat, with the rhythmic voice-noises and the grip of the song; those big brown eyes with a look in them that I've seen in eyes before, of a hungry emptiness, a curious seeking, a question with some panic at its heart.

He wasn't familiar with music, let alone with the Black Eyed Peas, to say nothing of lyrics; he stared for a long time - in grazing deer terms - at the roomdoor whence this mysteriously rhythmic and apparently human sound was issuing at chest-pounding volume greater than anything he'd ever heard, excepting maybe thunder directly overhead, backed by Echo clapping her hands. Should he run for his life, or could he safely ignore this amazing new thing? Could he graze and listen? He stood there looking, big ears focusing, trying to figure this out: was it a threat, was this a human in new form, was this... what was this? And he just a kid, these wild grape leaves so tasty, those lush lettuces just there in his vassal's garden...

The first several bars of the Peas seemed innocuous enough, but by the time he'd heard the hook and was getting into Verse 2 I could see he was getting antsy, the feeling was growing that this was a danger of some kind-- not sure what and maybe not imminent, but the wiser course was to get some distance into the situation, so he turned and trotted off toward the deep forest and a more traditional kind of music.

Who knows, though: having heard that beat, maybe he'll come back to stand in our garden and hope for more... he is a teen, after all, and there's nothing like that on his Big Radio.

I'll just have to be sure and keep the lettuce gate closed.

SUN MUSIC

Out in the colding late afternoon air, the mood of snow looming on the shoulders of the mountains, I’m loading up another wheelbarrow with firewood so we’ll have some nice warm nights, my work filling the air with the ringing music of well-dried sunlight.

That golden orb up there does have a direct connection with music as played on a marimba, a crude one, much like the first one ever made-- in this firewoody fashion, I suspect, the different lengths and thicknesses of the wood making a basic kind of music to the ear that has to do with heat, the music of solid sunlight, it’s a song about warmth and contentment (they go hand in hand), with lyrics about being beside a warm stove. (Whose fuel you had a part in creating!)

Which reminds me of my discovery in re the difficulty I’ve always had in describing the basic pleasure of a wood stove, saying to centrally and otherly heated folks that a wood heater is the most wonderful warmth to stand next to, its not like standing before any other heater-- electric ones get too hot, burn your clothes, fossil fuel ones are too thermostatty and vaguely dissipated, with their fluxy ventrush of god-its-hot-in-hereness; a straight up fire itself, as in the woods, is too focusedly hot, burn your clothes like an electric heater and so on, I just could never describe the way in which it was soulfully pleasant to be beside a woodstove, as winter guests of ours find when they gravitate toward the stove and stand or eventually lie down there with smiles on their faces, sometimes even saying Oooh this feels so good I don’t want to go home...

It’s not like dipping into an onsen either… I finally realized what it was-- of course! It's like being chilled with winter cold and suddenly being able to stand in strong summer sunlight: that deep, ancient, bone-warming comfort that our unending selves know so well as a kind of mother love. For what is radiating from that stove is sunlight, coming to life again after living through trees, then turning into the music that is playing even now, as I work into the darkness.

WHERE IS MY MIND?

I love it when, like last night after a long day in the office, on the train home I'm sitting among all the staid salarymen of mostly older years who live outside the city, and after listening to an elderhoodly interesting podcast on history or science I suddenly have a craving for some mindscouring tunerush so I dive into for example the Pixies' Surfer Rosa, one of my dozens of top 10 albums ever, with Bone Machine for starters, get down, and Where Is My Mind not long after, whoa, I crank it UP, let's wail, and all at once the nearer heads turn to see what that odd new tiny pounding and screaming noise is, and wonder why those little drumsounds and microriffs are squealing out of my silverhaired head as factoids of puzzlement begin crawling all over their faces: what is this casually dressed, ponytailed elder with two gold earrings listening to?

