The Kan Ro rang out like a bell, clear, smooth, and an easy reach for me. Those embouchure exercises must be paying off I thought joyfully as I again played the often times difficult note and again it rang out reassuring in its clarity. I congratulated myself for the progress and felt confident in my recent decision to increase the number of my monthly lessons with Chikusen. So many months of practice, so many hours of disciplined shakuhachi study. It was true, the many versions of, ''this is a difficult instrument to learn" that I heard as I was starting out with the bamboo flute. But it was worth it, wasn't it? Traditional honkyoku were taking shape and folk tunes starting to flow.
A few weeks go by. Lessons come and go. My hardback notebook slowly fills with references to chi dai meri fingerings, how to play "ru" and the meaning of "ra". And then one day it happens. Kan Ro is gone! The note squeeks out a mere wisp of its former self - well perhaps more like it had reverted to its earlier former self. I check my embouchure. I flap my lips to relax. I stop to take a moment in which I verify that my attitude is not tight and full of wanting, expecting, demanding. Yup, check, check, check....all is as it could be... and still, Kan Ro is gone.
Ned Rothernberg, a multiinstrumentalist shakuhachi player said it so aptly in a his release statement for his CD of shakuhachi compositions:
"After a 30 year romance with the shakuhachi, this is my first release exclusively devoted to compositions for the instrument. Why so long? When I say ‘romance’, I mean the word in its full literary compass, love and hate, ardor and betrayal. The root attraction has always been its depths of sound, capable of tonal colorings unsurpassed in the flute world, which can create musical expressions of great weight. The darker side? It is maddeningly difficult; compared to my beloved saxophone, it is a most fickle partner. On good days the breath and the sound are one, on bad ones, one flounders about searching for the illusive center, blowing no Zen, just hot air. "
You Kan do it. When you least expect it it will return, an auditory gift and reminder of your breath.Blow as if it was there in it's absence and it will return.
ReplyDeleteThank you my firiend, that's good advice.
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