The Secret Art of Tai-Dung-Shan

 Not much to say about this one.  There are many martial art adages throughout the story, But its really just a short, fun morality tale.  If you read it, you might end up smarter.  But that's not its purpose.  It is meant merely to entertain.  

                 THE  SECRET  ART  OF  TAI-DUNG-SHAN

                                                         by Dick Morgan

            I first met the venerable Master Feng Shou Li at a martial arts tournament, where he demonstrated his fantastic art during a half-time exhibition.  The small, thin, white-bearded Chinese man did a series of breathing exercises, then explained as best he could in his broken and heavily accented English how he was building up his internal power, which he referred to as chi-kung.  He said the ancient art of Tai Dung-Chan, or Dung-Shan, as they pronounced it in the farthest northeastern corner of China, was the art of projecting one's chi, or internal energy, into the enemy.  Master Li claimed that his lifetime of training in the art of Dung-Shan empowered him to knock his opponent senseless with chi-power alone, projected from a distance of up to thirty feet.

          Master Li explained how Dung-Shan had originated in Korea, during the Silla Dynasty.  The Hwarang, or Silla warriors, had come over the mountains separating Korea from China and freely, almost contemptuously paraded the art before the Chinese peasants and provincial bureaucrats.  The Hwarang had told of hidden caves high up in the mountains, where the precepts of Dung-Shan were chiseled into the rock walls in long pictographic detail.  The Chinese had searched  the mountains and found the caves to be in fact real.  It took years for the Chinese scholars to record and translate the pictographs and decipher their meaning.  Even then, none could master the awesome power of Dung-Shan.  The Chinese had been so impressed with this body of knowledge that they did not dare to attack the Korean Hwarang for the entire duration of the Silla Dynasty, a period of peace that lasted four hundred years.

          I watched with awe as Master Li proceeded to demonstrate the art of Dung-Shan, knocking down his opponents, one after the other, without seeming to touch them.  His attackers, all wiry and agile black belt-wearing Asian fellows, ran at him full speed, kicking, punching, and swinging various weapons, only to end up flying through the air backwards in awkward summersaults, landing in a breathless and obviously painful heap.  Master Li asked for a volunteer from the audience to attack him and to feel first-hand the power of Dung-Shan.  I was bolstering my courage to volunteer just so I could experience this amazing art, but before I could stand up, a well-muscled African-American man yelled from the top of the bleachers,  "Try me, old man!" and jumped down the rows of seats four at a time.  The huge black man swaggered up to the old Chinese gentleman, towering over him, and tapped his chest with an extended finger.  Master Li suddenly bent the big man's finger sideways, flinging him backwards onto the floor.  When he tried to rise, Master Li extended a palm toward him, and from a distance of at least eight feet, pinned the black man to the floor.  The man strained every muscle to rise up, even using his spirit yell, or kihap, but could not move.  Master Li stood calmly with his palm extended outward for a full minute, then relaxed his hand to his side.  Only then could the black man rise to his feet.  The huge man did not say another word; he just bowed very low with his head down in shame, and left through the nearest exit.

          Master Li told the totally silent audience that he would be holding a five-day seminar in the art of Dung-Shan at the Uptown Athletic Club.  In this course, he would teach the basic exercises that would be the foundation of the beginning of ultimate power, or, as he called it, the secret art of Tai-Dung-Shan.  Enrollment would be extremely limited, as Master Li could only teach three or four students at one time.  And even so, mastery could not be achieved in five days.  But if one were to faithfully practice all of the exercises that would be taught in those five days, then perhaps in a year or two, one could knock over a small puppy from a distance of six feet.  At that point, Master Li laughed until he had to wipe his eyes, a spontaneous and unguarded expression of pure joy

          I hurried down to meet Master Li and to see about signing up for this powerful art.  When I reached him, he was surrounded by people, many of whom were upper level black belts I had admired from afar.  I figured there would be no chance for me to enroll, but soon, people cleared away; I found myself face to face with Master Li himself.  As Master Li's eyes swept over me, I felt a startling emanation of power and enlightenment coming from him that took my breath away.  I felt naked, even though I was wearing a suit and tie.

          "I'm David Jenkins, and I want to learn your art," I said.

          "What you do?" Master Li said to me.  I told him I owned an accounting firm which I had manipulated into becoming a subsidiary of a major electronic components company, and that I had twelve employees under me. I was embarrassed to catch myself trying to impress him.

          "You big black belty master, too?"  Master Li grinned.

          I shook my head.  I was only a brown belt after three years of practice, a veritable beginner compared to this man who had dedicated fifty years to the martial discipline of Dung-Shan.

          "Velly good, velly good, brown belt best.  No so many bad habits.  Not have to re-tlane."

          "I want very much to be your student," I said.

          "Velly hard plactice," Master Li warned  "Only one, maybe two, finish," the Master said.

          "I'll finish," I insisted.

          "Velly expensive,"  Master Li held a finger up.  "One hundred dollah each lesson."

          That set me back on my heels a moment.  Five hundred dollars was a lot of money.  But this art, this Dung-Shan, was so profound, so powerful, so unique, I just had to learn it.  And besides, hadn't I just bragged about my well-paying job?  I was determined to learn this art, and nodded my head.

          "Velly good,"  he said.  We shook hands on it, and I was amazed to find his handshake to be soft and gentle.

          That evening when I went to my usual class at Song Il Kim's Tae Kwon Do, I told my teacher, Mr. Kim, that I would be missing a week of classes.  When I told him why, he could not suppress a small, tight smile.

          "Ahh, the secret art of Tai Dung-Shan, eh?  It has been a long time since I have heard that name," Mr. Kim said.

          "Sabum-nim, what can you tell me about it?"

          "Very old secret Korean technique.  Protected Korean temples, kept the peace four hundred years."

          "But what can you tell me about the art itself?"  I insisted.

          "Do you really believe in this art?"

          "I saw it work at the tournament.  I saw what it can do.  Master Li said that with a few years of practice, it is easy to knock someone out from a distance-- even kill them."

          "Very handy,"  Mr. Kim said.  "But, you have to ask yourself… how do they practice?"

            I begged him to tell me what he could about Dung-Shan, but he crossed his arms and shook his head resolutely.

