2021.08.01 Parable the Second: Passage. (Παραβολὴ ἡ Δεύτερη• Πέρασμα.) by Hearing Beings published on 2021-08-02T02:03:53Z In the morning of the last day of July, as I was about to enter the main door of an aged care nursing home, I had to stop and step aside to make way respectfully for a trolley bearing a deceased person draped completely with deep red cloth. I do not know who they were - their name, gender, nationality, story... The body was borne into a nondescript white van. Later, that evening, while editing and composing some field recordings for a quite different work, this particular conjunction of layers happened to align itself, as if of its own accord, and I recalled my meeting with an unseen deceased body, neatly draped in deep red cloth, earlier that day. For that person, for every such person, I wanted to offer this sound-parable, as an aesthetic gesture of respect, mourning, but also of celebration, a confident casting and sowing of thoughts towards the all-encompassing horizon of infinity. "Among the Seven Wise Women, one woman said, 'Sisters, you and I should not go to scenic parks to partake of worldly entertainments... Instead, let's go together to enjoy the charnel grounds.' The other women said, 'That place is full of decaying corpses. What is such a place good for?' The first woman said, 'Sisters, just go. Very good things are there.' When they arrived in the forest, the woman pointed to a corpse and said to the other women, 'The corpse is here; where has the person gone?' The women witnessed the truth and realized the way." (Dōgen's Extensive Record: A Translation of the Eihei Kōroku, translated by Taigen Dan Leighton and Shohaku Okumura, Boston: Wisdom Publications 2004, p. 120) Genre Field Recording