Shakuhachi club meeting

 As usual, Ken being over is ... exhausting ... I rounded up 10 things to list and that was about it. Too tired to even practice shakuhachi much. 

This is why sticking with an instrument for years and years on end is the way to go. If I suddenly need to go out and make money with the trumpet, I can. I can pick the thing up and draw on years and years of muscle memory and make a fast buck, which is why I think I'll sell the trumpet last thing. 

I woke up at 4 after some wild dreams (DaBus in Hawaii goes over a spectacular land bridge!) and at first had to work to remember what important thing I had going on today/tonight. The shakuhachi club meeting! 

I also got a call back from a gal I'd contacted about buying a flute on Craig's List. An Armstrong 104 which is the very same model my older sister had when I was a kid (none of us know what happened to "the flute"). She only wants $85 for it and while her pictures don't show how the pads look, it looks great in the few photos that are there. 

So I have to meet her for the flute first, then go to the shakuhachi meeting, then get all wet in the rain coming back, according to the weather report.

I cleaned up as much as I could and put on fresh clothes, got my stuff all together, and took off at about 5. I had time to get to Japantown, and buy some peanuts, and then some gum, in Nijiya getting $40 cash back each time. 

I went over to Roy's Station and gave the flute lady a call, and waited. I tried playing Hinomaru just to see how the sound carries, and it actually does OK. It will carry more when I'm a more skilled player. 

The lady showed up and I tried out the flute and couldn't get a note. I "dared" her to get a note and she got a few. I'd done that because she said, "Someone needs to practice". I said it was good enough - really the flute looks really good - and gave her the money, counting out the last dollar in quarters (I did not expect her to have change). 

I went back over to Nijiya again and got an eel bento, a real treat. And a can of coffee. I ate out front and sipped a little of the coffee, but didn't want to drink too much because my waking-up cup had filtered its way down and I had to use the loo already. 

I walked around a bit to kill time and in the end, went into the new pizza place on 6th and looking at their huge menu of crazy craft beer names, saw Pabt - a familiar name in the storm - and ordered one of those. That gave me license to use their loo, which I did, and then watched some of the Australian Open tennis while listening to the ghastly 70's hard rock they play in there. That beer cost me $7 with the tip and I only drank maybe 1/4 of it. 

When it was 15 minutes before the meeting I left and walked over to the temple. Tons of people were going into the gym for a Boy Scouts thing, and I sat on the bench in front of the temple itself with my shakuhachi across my knees and just didn't see any shakuhachi people. I finally tried the door and it opened. It's a "you just have to know" kind of club, I guess. 

There were four students and Rinban Sakamoto, the teacher. Two of the students are old ladies and one is very good, and she just plays a simple PVC shakuhachi. I was the only one who wasn't playing a hunk of plastic pipe, actually. There was myself, and then there was the guy I'd sold a trumpet and a cornet, or two cornets, or something, to, years ago. That had enabled me to pay my taxes that year. He's from a saxophone background so, since it will take more years than I plan to have left here on the mainland, he shall be known as Saxophone Guy. 

We did scales, and worked on two songs. Except for the one lady who's really good, the other three of us sounded pretty awful. It was great, though. In the 2nd octave I could not make many of the notes, or could mostly not make them except when they'd show up. So I just played along doing my best and I think that's what everyone did. Rinban Sakamoto had made these really neat music holders  out of foamcore that rest on the pews and hold a single page of music with two paperclips. Really clever. 

Saxophone Guy used to play some sort of a transverse flute with a Japanese music group in Los Angeles. For some reason he moves around the country continuously, and thus the horns he  bought from me are in a storage unit somewhere. "I'm finding trumpet is harder than saxophone," he observed to me. "Yes, it's generally agrees that it is; it takes a lot of pressure". I told him it makes a great sound when you "get it going" and said it's great when you get the ability to "jazz is up" and told my story about driving the annoying Christian guy off in Mountain View by jazzing up "Amazing Grace". 

The guy was in too much of a hurry to talk much, though. It must be like that when you continually move around the country. It seems kind of weird to me, but then it's kind of weird that I get around by bike or insist on using a flip phone. His way of life apparently works for him and mine works for me. 

It wasn't raining when the meeting was over, and the ride home was dry. Not without its thrills, though. I was riding home at about 8:30 which due to the wartime 3-hour shift is equivalent to 11:30 at night. Now, I used to be out busking when it was warm, up to and even past midnight without any problems but that was in the before times. I try not to be out much past dark at all these days. 

So, as I was just at the end of 10th street, approaching Bayshore, there was a zombie on a bike coming my way, no lights, and fast, Since there was no traffic I swung wide to get around the damned thing and it veered over to try to intercept me. I put on a burst of speed though and that threw it's timing off.  I went on under the bridge, going the wrong way of course, and then up Bayshore, on the wrong side, all the way up to where Chik'n Drip had their truck set up. It was not busy.

If the zombie was following me or had decided to, it would probably think I'd turned into the zombie-infested side street that's just before Chikn' Drip. Veering over onto the right side of Bayshore and into this complex would give the zombie the temptation to chase me into here. 