            "I think must be learned the hard way," he said.

          "What do you mean, the hard way?"

          "These kinds of art are entirely experiential," Mr. Kim said. "You must learn to become as a small child.  I could tell you all about Dung-Shan, but you would learn nothing.  Besides, it is big secret.  If I tell you, then I have to kill you." He laughed.  "But I will tell you this much; you must learn to have infinite patience.  That is the heart of all martial skill.  Remember, the journey to the temple is the temple."

          "Thanks," I said rather more sarcastically than I intended.  So much of the martial arts dialogue was full of riddles and conundrums; it was like a bad Kung-Fu episode stuck on re-run.  Have infinite patience.  What was that supposed to mean?  If one had infinite patience, then one would never arrive at the reason for having patience in the first place.

          Here I was, almost thirty, slim, fit, and divorced, the owner of a successful business, a dozen custom-tailored suits hung neatly in my closet.  I drove a gold Mercedes convertible, (my pride and joy I'd named Marilyn), and lived in the poshest condo overlooking the river that flowed through the center of town.  Yet everyone in the martial arts treated me like a wayward adolescent.  I had not gotten where I was in life by exhibiting patience and forbearance.  When I wanted something, I went after it.  I had always scrambled faster, harder, longer than others on the same path, and I always got what I wanted sooner or later.  I was focused, and I was ruthless.   I took advantages, I took shortcuts, I cut away the waste and excess baggage.  I was a lean, mean, business machine.  

          No, I had never been a patient man.  When patience was required, I simply changed the rules:  The way to the temple was to buy the property it sat on, evict the tenants, and change the locks.  There was an easier way for almost everything.  Martial arts, I was certain, would prove to be no exception.

          I had signed up for martial arts training hoping to hone my ruthlessness to a fine cutting edge.  Increased self discipline, self confidence, an imposing presence of being, the brochures had said.  I had signed up with Mr. Kim because he had the most imposing presence of being of anyone I had ever met.  I wanted that for myself, but Mr. Kim kept telling me it would take twenty years.

          "What if I practiced hard every day?"  I had asked him once.

          "Oh, then it will take you thirty years," he had laughed then too.

          After more than three years of practice and not yet a black belt, I was beginning to become restless, impatient.  I began looking around for quicker ways to become a master.  That search had fortuitously led me to Feng Shou Li and the art of Dung-Shan.  It was fate; it was my destiny, I told myself.

          On Monday, the first day of the Dung-Shan seminar, I arrived at the Uptown Health Club promptly at six, the scheduled class time. There was no one inside the room to which I was directed.  I only had to wait a few minutes before Master Li arrived. With him was the heavily muscled black man I had seen held subdued at the martial arts tournament.  The two of them walked in, heads down, apparently sharing some mutual thought.

          When Master Li saw me, he whispered something to the man, and made a hard motion for him to join me.  As the black man sat down next to me, Master Li began to speak.

          "I seem to have two students.  One is named Mister David," Master Li said, pointing to me.  "The other is Mister Avery, whose humiliation has stimulated much curiosity."  Master Li pointed at the black man.  We tipped our chins slightly toward each other.  "No!"  Master Li shouted.  "You must do full bow.  Dung-Shan requires utmost respect, utmost attention to detail!"  Avery and I performed simultaneous full seated bows toward each other.

          Master Li began to speak at length, his Chinese accent, curiously, much less apparent.  "Now you will listen," he said.  "Dung-Shan is ultimate connection to the universe, all at once.  The smaller training you receive will teach you to contain and focus this energy, and eventually to project it outward.  The larger training you will receive will teach you to survive this effort.  Just as Dung-Shan can kill an enemy from thirty feet away, this much energy within you can tear you apart, and kill yourself as well.  You cannot take this training lightly.  There is much danger, and much responsibility.  Are you committed to learning the secret art of Dung-Shan?"  Master Li's eyes were burning into me; I felt he could see my lust for the  power of this new art.  I nodded vigorously.  Avery nodded as well.

          "Very well.  Pay first, please, in case you die.  All money in cash." Master Li smiled.

          The first lesson consisted mostly of the history and philosophy of Dung-Shan.  Tai Dung-Shan was an arcane body of knowledge from an ancient lore, it's actual origins lost in antiquity.  Master Li showed photographs taken of the walls of the caves high in the Changbai Mountains that separated China from Korea.  The pictures showed ancient drawings of men standing in various poses, and strange diagrams consisting of many concentric circles, triangles, and squares.

          Master Li explained that Dung-Shan was a way to tap into the universal energy which was all around us, and inside us at the same time.  Reality consisted of three aspects: matter, energy, and awareness.  But matter and energy were actually only manifestations of a great Universal Awareness, and if we learned to expand our own awareness sufficiently to tap into this Universal Awareness, we could learn to control both matter and energy.  Ancient sages used matter and energy manipulation routinely, and could alter the forms of their bodies, become large or small, take on the forms of animals, and travel great distances with a technique called, "The Leap of the Mind."  The two of us would learn to begin the path toward all of these powers, provided we pay close attention and obey unquestioningly.

           After class, Master Li directed me to take the three of us to lunch at the Top of the Cosmo, where he and Avery both ordered steak and lobster. 

          Tuesday's class began with breathing exercises.  We were taught a form of abdominal breathing similar to the Tan-Jun breathing of Korean martial arts, but with rapid, circular hand movements, done first clockwise, then counter-clockwise, and finally, both hands moving in different directions, moving from large, slow circles, to small rapid ones. "This will build and enhance your inner chi," Master Li instructed.  "Tomorrow, we will learn how to focus it."

          We finished with a meditation consisting of producing primal sounds with the tongue held against the roof of the mouth.  Class ended with a Yoga position called Downward-Facing Dog, during which Master Li intoned our evening wisdom.  "Listen closely to the ultimate secret of Dung-Shan," he said in a voice that, in my exhausted and oxygen-enriched state, sounded like music.  "Whatever you do, do it wholeheartedly, from your Tan-Tien, your center.  When your mind, body, and feelings function together as one single reality, you become your own center of gravity, your own fount of primal energy; you begin to create your own universe."

