Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.1002081638220.9684@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: 3 qin songs
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 16:39:22 -0500 (EST)
3 qin songs http://www.alansondheim.org/qina.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/qinb.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/qinc.mp3 Years ago Nikuko was wandering near a crossroads where an inventor of musical instruments plied his wares. That is to say, he operated a combination laboratory and shop. He created qin with wires at cross- purposes, slant like certain guitar harps with one course angled against another. He created qin with wires fixed at one end, the other nothing but air. He combined the two instruments into one, with traditional dragon pond and celestial curve. He used seven strings, four and three. The three were father, mother, earth. The four were elements, of which the fifth was the body of the qin itself. The four strings were below, the three strings were above. The four were angled against the three; the three were angled against the four. The four were attached at one end, as were the three; of the other of the four and the three, nothing but air. Now this was during the period of Warring States. Now the strings were played, stopping with the left, sounding with the right, harmonics with the left and stopping with the right, but sometimes both with both and sometimes nothing with nothing. The inventor of musical instruments would play this instrument among all others, he loved this instrument above all others. And it would hardly sound, and the strings, like the Warring States themselves, would tangle. Their tangling and untangling is their song, he said to Nikuko, and their song is my song as well. It is the song of the brane (crane?), and ground-song of the universe. All I do, with skill and delicacy, he said, is keep them safe, sound when I can and unsound when I can, and the rest is in the doing of strings, what they ordinarily do, when they are fairly long, tied at one end, lose in the wind at the other. It is a poor qin to be sure, he said, but an excellent kite, and someone will always play such an instrument. Later generations, however, fixed the strings at both ends, and in their struggle to free themselves once more, music was born. (But this doesn't make sense, Nikuko said, since he was an inventor of musical instruments in the first place. I didn't say he was any good, Jennifer replied, Yes, an inventor in the first place, but in the second, none of them worked.) ( In the three songs, one and two are uncanny, three a healing across the surface of a wound, one and two and three at angles. And in two and three, the sounds of the silk and wood, creaking, adjusting, twisting; one hears the qin in the qin. And in one as well. )