Fiddle, love, and the bottom of the bucket

December vacation nears its end, leaving me full of fiddle tunes, names for God, and Love. One divine quality that resonated with me was Ar-Rahim, the capacity to receive deep love and compassion on all levels of our being. Ar-Rahim is like the moon, whereas Ar-Rahman is like the sun--our ability to let love and compassion beam from our core. The Sufi Book of Life relates a parable to illustrate the quality of Ar-Rahim:

A student arrives at the home of Mullah, the wise fool. Mullah asks his student to help him draw water from the well, and then Mullah begins to splash water into his bucket. The student observes that the water level of the bucket is not rising as Mullah frantically splashes more water into the bucket, and goes on to notice a sizable leak at the bottom of the bucket. He points out the leak and explains to Mullah that his efforts to fill the bucket are futile. "My friend," Mullah responds, "I was only looking at the top of the bucket. What does the bottom have to do with it?"

How often it is that we only look at the top of the bucket, at what more we can receive, rather than considering how to process and lovingly hold what we have already received. With this mind frame, more is never enough, whether we are dealing with love, knowledge, wealth, or, say, fiddle tunes. Perhaps we can practice receiving all of the blessings that come to us in such a way that we are not left unsatisfied, needing more all the time.

While I was considering this divine quality over the past days, a friend suggested that I write a blog entry titled "Fiddle and Love." This friend was almost certainly referring to the romantic liaisons that have sprung up in my life around my love for the fiddle. I confess, there have been a few.

Such a blog entry might hone in on such musical romantic adventures as strapping instruments into bike paniers for a midsummer ride to Singing Beach to play tunes by the side of the ocean, or waking up to learn a new tune in pajamas before making breakfast or brushing teeth, or piano and fiddle duets in a cozy living room before bed. Or perhaps the blog entry would hone in on those pesky questions that arise at times: Are you using me for fiddle tunes? Am I using you for fiddle tunes? Or is fiddle just a humble path to YOU? Does it even matter anyway?

At this moment in my journey, there is very little that I know for sure about the fiddle or love--although I have a feeling that the bottom of the bucket is where many of the answers lie. Take care of the bottom of the bucket so these beautiful adventures remain always within; take care of the bottom so that the love you receive fulfills you and does not leave you always needing something more; take care of the bottom and keep practicing, perfecting, and loving all the tunes you already know, rather than wanting always to learn a new tune. In a sea of unsureness, I have found great comfort this week in tending to the bottom of my bucket.

With the bottom of the bucket in mind, for two days I have limited my fiddling to reviewing and enjoying the tunes I have already learned....until yesterday, when a handsome fiddler passed on a pdf file of fiddle tunes and asked me to start working on them from page one, so that he and I might bolster our common repertoire. I am eager to learn the first tune, which is appropriately named "The Bottom of the Punchbowl."

Al~Muntaqim, Dry and Dusty

A daily fiddle tune and name for God has made for a rather divine vacation thus far. I have learned one important lesson: that I cannot attempt reels if I want to learn a tune every day, because these tunes take me several days to learn, it turns out. So I'll stick with jigs, polkas, and old time for a bit.

A favorite name for God so far has been Al~Batin: The Hidden Traveler. It is the quality of God that lives deep within and is hidden from others; the traveler within us that walks without feet. It reminds us that sometimes, wisdom is best left as a secret within our hearts. Silence is important and beautiful at times. On the day that I had chosen this name, I happened to have a fiddle lesson. My teacher aptly chose "Arkansas Traveler," and brought to light the old time bowing patterns that lid hidden within this simple melody.

This morning brought me to Al~Muntaqim, a quality of God connected with sweeping out the dusty rooms of our heart, or purifying ourselves from any affectations we may have taken on to please others. The book shares a lovely Shabistari poem the illustrate the point:

"...Why don't you sweep out the rooms of your heart

and prepare them to be the home of the Beloved?

When you leave, the One can enter.

Freed from self, the Beloved reveals its beauty.

Purified from all impressions

your real self outgrows differences--

knower and known become one."

Searching for a tune that could somehow connect, I was delighted to learn that one of my favorites from Brittany Haas's CD happens to be called "Dry and Dusty."

Al~`Ali, Green Mountain

The introduction of The Sufi Book of Life suggests that the reader not go in order through the ninety nine names, but rather flip through the book, or even open randomly, and "if something strikes you, stick with it." This morning I found myself at:

Name 36: Al~`Ali. Experiencing Life at Its Peak

This "L" is a deep consonant that brings you to the back of your throat sending the sound back to the physical body, not the kind of "L" that floats out into the air in front of us, as in the words "light" and "laughter." It captures the quality of being at the peak of everything, but in a way that leaves space for our own constructed notions of the self to disappear. Perhaps we are experiencing a "peak moment" through the grace of God--a moment that we can simply experience in its Divine fullness without analyzing or imposing concepts upon it. Douglas-Klotz reminds us to see these moments as a reflection of God in us; these experiences do not belong to us, but rather are a loan from the Divine, to remind us that there is more work to be done.