          After practice, Master Li took us to a spa, where we all received full-body massages from three beautiful Asian women, and Master Li disappeared for a time, before our jacuzzi baths.  My visa card was charged almost two hundred dollars, but it was a marvelous experience.  Master Li told me in confidence, "The body is not like a machine at all.  It must be rewarded for its hard work, like a small child who receives good grade."  He smiled.  In my totally relaxed state, I was inclined to agree.

          On Wednesday, the third lesson began promptly at six, with seven more breathing exercises combined with circling hands.  These additional exercises were meant to awaken and charge our seven chakras, or energy centers. Each chakra represented a nexus of chi power which governed a specific region of the body.  Beginning with the first chakra at the base of the spine, we awakened the energy in our hips and loins.  Then we stimulated the second chakra further up the spine, which invigorated the liver and intestinal region, the third, further still, which  connected to the diaphragm, the fourth, connected to the heart, and so on, until we reached the seventh chakra, at the top of the head, which was the seat of the spirit.

          After this full spectrum of awakening,  I felt completely invigorated and charged with energy.  It was almost as if I was walking on a cushion of pure energy, and my feet did not touch the ground.  I was almost giddy with power.  But Master Li warned us against feeling too empowered.  "Do not be seduced by your own Godhood," the Master cautioned us.  "Enlightenment, at this stage, is an illusion."

          "Not good to keep all this power inside," Master Li told us.  "We must purge this from our systems, or our lives are all in danger.  You will both come with me now."

          That was how we ended up back at the spa with the three Asian women.  I don't remember the details very clearly after the naked massage and the third bottle of Tsingdao beer, but the next morning, I found a visa receipt for four hundred dollars.  It was to save all our lives, I told myself.

          Thursday evening, our fourth lesson began with a repetition of the seven-chakra awakening, only in a more prefunctory fashion, so as not to exhaust ourselves prematurely.  Then Master Li shared the arcane, mystic knowledge of the eighth chakra.  He explained how the seven chakras of the Ayervedic tradition were merely focus points for stimulating body systems to optimum health and vigor.  They were, in essence, only focus points for receiving universal energy inward.  The ancient sages had intuited that such a body stasis, by its very nature, implied a significant imbalance.  There had to be a nexus for expressing energy outward.  And indeed, two were found, one in each hand, just inward from the vee between the thumb and forefinger.  This spot, the eighth chakra, was known as chiang-huo, the river of fire.  We spent the rest of the evening pointing our palms at various objects, the most often at the flame of a candle.  Again, after practice, I felt invigorated and giddy, but only Master Li could actually move the flame by his will and chi-power alone. Several times, he held his thumb and finger in a vee which he called, the "serpent's mouth", pointed this vee toward  the candle, and from a distance of six feet,  the candle was instantly extinguished with a snap of his fingers.

          After practice, Master Li asked me for a ride.   As the three of us climbed into Marilyn, my gold Mercedes convertible, Master Li rubbed the polished leather seats with the palm of his hand.  "Fine car," he grinned.  Then he directed me to drive him to a men's clothing store.

          "Important presentation tomorrow, at City Council Auditorium. Very big deal.  Must look, how you say... spiffy," Master Li said.   He chose an expensive three-piece suit, three shirts, and two ties, and directed me to pay for them.  Then he asked me to also buy a jacket for Avery.  "This one has agreed to be my uke, my assisant, tomorrow.  Must look spiffy, too," Master Li said, patting Avery on the back.  Avery chose a royal blue blazer that made him look like a cruise director on the "Love Boat".  The total was nearly six hundred dollars.

          "You are very generous," Master Li said.  "Tomorrow, I will give you the ultimate secret of Dung-Shan.  You must be prepared."  I wasn't at all happy about these extra expenses, but there was only one more day of seminar.  I was learning so much from this little Chinese man, and after tomorrow, I would not have his constant flow of knowledge to nurture my physical and spiritual growth.  I could tolerate these small exploitations for one more day.

          Friday evening, our final lesson began an hour early because of Master Li's prior commitment.  We began by reviewing our seven-chakra awakening, followed by extending our palms and envisioning the Chiang-huo stream of energy emanating from them.  Master Li led us in a variety of postures he called The Five-Animal Way, said to maximize and focus the body's natural abilities.  The low stance with the legs widely spread and the hands raised upwards into claws was the Tiger Stance.  This was the stance of strength.  The one-legged stance with our hands held high over our heads was the Crane Stance, said to enhance balance.  The legs close together, knees flexed and ready to spring, arms and hands bent into hooks, the Snake Stance, meant to maximize natural speed.  Rolling on the ground and then jumping into the air with various kicks were the Monkey techniques, employing deception, becoming unpredictable.  But the most important of all was the Dragon Stance, the most spiritually stimulating, meant to increase and focus our natural inner power, our chi.  Avery and I practiced standing with our legs slightly bent, one behind the other, and our hands extended, one slightly behind the other.  We were told to hold our left hand the most forward, as this was the hand most connected to the heart.  I practiced just as Master Li directed, holding the first two fingers of my left hand at a sixty-degree angle from my thumb, and aiming my Chiang-huo point at the candle flame.

          "No good," Master Li shook his head.  "Not motivated by candle.  Must envision enemy."  But try as I might, the candle flame did not even flicker.  "Need real enemy," Master Li said.  "Mister Avery, you must strike Mister David."

          "Excuse me?" Avery said.

          "You must hit Mister David.  Hit hard enough to knock down.  Hit hard enough to knock out, first hit."  Master Li pointed at me.  "And you must not block.  Only can use Chiang-huo.  Remember to make Tan-Tien Voice, the spirit yell.  Only this can save you."

          Avery looked at me, and then at Master Li.  The Master motioned him toward me with a quick sweep of his hand.  Avery shrugged; I saw him clench his jaw and step toward me with his fist drawn back.  I was very alarmed, but I did not forget my training.  I took a breath, extended my left palm toward him, and let out a yell at the top of my lungs-- or rather, from the bottom of my lungs, using the diaphragm, as Master Li had directed me.  A terrible, deep-throated roar came out, and I felt suddenly warm all over.  Avery lurched backwards, fell flat onto his back, and lay still.  After a moment that seemed like a lifetime, he slowly sat up and rubbed his chest.

