Photo by Barney Quinn

Hello friends, I’d like to share a piece of shakuhachi music I wrote for this morning’s practice. It’s called Autumn. The piece was influenced by this photo taken by a dear friend who has been using his photography practice as a way of coping with some of life’s curveballs. I had been receiving Barney’s weekly photos for sometime now and was always stuck by the technical beauty of each photo at first. Then, as I pondered each one, I always got a sense of that unnameable X factor - that thing that makes a piece of work compelling, that thing that makes something art (The photo obviously needs to be seen larger than it is here).

Autumn is dedicated to Barney and anyone who may find life challenging at the moment. If you have time, please join me. I recorded with a 1.8 EARTH Model shakuhachi:

 

 

Autumn. Play it anyway you’d like, repeating lines etc…

With gracious permission, Barney gave me permission to share his story with you.

“I think that art, all art, is very important. It is how we deal with the large issues in life. Love. Death. Birth. Loss. It’s a long list. Last winter my wife developed a tumor in her Pancreas. She had a huge, horrible operation at Johns Hopkins called a Whipple procedure. Her kidneys failed twice. I don’t want to know now close we came to loosing her. She recovered, thank God.

In August she was diagnosed with a very aggressive breast cancer. She had a double mastectomy. Now she is having chemotherapy. It is a road with many pot holes. It’s also the only road there is.

I have early onset Glaucoma. I have had it for twenty some odd years. I almost went blind from it about ten years ago. During the midst of my wife’s cancer the pressure in my eyes sky rocketed and for the second time I started to go blind again. I had a few anxious weeks, but for the second time my eye doctor and his partner were able to save my vision. I took this picture in the middle of all this. One reason I take pictures is to celebrate the fact that I can still see. Another reason is as a reminder that we do not own our hearing or our vision. They are on loan to us, and we could be asked to return them at any moment, without warning. How we use them is so very, very important.”

Lastly,
“Perry, Please do use my story. If it helps just one other person only a little I will consider that my day on this earth has been well spent!” - Barney
Thank you Barney.
Namaste, Perry