Ro

 Last night I got to thinking, "Hm, the shakuhachi club meeting will be next week, and I guess I should get the thing out and practice a bit, in addition to my flute practice of course".  So I went upstairs and dug it out, and got out the first Koga book which I'd been working out of. 

I blew a Ro. It was not much of a Ro. All the notes were weak and short-lived. I tried using my "new" flute knowledge and moved my mouth closer to the edge of the utaguchi and could blow a lot longer, but the tone was terrible. So much for "new" flute knowledge. So much for the flute being good training for the shakuhachi. 

And I have to make a decent showing in class! They don't know I haven't been practicing fanatically all this time. They don't know I spent the summer before last playing trumpet, and then last summer not really playing much of anything, not really sure of what I really want to do. 

That summer playing trumpet was pretty great, though. My tone had become so much better somehow and that's what people liked. And what had improved my tone? I'm convinced it was the time I put in on the shakuhachi before that summer. 

Shakuhachi strengthens the breath like nothing else I've experienced. Of course it had strengthened my trumpet playing, just as it strengthens my voice. It's very beneficial and healthy. 

I thought that playing the flute would help me out on the shakuhachi, and also, I wanted to get out there busking again ASAP. I figured a month or two on the flute and I'd be out there cuttin' it up, wowing 'em with my Danny Boy, Amazing Grace, that thing from the Joe Walsh album that no one's heard of but that I know by heart (on the album it said Pavane For A Dead Princess but when I look that up I get something else) Ave Maria, and other hits. 

Instead I can see I'm years out from this. Just like in 2009 when I got a cornet and by 2012 I was still not really up to snuff for busking. I don't sound good, I don't have endurance, and I sure don't have repertoire. 

And I haven't even felt very motivated to go out there. If I were motivated at all I'd have been out there. I'd have found a way to get around the cold; maybe found warm store fronts to play near or played mid-day when it warmed up a bit.

No, my heart was just not in it. I've even thought about going back to trumpet, with only three buttons to worry about. It's much more of a "grab 'n' go" instrument. "You don't have to worry about pads!! - Red The Flute Player. 

Pads ... I do spent a certain amount of time thinking about pads. I have books on how to replace pads, and do other things on flutes, which do have a lot of pads, as well as levers and rods and springs and screws ... 

A flute, I've felt, is likely to stay cleaner and be less stinky than a trumpet in a tropical environment in Hawaii but I've still begun to think about how well the salt air in Waikiki might treat a flute. When you've got something that's made of tons of fiddly little pieces and things, like pads, that bugs like to eat... 

It's no wonder that, aside from the guitars that no doubt need new strings and tuners twice as often as in a non-salty environment, one of the instruments I've seen a lot of in Waikiki is the pan flute, being made of bamboo, a bit of rattan, and plugs of wax to tune each note. Not a lot of metal parts there. The same goes for that old standby, the ukulele, which in its purest form has no metal parts at all. 

But aside from all of this, really, it was watching a documentary on YouTube called "Yokohama Mary" that started me on this line of thinking. In the sound track, near the end, there appears a shakuhachi. That sound cut right through me and I could not forget thinking about it. I even went back over a few weeks of videos I'd watched to find it again because I hadn't memorized the title. How did I ever forget how expressive the shakuhachi is? 

Then I started thinking about, What is it I intend to do here? I'll be retired. I'm not looking to get into a military band, or to join a professional band, or even make much of a living from music. Music will only have to keep food in my mouth, but a roof over my head will be taken care of by Social Security. And even the food in my mouth part can be taken care of by food stamps and various senior programs as well as my excellent "urban foraging" skills. It's just not a worry. As sure as there are kahelelani on the beach in la'ie, I won't go hungry in Hawaii.

So what do I really want to do here? Do I really want to become at least semi-expert on the flute so I can then and only then switch over to shakuhachi? Do I need to make lots of money by busking? I think I'm coming around to No, and No. 

