Transmutation
Once upon a time there was a bunny that lived under the deck in a nice backyard in Vermont. One night he was torn to shreds and devoured by a coyote that lived somewhere down the ravine. The end.
Forty-two years ago, Pat Metheny made an album in Oslo with some jazz jocks called "80/81". The album opens with a song entitled "Two Folk Songs" and features the ferocious drumming of Jack Dejohnette who plays like a stampede. Nobody sounds like him -- continuous calamity and swerving thunder. He's 80 now. Michael Brecker, on tenor sax, soars the theme over Metheny's strumming. Charlie Haden's bass bounds around the cyclonic drum attack. The insistence of the music is the soul of it. These are the lines of power drawn across the sky above the landscape where mortals wander. And then the sax leaves the planet, consumed as a fireball in the atmosphere, fretting, flickering, then lost. Gone. Only drums remain...
But, the coyote was old and two winters later laid down and froze in a freak November blizzard. His body was eaten after the thaw by crows and a vulture and a ravenous fisher. The buzzard migrated to Costa Rica and was hit by a rusting truck on a blind curve near Nosara while eating a rotting rooster. His corpse was dragged off by a coatimundi into the bushes. Flies ate most of the flesh. Dragonflies ate the flies. Fish ate the dragonflies. Bigger fish did what they do and then die and float, then sink and their proteins and fishy molecules disseminate into the sea columns and currents to be carried far, far away.
Rabbits, like us upright bipeds, are 99% hydrogen and oxygen and carbon and nitrogen. Hydrogen was made in the Big Bang. The other three are synthesized in the nuclear furnace of a star that only show up in the backyard after a supernova empties its star guts into the heavens. Then, gravity pulls these together and la la la, bunnies. No first Bang, no bunnies. No stellar cataclysm, no death of a sun, no bunnies. Researchers in 2008 found evidence of an early rabbit from 53 million years ago.
...the drums subside with the return of Metheny's acoustic strumming. The bass takes over with a lullaby figure, all wood and firelight, primordial solo notes from within the shelter of night. There is no hurry now. Metheny opens the tent flap. The morning sun. The world begins anew. And finally, the reassurance of the bass folk song takes us out. Dance a little boogie for the morning light...
In Anishinaabe traditional beliefs and other Native American tribal stories Nanabozho, the Great Rabbit, is a deity and part of the creation myth of all things. In cultures around the planet, rabbits, for obvious reasons, represent fertility and continuation. The Three Hares Triskelion circular motif is found throughout Western and Middle Eastern culture, from a Mongol coin in the 13th Century to the stonework of English cathedrals, from Chinese cave drawings to its symbolism of peace and tranquility in Islamic culture. The old German riddle "Three hares sharing three ears, yet every one of them has two", describes the triangle arrangement of the rabbits sharing ears.
Pat Methany made this album when he was 27. He's 68 now. Michael Brecker passed away at 57 in 2007. Jack played with Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins and Herbie Hancock and some other giants. Charlie Haden, a colossus of a bassman and composer, died in 2014. I saw all these guys together in a little club called Hunt's not far from the backyard mentioned above. They shared ears. As the best do. Rabbits are tricksters, just like the titans of jazz. Time and space, in their relentless continuum, reconstitute the elements that make us and the hares. However, art can hold back the sinking into the seas of our star stuff. Monuments of creativity abound; I have reveled in this singular song for decades. That's the reason I make these light sculptures and write these short missives to you.
Listen to "Two Folk Songs" from "80/81". But only if you can take 20 minutes to be transported. And pay close attention to musicians improvising. In real time, they are sharing ears on the stage. You share too. Art can make us immortal, or at least feel like it. That's the good stuff. Seek it.
Peace out my friends. Winter is coming. Cheers to firelight and warm smiles and family gatherings...
Love love love,
b mac
P.S. By the way, the bunny is fine. I made that part up. Pretty sure his name is Bugs.