Other earphoners my age are mellowing out to classical music perhaps, or maybe golden oldies from the Heian era, some koto tunes, catchy J-pop items of the 1930s or kabuki music, who knows, I can't hear it, but you can bet your last guitar pick they ain't listening to anything like the Pixies, who rule this particular train.

"Where is my mind, where is my mind, wheeeeere is my mind...
Waaaaay out on the water, see it swimming..."

Total.

***

In which connection, a GenX take on this reality:
Why Our Parents Were Cooler Than We Are Now
When They Were Our Age

THE QUEEN: R.I.P.

Koko Taylor: 1928-2009

STARSTRUCK

Yesterday, Kaya was taken by her other grandfather to see a planetarium. Mitsuki and Miasa were envious as double five-year-olds when they heard about Kaya's pending good time, but then they were told that they were coming to our house for the afternoon and evening, and their envy waned a bit; at least we have different toys, plus we live on a mountain.

When they got here we told them we were taking them to a concert. They'd apparently heard of the word, and seemed excited at the prospect. (What did 'concert' mean to them? What does a five-year old twin female expect from a ‘concert’? How do you ask such questions of a 5-year-old twin female?)

When all the travelly stuff was ready we took them down along the lake, around the mountain and into the beautiful narrow valley on the other side from us, where we drove the curving road in the deep shade along the lazy mountain stream until we found a good spot, went down to the stream bank and the twins went out of the hot day into the clear mountain water for a cool swim, enjoyed picking up larger and larger rocks from the bottom and tossing them further out, making the biggest splashes possible all over themselves and effecting their changes in the general layout of the universe, then after an hour or so of waterfun they toweled off and we went on to the concert, which was just down the road.

The ‘Haruya’ family, whom I've mentioned herein a few times, the most natural and simply living family I know in these parts (e.g., none of their three sons goes to school, they are home-schooled, extremely rare in Japan) (I have a lot of great stories about the family I should get to herein sometime). They live in a traditional Japanese village house in one of the small villages along that river. For their livelihood, in addition to occasionally serving excellent reservations-only meals in their home, restaurant-fashion, they travel around the country to various ecoevents where they sell delicious home-made organic ready-to-eat foods. As well, they are movers and shakers in a lot of the events that happen over in their valley neighborhood and elsewhere. They are also a rock/folk band, and were going to play the first set of the concert, starting at 4pm.

The twins knew none of these details, and seemed unusually quiet sitting right in the front row before a stage that was the deck of a rustic farmhouse up inside the edge of the woods. There were a lot of kids running around (almost all boys), but the twins stayed fascinated before the stage, watching the band set up; then the performance began. The Haruya band, Yamamoto 844 (mother on piano, father on lead guitar, sons on vocals and drums; another woman on bass, her two sons helping with the vocals). Five boys in total, from 5-8 years old, did the vocals in the first song. The Haruya folks’ three sons, 8, 5 and 2, took turns playing the drums during their set. Believe it or not, the 2-year-old did a responsibly credible job on the drums-- he stayed seated, pounding now and then, and finished with a big satisfying crash on the cymbals.

During the set, I was watching the twins now and then to see how they were taking all this; was it too noisy? Totally bizarre? Was it their first actual concert? They were too busy watching to answer silly questions; they never moved from the bench, sat there eating their snacks and drinking their cold tea, eyes locked on the performance.

After the first couple of songs, the oldest brother, 8, became the main vocalist and really belted out the tunes. During the closing song, Mitsuki kept pulling at Echo's sleeve and saying something, but Echo couldn't hear clearly because of the volume, so she just nodded. After the song ended, Mitsuki said Sonno hito wa kakkoii... Mitsuki sukii desu! Which situationally translates as: That guy is really cool... I like him! She wanted his autograph.

