I am sitting here in this small park where I have been practicing for about a year and a half, weather permitting, putting together a CD, “Trying to Keep an Open Mind”. I was just working out the final tweaks and laid the guitar aside, draped my arms over the back of the bench, stretched my legs out in front of me, breathed fully and deeply and gazed mindlessly ahead of me. There is something about this park that is conducive to moments of creativity, many moments over the duration of this project where notes, tunes and words came effortlessly together. It was uninhibited, inspiring, liberating, healing and joyous.

I had an ‘orphan riff’ (a riff is a short, repeated, memorable musical phrase) that I knew would be part of a new song but it hadn’t found a home yet (that is why it is an orphan) which was a variation of one from another song. I play it often to see what would happen. Things come to me like that sometimes. This time into my awareness, like a cool fog after a humid summer night, flowed a phrase, “From the Perspective of a Tree”. It anchored itself in place and was the centre of my attention bringing into focus the source of these words. There was a very mature Gingko tree that had a place front row centre for all this time for my musical act.

As I have a rather sensitive disposition towards trees it occurred to me that this was the Gingko’s request. To some people this might seem insane to some degree but I would suggest to them to check out “What the Bleep Do We Know” by Arntz, Chasse and Vincente. As for me I said that I would be honoured if ‘Gingko’ would be my Muse and it was graciously accepted.

Not only would he (the Gingko has a female counterpart and there is one just up the street but more about gender later) be my Muse, but also my language teacher, translator and interpreter that I needed to write the verse but firstly we had to find a good way to converse Wow! A rhyme already!.

Interestingly enough, I was reading R. Buckminster Fuller’s, “Cosmology” where he made reference to Annie Dillard’s, “Teaching a Stone to Talk”. It is a gem of work and I found this suggestion:

“I assume that like any other meaningful effort, the ritual involves sacrifice, the suppression of self-consciousness, and a certain precise tilt of the will, so that the will becomes transparent and hollow, a channel for the work. I wish him (not Fuller) well. It is a noble work, and beats, from any angle, selling shoes.” (Annie Dillard, “Teaching a Stone to Talk”)

Me: “Thank you for your title. Would you like to further collaborate?

Gingko: “For sure!” How can I help you?”

Me: “Annie Dillard has the gist that we could share a common paradigm. We need a method that transcends my perception filters.”

Gingko: “OK. Perhaps we can start by making it a game. What do you think?

Me: “I remember a simple game we played when I was very young called “The Knock, Knock Game”. I’ll start. Knock, knock.”

Gingko: “Who’s there?”

Me: “We are.”

We laughed till the sun went down.