Found Music

Music has been on my mind recently (now there's an obvious redundancy.) A few moments ago I had the sort of cellular memory event I would more often associate with my sense of smell, though music has always had a power in me, to return me to long past feelings and times. I was in my kitchen reading through a document with the early summer breeze blowing through open windows. As I read I found a sound tugging at the edges of my consciousness. Most sounds are not particularly confusing. This was. I puzzled and went to "okay ignore it" mode. The thing about me and such things is my ignore button loses it's resolve. I wondered again what the heck the sound was. It was random, manifold, sounding like wind blown through flutes or organ pipes, yet earthy, hectic, alive with undefined energy. It sounded strangely Indian and I had a Slumdog Millionaire flashback. I stepped out onto my back porch to see if I could hear it better. Indeed it was more distinct yet seemingly as if made by the breeze. All I could tell about direction was it seemed stronger on my right. I turned ninety degrees and focused again more deeply. Inside the cacophony of the sound I found something oddly familiar. I was staring across the neighbors home lot and the street at the old bastion of the one hundred year old elementary school building when finally the tumblers fell into place and I realized what I was hearing. If you're my age and grew up in the US the word you would use is Fluteophone. The fluteophone was a small black cigar shaped instrument, basically a bastard stepchild of the recorder, made from injection molded plastic which was used (due to it's rather insignificant cost) to teach children music in the 50s and 60s. It was a whistle with finger holes and tooth marks that tasted distinctly of poly vinyl chloride. The sound I was hearing was a classroom of children waiting for the teacher to call them to attention, warming up wildly, on their recorders (as I happen to know fluteophones are no longer used.... cheap low grade recorders are the tool these days.)
This stands as a pure music moment for me. These were the moments composer John Cage lived for. I felt a surge of longing and the ache for that pleasure of recognition; that palpable feeling that no experience is really lost in this universe... that those sounds are always out there, swirling through the cosmos someday to be picked up on the cosmic wind of everyday life. Fifth grade seems like yesterday for me, yet in no small sense, clearly, it's taking place today too.

And so the yearning strong, with which the soul will long,
Shall far outpass the power of human telling;
For none can guess its grace, till he become the place
Wherein the Holy Spirit makes His dwelling.

Exerpt from Down Ampney, Ralph Vaughn Willimas
Bianco of Siena (?-1434) (Di scen di, Amor san to); ap peared in Laudi spirituali del Biaco da Siena; translated from Italian to English by Richard F. Littledale in The People’s Hymnal, 1867.

June by Julie Miller

The night that you left the sky started crying
The moon's face was hiding just like mine
When I was thirsty and lost
Like a true heaven's daughter
Darlin' you brought me water for my soul

There will never be another one for me
I know someday I will see you again
But the love you gave me will last until then

I never thought I'd lose you or that you'd go ahead of me
But now you rode instead of me on their angel wings
Did the lord call your name and did you take his hand
To join that family band once again

On a night in may all the sky cried for june
And an eclipse of the moon said that you were gone