by Phil Nyokai James

I love it! It’s four AM, I have a cup of coffee and I’m ready to write. Oh, it’s not like it used to be, with a notebook and pencil out in the woods; instead it’s a computer… 

Times have changed. I’ll go out walking later. Meanwhile it’s still dark and it’s TOTALLY gorgeous.

Ah my stroke… I still feel it…

I look up and see across the room: my beautiful Japanese flute, the shakuhachi…

I want to tell you what it’s like; you’ll be fascinated! In MY case, pre-stroke, I was ‘iffy,’ subtly nervous… then post-stroke, after years of WORKING on things: 

Ahhhhh!!!!

I am a teacher of shakuhachi. Before the stroke I had LOTS students; now I have just one. But that’s OK.

When the stroke came roaring through me, when it snuck up like a DEEP force… well, there’s just one thing I could do: I could play, I could actually play shakuhachi! Oh, it wasn’t ‘perfect,’ just a note or two, but so what: I could PLAY!

And happiness snuck in, little by little, little by little… HAPPINESS!

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My Daddy was an old, OLD composer. He hadn’t even heard a shakuhachi, but he would have absolutely loved it!

Anyway, he left me 11,000 dollars – and I was elated! I was twenty-one years old and it was burning a hole in my checkbook. Hm, what should I DO with it?

Then suddenly I knew, oh yes, I KNEW:

I was eating at a macrobiotic restaurant in NY and saw a sign advertising shakuhachi, ‘Ronnie Seldin, shakuhachi lessons…’

Yes yes YES!

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I HAD heard a recording by Yamaguchi Gorō, and I was absolutely mesmerized. He just seemed to flow, to flow with his own shakuhachi self!

So I went out to Flushing, a long train ride and a long walk, twice a week. Ronnie Seldin was just back from Kyoto, where he’d studied shakuhachi with Kurahashi Yōdō I, the ‘first.’

Kurahashi Yōdō I was born in 1909; he began shakuhachi studies with Shodo Ueda and Jin Nyodo. In 1973 he established the Muju An dojo, or shakuhachi school, and he was a director of the Kyoto City Cultural Society.

When Ronnie got back to America, he was ‘sort-of Japanese.’ He basically lived it, at least at first.

And here’s what a particular notation might look like:

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Ah, the seventies, before shakuhachi had really come:

The seventies were truly idyllic in New York City. I lived on the Lower East Side and paid $75 in rent; later it went up to $85. OK, admittedly it was sort of sleazy, but so what: it was HOME!

And it was FUN! You could just walk along the street and say hi to everybody, the poets, the artists – and I was starting to write back then, plays of all things, and a little piano music…

I moved in with Heloise Gold, a beautiful dancer. I was, admittedly, a part-time drunk: she changed that! Well, at least for a while. I started working on composing piano ‘sounds’ and weird instruments – and I was feeling it! And that’s about the time I took up shakuhachi.

Ah the lessons, twice a week! It felt absolutely wonderful to get on the train to Flushing, and I’d walk, mainly through the Japanese area. Then we’d start the lesson. We were sitting on the floor across from each other, with a short table between us. We’d start by bowing to each other…

…it was pure Zen!

But I realize now that Ronnie had little ‘shakuhachi training,’ and just with Kurahashi I. That’s OK: SOME of his interpretations are brilliant. Ronnie was a strong, strong part of what became ‘American shakuhachi.’

I couldn’t really play the shakuhachi yet, it was all new to me. Heloise would do a ‘funny’ performance and I would play piano, or some strange homemade instrument. We were DEFINITELY a hippie ‘woogy woogy’ pair.

One night we were doing a performance at Jean Dupuy’s loft – that was how you did it, at a loft. Deborah Hay, the dancer who lived in Austin, was there that night. We didn’t know who she was, but she just about smiled the whole time. Afterwards she introduced herself and we traded phone numbers. Then a day later she called with a proposition: we would give a performance in Austin AND babysit her five or six-year-old Savanah, for at least a couple of weeks while she was away on tour. And we could find a place and move to beautiful Austin if we wanted.

Wow!

Hm, we COULD bring the shakuhachi with us… and the notation…

Yes! We said YES!

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Deborah decided on one thing and one thing only: dance! It had been her LIFE! And the shakuhachi became MY life, too. Oh, it had to ferment, it had to take its time… but gradually: AH!!!!!!

