We are currently working on a short video that will help to define Luna Guitars as a company. I have taken so much of my inspiration from the earth, and so many diverse players from diverse places play Lunas, that showing them in diverse natural settings seemed fitting. Each landscape has a road or path in it as a metaphor for each player’s personal path and musical journey. This is a preview of images.
Enjoy!
“You do not need to do anything; you do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You do not even need to listen; just wait. You do not even need to wait; just become still, quiet and solitary and the world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.” — Franz Kafka
I have been working on surrender for some time now and came across the following narrative by Henri J.M. Nouwen which was powerful for me:
The Flying Rodleighs are trapeze artists who perform in the German circus Simoneit-Barum. When the circus came to Freiburg two years ago, my friends Franz and Reny invited me and my father to see the show. I will never forget how enraptured I became when I first saw the Rodleighs move through the air, flying and catching as elegant dancers. The next day, I returned to the circus to see them again and introduced myself to them as one of their great fans. They invited me to attend their practice sessions, gave me free tickets, asked me to dinner, and suggested I travel with them for a week in the near future. I did, and we became good friends.
One day, I was sitting with Rodleigh, the leader of the troupe, in his caravan, talking about flying. He said, “As a flyer, I must have complete trust in my catcher. The public might think that I am the great star of the trapeze, but the real star is Joe, my catcher. He has to be there for me with split-second precision and grab me out of the air as I come to him in the long jump.” “How does it work?” I asked. “The secret,” Rodleigh said, “is that the flyer does nothing and the catcher does everything. When I fly to Joe, I have simply to stretch out my arms and hands and wait for him to catch me and pull me safely over the apron behind the catchbar.”
“You do nothing!” I said, surprised. “Nothing,” Rodleigh repeated. “The worst thing the flyer can do is to try to catch the catcher. I am not supposed to catch Joe. It’s Joe’s task to catch me. If I grabbed Joe’s wrists, I might break them, or he might break mine, and that would be the end for both of us. A flyer must fly, and a catcher must catch, and the flyer must trust, with outstretched arms, that his catcher will be there for him.”
I also came across some amazing underwater photographs by Gregory Colbert that somehow fit with Nouwen’s quote
and remind me of how, across species, we are all here to catch each other.
Drop the seed, cover it, pat the warm earth down. Water it black. What else? Roethke heard the sucking and sobbing of cuttings putting down roots, resurrecting themselves. I hear nothing from these seeds and spindly tomato plants. But I do like sitting here in the evening air, watching the wet soil, knowing it’s primed with hours of my work and its own latent power. Drop in the seed and the dirt takes over, the moist warmth, the dark. It’s mystery now, out of my hands. But I want to follow. I want to understand what begins to wake the seeds. I want to hear that inaudible moan or hum, that chant of all the lives and parts of lives that dirt composes — I hear it after all, in my mind — that steady call, alive down there, that cannot rise without seeds, that even now enfolds them with its infinitesimal vibration, urging them remember now, remember now, it is time to remember yourself.
— John Daniel in The Trail Home: Essays
Lately, I’ve had the pleasure of watching vegetables grow from seed, and of cooking and eating them right out of the garden. So incredibly simple and basic and yet so mysterious. I see more and more back yard and side yard gardens these days…one of the good spin offs of the economic downturn. What are you waiting for? Find a seed, some dirt and some water and a miracle will happen.
Watch some amazing time lapse photography of seeds germinating here!
http://plantsinmotion.bio.indiana.edu/plantmotion/earlygrowth/germination/germ.html
I have been diving deep in Ukulele waters while designing a new line of Luna Ukes the past few weeks and came across a delightful artist, Amy Crehore. Her latest show is entitled “Dreamgirls and Ukes” and her canvases are vintage ukuleles!
I am including closeups of some of the bodies and headstocks below for your entertainment and amusement. They brought a much needed dose of deep play into my day!
I spent the weekend out at a sacred piece of ground in an estuary and was refreshed and renewed by it.
Thought I would share these photos I was lucky enough to capture.
THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free
……Wendell Berry
Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble, breathe out whole buildings and flocks of redwing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothespins, clean rivers.
Make soup.
Play music, learn the words for “thank you” in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries, imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Don’t wait another minute.
…………………….Mary Oliver
The art glass piece above was brought to me by my dear friend Ragtime (1000pointsofpeace.com.) and hung in my studio on this inauguration day. It is personally significant to me as an image, but there is more of a story to it. The wings were from a panel that was broken and had been out of sight in my glass rack for years. On his last visit, he took it back to his studio where he carefully disassembled and reworked the wings into an entirely new background. He added his signature peace sign and it is now more beautiful than ever……its brokenness healed. Love, patience and belief. Powerful stuff! Thank you Ragtime!
In attempting to re-establish my qigong practice, I was going through the journals I kept during my years of classes. And while refreshing myself on the names of some of the basic exercises, I was amazed to realize how much my practice has subconsciously influenced Luna’s Designs. “Swimming Dragon”. “Lotus Opens its Petals”. “White Crane Spreads its Wings”. “Phoenix & Dragon”
swimming dragon
lotus opens its petals
white crane spreads its wings
phoenix and dragon
It’s humbling to recognize that the answer to the question “What inspires you?” could be anything you’ve ever experienced.
Sacred space and sacred time and something joyous to do is all we need. Almost anything then becomes a continuous and increasing joy…..Joseph Campbell
I touched on the need for sacred space in a previous post. And I am sorry to say that I have neglected entering my own space and spending joyous time in it for a very long while because of everything that I thought was needed of me by the outside world.
Sacred Space can take many forms. It can be as small as a conscious breath, as large as the universe, and anything in between.
My own sacred space, created for my qigong/tai chi and meditation/prayer practice, exists in what used to be my stained glass studio of 20 years. Before that, it was my father’s potting shed. All incarnations filled with joyous pursuits.
The process of creating it was an unforgettable experience because friends came together and we used what I already had, what friends gave me, what I loved, what inspired me, what made me feel passionate and therefore more alive. It was about making a part of myself visible.
threshold
path
balinese sofa
destination
bamboo lighting fixture
floating quan yin light
alabaster candles
lotus & stones
garden from porch
garden Quan Yin
camille's orchid
sandy's orchid
It is time to reconsecrate my space and my practice so that I may contemplate on the very things that went into it’s manifestation…my friends, what I have, what inspires me, and what makes me feel passionate and therefore more alive.
“Keep a good heart. That’s the most important thing in life. It’s not how much money you make or what you can acquire. The art of it is to keep a good heart.”
Joni Mitchell