guqin in dark times and memory http://www.alansondheim.org/guqin.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/qin.mp3 earphones or good speakers i hadn't played qin since the end of february. we retrieved the qin and other instruments from storage about a week ago. there are two qin, the oldest from somewhere between 200-400 years ago, more or less. stephen dydo refurbished it. earlier, candelario delgado had worked on it. originally, i found it in a new england antique mall where it was sold to me for seventeen dollars as a 'board.' stephen restored it and i played it and another qin, from the 1908s, for several years. but with storage and such a long break, i forget a great deal, and both qin needed tuning. so far i've worked only on the old one. i played with a new approach, at first somewhat tentative, having forgotten the positions. then i thought about the condition of humanity now, although perhaps always now, but surfacing and transforming, global warming, race, virus, economic collapse, global warfare a real possibility. so i started playing and let a different playing emerge, in respect and sorrow, and then lost as well in the stunning sound of the instrument, so much older than me of course, and what of the stewardship that its sound and age entails. what emerged was the qin, guqin, playing through me, making sure i didn't forget where i was, my finger positions, the strings, my life. and for a moment this romanticism, this world, emerged, and the strings, now tuned, sang for me, and for you if you listen as well. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
