Sound Magic
On a recent morning, I was just waking up, my mind hovering at the edge of a fading dream, when the image of a loved friend who had died over seventeen years ago appeared at the foot of my bed. It was Darrell, unmistakably, but diaphanous, a figure woven with strands of a spider’s web. He held a violin, not the flute I would have expected because he crafted flutes. I did not get to hear him play, he vanished the moment I opened my eyes.
As we grow old, many of us find that there is no clear division between the living and the dead. Rather, there seems to be a permeable membrane, through which the departed sometimes move back and forth. Whether that’s fact or a figment of our imagination may not be possible to ascertain, but many of us have had such experiences.
Darrell De Vore was known as The Flute Man and also as Dr. Um, in the years that he and my husband, Mel Moss, were close friends, bound by the love of music. To make a living he carved bamboo flutes and sold them on college campuses and elsewhere. He also created new instruments from unlikely materials, showing that music can be found in almost all materials. Supported by a grant from one of the Grateful Dead, Darrell gave “sound magic” classes to elementary school children in Petaluma, teaching them to make little flutes from film cans and shakers from the lids of those cans, two lids taped together, with a few dry peas between them. He invented new instruments--spirit catchers and windwands —using bamboo and rubber bands. Mel, meanwhile, made slit drums, each one shaped and tuned according to the particular qualities of the wood, and mbiras modeled after indigenous instruments from Zimbabwe. Both Darrell and Mel used discarded Styrofoam packaging as sound boxes. For several years, they jammed every Thursday in Mel’s studio with some other musicians and occasionally performed as Moiré Pulse.
Darrell died two weeks before Mel departed. For nearly two decades their presence and music has been missing from my life. I dream of Mel quite often, waking happily sometimes thinking he’s alive, then sinking into sadness. Seeing a manifestation of Darrell the other morning was both a happy and a sad experience. It was a blessing and a reminder of the temporary nature of everyone and everything, and the unfathomable mystery of life.
Darrell (left front) and Mel (right back)
Jamming
Credit: Elena Gustaitis