Yesterday Ruffles (who is Athena in disguise) played her harp for us. Utterly ethereal when she plays-- she looks like a goddess. Adonis was, of course, entranced. He seemed to really like pressing his ear up against the sound board to hear the vibrations-- to let the music wash over him. Being "bathed in sound," it reminded me of standing near a large waterfall and feeling the negative ion wash over you.
Negative ion ("negative ions as positive vibes") is, of course, big business in Japan. Used in hair driers and curling irons, humidifiers and air conditioning units, I wasn't surprised to look online and find many harp CDs titles with names like, "The Healing Harp," "Healing from the Harp," and "Echoes of a Waterfall."
An ancient instrument, it was *already* ancient by the time the Sassanid Mosaic above was made (that is, ancient by Tang dynasty times). I just looked up the Japanese version of a harp-- or a zither, I guess. Played flat the koto has 13 or so strings. Tetsuya commented that, while you only hear the koto with your ears, the harp resounds through your entire body.
Maybe because it so so ancient but the harp has such an other-worldly quality. Like gamelan or gagaku-- it is transportive. I have been listening a lot to Estonian minimalist Arvo Part's Fur Alina and Spiegal in Spiegal. Inspired by the chanting the composer heard in the Orthodox church, his music is often referred to as being in the style of "Sacred Minimalism." Stripped down to the simplest melody with an extremely meditative tempo, his music reminds me of a Chinese ink painting, where the blank space is as beautifully rich in significance as the drawing itself-- the pregnant possibilty of empty space and simple forms; of pauses and that left unsaid.
The composer himself coined a new phrase for his music, describing its style as tintinnabuli, or in the "style of bells." In most countries, bells are what call God to come and listen to our whispering.
Part said, "Tintinnabulation is an area I sometimes wander into when I am searching for answers - in my life, my music, my work. In my dark hours, I have the certain feeling that everything outside this one thing has no meaning. The complex and many-faceted only confuses me, and I must search for unity. What is it, this one thing, and how do I find my way to it? Traces of this perfect thing appear in many guises - and everything that is unimportant falls away. Tintinnabulation is like this."
"Traces of this perfect thing.." I think that perhaps there is a place, or a mode of being, where, when everything decorative or unneccessary has been stripped away, you come face-to-face with a diamond-like unity, or truth.
Part also remarked that, "I could compare my music to white light which contains all colours. Only a prism can divide the colours and make them appear; this prism could be the spirit of the listener."
There is something pared-down and diamond-like about Ruffles. Tetsuya said that he really wanted to see my high school. I thought, if he was looking to know more about me, instead of my high school, I would rather take him to Ruffles' place instead. Because, after all, that is much more about who I am. Or, rather, who I was and who I would like to be again.
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