Dear Global Shakuahchi Community,
I just returned from attending the annual Shakuahchi Summer Camp in the
Rockies which was wonderful and moving on many levels. I'd like to share
with you a little of this experience as well the events leading up to it
via my journalizing. It may be interesting for many of you who didn't
have a chance to attend this year. It is divided into three parts, the
last one focussing mainly on the Shakuhachi Summer Camp itself. I hope
everyone's summer is going well and and that everyone is practicing
shakuhachi well, as well. Well.......here it goes!
Alcvin
PART I: Traveling into Desert Country
"Without love, beauty, and danger, it would almost be easy to live."
At the Greyhound bus station waiting for my bus to Arizona. Dumbfounded
and marvelled that I am living life as a shakuhachi player. This
November, we in Vancouver, Canada will host the first Shakuhachi
festival in Canadian history. Kakizakai and Matama wil come to do
workshops and concerts. I'm so excited about it!
Looking for freedom. What thoughts blow through my head have no basis
for this reality. They mean nothing. My health problems are now
non-existent. How did this come to be? I am so thankful that I can
finally experience life with perfect health. Travelling on the bus is a
bit uncomfortable. But once the body relaxes into it it's easy. Happy to
be healthy on this trip. It's cheap and it gets me there.
After a LONG bus ride through Washington, Oregon, and California, we
finally reached the desertlands of Arizona. The weather is blazing hot
and dry as death. A perpetual oven. Many of the buildings have outdoor
sprinklers lining the roofs emitting watery mists as a relief from the
intense heat.
I successfully checked into my hostel in Phoenix, Arizona. The Metcalf
Hostel. It's a well-used old house with lots of character. Many aging
posters, sketchings, postcards on the walls and ceilings from the many
lodgers through out the years from many lands. Tonight I play in Tempe,
at the Borders Bookstore in town. Andre, whom I met on the internet just
before I left, will be coming to the show tonight and will have a lesson
with me tomorrow.
6/14
Last night's gig went really well. More people than usual came to hear
me play honkyoku. Met Andre who will have a lesson in a hour. I wonder
what the show in Chandler will be like tonight.
Just finished a 4 hour lesson with Andre which went really well. He's
very kind and lives an interesting life as an artist and metal
craftsman. He loves shakuhachi so deeply. It's a shame that are no
shakuhachi teachers where he lives. We worked on the basics of tone
production and bonding with the flute and meri/kari techniques. Also
mangaged to get through the first 4 lines of Honshirabe. I can tell
immediately that he will be a fine honkyoku player later.
6/15
The show at the Chandler bookstore was such a wonderful success! Sold
several CDs and one of my hand-crafted hocchiku shakuhachi. Also made
several new friends. It was so unexpected. At first it seemed like no
one would show up. Then suddenly more and more people started to sit at
the tables. After the show, I was invited by one of the audience members
to play shakuhachi at the Desert Lotus Zen Sangha on Monday night. I'm
looking forward to that.
Tonight's offering here in Tucson, however doesn't seem too promising
since the manager said he never received my poster, nor did the general
manager ever mention me to him. I was not on any of their newsletters
for programming for the month either. There was no advertising at all
done, as the other stores had done. Nobody knows I'll be playing here!
But he said it would still be alright to play in the cafe. This will be
basically be a busking situation. Anyways, I have a few hours till the
show, so I will visit Steve Roach, one of my sonic heroes of my younger
years who lives near here in Tucson.
As I suspected, the crowd was pretty scant. Just relaxed and enjoyed
playing to the spirits. Afterwards a couple approached me expressing a
great interest in the honkyoku sound.
6/18
Yesterday I drove up to Sedona and spent all day searching for and
harvesting agave stalks to make didgeridoos from. The agave plant is
sometimes called "Death Stalk" because soon after flowering it dies.
Earlier I looked all over the Tucson area for the agave but couldn't see
any, only a thinner cousin, the yucca. I finally spotted the
characteristic flowers about 6000 feet above sea level in the hills of
Sedona past the commercial new age town. I stopped by the side of the
road. Armed with heavy gloves, a shovel, and saw, I trekked into the
ravine where I stumbled into a family of the plants growing all around.
It looked like a scene from a sci-fi movie: giant alien spores sprouting
from the red earth, basking in the intense heat of the blazing sun. The
first stalk I was drawn to was a huge, black, dried up flower that was
perfect for tranforming into a didgeridoo. It was clearly dead, but
hadn't aged as yet to the point of deterioration (as evinced by the
crumbling stalks lying all around), so was still solid enough to make a
didge with. After saying a prayer and offering water of thanks to the
spirits of the plant, I spent a couple of hours ripping out by hand the
dangerous spiky leaves that surrounded the root portion of the plant.
When the root bell was sufficiently exposed I sawed the stalk out of the
ground making sure enough root remained to create a bell for the
instrument. This process reminded me very much of harvesting bamboo in
Japan to make shakuhachi. I love root ended instruments that reach deep
into the earth! When it was finally cut from the earth, I sawed off the
flower tip and carried the raw 2 meter stalk back to the car. I saw
another smaller, thinner, much lighter stalk which was white in color
laying on the ground. I also took this back with me to Phoenix to
transform into a musical instrument.
Then next couple of days were spent in the construction of the didges.
First I had to cut the stalks in half and hollow out the fiberous center
to create a bore. I used special chisels that were conviently supplied
to me by the hostel handyman, Keith, who happened to be a an ex-wood
sculptor. After hollowing, I applied several coats of polyurethane
lacquer to the bore. When the coats were sufficiently hardened I glued
the two halves together using clamps, saran wrap, and a substance called
"Gorilla Glue" which incredibly cemented the two halves perfectly
together. I was kind of concerned whether or not it would work, but by
the next morning when I unwrapped the stalk, it had glued rock hard and
perfectly sealed where I had cut. The moment of truth arrived when I
applied the beeswax mouthpiece and evoked its first resonant frequency:
the deepness and smooth rumbling power of this new didge was awesome!
The lightness of the material and wideness of the bore and bell combined
to produce a profound sound unlike any other didge I've ever played. My
job was now complete here. It was time to leave Arizona to go to
Colorado via Texas and New mexico.
To be continued....
-- Bamboo-In #214-130 W. Keith Rd. N. Vancouver, BC V7M 1L5 Canada Tel: 604-904-2069 Email: ramos@telus.net Url: http://www.Bamboo-In.com/al.html: -)=====0 (Happy face playing shakuhachi!)
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