It’s hard to describe beautiful Austin, its magic – at least that’s what it was like in the seventies and very early eighties. I bought a used 1967 VW van, light turquoise and as hippie as you can get; I traveled, all around Texas and New Mexico; I took odd, odd jobs; I lived in a tipi for a while; I’d get with people and SING outdoors; I tried to teach them a little shakuhachi; and yes, I toured with Deborah, in New York, Washington DC, Seattle…

Austin! Damn, I loved that town! Back then it had a certain feeling to it, it really felt like HOME! And nature, the hills nearby, and rivers, and the endless flocks of birds… and I was making MUSIC!

Sheer JOY!

Yes, Deborah LOVED LIFE, through dancing – her face always shone, always gleamed! I even wrote a poem for her, back in the days of writing poetry:

For Deborah

we walk together
each alone
each one's solitude
is the whole sphere
round and luminous around us...

Ha, and here’s a program I just found – it includes Heloise and myself:

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But, BUT…

Oh, there is joy, there is happiness, but I am somehow depressed!

And I kept it secret… sort of…

I didn’t completely realize my ‘unhappiness’ until I had a stroke, in 2010. Then I just studied it, the pain, the ‘illness,’ alone for years…

and slowly, slowly I came back…

back to childhood… and yes, to ADULTHOOD…

…and there it was, there was the secret beauty of the shakuhachi, howling YES to me!

For the past few years I’ve been smiling YES – I am one of those so-called ‘stroke victims’ who has YES in his smile. And there is something MAGIC about the shakuhachi. It doesn’t make a ‘Western sound’ at all, nope. But it curves the air, carves a realm, weaves a sound that is beyond anything I’ve heard before.

The shakuhachi IS my altar; it asks me for my ULTIMATE respect.

And then it sings sings SINGS!!

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It was the late seventies/early eighties; I drove my ’67 turquoise VW down to Big Bend, alone. It was the summer, no less, and the van had no AC – but who cares?? I was YOUNG then!

Needless to say, the temperature was ENORMOUS: I had to fall asleep sweating in the 100-plus evening. But I felt incredibly happy, for a change. I loved being alone. And I loved PARTICIPATING in the sound of the shakuhachi: I played it late at night, and it went howling across the riverbed – and the trees were talking back to me!

I thought about what ‘music’ had been like as a young boy – how I hated practicing piano in front of this or that teacher, those bitter money-hungry men. I remember the first piano teacher I had. He would flick his cigarette and DULLY repeat the words ‘wrong, wrong, wrong.’ My Dad had to take over, he taught that music was beautiful. But I would have to find my way into it. Yes, my OWN way.

So shakuhachi came to me! And Ronnie Seldin, like SO many shakuhachi teachers I later studied with (and continue to learn from) was as kind as they come. That’s what I felt at Big Bend. I was truly, truly happy – ha, for a while!

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Well, Austin was great, but it grew up SO fast that I had to really think about it.

I met an absolutely fascinating woman named Kim. She was just becoming a midwife, and she was kind of a hippie, like me. So we got married. And here we are with our brand new baby Sierra:

We lived in a trailer for a while, across the park from a gun-toting manager. It wasn’t exactly an easy time, for ME anyway.

And we traveled around the US, stopping for instance at a commune near Spokane. I remember once leaving our diapers for some reason out of town – we were just like that – and having to wire home for a few dollars.

We decided to move. I had been reading about communes with available pieces of land, and for some reason I was attracted to Missouri. So we moved there, borrowing money from my mother. Yes, we were in a trailer AGAIN. But it was beautiful, the LAND itself, the sun and the moon! And we had ten acres of our OWN.

And yes, I had my ups and downs, and my occasional angry depression. I realize NOW that it affected both Kim and Sierra, and maybe later my son, Aaron… I’ll tell you about it more in another article; this one is about shakuhachi!

Well I just found this old newspaper article, from 1986. It shows me playing shakuhachi in a vast field, and the headline is: One Man’s QUEST: Phil James finds happiness is simple.

Ha! YES! Alone, hearing that beautiful sound…

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The years went by. I was kind of a shakuhachi player, but really an amateur…

We moved to Columbia, MO. I started making money, lots of it, in the world of software, and I started writing technical books. I traveled. I even learned to fly a plane.