          "Damn!"  he said, his eyes wide and his mouth open.

          "Lesson over," Master Li said to me.  "You dangerous now.  Go take cold shower."

          "Yes, Master Li," I said, grinning.

          "Remember," Master Li said as I was leaving, "First time, maybe accident.  Must practice many years to make Chiang-huo on purpose.  Must have infinite patience."

          His last words were like an echo I had heard many times before, a recurrence of timeless truth.  "Thank you, Master Li.," I said, and bowed low.  "Thanks for everything."

          I was giddy with power, and sang out loud in the shower room.  I had mastered the arcane art of Dung-Shan, and knocked a man down.  Maybe it was an accident, but it had happened once; I could learn to do it again, no matter how long it took.  I gave a throaty yell from deep down inside; my powerful voice reverberated from everywhere at once, bouncing off the tile walls.  Several of the men turned their backs to me, uneasy in their nakedness.

          When I finished my shower, Master Li and Avery were gone.  And so were my car keys.  Surely the two of them would not have taken my car, would they?  My beloved Marilyn!

          I had to take a cab to the City Council.  I arrived just in time to see my beloved Marilyn hoisted up behind a tow truck, her front end caved in, her Mercedes insignia lying on the sidewalk beneath a bent signpole that said, Reserved Parking Only.  There were empty bottles and trash on her dashboard, and cigarette burn holes in her leather seats.  My pride and joy, ruined.  I was beyond angry; I was righteously pissed.  This time, Master Li had gone too far.

          I stormed inside the City Council entrance and found Master Li alone in the foyer.  I was so angry, I didn't think about what I was doing.  As I walked up to him I could see recognition in his face of my agitated state.  Master Li held up his hands, palm outstretched toward me, but before he could use his awesome power, I kicked him in the stomach as hard as I could.  Master Li crumpled like Marilyn's dented grill, and fell to the floor.  Again he held his palms toward me, but this time it was in supplication, as though to protect himself.  "Hey, man, what the hell are you doing?" he panted, all traces of accent totally gone. Somehow, that angered me even more, and I kicked him between his outstretched hands, square in the chest.

          I was going to kick him again, but Avery suddenly appeared between us.  It was only Avery, though; I knew how to handle him.  I pointed my left palm at him, my fingers held in a precise "dragon's mouth", and yelled fiercely.   Avery just laughed, picked me up by my shirt, and pinned me against the wall, my feet dangling an inch above the floor.

          "Don't you get it yet?" Avery said through his teeth. 

          "Get what?" I said, not at all sure of my position here, despite my new-found and awesome inner power.

          "The secret of Dung-Shan," he said.

          "Of course I get it," I said.  "I knocked you down, didn't I?"

          Avery laughed, and dropped me down until my feet gained purchase of the floor, but he didn't let go.  "I only fall down when I'm paid to," he said.

          "But what about this afternoon, in class?" I asked; I was confused.

          Avery let go of my shirt, smoothed the wrinkles from his royal blue blazer.   "See my new coat?" he said.

          Saturday morning, I went back to Mr. Kim's class.   Before practice, I told him about my confrontation with Master Li and Avery.  Mr. Kim laughed and shook his head.

          "Dung-Shan is like every other martial arts miracle I've seen parading down the turnpike," he said.  "But you can always get someone to fall down for you if you pay them enough money."  Mr. Kim shrugged.  "There really aren't any martial arts secrets.  There's just practice, and more practice."

          "But what about the writings in the mountain caves?" I asked.

          Mr. Kim laughed.  "The Hwarang only put them there to intimidate the Chinese, to make them think twice about invading Korea.  It worked for a few years.  Then the Chinese figured it out, and named the art Tai-Dung-Shan.  The Big Mountain of Shit."

          "You mean, there is no art of Dung-Shan?"

          "Oh, indeed there is," Mr. Kim said.  "How much did they take you for?"  I lowered my head, so that I would not have to look into his eyes.  "Old Chinese saying," he continued.  "'Don't be distracted from your art by too much ambition and too little patience, or you'll find yourself climbing Tai-Dung Shan.'  Are you ready for real practice now?"

          I nodded, and without a word, walked to the dressing room, put on my practice uniform, and tied a crisp new white belt around my waist.

                                                *            *            *

Zanshin: On Becoming a Brown Belt

This column was written about seven years ago, and caused a bit of controversy for me.  One person in particular didn't like it.  You can guess who.  But I have little tolerance for... well, read the article.

Z A N S H I N

                    By Dick Morgan

                            On Becoming a Brown Belt

          A month ago, Grandmaster Garrison asked me if I would be free to be on the judge’s panel of a Hapkido promotional exam.  There would be a student or two testing for brown belt.  Of course I said yes, as those kind of questions are not really questions.  When your teacher says, I’d like you to do something, you rearrange your schedule to make that happen.  That defines the teacher/student relationship.  The teacher is really saying, “I think your training will be enhanced by having this experience.”  And it is the student’s job to obey.  You must trust the teacher’s judgement no matter what the request.  If you can’t, then you need to find another teacher.

          Being a judge is both informative and fascinating.  I get to observe my teacher in his most intense and critical mode.  I get to watch students get physically pounded and mentally squeezed past their own limitations.  I get to see them firm up their intent and rise to the challenge, determination blazing across their faces.  This is what my teacher wants for all his students.  It’s what I want for my own.

          So, when I accepted, I asked him a favor.  I had two students who were almost ready to test for brown belt.  I asked if they could be included in the test.  One of my students I considered more ready to test; the other, I would encourage to watch.  Grandmaster Garrison readily agreed.

          At my next class session, I took these two students aside and gave them this information.  I wanted one student to test, and the other, who I  considered not quite ready, would watch the test.  The student who I asked to test replied, “I don’t think I’m ready.  I don’t want to.  I don’t think I’m going to test.”

          I was very surprised and puzzled by his response for a couple of reasons.  First, it is not up to the student whether he is ready for a certain test-- ready for any training experience, really.  That is a teacher’s judgment.  And second, it is a student’s duty to obey the teacher.  I told him to test, and he basically said, “No.”  How am I supposed to remain his teacher then?

