Saluang Flute

The saluang is a bamboo flute of the Minangkabau people of Western Sumatra, Indonesia. I studied it in preparation for a performance of Randai, a martial-arts based dance-drama. It has a airy sound, dry and meditative, and requires circular breathing (breathing in through the nose while blowing out through the mouth with no break in sound). Through it I lose time.

 

Photo by Kumiko Lawrence

 

Sound Healing session at asaltmine Arium

Himalayan Singing Bowl certified

There is a shimmering, like leaves on a tree when it sways in the breeze. Our minds perceive and simplify. We’ve seen it before, many times. It is a tree. They are leaves. The wind is blowing. But we do not, perhaps cannot, perceive the whole: The tree, that particular tree, is not the same as it was yesterday. Our experiences in the last twenty-four hours have changed our way of perceiving. We feel we’re standing in the exact same spot, but that spot, our posture, the slight change of light has altered our perception. The tree, the leaves, the self, change imperceptibly with each moment.

It is the same with sound.

I am now a certified practitioner of Himalayan singing bowl healing. My instructor, Suren Shrestha, showed me an effective treatment to release stress and muscle tension or to cure insomnia and migraine headaches. Gently strike an inverted large bowl while it rests on your head. In the west we would call the sound produced a ‘drone’, a sustained sound or repeated note, but the actual sound is extremely complex, like sunlight reflected off a lake, an infinity of shifting angles. The mind struggles to analyze the patterns, is overwhelmed, shuts down. The mind’s surrender is relaxation. 
Suren Shrestha : http://surenshrestha.com/

Mahabharata (The magazine Parabola)

Kumiko Lawrence’s sumi-paintings are featured in the summer 2013 issue of the magazine Parabola together with a Mahabharata-based short story by Kenneth E Lawrence . Thank you all for making this possible.

  Sumi Kumi Works.com

Soju Kai Recap by Heather Porter

Our friend Heather Porter posted a recap of Soju Kai’s March 24 lecture/performance ‘Healing in Noh’ on her blog ‘Hanamichi’. An excellent recap with great photography by Heather Jackson.

Healing in Noh @ Nagomi Tea House

On March 24 Soju Kai presented a lecture/demonstration at the Nagomi Teahouse in Seattle’s International District. I recently began writing a monthly column for the Hokubei Houchi (North American Post) newspaper entitled ‘Tales from the Noh’. During our first meeting there, we were pleasantly surprised to discover the Nagomi Teahouse downstairs, a beautiful and intimate space.

We chose as our theme for the presentation ‘Healing in Noh’, and focused on specifically on healing through sympathy as expressed in the Noh play ‘Atsumori’. Kumiko opened the performance with a celebratory chant from the play ‘Tsurukame’. I then spoke on the music, movement and chant of Noh, as well as its history and esthetics. Kumiko demonstrated jo-ha-kyu, then danced a section of the play ‘Yuya’.

The presentation also featured backstage photos of Kumiko’s father Yoshio Negishi, a licensed Noh performer. Masks carved by Kumiko’s mother, Yukie Negishi, a Noh performer and accomplished Noh mask carver, were modeled by stage performer/dancer Yuuki Hoashi.

The performance continued with a staged reading of my retelling of the play ‘Atsumori’, as published in the Summer 2012 issue of the journal Parabola. Kumiko’s sumi paintings of scenes from the play were also featured.

The performance ended with a video clip from a live performance of ‘Atsumori’, danced by Hideo Fukuhara, Kumiko’s uncle.

Photography courtesy of Heather Jackson.

Vikings

Like most bookworms, I tend to see TV as a distraction. Why waste time watching TV when there are so many good books lining my walls just begging to be read? No great sacrifice, really, since 98.9% of what's on is unwatchable. Recently, however, I happened onto a new show that- dare I say it? - I watch religiously.

I originally gave 'Vikings' a try because I love Icelandic sagas. I've read a dozen or so, mostly Penguin classics, and I thought maybe the new series would therefore be at least mildly entertaining. So far (three episodes in) I've been very impressed with just how true to the original culture and history the show is.

I get most of my televized history from lectures on C-SPAN. I loved the History Channel when it first started broadcasting, but lately it seems to only have marathon showings of Pawn Kings, a sort of rustic Shopping Network glorification of pawn shop shoppers, so 'Vikings' has been a very pleasant surprise.

Hopefully the show will be a big hit. I don't care much for spinoffs, generally speaking, but if a publisher or two wants to hop on the bandwagon, maybe they'll finally release some decent audiobooks of some of the sagas. That, if it happens, would be a rare example of commercial forces working in my favor.

 

Mahabharata

I'm currently working on a novel, a new version of the Mahabharata. My influences are many, including 'The Tales of a Thousand Nights and a Night' and Indian cookbooks, but the strongest influence (aside from the Mahabharata itself) is the Japanese Noh theatre.

Sumi ink painting of Draupadi by Kumiko Lawrence.

Soju Kai Performance

 

Soju Kai presented several lecture/performances in 2012, and we are currently scheduling our 2013 tour.

