River Mandala

River Labyrinth: 1/17/11, on the ice of the Huron River at Argo Park

Here is what I did today when I needed a break from composing. My colleague the wonderful  soprano Carmen Pelton made a labyrinth in her yard this summer,  and she recently loaned my wife and I a book on the history and process. The book taught how to plot the walls of a classical seven-course Minoan labyrinth, (as in the neolithic tomb carving below) but to make one out of snow I had to teach myself how to create one by walking the path. 

neolithic tomb labyrinth

Creating the shape by walking the path means that the shape won't be mathematically proportional, but drawn freehand by walking, in this case, with a shovel.This practice used parts of my brain that I haven't accessed since I was an early adolescent, and for a time obsessively drew mazes (motivated by what, I cannot remember.)

I'm tempted to draw some metaphoric connection to composing though, in which we lay out a path through action, and ask others to follow it...and of course the difference between a labyrinth and a maze is that in the former there is only one path to follow, instead of many...

Tomorrow's forecast: rain.

 

Mandala center

Where is the river

 This is the second of two current river songs. It was inspired by a very short commercial spot designed for the Huron River Watershed Council that I saw once that showed cars going by on a road with the question "Where is the River?". The camera then panned down to the ditch by the side of the road and answered the question: "Closer than you think..."

If anyone is interested in writing some of their own water or river songs, and participating in spontaneous public performance this winter, please contact me! I could also imagine some kind of water-themed flash event on public transportation, so if you have ideas, do let me know!


Where is the River

River Songs-Everything Flows

"Every single thing we do as animals we do because we are an aqueous solution." 
Lynn Margolis

I spend a lot of time on and along the river near my house; I go to visit it every day. I've been doing so for over twenty years. I came to realize that I was made of the river, and that its waters were flowing through my veins, that my cells were swimming in it, that it flowed through me just as surely as it flows through my neighborhood and my town.

I sometimes say that I only want to write music that I would sing to myself for my own edification if I were in a field alone, and this little song definitely fits into that category.

I wanted to write some simple songs that would express this intimacy with the waters, and the immanence of the river. I have the simple hope that if we come to love the river, we will not hurt it, since we are dependent on it, utterly. If you love God, you gotta get right with God, and if you love the Dharma, you are compelled to live rightly by the Dharma, and if you learn to love the river, you've got to get right with the river.

We are quite dependent upon the river for our moment to moment existence. In this way, our relationship to the waters makes me think of the Zen Master Samu Sunim's teaching about "true suchness": that which is "intimate, immediate, spontaneous and obvious."

This is meant to be one of a small set of "guerilla art" songs I've created to sing on buses during the winter here in Ann Arbor--our University is organizing a semester's worth of events around the theme of Water, and this is one of my contributions.

So here is my first attempt at a simple river song:


Everything Flows:

Free the Huron River

If there were any kind of newspaper left in this city, the following would be an opinion piece or a long letter to the editor...

A very vocal group of citizens in my town (many of them my near and much-respected neighbors) has become very vocal in their support of leaving the aging Argo dam in place. This dam is at the end of my street, so it hits pretty close to home for me, as I kayak the waters behind the dam a few times every week when the pond isn't frozen. The state of Michigan says the city has to remove or repair it, and and the local watershed council has strongly recommended removal. My neighbors have framed their position on this issue with yard signs that say "Save Argo Pond."

By doing so they directly reference many other similar campaigns we have become familiar with: "save the whales", "save the Hudson", "save orchestra hall"...in each of these cases, though, there is a natural feature or a historic building or a community asset that is perceived to be threatened by destructive forces that are in the wrong, and there is a call for us to step up into individual responsibility to protect something that should not be destroyed. In this case however, there is a reversal I find ironic--the "save the" argument is being used in the service of the preservation of an aging dam that is proven to be bad for the health of the river, and at great expense to the city.

The city council is not meant only to make decisions based on the desires of narrowly defined economic elite, nor even on the basis of their perception of what the majority of their constituents want. Still less are they [you] meant to develop that perception based on who seems to be shouting the loudest, though it seems that that is often the most politically expedient thing to do. You [they] are also meant to serve as stewards for the all the lands of the city, the whole environment that those lands entail, the same environment that supports our human lives, and countless others.

If a group of people got signs printed saying "more toxic waste dumping," even if they seemed to be in the majority, even if they included the past president of the Downtown Development Authority or the chamber of commerce, it would be incumbent upon you [us] to say "no, that is not in the best interest of the whole community, and not in the best interest of the environment that supports our community."

In this way, the Huron river itself is like one of your constituents, or rather, like one of your charges--something that needs to be cared for and preserved as an essential part of our lives (it literally flows through the veins of everyone in this town)--but it can't speak for itself. Though I'm all in favor of recreation and cardiovascular health, I don't think the rowing team's reluctance to relocate, or the desire to keep Barton pond clear of rowing shells for the rich folks is enough reason to insist on going to great city expense to keep the river sick.

The Huron river is sick. It is sick because of what we have done to it. We cannot expect to keep making the environment upon which we depend for our existence sick, and somehow expect to be well ourselves. I urge you [everyone] to act as stewards, and to do what you know is right, even if it is hard: we must free the Huron river.