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Shakuhachi

Shakuhachi
Track number 9 of the Snow on Water Soundtrack on SoundCloud.com features my son Maxwell Campbell Barrett playing the bamboo root flute. The shakuhachi is the traditional Japanese 5-hole flute. The name describes its length, and thus its key, as D. The pentatonic scale is known to native people everywhere as the modality of the Earth.…
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17 Moons

17 Moons
1. Allusion   still new; Basho’s moon, Issa’s dew           2. Hosomi ––Slenderness   in and out the window and the bed this lover moon   3. Yugen ––Beauty suffused with ineffable mystery   every leaf renewed–– the moon reaching into the pine   4. Kogo kizoku  ––Awakening to the High,…
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Calanais

Calanais
Older than moss, hands stacking the stones. Our wedding was in Scotland, in an ancient hunting village on the edge of the Isle of Skye. It felt at once surreal and perfectly at home. We were very much at home among the highlands, and we thought of making a new life there. It was years…
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Seventeen Turns

Seventeen Turns
1. Hosomi ––Slenderness   the vine finds itself, ties a knot         2. Shibumi  ––Astringency   the green gone only your searching remains old vine     3. Fuga no makoto  ––Poetic Truth   the vine needs the tree to rise     4. Yugen ––Beauty suffused with ineffable mystery   halfway…
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