Ya-Ali. I could not stop saying this word, once I began this morning. It filled me with such a grounding peace; with permission to live at the peak of this joy that fills my life; with a call to view this moment, with gratitude, as a loan from God.

Time to try a fiddle tune. A new fiddle friend just emailed me three volumes of Irish music. The first volume alone, which supposedly only includes the most common of tunes, contains about 120. So the Irish zeal for writing tunes has outdone the Sufi passion for naming God. (Although the book has about the 99 names, it does assert that there are infinite qualities of the Divine.... It's still entirely possible that the Irish tunes win out, I'm not sure.)

So, feeling at the peak of life, I scrolled through the first volume of Irish tunes and decided to try a tricky little reel: "Green Mountain."

Ar-Rahman, Tucker's Barn

I began my two-week December vacation last night by riding across the the Beverly Bridge, fiddle strapped securely in a panier, to play at the Atomic Cafe Irish session. There were six of us altogether--four fiddles, a flute, and a guitar--most of whom were familiar faces. We played many old favorites and, as always, I left with a list of tunes to learn before the next session. On the chilly ride home from Beverly, I decided to learn one new tune each day of this vacation. Sixteen tunes.

This morning, I awoke with fiddle music in my heart, but forced myself to hold off as my friend, who is temporarily living on the floor of my study, was still asleep. So I turned to my kitchen bookshelf, where books unrelated to the seventh grade curriculum tend to sit and gather dust until summertime. I picked up a pristine copy of The Sufi Book of Life: 99 Pathways of the Heart for the Modern Dervish by Neil Douglas-Klotz. I had learned about this book at a Sufi retreat last month and purchased it, imagining that I may one day have time to read it.

A dervish, the introduction reminded me, is "one who sits in the doorway or on the threshold or something, ready to move on and transform him- or herself." The 99 pathways are Arabic words that are names of the the Beloved, or God. They are powerful words that embody a living spiritual experience of the Divine and can awaken us to the pathways to God that already exist in our hearts. Over the past years, I have worked in meditation with a small handful of the these names, but am largely ignorant of the others, and have never taken up a consistent practice of working with them.

So. Why not one pathway and one fiddle tune for each day of vacation? The final week of Advent and subsequent Holy Nights are a magical time--a time when the earth around us is at its darkest and we are all invited to let Divine light shine within. Perhaps the joyful practices of welcoming each day with a new fiddle tune and a new name for God, will ..... well I'm not quite sure what it will do, but I do want to try it.

So.......

Pathway 1: Ar-Rahman: The Sun of Love. This is the kind of love that shines from within us and comes from a deeper source; it is always there, waiting to be discovered. Sometimes we have to give up a part of ourselves or ideas we hold in order to seek it. Douglas-Klotz illuminates this pathway by sharing the following poem by Mahmud Shabistari:

"The stakes are high for real prayer.

You must gamble your self

and be willing to lose.

When you have done this,

and your self shakes off

what you believed your self to be,

then no prayer remains,

Only a sparkle of the eyes.

Knower and known are one."

Here is to cultivating this divine sun that lives within. Ar-Rahman. Bismallah Ar-Rahman Ar-Rahim. My first step in doing so was to learn "Tucker's Barn," a cheery old time tune in G.

Double stops are unforgiving

I recently took a couple of lessons from Alan Kaufman, the fiddler who leads the well-known old time jam at Skellig. Alan seems to live in one cluttered bedroom, where instruments, music, books, and computer spill from the walls, leaving space only for Alan and one student to sit in the center of the room, unscathed by the chaos, for a lesson. Each time I have gone to Alan's home, we have worked on one of the tunes he regularly leads at the Skellig, with attention to the challenges of old time bowing and timing. Then he makes a recording of himself playing the tune and emails it to me so that I can perfect it at home.

This week, when we were reviewing "Duck River," the tune I had been working on since the last lesson, I noticed that Allan was adding a double stop that I wasn't playing: when the melody bounced up to a high B, he put his first finger down to play the B below it. I tried to add in this extra touch, but even I winced at the resulting screeching out-of-tune octave. Double stops are completely unforgiving. Any intonation inaccuracies are magnified and made uglier when played against another note, in unison or in harmony.

Alan noticed my look of disgust and paused. Double stops are unforgiving, he says, it's ok. Remember three things.

1. Keep playing them, even when the going gets rough.

2. Set the bar high. Listen for and expect the highest level of intonation.

3. Be very forgiving.

Show up, set the bar high and be forgiving. Can these last two concepts go together? I was recently discussing the nature of ambition and setting goals with a friend while hiking in Vermont. I don't worry too much about any of my goals, I had insisted. It's all about finding joy in the process. I didn't even care if we reached the summit after hiking the better part of a day, I had claimed. And it is true, I would have been perfectly content to turn around at any point, but perhaps my story was missing something.

I have learned to be extremely forgiving of myself and accepting of whatever I am at any moment and whatever comes my way; this has brought me great joy. But this forgiveness can go hand in hand with a high bar--with setting out to reach a beautiful mountaintop, a goal of learning a new Irish tune each day of vacation, or striving to one day master old time bowing techniques. In the cramped lair of Alan's home, it finally occurred to me that challenging goals and forgiveness do indeed go together. Perhaps each makes the other possible.