Echo went over and found him behind the stage with his friends, horsing around like an 8-year-old, and persuaded him to come and give his autograph to one of those cute twins over there (seems it was his first autograph, and he was uncharacteristically a bit shy about it). He came over in his Grateful Dead bear t-shirt, and in his immediate presence it was clear that Mitsuki, who had just turned five a few days ago, had a major crush on this guy nearly twice her age. He signed his name in normal-sized letters. Echo asked him to sign it BIG; he did. Mitsuki held the paper with just the tips of her fingers, like a basically untouchable treasure.

As the sun was setting and the featured group was setting up for its session late into the night, before leaving (we had to meet Kasumi at home around 7) we went over to where the Haruya family was now selling their foods, and told the boy's mother about what had happened. She said to her son, who was there helping out, why don't you draw her a picture of a samurai on the paper? (He loves drawing and Japanese history, so draws a lot of historic figures). He took the paper, M&M following, and went over to an outdoor worktable of plywood over sawhorses and began to draw. The twins watched in close fascination; he joked, they laughed. I took some pictures. His 5-year-old brother came over. Echo said That doesn't look like a samurai. The younger brother said It isn't a samurai; it's Napoleon. Napoleon? said Echo; It doesn't look like Napoleon, either. It’s Napoleon the third, said the home-schooled 5-year-old.

When we got home, Napoleon III in his own special folder, Mitsuki commandeered Echo to write a fan letter, inviting her crush to “come by Shinkansen and stay at my house and go to a restaurant where we can have spaghetti, pizza and dessert.” Echo asked who else would go on the date; Miasa said I'll go! Mitsuki said His mother, my mother, and Miasa.

Then she carefully colored his drawing of Napoleon III and gave it in its folder to Echo to keep for her, put a bunch of her own drawings and newly learned writings in the envelope with the letter for Echo to give to her one and only.

That's Mitsuki in the last photo, holding the paper...

Five years old...

WEARING MUSICIANS

I'd refrained for years from using portable music while commuting to Osaka and back, not because nobody my age on my train has an iPod or wears earbuds in public, but because I couldn't bear the thought of experiencing rush hour from the glory level of Coltrane, or of being pinned against train windows with Nine-Inch Nails; it would be unbearable to crush through the business district with Satie; heartbreaking to arrive at my office with Concrete Blonde.

The germ of those misgivings was my fear that the sudden contrast between the ecstatic heights in my head and the actual pits of the day would too painfully expose the irrhythmic nature of the quotidian; that with such measures of grandness going through my mind I would find naked reality even harder to appreciate than before I began wearing musicians.

But as soon as I got back from the US with my new music-filled iPod and plugged in - or plugged out, rather - I found that I needn't have worried. Plowing through fellow Osaka rush hour contestants with the help of The Pixies, or shouldering through wickets with the Chet Baker quartet gives the mundane that surrealistic quality it's always needed, transforming a humdrum commute into a suitably bizarre art form.

And having all those stellar personas right there in my head to rhythm me through it all, shrinking hours of commuting competition into minutes of playtime, drowning train announcements in Muddy Waters, blanketing shrieking infants with the Mothers of Invention - idealizing the quotidian - is basically what art is all about anyway, isn't it?

And in this state of technoschizophrenia, hearing a music that no one else hears, tapping my feet to rhythms unsensed by those around me, lip-syncing with voices from other dimensions, walking to the beat of a different drummer as it were, I view the commuting scenario as a very zany movie by a top director with a sense of humor much like my own, to which this is the masterfully shuffled soundtrack; and I can walk out of the theater anytime, is the unreal mood.

And amidst the tyranny of transit, suddenly there are choices: Red Hot Chili Peppers, or train through tunnel? Thirty-three garbled public announcements or the Talking Heads? The guy next to me coughing for an hour or Radiohead? To say there is no contest is to say that the sun shines in the daytime.

Although the choice is clear, and distinguishes this virtual fugue state from true schizophrenia, it is uplifting to be a madman manque: to watch the commuter hordes massively lemminging down the station stairs to I Wish I Was a Catfish is to see by a strange and welcome light.

