Garden of Memory

This was my third visit to Garden of Memory, the annual solstice walk-through concert at the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland, though I'd missed the last two. Walking through the labyrinthine space listening to various mostly ambient noodling music from performers set up in small chapels and smaller niches does not lose its appeal. Many of the performers had been there before; others were new to me. This year, I liked the thoughtful cascading guitar work of Henry Kaiser and Allen Whitman. I liked the William Winant Percussion Group playing what Winant called "a piece by Philippe Glass, a New York Jewish composer." I liked the two guys in skirts and bare feet who moved around in an infinitely slow modern dance style as pre-recorded clarinet music emerged from loudspeakers attached to the tops of their heads. I liked the two people melding sound clips on their Mac laptops into an ocean of slowly shifting sound. I liked the guy who softly padded his hands around a metal drum. I liked Paul Dresher and Joel Davel improvising for twenty minutes on a mechanized hurdy-gurdy. And of course I liked my favorite, and possibly the most popular, regular performer, Amy X Neuburg, even though her looping equipment was malfunctioning (again), forcing her to abandon most of her repertoire and resort to improvising at which she is not as skilled as Paul Dresher.

Neither the strangers I exchanged words with, nor a few friends I ran into, commented on my appearance, which surprised me once I caught a glimpse of it myself. (The few rest rooms at the chapel are smaller and more popular than the performing spaces, so it was hard to get in.) My nose was covered with dried blood where I'd fallen and smacked it on the sidewalk outside an hour before the concert. (I really ought to consider using my cane more often.) Various concerned passersby - on whom all blessings flow - helped me up, provided tissues to blow and hold the bleeding nose, and called the paramedics, who weren't about to let me go without thorough checking-over both physical and cognitive for concussion. They buried me in a flurry of gentle bureaucracy: never before have I been asked my age so many times in such quick succession, until I began to believe the number myself.