Wind is a sculptor.

When I look at the photo above, the invisible is just as present as the visible. Dunes in constant motion, whipped into new shapes by the thing we can't see, except by what it leaves behind. You can feel the trajectory of the wind, the speed and power of it apparent by the sharpness of the ridges. You can feel the capriciousness, the curve, the relationship it teases with the ground. It is, and it is not. Heady stuff! 

I ran across this poem from D.H. Lawrence a long time ago, and it has always felt, well, true. 

"Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!
A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.
If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!
If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift!
If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed
By the fine, fine wind that takes its course through the chaos of the world..."

A Far Cry is presenting its first concert of 2021 tonight at 8: "Horizons", a beautiful program dreamed up by Zenas Hsu. Three string quartets that gaze out towards the distance: Lei Liang's "Gobi Gloria", Thomas Sleeper's Quartet no. 2, and John Luther Adams' "The Wind in High Places". I've been living inside the Adams, thinking about wind, height, horizon, and how to let the wind blow through me.

The thing to know about the Adams quartet is that, as he says, for all twenty minutes of the piece, the performers' fingers never touch the fingerboards, but only balance on the top of the strings. Instead of producing a chromatic stream of firm notes, the result instead is a light-filled cascade of tones inside the harmonic series. It references the sound of the Aeolian harp, played by the wind itself. Adams says it best: "If I could’ve found a way to make this music without them touching the instruments at all, I would have."

This is super cool. But it is also HARD. 

To play a string of natural harmonics is like tiptoeing across a mountain ledge. One false move, and you are gone. It's not just that the note won't speak perfectly in tune, if you don't hit it dead center. It will whistle, squeak, shriek, break. A nearby harmonic may storm onto the stage and replace the one you're trying to coax out, like an encroaching warlord. Keeping your balance is life or death. No false moves, in the high places. Absolute precision, or disaster. So, that's relaxing. (Oh - and of course you have to be relaxed.) 

And yet, you are relaxed! That life-or-death necessity, that black-and-white of harmonic truth, creates a sense of profound stillness. You're not creating the truthiness of usual string intonation (which is both collaborative and strategic) - nope, here, you're literally touching Truth. or not. The simplicity of it is strikingly beautiful. The craft of it is quite peaceful. You're being sculpted into a perfect shape. 

It's interesting. You have to give a lot up for the wind to flow through you like this. Lots of notes, lots of colors, lots of warmth, lots of emotions. This windy ledge is not a place to live, not for long, unless you are a sage or a saint. 

But it's a place you can make a pilgrimage to, climbing to the top of the mountain for that stillness in the midst of space, heading to the edge of the ocean to find the purest horizon of all, looking through the window of the plane to catch the slightest hint of the curvature of the earth. You can go there, and you can come back again. The severe clarity of winter can yield - in a moment! - to the tender confusion of spring. 

What a good time to be playing this piece, at the turning of the year, at a time when so very many cycles are rotating, inflecting. It's helpful, to take that time to be still and to feel the immensity of space, of possibility, all inhabited by that defining rush of energy borne in the wind. How will we interact with it?   

When I think about the wind long enough, though, eventually I become aware of the movement of my own breath, and that's when I know things are going in the right direction. 

All my best - and see you soon!

Sarah