Music of the Spirit

Long ago and far away but just the other day, I was hiking up Mount Tzouhalem on southern Vancouver Island with my bamboo flute in hand. After several months struggling to find a single note, the flute had begun to respond to my breaths. The sound of it, echoing among the trees and hills was so natural and powerful than rather than sit in the confines of my little wooden cabin, I took it up to the mountaintop nearly every summer day.

The flute, a Chinese folk instrument closely related to the Japanese shakuhachi, was a gift from a poet friend. Determined to learn it and to reproduce the haunting sounds that had first captured my attention, I battled with my tendency to give  up on it for days, weeks and months on end until at last it began to respond to my touch, thrilling me with the sound that emerged from it.

I had been living in my cabin for about a year now, following the Zen tradition of sitting meditation coupled with chopping wood and hauling water and also working on my craft of songwriting. The flute seemed to take me to a place beyond any of these into a timeless, spaceless connection with my own inner spirit and so when I finally began to make music with it, I was able to use it as a tool that took me deeply and powerfully into a meditative state.

As the summer wore on and my mountaintop flute playing became more melodic and easier, I noticed that small birds which had at first flown away startled when I began to play settled down to their activities apparently completely undisturbed by the music. I saw myself as a budding Orpheus and focused on trying to play a quality of music that would actually capture the attention of the animals and birds. Squirrels and sparrows alike, although at least comfortable with my presence and the flute’s sound, exhibited an exasperating indifference to my efforts at serenading them.

This dance went on for some weeks until the thought came to me to try and “talk” to the birds with the flute, rather than play to them. My efforts began by imitating bird sounds or at least the rhythms and pitch of them. On a bamboo flute at least, I could only approximate these.

Soon, something interesting began to happen. I developed a kind of call and response pattern with the birds. There were even moments when the birds actually paused, looked directly at me and seemed to speak their chirpings back to me. Along with the notes, I practiced communicating simple messages such as “hello”, “what are you doing” and “I am happy to be talking to you.” The very focus of my efforts, pitched into the gentle force of the flute’s sound produced some remarkable and mysterious results.

I had never before been able to look at birds without them somehow noticing me looking and flying off. This is how it seemed to me at least. Now, inexplicably, the birds were no longer afraid of my presence. Strangely, although this is the most difficult part to explain, they were even talking to me.

Once, a robin landed on my shoulder, startling me. I didn’t move for the longest time for fear of scaring her off. At least 10 minutes passed before the robin moved and then she fluttered up into a nearby tree and cocked her head quizzically at me before finally flying off. But before she did she communicated something to me resembling, “What’s your problem? Loosen up!”

Soon I learned to transcend the laborious manual manipulation of the individual notes in scale form and to soar off into wild trillings and harmonic notes in which I gave my fingers and breath free rein to express the spirit of the moment. This seemed to increase the intensity and broadcasting ability of the flute and it seemed to me that the notes were penetrating high into the upper air.

During one of these musical flights I noticed a pair of eagles circling high above me. The thought came to me to begin “talking” to the eagles. Very deliberately I began pitching the notes upward, imitating the cries of the eagles. To my astonishment the eagles began a slow downward descent. I was largely hidden beneath a thick canopy of trees but I moved towards a hillside clearing still playing and the eagles moved with me.

A sensation like a hush descended over me as the eagles reached treetop level and began circling in among the branches, so closely that I could almost reach out and touch them. I was still playing but it was almost as if there was no sound. The presence of these enormous birds which I had never seen before so near to me filled me with a sense of reverence and awe. I was receiving a message but in a wordless, thoughtless form. At the same time as I was playing I was studying these birds and they were studying me in return and there was something of interest passing between us. More importantly, I felt I was being honored, even blessed by their scrutiny.

That night, drinking a steaming cup of tea alone in my cabin I gave thanks for the events of that day. I tried to put them into words in journal form but the words eluded me.

Later that summer a wise old friend Paul Reps who visited me in my cabin summed it up for me.
“You were not just playing music,” he said, “You were playing Eagalic Music.”