So here's to showing up for life, setting the bar high, and, above all, forgiving ourselves.

The beat that binds us together

On Friday night, I attended a new Irish Session at Atomic Cafe in Beverly. When I arrived with a friend, there were five musicians crowded around a small dining area, playing banjo, bouzouki, guitar, concertina, and fiddle. Four diners sat at the edge of the group, sipping coffee drinks and tapping their feet while listening intently to the music. They applauded vigorously at the end of each tune. The only person I recognized was the fiddler leading the session, and she generously invited me to pick a few tunes that I knew for the group to play. It soon became clear that this was no novice group and the others in the circle knew just about every Irish tune in the book (or shall I say in thesession.org, the comprehensive online database of Irish music?). Yet they gladly dived into the run-of-the-mill Irish classics that I chose--Road to Lisdoonvarna, Morrison's, and Boys of Bluehill, to name a few. And there we sat playing for nearly two hours, strangers to one another, yet connected deeply through a shared knowledge of tunes, and bound together in rhythm and pitch.

On Saturday night, I set down the fiddle and ventured into a world of musical connection that is a bit more mainstream, if you will: the night club. I always forget that this operation exists just down the road from my home....

After a stern look from the bouncer, who scrutinized my ID as if I were criminal suspect, I followed my friend through the double doors, where the trance-like beat and flashing lights transported us to another dimension. We found our place among about sixty other dancers on the floor and began to move. My racing mind slowed and soon turned off, while the pounding bass took its place in guiding my every move. I saw one familiar face in the sea of strangers: my neighbor, who smiled and danced his way over moments later with drinks for my friend and me. He glanced at the guy accompanying me, then somewhat quizzically back at me, before we lost ourselves once more in the beat. And there we all were, packed even tighter than we had been in the small Atomic Cafe session, all driven by the same beat, twisting, bouncing, shaking as one body.

I surrendered myself to the moment in joy. Yet, there was something very different about this second night of music. A different kind of surrender ruled the night club, a kind that leaves little space for the higher self perhaps. Everything was taking us out of ourselves: the pulsing beat, the flashing lights, and the alcohol coursing through our blood. Somehow we had been fully present the night before at the Irish Session, while letting the tunes carry us together to another place.

When the music at the club stopped, the dancers poured out onto the streets, where trance-like bliss faded into inelegant reality. The bouncers tried to disperse the crowd, visibly nervous that trouble would spark up near their establishment. One man began to yell that he wanted his knife back and, on the sidewalk, two small mobs of buff young men with women in mini skirts began to shout at one another, while two men lunged for each other in the center, fists swinging.

As for walking out of the Atomic session? There had been an exchange of email addresses and invitations to other local jams, compliments on tunes well played, and recommendations for new tunes to learn, amidst a sea of smiles and shaking hands.

Reminds me of teaching. Two different lessons can seem so full and joyful while teaching. The true measure of the nourishment I have given my students is how they behave in eurythmy class that afternoon, or how they treat each other at recess.

Finding God in Hell

Last weekend, I attended the fiddle event that I have been hearing about since long before I ever held a fiddle in my own hands: Fiddle Hell. Organized by the Reiner Family, Fiddle Hell consists of three days of fiddle workshops, jams, and concerts at the Concord Inn in styles ranging from Bluegrass to Cape Breton. Well over one hundred fiddlers with a wide range of levels were in attendance. Over the three days, one only stops fiddling for the essentials: food, bathroom, and perhaps a little sleep.

I attended a Sufi workshop last year about turning, a prayerful practice of the whirling dervishes. We spun all day, with a few breaks for instruction and meditation. Spin until the whole world goes away and all that is left is your center--the Divine that lives within you. Fiddle Hell was comparable. You fiddle until the whole world goes away and all that is left is the feel of the bow in your hands and music pouring over you...voila, all that was left was the same Divine presence that we had whittled the world down to by turning at the Sufi workshop.

On the second night of fiddle hell, my friend and I stumbled upon a serious Irish session in the Inn's pub. The energy pulsed through the walls and spilled out into the bland hallway of the hotel. We found a place next to a drunk-looking older fiddler, took out our fiddles, and I looked on with awe at a picture of what Irish fiddling could be. I breathed it in and decided that one day I will be good enough to participate in such a session.

After several tunes, I picked up my fiddle and wandered across the hallway. I could already hear the slow lull of a waltz reaching out towards the Irish jigs, like two patterns of waves that meet and transform one another. I followed the sound of the waltz and entered a tiny room, which seemed to cradle its five inhabitants with a deep crimson wallpaper. I inched in and began playing along to "Planxty Irwin." Here was my community, at least for the next two hours. I recognized a middle-aged woman sitting across from me; I had sat next to her at a jam months ago at the Harry Smith Frolic. I was playing mandolin at the Frolic and remember watching her, mesmerized with a hint of jealousy, wishing that I could play fiddle too. Suddenly, I felt that in this little room, covered in a blanket of red, fiddling alongside the happiest and calmest of musicians, I was filled to the brim with all the joys one could ever want from life.