Above is a photo from our February 16 presentation at East Shore Unitarian Church (Bellevue,WA) for their Adult Program.  The performance had 'Healing in Noh' as its theme, and focused on the stories 'Hagoromo' and 'Atsumori'. It featured a lecture 'What is Noh?', dance and chant, and Kumiko's sumi ink paintings.

Our next performance will be on March 24th at Nagomi Tea House in Seattle.

We plan to do a Heike Biwa Katari (storytelling) series this spring and summer. We have long wanted to do a Heike Monogatari storytelling series in this style, the way it has been done in Japan for over a thousand years. 

2013 will be an exciting year!

The Epic of Kelefaa Saane

The Epic of Kelefaa Saane describes the life and exploits of a legendary warrior prince of the Mandinka people of West Africa. African epics, when published in English, are usually translations of transcriptions from oral recitations by griots. These recitations are often done before a live audience that knows the stories very well. The end result, yes, is often repetitive or confusing to the uninitiated. But I found this particular epic to be a good read, less confusing than most, and I found the story to be powerful and the variety of ways it was presented to be fascinating. A very enjoyable read.

Kumiko's Art on Display

Kumiko's art is on display at South Bellevue Community Center. One of the series "Atsumori", a samurai story from one of the Noh dramas.

Three Kingdoms/Three Musketeers

I'm only seventeen episodes into the 2010 TV version of the classic Chinese epic 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms' (about 16% finished), but already I have that feeling again. I first felt it, I think, towards the end of a Dumas novel. I was about half way through his 'Man in the Iron Mask' when I realized, a surprise for some reason, that the musketeers were growing old and would almost certainly die within the next hundred pages or so. I was about to finish the multi-book 'Romance of D'Artagnan', and I remember wanting to put the book aside to somehow prolong the lives of my favorite characters. It's early on still, but a similar feeling has crept into my watching of the RoTK.

Thai Epic

This year Santa brought me a gift card for a bookstore (always a good thing). My list, as usual, is long, and
includes several jazz CDs by Lage Lund and Rez Abbasi, and director Chatrichalerm Yukol's epic Thai movie Kingdom of War, but I will almost certianly use it to buy the Baker/Phongpaichit translation of The Tale of Khun Chang Khun Phaen. It's been described as 'a love story, set against a background of war, and ending in high tragedy' filled with 'comedy, tragedy, love, sex, war, magic, honor, infamy, gallantry, and treachery', 'a dozen Shakespeare plays rolled into one, with a rich vein of Arthurian romance to boot'. Just what the doctor ordered.

Judge Bao

I first became aware of Judge Bao, the Song dynasty magistrate, in the 90s. I was one of the musicians in a Beijing Opera Judge Bao performance, part of an intensive months-long training program at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. I was able to work firsthand with professional teachers from China. It was a great experience, but to be honest, what struck me at the time was just how incredibly loud Chinese percussion instruments are. As a plucked-string player, I had to sit right in front of them. I’d been exposed to loud before, but this was one of the loudest, perhaps (along with Kathakali and Stevie Ray Vaughn) one of the top three loudest things I’ve ever experienced.


Recently, however, I’ve experienced good nostalgia. I’ve come across several Judge Bao stories, and what’s striking is the various ways these stories are presented. For those who want to stick to the more novel-oriented experience, there’s ‘Tales of Magistrate Bao and His Valiant Lieutenants’. This is a translation of an 1879 Chinese novel derived from the oral narrative attributed to the Qing storyteller Shi Yukum. Similarly, ‘The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants’ is another novel about Judge Bao and his men who solve crimes, rescue maidens and pretty much seek justice anywhere and everywhere.

Closer to the source (and therefor of much more interest, at least to me) is ‘Judge Bao and the Rule of Law’, a series of eight ballad-stories on Judge Bao, dating from the period 1250-1450. These ballad-stories, the oral narratives on which later novels were based, are more straightforward, the experience more distinct, like reading Robin Hood ballads as opposed to movie tie-ins. There’s also an early Chinese play ‘Rescriptor-in-Waiting Bao Thrice Investigates the Butterfly Dream’ in the collection ‘Monks, Bandits, Lovers, and Immortals’.

Another way to experience Judge Bao is ‘Judge Bao and the Jade Phoenix’, a graphic novel of his adventures. It’s important to keep your standards high when choosing a graphic novel to read, and this one looks to be quality work.

Finally, in the movie/TV section, there’s ‘Judge Bao’ and ‘The Return of Judge Bao.’ There are many more, no doubt. My guess is that watching these would be roughly analogous to watching Chinese versions of ‘Bonanza’, but I could be wrong. I hope to find a subtitled jingju (Beijing Opera) video, but if there are any out there, I haven’t come across them yet.

Water Margin

I'm only eleven episodes into the 2010 Chinese TV serialization of the epic "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and already I'm contemplating the next epic series, "Water Margin". Also refered to as 'Outlaws of the Marsh' or 'All Men Are Brothers', WM is a much different experience than RoTK. RoTK is an incredibly tangled web of intrigue and overlapping strategies, with many battles and sieges. WM, meanwhile, is more of a series of short stories, Robin Hood-like kung fu stories. A very different read. From the clips I've seen, the TV series, like RoTK, has very high standards in production, acting and, of course, fighting choreography.