Pairing 008, Kobuchizawa Coincidences: Terry Riley “A Rainbow In Curved Air” x Phoenix Oolong “Misty Fragrance”
In which skewers are bubbled and bubbles are skewered and I finally lose the plot.
This is not a newsletter about tea. It’s a series of confectionary confessions.
I fly to Belgrade tomorrow and I am not ready to go. Let’s not get into the specifics. Instead, let’s drink Tea Habitat’s 2020 Misty Fragrance Pheonix Oolong and let Terry Riley’s “A Rainbow In Curved Air” connect my cups to yours.
What sort of words are useful when there are too many sensations pitter pattering across your tongue to name? What’s the point of describing the kaleidoscopic light beams that hit your ears during each nanosecond of Terry’s 18:39 masterpiece from 1969? How are we even supposed to proceed when we find the pot of gold at the end of these wind-blown boomerang days?
I’ll opt for a story instead. Compact. Dense. No asides, I promise. I’ll try.
An aforementioned Italian man crashes his bike in front of my house. Grabs my beard for safety. Returns a month later in the pouring rain in a Hawaiian shirt with more buttons unbuttoned than not. I serve him cold brew. He asks if I like music. I answer in the affirmative. He plays me a song. I have my doubts. The song is by an artist I’ve never heard of called Terry Riley. It boils the noodles curling around my brain curves and gets into my bloodstream and orchestrates my molecules toward the sweetest slipsliddy dance moves. I’m infected and I know nothing, once again.
Perfect. Except, then I get a tip-tap on the shoulder a few days later. Something called a Raga class. A friend is going. Taught by the aforementioned Terry Riley. On the other side of the hill from my abode. I can’t catch up. I don’t go. I just keep listening. It’s like exploring Sun Ra’s catalog. It’s like exploring fauna. It’s like exploring Buddhist iconography in Kamakura. It’s like drinking tea. Trying is of little use. A catalog that laughs at the concept of a catalog.
Then, I go to Spain. I bring up Terry Riley. I hear people I respect talk about him like he’s a kind of ambient, minimal, soundscape artist form of Pelé. Imagine never having heard of Pelé and then suddenly you hear of Pelé. Secret Pelé. Maybe Eusébio. At least.
Back in Kamakura. Another Raga class. Kirana East. Jomyoji. I sign up. Bring my brother. My first singing lesson. We lose it. I lose it. Terry Riley approaches me. I’m wearing a Sun Ra shirt. He says, “I love Sun Ra.” I’m like, “Me too.” Then he says, “I just recorded a version of Nuclear War.” I’m like, “I can’t wait to hear it.” He smiles. I smile. We go upstairs and sing until we are all tired. Smiling tired. Tired smiling.
I’m changed. Somehow. I sing a little every day. What on earth am I singing? What do I know of Indian Classical Music? Where do instruments end and vibrations begin? Am I an instrument? Are we instruments? I don’t have time for this. Which is no problem. Because, I realize around then, I don’t have time. I am time.
I meet the crew. Mike shares his TR story. Tadashi smoothes the grooves. Sara copilots. Root culture. They bake. Paradise Alley. David and Mari serve me sandos of Classical Indian Music. I serve them only my awe. All this awe, overflowing tea cups. Pots. Cans. Bins. Bits.
Terry Riley performs in Yamanashi last week. Not even the most ambitious music enthusiast in me dares describe what I saw with my ears. What I heard with my eyes. The vibrations of 10,000 tea leaves being liberated from their sap in asynchronized rhythm. Off but on. On but onner. Babies dancing in wombs. The dead in their tombs. Carlos Niño, Laraaj, Flying Lotus, the whole of Low End Theory lineage—a curved air rainbow of a being to whom all these wordless wiggly air wizards owe a nod. A bow.
And so what else is there to do? I buy a CD. I have no CD player. I just open the disc and let it refract in the sunlight, all these curved rainbows dancing around the room. Plot kaput. I’m an ant again and these sounds are as vast as if every tatami mat ridge is its own endless mountain range.
A mountain range in Yamanashi graces the cover of Terry Riley’s Kobuchizawa Sessions #1 “Standardsand.” I recognize it right away. I had only ever visited Yamanashi once. I forgot where. Now I understand. A little pocket of Kobuchizawa. The place Terry Riley now calls home. Same same. Not different.
So what would you do in my shoes? Slide down this rainbow and sing of the tale? Write a tanka poem? Or a tank of a poem? Or try to drive where you thought this would go?
I want to write about tea lit. I want to write about sap liberation. But all I can do is poem it up and take a spin around these photo shops, hoping to say something these words could never. Those somethings that music always can.
Bubble World / Blossom World
I was skewered
Over bubbles in my tea
Rough sips need chewing
But I’m a champ chomper
With liquid thin ambition
I was skewered
Over bubbles in my tea
Frozen to the floor
Too afraid to interrupt
The plum blossom puppeteers
Skewer me freeze me
Or freeze me & skewer me
Whatever you choose
My bubbles & my blossoms
Bruise less brutal than my sky