My poetry partner Bill Mercer and I have a duo called “Lunation”. Aside from being a poet, Bill plays the shakuhachi, a Japanese bamboo flute. When I first heard him play I was still running Clarion Music Center. I was struck by his sound–free–was the only word I could use to describe it. You can’t plot his notes because there is no scale. You can’t define them because there is no meter. You can’t confine them because there is no rhythm. He plays by how his great body and mind feel. His music is like the cosmos, infinite and mysterious.
We practice regularly before a performance. The challenge for me is to harness his freedom so that my verse and his music may come together and not be entangled. After five years we are beginning to tap into each other’s psyche. He understands my needs if I can verbalize them. There are moments in our practices and performances that are exquisite and heavenly but they will never be repeated. Only a memory remains, but indescribable.
