Almost

When I began to play the shakuhachi every series of notes went allegretto, despite the expected tempo. I could not keep up: my head spinning with futile attempts to suck in oxygen. A half decade into concerted study, the notes are beginning to unfold in slow motion.

Honkyoku, the shakuhachi’s classic music, does not have a specific time signature. It is timeless and often seems to begin as it ends. Small dashes and indeterminate lines droop from each note to provide a sense of the rhythm, but typically, the phrasing is passed down from teacher to student generation after generation.

I think of the music as the forest breathing. And if I am being romantic about it, this is interspersed with the devotional chants of Buddhist nuns, monks, and priests. A honkyoku piece reflects the interplay between nature and the player, if that distinction can be made.

That the quality of the sound has no bearing in this is hard to grasp. I struggle for the correct timbre and cadence knowing that if I had a truthful spirit the notes would be superfluous.

I often relate a work to a season of the year, even if there is no such indication. Winter is pianissimo, until a blizzard blows in and shatters the silence.

Spring is allegro molto vivace. It goes from crescendo to decrescendo as the nestlings are fledged.

Summer’s moderato ushers in with a steady drumbeat of activities only to be broken by tympanic summer squalls that pass quickly.

Fall is nature in retreat. Unlike spring, the pace is not frantic but largo. The earth is changing again, this time reluctantly.

With a repertory that can be counted on one hand, none are mastered. A few brief honkyoku tolerate my complete attention. Others linger on and challenge my competency.

I begin with a plan and great expectations, then midstream they are forgotten. Notes squeal then burrow deep. Fingers refuse to conform. Time is too short or too long. Breath runs out and leaves unexpected gaps.

For all that, after the last note it is difficult to disengage the mouthpiece from my lips: the music still beckons. And though the echo has faded, the sound continues.

Slowly my heartbeat fills the void, and it feels as if I am about to blow into the shakuhachi again for the first time. This is frustrating and thrilling at the same time. To know some forty years ago, what I know now would be joyous.

But then, now I can keep up with the notes . . . almost!

January 2020

Humans

These days when the newest wiz kid app developer or start up billionaire is interviewed, and the use of their product is questioned, they respond by stating that it is uniquely designed for humans. This takes me aback. I begin to wonder whom else would it be designed for.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) must be further along than I realize. Are these applications designed to be used by modern day R2-D2’s. I comprehend that my concept of robots, with or without AI, is colored by the black and white images I saw on TV when I was an impressionable youth.

I suppose I need an up-to-date definition of what a robot is. Can I equate AI with robots, are they one in the same; do robots have to have an arm to manipulate the world or can they do it by manipulating our minds to do their bidding.

AI, at least in my imagination, inhabits faceless servers, and is imbedded in the cloud and on our phones. It navigates through the Internet’s neural network, and it see’s through those odd looking goggles where people experience the virtual world while wandering around sparse rooms as molecules do in Brownian motion.

Though I often feel like a Luddite, I have been part of the internet since before there was an Internet. In the mid 1970’s, Southern Illinois University’s library was my chosen spot to study. I would leave the apartment after dinner and cross a gravel parking lot; walk up and over the train tracks (careful not to be run down by an errant freight train) to the Greek fast food joint for a cup of their bitter coffee.

This cup would be sneaked into the library where I set up shop and sipped while I studied anatomy, chemistry, and higher math. At about nine, my limit for absorption was reached, and I would head for the basement lab that contained odd neon screens with a resolution of about four dots per square inch. Here resided PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations): a pre-internet network developed at the University of Illinois.

A reservation was required to use the terminals and I always scheduled a 45 minute session. This was a reward to motivate my diligent study until the library closed at 11:30pm. If I remember, the programs offered were geared toward higher education, but it had other functions that we now equate with the Internet.

I most often used the learn-to-type tutorial. I never learned to type other than the laughable hunt and peck that I write these commentaries with, but I did get a sense that there was a wider computer based world out there.

My next interaction with the web was from the editors of the Whole Earth Catalog. In the far off fantasy land of California there were enlightened individuals who communicated about intriguing things on a network that was the progenitor of user groups and chat rooms.

I longed to be part of that world but never managed to ingratiate myself. I considered myself too ordinary to be of interest, though in reality I lacked the motivation to investigate how to connect. Maybe I thought it would entail too much typing.

In those years, when I had some free time I opted to take long walks in the woods and spy on birds rather than lock myself in a room with a screen. Remember those days!

Back then the assumption was that these electronic innovations were to be used by Homo sapiens. I am not sure that this is true any longer. Each day brings news of ways to replace humans. The bank teller is replaced by an ATM. Stores are now busy training us to check out and bag our own goods.

Automobiles are so capable of driving in rush hour that their drivers are free to nap at the wheel. And then there are the drones, which will soon deliver packages and transport us above roads crowded by automatous delivery trucks.

The world moves on whether we like it or not. I watched my parents struggle for years to program a VCR. I like to think that I am better equipped to manage change but I also realize that I have lost the ability to record and play back video images.

For my part, if I can quickly get the latest app to work I may be interested, but if not I am perfectly happy to do without it. There is always the shakuhachi to practice, a wood working project to finish, or a couple of YouTube videos to watch. And I think I will try to stay awake while driving.

After all, I am proud to be human; it must be better than being a nematode. But then a nematode does not need to update its software or delete thousands of emails!

December 2019