I realize now that the flute will not give me hidden insights to the shakuhachi or be any kind of a "cross training" for it. And I've been meeting my savings goals without busking at all. So there's not really any pressure of, "I'd better get good at a 'commercially viable instrument' or I'm gonna starve". 

I'm not at peace at all with the playing position used for the Western flute either. Somehow I could play trumpet for hours with no problems, but the position used for flute really bugs my left shoulder. I ran into this problem with the violin, also. The flute's worse though. I figured I'd get around it by gradually lengthening my playing time but the problem is easily inflamed by any sort of heavy lifting or wrenching things around, the kind of work I have to do around here all the time. So that's another thing. 

The upshot of all this is, I have my first meeting with the shakuhachi club in something like 8 days. I want to not completely embarrass myself, and I know I could play Hinomaru OK, so I can work up to that again, plus I want to learn Kimigayo. So I "must" be able to play the first competently, and I want very much to be able to play the second, which is the Japanese national anthem and a beautiful piece of music, and with its mention of pebbles eventually growing to boulders in its lyrics, adorable too. 

So, I put in at least an hour messing around on the shakuhachi last night while watching things on YouTube and drinking "a bit" of beer. 

I went to bed at 8AM and woke up at 4. It was dry outside and looked like it would be so for a while. I had one package I had to ship, a big, bulky item that would create a major clog in my shipping if I didn't get it out. So I got that packed, and since FedEx was "experiencing problems" and because it would save $20, shipped it by UPS. I loaded it on the bike trailer and took it right over there, feeling fortunate that there's that friendly little UPS store even closer than FedEx. 

Mondays typically are bad for finding packing materials, and the place next door to Tom's only had cardboard boxes in their dumpster. I knocked on Tom's door and said I had some peanuts with him to go with beer, and he said he was out of beer, Why not come inside and sit down for a while? We put the bike and trailer inside, and hung out in his office for a bit, talking about Chet Baker, and what's going on with the survivalist place in Gilroy, and all kinds of things. 

Eventually we got in his truck and went to Lowe's where I got a big package of paper towels and he got some caulk and screwdriver bits, then we went to Wing Stop. 

He's never been in, and I said I had ... but then thought a bit and said it'd been at least 4 years. I ordered the small meal of wings and fries and a drink, and then Tom stepped up and said, "I'll have the same exact thing Alex is having". They had a goofy modern drinks machine where you order from a big screen and then the little round screen right over the spigot shows what you're getting and it's actually pretty neat except there's a tendency for most people to overfill their cups, with soda spilling over. There was a soaked rubber mat in front of the machine and it really needed a dedicated drain. 

Tom and I waited for our food and talked about tons of things, an information kiosk I'd had some hand in building that was set up in Waikiki in 1983, hilarity ensued of course it being 1983. The strange juxtaposition of dated-ness and cutting-edge modern to be found in Hawaii. He told me about a guy his father had known who'd crashed his plane not far from his dad's place in Alaska, and how the guy had an illegal deal with the fishermen, "Bring me any octopus, and I'll settle up with you later". The octopus was going straight to sushi bars in Japan and it was highly illegal as it was illegal to keep by-catch. The money was really good! 

Our food was ready, after watching tons of people come in for their to-go orders. The servings were so large of fries, and the chicken wings so big, that at first we thought both our orders were in the bag for me. But no, we both got monster baskets of fries, huge little tubs of Ranch, and the biggest meatiest wings I've had anywhere. If either of us had eaten yet that day, I don't think we'd have been able to finish. Man, what a feed! 

We talked about more crazy shit and laughed it up and eventually it was time to go, so we went back to his place, I got my bike out and loaded it up, and we talked a bit more. It's just great to hang out and talk about movies and laugh it up once in a while. 

I rode back here and stopped partway to put on my sweatshirt and then again to put my gloves on - the sky was clear and it had gotten downright cold.