I sighed. I sighed and sighed. Oh well.

But it meant I could get LOTS of lessons by cassette tape, and by listening to dozens of Japanese CDs, and TRYING to get the sounds by myself. Believe me, it was a struggle – one could call it a sweat – but one that truly SHINED, with a sunlike smile!

Here’s my grandson Josh, a long time ago:

I went to Japan with Ronnie, met with Yamaguchi Gorō and took lessons from other ‘famous’ musicians… and Kurahashi Yoshio, later known as Kurahashi Yodo II. Kurahashi Yodo II was the son of Kurahashi Yodo I, Ronnie Seldin’s old – and gone – teacher.

Yodo and I became good friends. He was, and IS, a tremendous gift to me: I LISTEN.

Ah, the sounds he makes, from an intense roaring to an almost inaudible wail – I call it the ‘Kyoto style.’ Yes, he is a teacher, and that’s what he always is, a teacher… and he too listens, LISTENS.

Here’s a biography of him from 2017, in the Kyoto Journal:

Studying under Matsumura Homei of Nara, in 1976 he performed his first solo concert, winning the Osaka Cultural Festival Award. Four years later he became director of the Mujuan shakuhachi school founded in Kyoto by his father, and shortly afterward began touring throughout Asia, Europe, Israel, and the U.S. Since 1995, his annual intensive classes throughout the U.S. have become very popular. His sense of humor and generous attitude are well known to his students (who simply call him “sensei”), and to many others who enjoy traditional shakuhachi music. Today, because of his exceptional technique and a wide repertoire bridging traditions and cultures alike, Kurahashi Yodo II is sought by composers and musicians of many genres wishing to incorporate shakuhachi into their music.

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There are a few things that make Kurahashi such a wonderful teacher. He is most of all sincere.

And he never EVER gets ‘angry’ – that’s just not his way! Or caring about money. And he has one hell of a sense of humor, knowing all about growing up in Kyoto!

When I was in Japan they had a soda called ‘Sparkling Beatnik.’ I kind of liked the name. So I started a record company called just that, Sparkling Beatnik:

AND Kurahashi Yodo decided to put out his first album on Sparkling Beatnik records. He recorded the album in one or two days at my studio, and he sat in our kitchen drawing the cover, all HIS cover. It received from New Age Magazine the Best Serene Music CD, 1999.

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All right, here it comes: the stroke.

I was on vacation in Arizona, January 2010, with my new wife Lara; we lived in Portland, Maine. I was giving shakuhachi lessons, lots of them, in Boston once every two weeks. Lara was seven-months pregnant, and I was driving us somewhere around the Grand Canyon. 

What was I feeling? Well, I somehow felt uneasy, like I was backing out of everything… it was just like it had been in the old days: that strange sensation of depression was clearly right here, right now…

And I got ‘the stroke,’ weaving around, the car SCREAMING, Lara screaming too…

Well, I won’t bother you with the fevered event, it was pretty damn weird – helicopter, me talking gobbledygook…

But there is one thing that was absolutely significant to me during that long hospital time: the shakuhachi! Yes, I could actually play the thing, much to the surprise of the medical gang. Oh, I didn’t play all that well, but I played. And a deep, DEEP smile was passing through this bent body, a HAPPINESS smile! 

I have lived alone for almost fifteen years. It feels difficult at first, but gradually it feels OK. People who have gotten the stroke talk about it in journals like this, and talk about it powerfully and honestly: Agnes de Mille, Ram Dass, Jill Bolte Taylor, May Sarton… ALL are experts, brilliant experts!

And so I am too, an ‘expert’ at shakuhachi. I have thought about it SO deeply – what is it meant to BE?

I have eliminated what needs to be eliminated. I don’t have a car, or a license. I don’t drink. I rent an apartment, right next to the woods. I walk and walk, and I run, and I write. And yes, I play shakuhachi every day: AHHHHH!

I’m putting together a performance of old ‘honkyoku’ pieces for shakuhachi. AND I will add a piece for shakuhachi and ‘toy organ’ – in honor of my composer Daddy. Yes, I try to sound like him, with that ‘jazzy’ 30s stuff. I’ll let you know when it’s available on Youtube… or HERE!

Shakuhachi-playing is a long, LONG trail that just doesn’t end. I LOVE IT. It makes me feel blessed – absolutely BLESSED!

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