          A few days later, two days before the test, I shared this conversation with Grandmaster Garrison after advanced practice.  He told me, “No is not an option for either of them.  Have both of your students here on the mat, in uniform, a half-hour before the test.”

          I would not see these two students before the test, as I had cancelled my own Hapkido class in order to be present at Grandmaster Garrison’s test.  I had to telephone them both the day before the test.  I couldn’t reach either of them, so I left a couple of phone messages.  One got the message; the other didn’t.

          The student whom I considered ready to test was at my teacher’s dojang, on the mat and in uniform by the time I arrived.  He was stretching out with the other testing candidates, looking pale and nervous.  The other student showed up just before the test was to start without a uniform.  He had not been home nor checked his phone messages; he did not get the information that Grandmaster Garrison wanted him on the mat.  He had come to watch the test, which was the last information he had received.

          Grandmaster Garrison told me to inform him that he was to be on the mat one way or another, and handed me one of his own spare uniforms.  The only spare belt I could find was an old green belt, but I presented these to my second student, told him to dress down, and to hurry.  His eyebrow raised slightly, then he shrugged and hurried off to the dressing room.

          The long and arduous test was run by one of our other black belts, an extremely athletic young man who had been drilling the lower ranks in Hapkido basics for about a year.  Students were led through vigorous sets of walking basics, forms, falling, one-step sparring, and Ho Shin Sul-- self defense techniques involving grabs, throws, and take-downs.  My students performed alongside and with all the others, even though they were not familiar with some of the techniques.  It was clear that some of the techniques were unfamiliar to all the students.  At the brown belt level, a student should begin to think strategically, and improvise when necessary.  How one deals with the unknown is a major part of the mindset referred to as Warrior Mind. 

          My first student’s performance—the student I had considered ready—steadily worsened.  He hesitated and faltered, frowning and shaking his head.  Halfway through the test, I saw him at the edge of the mat, holding his head.  He had apparently taken a blow to the back of his head and was dizzy.  He left the mat and did not return.  I left the judge’s area to see how he was doing and examined his head.  I could not find any area of injury, swelling, or even tenderness.

          My second student—the one whom I had not considered ready—stayed on the mat.  He could not do the techniques he had not seen before, so he substituted techniques we had practiced in our class.  He was awkward and nervous, but each time he was thrown down, he jumped back up and entered into the action with renewed vigor.  He never gave up, even after I saw him shake the pain out of his wrist after a wrist throw.  He totally blew his form, but he began again and moved slower, deliberately forcing himself to remember each step.  And he finished.

          During the execution of one technique, this student lost his balance and was quickly countered by his opponent; I closed my eyes in embarrassment for my student.  Grandmaster Garrison must have seen me wince.  He said, “Your student is having a good test.”  I said, “He looks terrible!”  Grandmaster Garrison replied, “Oh, that’s just technique.  You can help him with that.  But when he gets thrown down he keeps getting up quickly, and he’s not giving an inch.  He’s determined to see it through.  You can’t teach determination.  They have to muster that on their own.  The whole point of Hapkido is to find that intent.  He’s having a fine test.  Promote him to brown belt if you want; he’s already got the mindset.  You can improve his techniques over time.  But the other one-- he will never understand the techniques until he toughens up his mind.  You should not promote him.”

          When I held my next class, I presented the second student with his blue belt with a brown stripe-- officially, brown belt apprentice rank.  This is one of the most difficult ranks to achieve; many students are not prepared for the intense shift from focusing primarily on techniques to being challenged on a mental and emotional level as well.  He had done his best, and had never given up.  “It was a challenging test,” he said.

          The other student-- the one for whom I had gotten permission to join the ranks of those being tested, and for whom I had rearranged everybody’s schedules-- I talked to him in private.  “I was not ready,” he said.  “I was nervous, and my back hurt.  I had never seen some of those moves before, and I haven’t practiced judo.  I don’t want to learn Judo.  I don’t have the build for it.  I just want to learn the stuff I can use and adapt to my own ability and comfort level.  You should not have made me go out there.” 

          Oh, poor guy.  Everything was bad, except for him.  No comment about his lack of commitment, or about allowing a minor injury to be an excuse to quit.  At one point, he said, “I wish I’d have been injured sooner.  Then I wouldn’t have had to be stressed out for so long.  It was a horrible test.  Very unfair.”  Hmm, and the other nine test candidates did just fine…

          This is not a warrior’s mindset.  This is the mindset of a narcissist victim-- a person who fails, but blames the world instead of himself.  This mindset does not pick itself up and say, “I’ll do better next time.”  The narcissist victim is more likely to say, “I’m never going to do that again.  It’s too hard.  It’s unreasonable.  It’s unfair.”

          In a real fight, it is not the techniques you know that will save you; it’s your determination to win.  It will be at a most inopportune time that life will choose to be the most unfair.  The warrior who has nurtured his indomitability will experience an automatic flow of techniques as the situation requires.  He will be practiced at improvisation, at meeting challenges.

          The person who has practiced failure will be defeated, and it won’t matter whose fault it is.

          We become what we intend.  The challenge is to be conscious of our intent, and unwavering in our resolve.  That is the heart of all martial arts.

                                      *       *       *       *       *

I Am The Band

This  story was written about 35 years ago.  I used The Moody Blues Band as my band model, but there is no factual correlation to them.  But it was great fun to write. 

                                                    I Am The Band

                                                By

                                                         Dick  Morgan

We wait.  The damp sub-floor locker room smells like used hockey jerseys.  Cement walls push back the sounds of our movement, even our breathing, and compresses them into layers.  Four of us twist and stretch in silence, warming the fires within.  One of us dances and pirouettes in front of his mirror. 

          We are the Mystic Mountain; our music has studded the charts for more than two decades.  We have played before royalty, and toured nations, in front of an ocean of faces that recedes beyond the horizon.  Our music is heard on television and movie theaters, in commercials and even in shopping malls, mutilated beyond recognition.  The Chronicle called our performance “The ultimate musical experience.”  Tristan, who laughs and flits about in front of his mirror like a butterfly, has said he doesn’t like that phrase.  “We do not yet know the meaning of ultimate,” Tristan says.

