Reeds, Strings and Other Precious Things
...written on 2001-01-18, @ 01:28:52
Tales of Kim's Life in Japan
Sun January 14, 2001
We got notice of a Koto & Shakuhachi concert at the Suitopia Center's Tea Room. Chad, Ivan and I had planned to meet there. The tea room is a small intimate space, with light colored wood, tatami mats and shoji screen, certainly a fitting venue for a concert with traditional Japanese instruments.
There were six kotos (long flat stringed instrument that is played while kneeling) that were played by women. Four men were playing the shakuhachis (bamboo flutes). They performed five selections and then invited the audience to come up and play the kotos. Chad told me to give it a whirl and I said I was more interested in the shakuhachis. I went up to one of the men and started to ask some questions. He showed me the maker's sign on his shakuhachi & said that it was made by a famous man in the shakuhachi world. He offered me the short stocky bamboo flute and encouraged me to play it by saying it was easy. I took it from him, noticing his kindly smile, and knowing full well that he didn't expect me to get a "tweet" out of it, put my fingers over all the holes and then blew out a few notes.
The fact that I could produce any sound at all, much less a full scale, sent four pairs of wiry eyebrows up into curt arches over the widened eyes of the kimono-clad gentlemen. I smiled and bowed to the man who had given me his flute and thanked him for his generosity and complimented him on his lovely flute and his skill in playing it, keeping to myself the fact that for the past twenty years I've had a shakuhachi of my own, though I would call myself a collector rather than a player. I had planned on bringing my shakuhachi to the concert, but had to leave in such a rush on my bicycle, I was afraid it might get damaged on the way over.
My shakuhachi is a "precious thing" to me. That's what Fred's father said anyway when I showed it to him the other day and told him the story about it. You see, I got my shakuhachi from a street vendor at the Annual 4th Ave. Street Fair in Tucson, Arizona in 1979. I was fresh out of college and had started my first job as a waitress at Sambo's. I went straight to the festival from work, so I was still in uniform, my pockets bulging, swaying and clinking with the day's tips.
I was walking from stall to stall, checking out the different offerings of jewelry, pottery, and alternative clothing, when I heard the haunting call of a flute of some kind. I walked over to the source of the sound and found a 31 year old man, his long auburn hair in a ponytail, sitting on a cushion in front of a nubbed cloth mat stretched before him where he had on display, ten of his best shakuhachis. He was playing one of them to a growing appreciative crowd. As he played on effortlessly, one of those audience members was running her fingers through both of her pockets trying to tactily figure the monetary value of the coinage therein to see if it would be enough to lay claim to one of those beautiful bamboo shoots, strategically wrapped with black resin cord to prevent splitting. Drats, she was five dollars short.
Richard, the shakuhachi guy said that was ok though. He took my down payment and started to work on a flute for me and even made a bag for it. I merrily skipped home (now free of the $20 in change that Richard gratefully accepted because he had dirty clothes to wash at the laundromat) to face my roommate Mark, who shook his head and clucked at my street fair impulse buy. I didn't care, I would have my flute within a week!
In the meantime, I made friends with Richard and visited him in his little dumpy, scary, surrounded by questionable types hotel room. The next day as a matter of fact, after the street fair, we went there. He had few possessions, but one of note was a small wooden framed picture of some Mahareeshi or other.
As Richard emptied his pockets of the day's loot, accounting for the sales of the day, he discovered that there was some money missing. Every penny was important to Richard so he fretted, hunted, worried and searched. Finally, he found the money, which had fallen out of his pocket, on the bookshelf on which sat the venerable Swami himself. Richard grabbed the wooden picture frame with both hands, giving it a good shaking, "Don't you ever do that to me again!", he admonished the smiling holy man.
Maybe we kissed, I don't remember really, but I do know it went no further. Perhaps he said I was too young. At any rate, I was attracted to his being older and wiser. We stayed in touch with occasional meetings and a few months later to my surprise, he announced that he was marrying a 16 yr old (so much for being "wiser", eh?). I met Richard, his fiancee and her mother at a Greek restaurant one day. His fiancee looked like a henna haired fairy from a Shakespearean play. I could see why Richard was so smitten.
Since then I have taken my shakuchaci every where. For over the past 20 years it has been a faithful traveling companion. We passed many a lunch under a shaded tree in the Dominican Republic and even performed at a Kung Fu class Mother's Appreciation Day event in the capital. We hiked the Andes together, peered into the "Devil's Throat" Falls at Iguazu, Brazil, hit the souvenir shops in front of the Great Wall of China, walked through olive tree groves in Arezzo, Italy, why we even got introduced to a Japanese shakuhachi master the last time we were here in Japan. He called my shakuhachi a "mutant", well, that's what the interpreter said, but by that time she had mysteriously sunken into her shoulders and had almost folded herself in half.
All of these memories and more come to me when I bring out my shakuhachi to play. Yes indeed, it is a precious thing.