The Young Man and The Flute

Once there was a young man who left home in search of a way to make his mark on the world. One day in his journeying he came to a forest, where he heard the sound of a flute. It was such a beautiful sound that he entered the forest in search of it. 

But the sound came from deeper in the forest than he had guessed. Even after several hours of his pursuing it, it still sounded in the distance, and then not at all. It grew dark. The young man took shelter in the hollow of a large tree and the next morning sought a way out of the forest. About mid-morning he heard the flute again, but he did not go in search of it. Instead he cursed it for leading him astray. "Perhaps," he thought, "it will even prove to have led me to my death."

But that afternoon he stumbled upon a stream where a bearded old man sat playing a wooden flute, making the sparkles on the water scatter and dance in intricate patterns according to the melodies he played. As the young man listened and watched, he was overcome with a desire to learn the same skill. He went up to the old man and begged to be taught. 

"Ah, it's not what you think," the old man said. But the young man persisted and at length convinced the old man to take him on as a pupil.

So the young man stayed and learned the secrets of the flute. He learned the melodies to summon starlight and to make it fringe the pine boughs, and the melodies to make moonlight fall in soft rustles of light as if it were a lovely woman letting down her golden hair. Sunlight, the young man discovered, was more difficult--like untamed, flashing horses. Yet eventually he could braid bits and bridles of light and set those steeds galloping across the sky, right and left above the forest floor.

Then one day the old man said, "I will take you back to the road. You have learned everything you can from me, and the flute is yours." So the young man followed his master out to the forest's edge, and, after thanking the old man, set out for the nearest town. He dreamed of his new power. With it, he thought, he would find love, gain fame, maybe even become a great king.

That evening at an inn, the young man decided he would make a start on his dreams. It had been raining for days, and the firewood was soaked, so that in the great hall of the inn, the fire smoldered dismally. The young man bet the innkeeper and all those gathered at the tables in the hall that he could make the fire burn brighter, without touching it or even blowing on it. 

"And how will you manage this?" asked the innkeeper.

"With a melody from this," said the young man, drawing out his flute. Laughter burst out on all sides and the innkeeper and everyone in the hall gladly accepted the grounds of the bet, as the young man put the flute to his lips. 

The melody he played was lovely, high and shimmering, but soon it was drowned out by laughter, because to the young man's surprise and consternation, no matter how he played the firelight burned no differently: no brighter or warmer or friendlier or cleaner. He stopped playing and stared at the flute in astonishment. But no, it was the same flute; you could tell by the beautiful inscriptions in the wood and the unmistakable tones it had produced. The young man put the flute away, paid the innkeeper and the patrons the money he had bet (it was all the money he had), and hurriedly left the inn.

For days he wandered, despairing that the flute had lost its power. He would take the flute out in some isolated spot and play, hoping against hope. But still, nothing: no starlight resting on the pine boughs, no sunlight willing to be tamed. He thought of turning back and entering the forest again, but he sensed he would not find the old man there.

Since he had no more money, he was forced to play on the streets of the towns he wandered through, and to put his hat out in front of him on the road for whatever people would give him. All who heard him play were amazed at the loveliness of the flute's tone and at the beauty of the melodies he played, and he earned enough to keep himself clothed and fed. But the young man hardly heard his own music, because it no longer gave him the power he had dreamed of using. In fact, it so depressed him to keep playing that one day he decided to rid himself of the instrument and with it, his misfortunes. He went to a bridge over a deep river and held the flute above the moving water. 

Just then an old blind man tapping his stick along the surface of the road, arrived at the bridge. He stopped and begged the young man for alms.

The young man turned from viewing the water. "I have nothing, old man," he said, "but a few pennies that I must keep, and this miserable flute that I am about to throw into the water."

"Play to me then," said the old man, "Before you let it go. I love to hear music."

The young man sighed. It would do no harm to play for the beggar. And, he thought, since it was to be the last time he played the instrument, he would play it well. So he played the loveliest tune he knew, a tune that in his days in the forest, had made the meteors run in streaks down heaven. He played so beautifully, that the old man, listening, wept. 

"Once," said the young man, "this flute was magical."

"Ah" replied the old man, as he moved along, "if only you could see."

The sound of the blind man's tapping grew dim; the young man was overcome with remorse. He suddenly understood that all his foolish wishes to become great in the world's eyes meant nothing, for what could be more meaningful than what had just passed between him and the beggar? He repented of his wish to destroy the flute and from that day forward played it gladly. And although the flute had a strange way of keeping itself a secret--the young man never became famous, and when he died, the flute was lost--it was said that near the end, he could make even the most hard-hearted miser weep with it, the most miserable orphan smile. 

And sometimes when he played (people said) the smallest, loveliest things would happen: the shoe on a horse would unexpectedly flash, or a water drop splashed from a pail would throw a bright, momentary rainbow before it fell to the dust.