Up two flights of stairs, a sell-out crowd stomps and claps to the rhythm of our warm-up band.  They are only passable except for Tanya, who leads with a rich voice, a pitch-perfect sound full of echoes, waterfalls, and birds.  But the audience does not care.  They have come to see us.  They have stood in lines several blocks long to fill this colossal cement bowl, to watch us sustain the act of being ourselves.  Sometimes I used to feel the audience was an imposition upon musicians, as though pleasures shared by so many were thinned out, diminished.  But when I listen to the sounds of computerized music, and the faked instrumentation of multiple-band synthesizers, I know that we can play in front of these people with deep pride; we play our own instruments as we have done since the beginning of our climb.  Oh, there were a couple of years that we didn’t play together, when our instruments were mixed one track at a time as we passed through the studio on our separate ways to London, or the Bahamas.  “Uninspired,” Rolling Stone said; “Such a great band making records the same way a hash-house makes eggs:  over easy.”  And, “If Mystic Mountain continues to occupy their plateau of mediocrity, we suggest they change their name to Mystic Mesa.”

No.  That same dissatisfaction drew the five of us together again.  We were not at the top of the mountain yet.  There was more we could do, more to reach for, to write, to sing.  We are the Mystic Mountain.  Tristan said it best.  The only guys who are perfect are all dead.  Well, we live, and we’ll play one more concert in search of that final peak.  I believe there will be a deep joining tonight, a synchronization of our minds into a single unity such as we have never reached before.  I can feel the power, the seduction of that moment even now.  We wait with quiet resolve.

I am Clayton St. John; you may have heard the name or seen the poster.  I’m second from the right, the same as I am on stage.  Of course I’m a little heavier now, and my horse-mane of dark hair a bit thinner.  And I tell myself the grey is not really noticeable yet.  But the poster is more than twenty years old.  I know my long collared open-front shirts doesn’t hide the toll of those years.  But then, twenty years ago, I was a back-up singer and a fair flutist.  Now I am Clayton St. John, and I’ve played the Philharmonic, twice.  But tonight is another Philharmonic, for each movement in the shadows holds a face, and a threshold to a joining spirit.  I feel them waiting.  I can already hear the flutes inside their brains anticipating The Quest or Lucifer’s Hammer.  I hear the waves of disjointed sounds, tiny bright dreams awash with them, like boats foundering in a thrashing sea.  Again I remember Tristan’s words; last night, dizzy with scotch, he spoke of this:  “Their fantasies won’t survive us,” he said.  “We’ll break in and blind them.  I want to be… I want to be like a hand on the throat of the soul!”  His grin did not diminish the apprehension I felt—the desire to hoist sail and tack away from the harsh spring-steel of his words.

I put on my back support and Christopher pulls the laces taut for me.  It will hold in my gut and improve my wind, but I feel like a transvestite in a corset until I put on my shirt.  I jump up and down and shake the muscle kinks out of my limbs, wave my fingers and make faces to work blood into my cheeks and lips.  When I am warm, I let my mind reach out for the others.

The one on the far right of the poster is Christopher See.  You may have read we are good friends.  In truth, we are the best of friends, a special congruence of joys and sorrows shared over wine every week, and sometimes shared without speaking at all.  Christopher has put on thirty pounds since the poster shot, and wears long flowing shirts to hide his paunch.  He refuses to wear a cummerbund; he says it restricts his movement over the keyboards.  He knows what works best for him.  But as my mind reaches out to him, I pass through a thin membrane of composure and feel again his anguish.  I see the image appear; it is Tanya, come to taunt him again.  She is standing close, but not smiling.  She is pulling away from him, a comet soaring in her own night sky.  Does it always have to be like this? I hear his mind’s voice say.  And another sensation, a stinging high in the cheeks.  I cannot hear her answers through him, but it doesn’t matter.  She has said them all to me once as well.  And Christopher was with me then, as I am with him now.

Tanya’s voice rises like a mating call-to-combat and resonates through the ceiling. The number ends and we hear the applause like a hard rain.  Christopher does twenty push-ups, ignoring the eyes and lips in his brain.  He calmly tapes his wrists against the pounding of the keyboards.  He catches my gaze, and I feel the smile that does not appear.  In the end, it’s, you know, the music, he thinks; I nod.

Mark Kreutzer works his shoulders and arms in the expert circles cross-country skiers use before a race.  For a moment, I feel the rarified wind on his cheeks, the fir branches brushing his sides.  Then a burst of white silence slopes away into soft blue, a breathless lunge into air above the tiny lodge and cabins… after a quarter century of alternating between the ski slopes and the drums, Mark has developed an enormous neck and shoulders, and a hearing problem he compensates for with ear-phones plugged directly into the main amp.  He grins at me, wild-eyed, the way only those people can who live their lives stuck in one gear—overdrive.

Peter Martin sits in a lotus on his cushioned mat.  Peter is the hermit of the Mountain, the lost mystic.  It was Peter who brought us together and who named us, and then who hung back in the shadows to the far left of the poster like a stage-hand, his bass guitar behind his back.  It is Peter’s gift for the words which describe the terrain within while observing from without which lifts our music above the mere simple melodies of the rock-synchers.  Peter is the quiet one, the seeker, the dancer.  He has taken up Yoga with both hands of his soul.  He has even traveled to India under another name to study with his chosen master.  I do not feel as close to Peter as I do to Christopher, But I tune into his mind as though opening a favorite book.  I sometimes have more empathic tone than I can control, and Peter has pulled me from the whirlpools of turbulent emotions many times.  I reach for him now, for calmness, and for a better grasp on that which remains my own when I have given all I have.  I breathe with him as he bends and stretches his thin body into impossible angles.  Of all of us, Peter has changed the least.  I believe it is because he has in his own gentle and deliberate way stopped allowing age to affect him.