So I ordered some fries, having $5 on me. "Do you want chicken on your fries?" the skinny kid asked. "I can't afford chicken", I said. "I'll hook you up!" he replied. The fries were actually only $4 and I said, "let the other dollar be a tip" and he put it in the tip jar. 

I had to wait a while, since being one of the very few places open after 7 or so, they had a steady number of customers. Two large Black gals came up to order and we had a laugh about zombies; my imitations of zombies staggering around wanting "Braaaaaaaains" cracked them up. 

My food was done and the bag was tied up so I'd need scissors so I just took it and get back here. It turned out to be fries, dressing, chopped-up chicken tender, and lots pickles. A lot more carbs than I should be eating, but I sure didn't finish the thing. Most of the fries are out front for the gulls as I write.

My thoughts on the shakuhachi club meeting are that firstly, Rinban Sakamoto really loves the shakuhachi and teaching it. He's probably not a masterful player, but he *did* get to study with Masayuki Koga, the guy who wrote the books I have. I told him I could play Hinomaru, the first song in the book, fairly well, and he played it while I sang along. (Singing the songs is taught as well as playing them on the shakuhachi in this club). I explained that for me to take a lesson from Koga, I'd have to take a day getting up to Oakland where he is, stay a night in a hotel, take the lesson the next day, then it would take me another day to get back. 

The one lady who's really good, is probably someone who made it a very solid habit to practice every day, and probably has been playing since the club first formed, however many years ago that was. And has been practicing through the dissolution of the club, through covid, etc. That's what it takes - years and years. 

If I were going to stay here on the mainland, I'd do well to stay with the trumpet, because the trumpet is a good instrument for here. It's loud and, well, brassy. I've already got a bunch of years playing it under my belt. Now I'm starting from zero. That lady in the shakuhachi club, without saying a word about it, has shown us all how regular practice and sticking with a thing will always win. 

I experienced this on the trumpet. Put in enough years, and eventually, in spite of yourself, you might just end up with a decent tone. Although I'll say that I'm convinced that my taking some time off and practicing shakuhachi and then coming back to trumpet is what made the difference. That's what really gave me a winning tone. So if I were to stay with trumpet I'd have to play some shakuhachi too because I know what's good for me. But better still to just play the shakuhachi. 

On the flute ... well ... my left shoulder is sure happy I'm not playing it. I ran into something like this with archery. In the early 2000s I started to get into it, but shortly after I finally got "in line" (proper form) and finding I could just zing those shots in there accurately, some muscles or tendons or something went "sproing". I took a month off, went back to the archery range, shot about 3 shots, right zing in the middle, and ... "sproing". My problem was, I wasn't doing archery fairly seriously from when my age was in the single digits, which is what it takes to have the body adapting as it grows, to what's a fairly unnatural movement. 

I think I'm running into the same thing with the flute. Not *all* transverse flutes, but the Western transverse flute is a real beastie. This is not going to be a problem if you've been playing the flute since your age was in the single digits, which serious players have. Even less "serious" players like that guy from Jethro Tull, I strongly suspect, have a lot more flute practice in their childhood than they let on. 

In other news for some reason both my Oahu friend and my Big Island friend have stopped emailing. Now, email, or anything involving any kind of real distance, is no way to make or maintain any kind of friendship. There's this "distance effect" and it's the reason companies and even the government spend millions flying people all over the world so they can be in the same room, smelling each other's farts. That's exactly how it works. If you're not smelling each other's farts, you can't get business done; you can't keep a friendship, you can't make agreements or start or stop a war and so on. 

It's why all these bigwigs spend millions upon millions flying to some resort town in Switzerland, to discuss .... the anti-environmental properties of air travel. The problem is, they have to travel, air travel environmental harm be damned, to have a chance of actually doing anything. 

It's also why I'm not even trying to get in contact with my older sister back in Hawaii. It all comes down to, decades ago now, our talking on the phone, about 3000 miles apart. I was under a lot of stress, said something I should not have and does not even reflect my actual view, and it can't be fixed until I'm back there, in person, and we witness each other's table manners, and observe each other eating, and yes, smell each other's farts if it comes to that. There's no other way. 

Other-other news is, a thread on Reddit in r/sanjose about the difficulties in getting a passport. It turns out to be difficult indeed! That's scary, as one of the signs of a failing nation is it gets very difficult for people in it to leave if they want to. It's taking months on end, and people are even going to other states, and one suggestion was to go to the post office on the island of Maui and apply there. Most people are talking about going to Gilroy or Hollister or tiny, dot-on-the-map towns. I could handle going to Gilroy because there's a bus that goes down there and there's always a cab or two hanging around the bus station. The other places would take days of travel for me, each way. 

This is why I need to get to work getting my papers in order. They've pushed back the deadline to get a "Real ID" to 2025 and I plan to be back in Hawaii by then, but I want to get one and to get a new passport also. I wonder if not having a good proper Nazi Germany passport hindered those people without one, who were able to get out? I'd rather have more "proper papers" than less.