HB



 

Hand Work as a Way to Joy

A little boy's picture of a ladybug on the refrigerator door, the rough carving of a boat, a clay soap-dispenser, an exercise in Japanese flower arrangement, a bar of lavender soap crisply wrapped in brown paper, these are all proof: that whatever is done or made by hand, however imperfectly, has a natural dignity to it, and carries the signature of meaning. And that meaning is generally more intensely felt the closer the hands are to being your own hands or the hands of someone you deeply love. The bread you eat has more meaning to you if you baked it yourself or if someone you loved baked it. The music you hear has more meaning to you if you're playing it yourself with your own two hands, or if someone you love is making it. We can debate why all this is true--there are certainly many reasons for it--but there is I think almost no question that it is true. 

The fact that handwork feels so meaningful, has to be one of the biggest reasons why so many who adopt a lifestyle low on consumption and high in do-it-yourself activity find their lives more satisfying after they've shifted them that direction. Joy depends on meaning and since (to say it a different way) human meaning depends in a remarkable way on the sensed presence of human hand, then cultivating the domestic arts--cooking, gardening, carpentry, flower arrangement etc.--are an obvious place to start investing in that market of joy. Decorating our homes with things that we ourselves have made and designed may be one of the most straightforward ways of making ourselves feel at home. Again it's not so much a question of how perfect the work in question is; it's more a question of the source, of whose fingers shaped, assembled, or produced it. I have access to any number of recordings of the finest musicians in the world playing the finest work of the finest composers. But I would always prefer to hear my son improvise on his violin or my wife sing in her beautiful pure voice a simple folk tune at the piano. How could it be otherwise? Loved and live always beats even the best of what a recording can supply me with. 

Of course, it's only fair to admit that taking up the task of learning hand-skills guarantees some heartache and trouble as well and joy and satisfaction. What bakes can also burn. What's grown in the garden can also wither and die. What's smoothed by hand can also be gouged. And it's hard to get used to this truth, because of course every failure in handwork gestures embarrassingly toward our larger human fallibility, and makes us feel embarrassed and inadequate. My mother was a good cook, but I suppose some of my most painful memories as a child involve scenes at the dinner table, in which the family simply wasn't able to be polite about her more exceptional failures. In part this was our fault--we could be unforgivably frank--but in part it also had to do with her inability to let a disaster be a disaster, and just give up on the dish and throw it out. "It looks odd, but it tastes fine," she would assert, when in fact, it looked odd and tasted pretty odd as well! But you see, the thought of waste was so distasteful to her, and her wish for the dish to be perfect was so overwhelming, that on occasion she was just unable to admit defeat. So where our gustatory skepticism collided with her unwillingness to consign the dish to the compost--there at the intersection of six o'clock and the dinner table--we got these almost ecstatically tearful episodes. It was absolute misery. 

To say it again, it takes time and practice to acquire domestic skills. And this is one reason why my wife and I often say to ourselves that, as much as we might want to change our lives quickly (to live within the limits of ecological reality, and also more in solidarity with the poor) we still say to ourselves: "one big step at a time." That is, don't set your sights too low--really work toward change. But at the same time remember that the attempt to do so all at once will likely bring the whole project of change to a shuddering halt. Better to be strategically ambitious, tackling one difficult project at a time, and integrating each new skill in with the others as time goes on. So for instance this past year we made the digging of a substantially larger garden our biggest project, and combined that with learning to preserve several new items of food. In 2014 we'll work hard on improving the garden soil; also I intend to to build a cold frame (to provide us with early greens and seedlings) as well as a solar oven to expand our food-preservation options. Also, because I want badly to find a way to serve the community with my own hand-work, and most particularly with my theater work, I plan to make my newest play "Myles to Go" into an engine for community fundraising. My troop will perform at as many venues as possible in the Valparaiso area, in order to raise funds for a low income housing project.

All of which brings up something more about hands: they can grasp one another. They can work together. It is not possible to do everything ourselves, nor should we ever try to make that a goal. No, the best place to live and be, as a human being, is where skilled hands meet skilled hands in community, exchanging one skill for another, and finding joy in the sharing. So. Out with business as usual in this anonymous economy-at-large, where stranger provides service to stranger, and products are manufactured at a distance to fill our (often imaginary) needs, and natural limits are continually transgressed, and speculation is the most profitable enterprise, and the poor (who do not know how to speculate except in lottery tickets) are left to their own devices. Truly a different world is possible, one in which we put our own beautiful flexible hands to collective work until the earth becomes a garden and a holy wilderness, instead of moving, as it is moving, so inexorably, so mechanically, toward a vision of emptiness, smog, and infinite loss.

HB

Until Saturday the 21st!