It is Tristan I worry about the most.  Tristan Bell, the one in the center, the sharp focus of the poster and the stage.  Tristan is the only one of us who has had a solo poster.  He is posing in front of his full length mirror.  He has bleached his hair again so that it looks as close as possible to that famous image.  I watch him puff up, turn this way, then the other.  He seems to prefer the right side forward, so the belly of his guitar will cover his round middle-aged stomach, and he can flex his right bicep, the one he has been working on.  He snugs his black silk pants tight into the bulges of his crotch by pulling and tying laces above his butt.  He smokes a cigarette and views himself in the mirror again.  He is dreaming of hanging suspended from his Rogallo wing, soaring like a giant hunting bird above the jagged cliffs of Big Sur.  I feel a wind blast through his brain, far colder than Mark’s ski slopes, a wind that freezes the blood in my face and rips open my chest like a hungry beak. 

Tristan sees me in his mirror and blocks me out of his mind as the others have never done.  Now I feel nothing from him but a blankness full of pin-holes, like the eyes of endless faces, through which that icy wind blows.  The others feel it too; I feel them feel it.  But Tristan just smiles and says he’s fine.  In fact, he’s going to shine, he says.  All I feel from him is blackness.  He explained it once.  He said he holds back on the final synch like pulling tension on a bowstring, so that when he finally does join our minds, he’ll project all of us far out into the audience, an overwhelming magnetic presence.  I don’t know about that; all I know is what I feel. 

Again there is the hard rain, and a thunder of stomping feet.  The audience is with Tanya all the way to the end.  Then there is quiet, and we know the stage is bare and the crew is moving the sets around, checking the lights, turning on our main amps, sound mixing, and eliminating the last of the feedback.  Vern comes down the stairs and asks if we are ready for the black-out.  He looks straight at me, and I know he is remembering my visit to his office a month ago…

I see myself standing by the picture window through Vern’s darting eyes, amused by the bird’s nest my hair resembles from the rear.  I remember my hand on the window, the cold, thirtieth-story air on my palm.  Woven into the fibers of that sensation were the salt air from the Golden Gate, the traffic noise, joss and burnt rice from Chinatown, sun-ripe grasses from the Sacramento hills. Below, an accident in the street sent a sensation I felt as pain under my fingernails.  I removed my hand from the window.

Vern sat gingerly into his thick cushioned chair like a man mounting a bronc in a rodeo chute, biting his cigar so as not to lose it on the first jolt.  “I’m against it, Clayton,” he said with a final rush of blue smoke.

“This may be our last gig, Vern.  I’ve talked with the others.  We’re all of one mind on this.”

“You want to do a full mind synch.  Jesus.”

“We’ve been playing hard again.  Our regular hours.  You remember.  It used to drive you crazy watching us play all night.  Technically we’re ready, as good as we’ve ever been.”

“Listen, listen, listen,” Vern said, as he almost always did when he was going to give his agent-to-renegade-client speech.  I’d heard it a hundred times.  Vern took the cigar all the way out of his mouth.  “We’ve come a long way together, Clayton.  You guys writing and singing, my booking and promos.  We made it, you and I.  We got the townhouses and the beach houses and ski chalets, not to mention that sailboat of yours.  We’re there, baby.”  Vern leaned toward me as though he intended to tweak my cheek-flesh.  I turned from him toward the window again. 

“We are never there,” I said.

“That’s Peter talking, or Tristan,” Vern said.  You’re older, more mellow.  You know what I’m talking about.  Why the risk-taking?”

“We’ve got the sound, Vern.  It’s like a single vibe again.  A meditation…”

“I know, Clay.  I was worried at first.  But I see that glow in your face.  I’m not worried about the music at all.  You know what the hell I’m getting at.  I’m talking about the mind-synch.  It’s more dangerous than you think.”

“So’s mountain climbing.  But without the climb, you don’t ever get the view from the peak.  Tristan says it’s the ultimate experience.”

“Yeah.  Like falling off a cliff.”

I see into his eyes; I see paper, stacks of paper.  Some of it is grey and green.  Then there is steel and glass and velour.  That is all.  “Others are trying it,” I said.  “The Stones, Moody Blues, The Who, Nautilus…”

“Yeah, Nautilus,” Vern interrupted.  “A keyboard tekkie, a programmer, and a speed freak.  It’s all electronics, Clay.  It’s not flute, it’s not guitar, not even real drums.  It’s just typing into a black box.  No variables, no need for talent.”  He stopped shaking his head to draw on his cigar.

“Nautilus puts out good sound and damn good vibes.  You know they synched last week in Seattle.”

“Yeah, I know all about Nautilus in Seattle.  I was there.  In the first place, there were riots inside the Dome all night long.  In the second place, those guys are young and brainless.  And in the third place, the drug they took is completely unpredictable.  Not to mention illegal.”

“We’re going to play the Palace next month, and we’re going to try a synch.”

“Listen, I was front row in Seattle, Clay.  I didn’t synch, but I felt the energy.  I saw the shudders sweep over people’s heads like a damn wave.  I saw the sweat, and the tears.  And those boys are only in their twenties.  They try it a couple of times a year and still it gets out of hand, like in Seattle.  One mind on a bad trip can bum out the whole vibe.  Risky enough for three young guys with some experience at it.  But five guys without experience to try a high-tech synch in front of fifteen thousand people?  They say even a three or four way synch wipes out any ability to control it.  You know how many weirdos, not to mention weak hearts, the Palace can hold?

“Yeah.  About fifteen thousand, give or take a few stray normal people who get in by mistake.”

“You know in Seattle, a man actually died?”

“An old guy, I read.”

“Fifty-nine is how old.  How old are you, Clay?”

“Not fifty.”

“Not for a few months.  Or is it a few weeks?  Look at yourself.  Sure you’ve got your long layered hair, but look how far it’s receded.  And your shoulders slump, and your gut sticks out, and the top button on your pants is always undone.  You eat too much for lunch, Clay?  Or are you just getting old along with the rest of us real people?  And now you’re worried about it.  You want a last fling.  You want to convince yourself the woman of your dreams isn’t opting for younger meat, am I right?  You want to climb into her body and into her brain, quicken the breathing…”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.  But maybe there’s more.  Maybe it’s because we’re getting older and we want to resist the slide, but maybe it’s because it’s a challenge, to get into as many heads as we can and carry them to that peak, the ultimate climax.  Anyway, we’re musicians, not tekkies.  Nobody has ever done a full mind synch with actual instruments, and Mystic Mountain is the band most likely to pull it off.  I don’t know, Vern.  It’s like a magnet, the audience, the lights, the applause.  It’s like spirit food, baby, and being away from it, well, it’s like a hunger that gets worse and worse like you wouldn’t understand.  It’s a coming together, take that any way you want.  A celebration of a single moment.  Tristan says it’s kind of a moth-in-the-candle thing.  I can’t explain it.”

