Emotion

The hardest part of this blip was figuring how I was going to write it up. Normally a picture is worth a thousand words, but I guess I am just not good enough at this photography thing, because I failed to capture the emotion that I felt and so I now have to manufacture some words to fill in the gaps.

Jerzi told me that there was a park close by where I might get my bug fix. I pulled up Google earth and found the hotel, zoomed out a tad, and there it was, just a few blocks walk away. It looked rather regimented, but certainly large enough to support a plethora of bug life in the middle of this concrete jungle that is Liuzhou city.

Indeed, the park was very regimented. All the bushes and plants were perfectly groomed. The leaves were flawless, which gives a clue as to why I cannot find any bugs. NONE! There were lots of people enjoying the rather spectacular park views, probably close to a thousand or even more, but still I had nothing that I wanted to photograph.

As I was scanning the bushes, this glorious pipe music was messing with my ears. Before very long, I found myself wandering towards the source of this haunting music that seemed in tune with the occasional birdsong. I finally arrived at one of many bandstand type structures. The sound was being produced by this young boy, being tutored by the master. I just could not believe the mesmerizing sound that was being produced.

The light wasn’t good, so I sat down a suitable distance away for the 105 and extended the monopod. I proceeded to click off some shots, all the time soaking up the maturity of the sound produced by this young man that you would be more likely to visualize playing with Lego rather than musically messing with your head.

I had to break off the photo session, as I felt the tears rolling down my neck and started to feel self-conscious of this public display of emotion. Why I should feel that way when for so many years I WAS that musician, trying my hardest to extract that same emotion from my audience, and occasionally succeeding.

This is a day that I will never forget, but still wanted to get it written down. On the way out of the park, I finally saw my first butterfly. I decided not to bother chasing, as today’s diary entry was always going to be about the music.

Dave