Inspiration and the Flute

The thing we were most taken with at the Native American camp was the flute performance by William Whitefeather. Sunburst has been learning to play a Choroi pentatonic flute for a month or so now, struggling through her third song, and it was neat for her to see real flute playing in action-- on a stage and everything.

I love the sound of the Native American flute. It's different than what Sunburst is learning to play-- the Choroi pentatonic makes me think of angels, sort of a hovering, airy sound, while the Native American flutes seem to sound more earthy, sweeping, and I don't know, connected to the whole of life. Maybe that makes sense to someone besides me?

Anyway, I asked Sunburst to watch Whitefeather's fingers, particularly, to help her get a better sense for what he was doing. At one point she turned to me and whispered, "Hey, I know that song!" He was playing a Native American lullaby off of "Under the Green Corn Moon," a cd that we have listened to on and off since Sunburst was just a day old. Hearing something familiar like that sealed the deal for her.

When he was done playing and started to pack up for the day, Sunburst went up and asked to see his collection of flutes, and she let him know that she recognized the lullaby. He told her that he has the same cd, and he just figured out how to play it by listening to the song. Then she asked him to play a couple of different-looking (and sounding) flutes he had, including a triple- chambered drone flute that was a thing of beauty and wonder in itself, before she admitted to him that she's has been learning to play the flute at home.

Next thing I know he had handed her a small flute so that she could show him. She was shy and reluctant at first, but then she took it and began to play "Deedle Dum," the first song I taught her using David Darcy's wonderful pentatonic flute book. The fingering is different, but she quickly worked it out and then lit into the second song she knows. While she was playing, a group of older school children had materialized behind her, so that when she turned around she found herself giving a surprise concert. Undaunted, she played the song a couple more times before thanking Whitefeather and coming back over to me with a huge grin on her face.

When we got home she took out her own flute and began to play around with it, not practicing the songs, but just trying out different notes and combinations-- happily playing with the sounds. She's used to hearing her dad and I play the pentatonic flute, and she hears her dad play the Native American flute and Irish Tin Whistle (among other things,) but somehow it's not the same kind of inspiration. Apparently Whitefeather struck some chord in her that we hadn't. Life is funny that way.

Longhouse Dreams

Today we managed to find our way to a Native American educational camp staffed with reenactors and props out in the forest. The drive was rather pleasant and green, and the girls ooohed and aaahed over the purple-flowered trees and frolicking baby cows on the way. It didn't matter that I got lost, twice, and that we missed several presentations. We had a great historical time.

The girls found plenty of things to hold their interest --things I wouldn't have normally expected them to be interested in. Like tool-making, for instance. They watched with rapt attention as one man scraped at some rocks and talked a good deal about arrowheads and the like.

They weren't interested in clay-pot making in the slightest. We explored the longhouse and imagined living in it, but what they really wanted to see were the buckskin hides pulled taut and slathered in some sort of juice that sprayed around every time someone scraped at them with some primitive hair-removal tool. One little friend of ours got splattered in the eye and was taken aback at this, "Ew, Gross!" My sentiments exactly. My girls were curious about all this skin stuff, but not enough to jump up and try it out with the rest of the kids. Instead, they laid in with their questions.

Moonshine (my 4-year-old) found it all very confusing. "Excuse me, why would anyone want to kill a deer?" The answer she got from the reenactor was something helpful like, "Deers were their cows." She looked up at him with these confounded big eyes, Huh? "They didn't have any cows, pigs, or sheep," he told her. Huh? "What about bears? Bears are angry creatures." "Well, sometimes they killed bears, too, but deer was their meat." Aha. "But excuse me," she asked with complete sincerity, "why would anyone want to eat meat?" Then it was his turn to be confounded. From the mouths of babes...

Both Sunburst and Moonshine jumped at the chance to participate in some Native American dancing, and they each had more than enough questions for the reenactor stationed at the weaponry and compass tent. Moonshine took one look at the loot spread out and decided that the "little gun" was just her size, and got into a very lengthy discussion with the interpreter. Meanwhile, Sunburst spent a long time examining everything closely and spent an extra bit of time maneuvering with the compass.

It's a good thing, too. I took a wrong turn on the way home (I have a particular talent for wrong turns,) and after a few minutes I asked the girls if they recognized anything familiar out the windows. Neither one did, and after a minute Sunburst said, "Are we supposed to be going West?" "What?" "We're headed West, Mom. I remember that way is North, so this has to be West." "Oh," I said, and pulled off and turned around. "Now we're going East," she said and caught the look I gave her through the rearview mirror.

She was quiet for a few minutes before she replied, "It's okay Mom, I'll be your compass."

Indeed.