8/20/10 crickets

So many ecstasies are creatures, maybe I should be calling this blog, “beings I love, and how that love is an ecstasy.” Or “How I want to see the world from the perspective of this critter and how that is an ecstasy.” Or “people I wish I knew now, or regret not knowing better, and how dreaming about the better is an ecstasy.” Or “music that I dream from the inside of someone or something else, and how that is an ecstasy.” Or “the million ways to melt with love over something, and how being alive and feeling things is an ecstasy.” Or “songs I wish I could sing, and that I sing in my dreams in particular at this time of year.” Or “how deep is my respect for these shiny black critters with segmented bodies and washboard knees, and how I wish I could sing like that.” or “songs I write when I am not myself, or when I am.

I don’t go out into the night enough, and I don’t remember what time of year they first start chirping, but once they start it seems as though they’ve been at it all summer, and it just gradually dawns on me, like tonight when I came home from work, there were crickets chirping in the rock garden at the front steps and I knew that had to be the ecstasy of the day. But I also noticed as I stepped inside the door, that two of the rock garden crickets had managed to chirp “shave and a haircut” in perfect cricket rhythm. So then I start thinking about crickets and compositions like that old koan about Shakespeare and a thousand monkeys at typewriters for a thousand years.

It took a few seconds for the crickets at my door to chirp shave and a haircut. And I don’t know if there are baritone crickets or basso profundo crickets or coloratura crickets to make this happen, but how and where would it be possible for crickets to chirp all the amazing compositions of human history. Eroica and the Moonlight Sonata and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and Scarlatti’s sonata in E and the Jitterbug Waltz and chopsticks and everything (to name a few of my personal favorites). You’d need a thousand summers and at least a thousand crickets but you could maybe get that in a few square city blocks in a single night, so numbers would not be a problem.

But then, why would crickets bother with human music, when their own music, and the music of other animals and birds is so much more refreshingly interesting, and maybe our human music is lower on their list. Cricket Q To do: 1. Sight-read at rehearsal with humpback whales; 2. brainstorm with warblers planning an interspecies mash-up; 3. help cicadas find their authentic voice.

I have a friend who is a personal coach--she trained for it and got certified and everything. I think she has a t-shirt for her business and she definitely has cool business cards. I'm going to make up a cool business card for cricket voice and composition coaching:

Cricket music coaching



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