The Flute Player
The jazz club is part of our village, an area on the edge of a small city perched on the southwestern plateau. Several years before we came along, the area had started out being light industrial during the boom phase of one of the boom-bust cycles that went soft before it had truly begun. The economic dreams went belly up and the buildings sat there empty with both the demand and the property values going into free-fall. Eventually, hard to say just when, a number of us began to drift together and buy up the empty warehouses and loft spaces to give a home to the art we were creating. Along the way, we started to think of ourselves as a separate village.
It's hard to define just who we are. A few of us were former tech types that didn't fit well with the tempo and priorities of the mainstream world. We moved on to something that left us with more time and soul intact. Others just dealt better with using their hands to create from wood, clay, metal, and precious stone than with the head battles of words and abstract ideas. Some, who started out rebelling against nearly everything, rebelled themselves right into what we were doing. A few of us are Native Americans, finding our space more supportive for the work with silver and stone than was the mainstream culture around us.
Amid it all, the jazz club meets our needs for a place to come together and listen together. Changing it from a large bare room to a place for performances became a community project stringing over several years. Some contributed skill in carpentry to add a stage and then a hanging cubicle for the stage controls. Others pulled and connected cables so that Stephanie and Dave could work their technical magic with the light and sound equipment. No one really cares just who is performing, just as long as the music is good enough that it gives us that sense of sharing time. There's not a lot of reason to build a community like ours, if you don't set aside the space to interact with each other.
The player that night walked onto the stage with just a flute case. He was wiry with a slight stoop to his shoulders. His denim jacket and jeans were clean, but with the faded look of honest use that showed the worn spots. It was hard to say how old he was -- there was some gray to his temples, yet he moved with an almost feline litheness. He hadn't been scheduled to play that night. The scheduled guy had called that morning from Albuquerque, sick with a bad flu. Just as Ron, the club manager, began to wonder where to find a replacement, the flute player had wandered in to the club office asking if anyone could use a musician."Yes", he was free tonight. "Yes", he could come back for a 9 o'clock gig. A few bars of demo playing and the deal was set.
During the afternoon, the clouds began to build up into tall turrets; welcome shade and a welcome hope for a chance of rain. The start of summer had been unusually warm and dry. The papers were beginning to talk about drought and the possibility of water rationing. This was a distressing thought, since many of us supplemented the food we bought with what we could grow in our community garden. Without enough water, the raspberries would likely survive to the next year, but the squash, corn, beans, and tomatoes, the latter staked up on discarded ski poles, would all be lost. Even the sight of the clouds and the smells they brought to the air were a welcome relief.
About 8:30, we started arriving, talking, and finding our seats. Jill was already plying the tables, filling our needs for beer, wine, fresh coffee, and her homemade brownies and cookies. It was one of the odd jobs she took on within the village to bridge the gap between what her artwork brought in and what it took to support her daughter and herself. As 9 o'clock approached, the flute player arrived and talked a bit with Dave, who was handling the stage lighting that night. Then Dave went up into the light cubicle and the player sat down on a stool on the stage. He began taking his flute out of its case, as Dave, slowly lowered the lights to a deep, almost imperceptible red.
The first notes were quiet and slow, starting at the edge of our ability to hear and building until each note seemed to fill the room. As he continued to play, the tempo and the intensity kept increasing as Dave, correspondingly, moved the lights from red into orange, then yellow, green, blue, purple and finally violet. Then gradually, cascading on us in tunes that no one could put a name to, the music and the lights came back down the spectrum. As he played, the flute player had begun to move. I've had a lot of dance training over the years and usually my eyes are good at picking up the patterns of a person's movement. Yet, try as I would, there was something about his movements I couldn't quite focus on. Finally, I just gave up and let my mind float on the music.
It seemed like he was playing to each of us personally, his music speaking to our struggles and our losses and about our moments of triumph. I don't think there was one among us who didn't gasp at some point as some particular note or trill resonated within our individual heart. That night, some who had been struggling with an idea or image for weeks went home and wrote or drew or painted well into the early morning. Others, who had been driving themselves feverishly dropped into a deep sleep filled with images and dreams. Others of us … well, it's said only half jokingly that a number of the village's children are the result of what was played that night.
When he was done playing, there was a long pause before the applause started and then a longer time before it died out again. Then, the flute player carefully dried his flute with a red bandana and put it back into its case. He stayed only to talk briefly with the few of us who had the presence to come up quickly. Most were still just sitting there, talking very quietly with those next to them or even just lost in thought. Then he collected his pay envelope from Ron and headed back towards the rear door. The door was open, looking out onto a side street, as Dave and Jill sat there quietly sharing the cool breeze blowing in the door and looking at the bursts of lighting jumping between the clouds. As he came to the door, they both thanked him and he nodded back with a subtle smile moving across his face. He placed the envelope he held in Jill's hand, and stepped out. Jill later said that it was then, as he reached towards her, that she noticed a single 'K' and one of those curved silhouette flute players ubiquitous to the southwest, engraved onto the top of his flute case. When he was about a half block away, they both thought they heard him make a sound, Jill said a chuckle and Dave said a belly laugh. They never did figure out which, for, as they started to look down, there was a flash of lighting and when their eyes could see the street again it was empty. Then the rain started to pour down in sheets.
©The RamblemuseSM — Keith Eric Grant — April 2002