I hit 'pause,' turn instinctively to a fellow commuter to share this vision and am met with the lemming look, when I realize that base reality is in fact largely uninhabited at this time of day; so I flip back out and follow the lemming crowd, but not nearly as really as I used to; actually, I'm on my way to one of the many potential heavens I've just begun to realize there are: a company meeting at which my boss will sing Heroin exactly like Lou Reed.

RECOMMENDED:

Musicovery... it learns what you like, with welcome surprises.
Join up, move the threads, leave it on in the background while you surf
or live otherwise...

SHIMA-UTA
(Island Song)


One of my favorite Japanese songs,
and it's about Okinawa,
one of my favorite places in the world...

with big thanks for the reminder to Marie Mutsuki Mockett...

R. I. P.

Otis Redding died 40 years ago today, age 26.

YAMAUTO 2007

Yesterday being a fine Sunday with weekend work mostly done, we took the afternoon off and drove around the mountain into the beautiful steep-sided valley on the other side, that I've posted about here (Monkey Soup) and here (Sparrow's Inn), it is all as beautiful as always, knocks me out every time. We have to do some serious exploring there, along those streams, up those narrow side roads…

We were heading for the village of Kutsukimura, site of Yamauto, an annual campout eco-event that has a long and growing history under various names, all organized - moreso now than before - by our good friend from way back, Sogyu,

former monk, world-scale zen gardener, stone wall builder (he built our front-back stone wall) and now caretaker of Yoshida mountain in Kyoto. (That's Sogyu with Allan Ginsberg.)

Back in the days when the kids were here we used to take them every year and camp, or just drive out to Sogyu's house in a remote valley accessed only by a narrow winding road that partly travels along along the edge of a deep gorge, beneath steep mountain faces. Many small hamlets along the way, beautiful sights amidst the now lush rice paddies surrounded by forested mountains, a clear fast river running, you want to stop at a dozen places along the way and just get out and walk around, maybe take a swim…

After a long ride we arrived at the village, where Yamauto was being held for two weeks straight, all-night performance music on the weekends, spontaneous music breaking out all the time otherwise,what with craftsmen selling drums, flutes, didgeridoos and all manner of soundmakers; there was a glass blower, folks selling jewelry, clothing, all kinds of natural breads, baked goods and honey, juices, lots of natural food restaurants and cafes there among the trees, and what amazed me was that it was all centered around Sogyu's house! I didn't even recognize the place.

We hadn't bought a festival ticket because we weren't going to camp, only wanted to visit a couple of hours just to see old friends and reconnect, see what the event was like these days, but there were no one-day tickets, so we were thinking maybe if Sogyu was there we could get in for a while just to walk around (we've known Sogyu pretty much from the time we moved to Kyoto in 1980). Turned out he wasn't there, he was finishing up a Tibetan shrine in Taiwan! But just mentioning his name as our old friend got us first class treatment. It was a great and musical couple of hours walking around, talking to friends, eating fine food and looking at all the beautiful stuff. We're going back next weekend again for the final days. Maybe Sogyu will be there.

And then of course there's next year...

Mick just posted
Let There Be Soul
on
The Blog Brothers.

Rock On.

TWILIGHT GLIMMERINGS

Every evening at about this time a treacly sensation steals over me and I suddenly feel like flinging out my arms and spinning about a flowery meadow somewhere, like I'm one of the Trapp children stuck forever in an alpine loop track of The Sound of Music. I shake my head to snap out of it and realize I'm just hearing once again that same old snippet of the execrable Edelweiss being played on the loudspeakers down in the village to mark the hour of five pm for any farmers who might be out in their fields and feel like dancing and singing of tiny white flowers, or maybe to summon home a Heidi who forgot her watch, and as the treacle washes over me I wonder at what long-ago village committee meeting from hell they made the innocuous-appearing but long-reaching decision to play the same syrupy song loudly in the twilight zone every single day all the way to the end of time, until one day a mountain-dwelling foreigner begins to intuit the actual length of eternity, to sense something new about the nature of madness...