“Tristan again.  You know, sometimes he scares me, Clayton.  He’s got no sense at all of holding back.  He’s over the edge all the time, if you know what I mean.  You know how bad he was hurt the last time you played live.”

It was more true than he knew; Tristan had gone over that edge last time.  It was during our longest hit song, The Portal, during the final chorus, when his voice and mine had joined into one sound.  I felt it happening, but I could not resist it.  Our voices poured into the words as though from a single mind, singing, Our bodies are the moon and sea, they rise and meet, flowing and free,,,  There was a partial synch; Tristan and I, and I could feel the first few rows of the audience coming in with us.  I could see them pantomiming Tristan on the guitar.  When Tristan played a long slow run and his fingers caressed the frets like a lover’s thigh, I could see invisible guitars in the hands of spaced-out synchers half a dozen rows back, their fingers jerking into the exact same run.  And there were flutists, too, oh yes.  There were those arms flailing to the side, elbows bouncing off their neighbor’s faces, swaying up and back exactly as I did… I reach to you and give you my all, the crash of the waves, the shoreline’s fall,” we sang, and there was a moment when Tristan reached for the high notes of As we pass through the portal, I felt the tightening in my vocal chords even though I was playing the flute.  It was as though I had become a tube through which his voice flowed like hot syrup; I felt it spread down through my body and I let it happen.  I felt it again as the chorus repeated,  As we pass through the portal.  I couldn’t resist it.  I’m a natural, but Tristan, I knew at once that he had taken the drug.  I could feel the tension in his spine, see the seascape of faces in his head, felt his high notes flow down my chest and out of my belly, down into my cock, and on the peak note I started to pass out, but Peter broke the bass rhythm by slowing the tremolo.  I knew he did it on purpose because he saw the synch happening and tried to stop it.  I came out of it immediately, but Tristan climaxed and went down; so did three people in the first row.  The thunder of the standing ovation covered the confusion as the coliseum guards sprinted down the aisles with their oxygen kits.

“Tristan’s okay,” I said.  “He’s with us now.  He won’t synch unless it’s unanimous.”

“And it is, then?”

“Yes.  With or without you.”

Vern held his head, then brushed his sparse hair flat with the palm of his hand.  “Okay, you have my official disapproval, for what it’s worth.  But I’ll want to be there.”  He paused, motionless for a second; I saw those grey-green piles of paper again behind his eyes.  And there was a woman.  Young-- a groupie.  So, Vern still had ambitions in some ways.

“I’m late for practice.”

“Take care.”

I heard him say those words with all the emotion a gambler musters when he speaks to his dice.  I saw him, saw his greasy strands of hair that he combed from one side to the other to try and hide the bald spot.  It didn’t, but Vern knew this and did it anyway, a sort of futile rebellion.  He pretended to be young, but at least he didn’t pretend to feel the music in his soul.  I’d never seen Vern picking at an invisible guitar, or worse yet, a flute.  That’s why I liked him. 

“Yeah, take care,” I said, and let the door close on its own…

This passes as a kind of secret between Vern and me as our eyes lock for an instant into deep probe.  I hold nothing back from him but give nothing in return.  He guesses correctly that I have no secrets from the others; he breaks and stares around the room.

“Okay, Blackout,” Vern says, and claps his hands twice for punctuation.  Time to go onstage.  As we leave the locker room and climb the stairs, even in the blackness, a reverberation of thunder mixed with screaming sweeps backward through the bodies.  Yes, the crowd seems very receptive.  I hope our minds will synch seamlessly tonight.  I don’t know what will happen, but I already begin to give myself to it.  I have no concerns.  Since I don’t take the drug, I can control my entry into the collective mind.  I can even hold some thoughts of my own instead of losing them all.  I don’t know why more people don’t cultivate their empathic tone—so much safer, so much easier on the body.  But it’s none of my business what others do, nor is this the time to dwell on it; we have reached the top of the stairs.

In the darkness I can see movement, and hundreds of tiny flames as cigarette lighters are held overhead.  The audience can see our silhouettes in the darkness, and their applause becomes the sound of an avalanche.  I find my way to the right-hand mike just as the lights flick to a brilliant blue, with white circles on Peter, Tristan, and me.

We begin with the biggest hit from our first album, Dreamseed, a song cut before many of the younger faces in the audience were born.  But there is a roar of recognition by the third note.  Christopher is hot tonight; he throws in a few riffles that aren’t on the original cut, and sticks out his tongue at me.  I feel his vibrations like an old friend tousling my hair, and he smiles.  I take up the flute and rush right into the focus of the song, and when the refrain comes, I mimic Christopher’s keyboard improvisations as best I can, which I can say is pretty damn good.  The flute is mine, all mine.  It’s what I do best in life.  And when I finish, there is applause and stamping feet in the bleachers; yes, I feel very good too, Christopher.

When our intro is over, Christopher comes out of his keyboard cubicle (he has to move one of his four keyboards to exit) and slaps me five, but very lightly, like a cat’s paw.  We know the music that is in our souls has to pass through our hands, and it will be a long, hand-sore night.

We play our entire second album while the lights shift slowly from the ultra-blue spectrum to the rich solid red glow we are bathed with as we play the title song at the end, Blood from the Soul.  I pace myself so that I don’t tire.  There is no flute in Blood, so I take up a tambourine; at least I can look like I am contributing an essential part of the sound.

The lights shift to greens except for me.  We’re going to do Lucifer’s Hammer now, and I am the lead vocal.  I take the mike off its stand, and Christopher leads me into it.  I begin slowly, softly, like a motor warming up, and then I feel the vibrations of Christopher’s notes pushing me onward like a wave beneath a surf rider.  But suddenly I realize the notes are not coming from Christopher, that he actually has his arms folded as if to say, look—no hands.  And I know that it is Tristan, cool distant Tristan is warming up, and he mimics Christopher’s keyboard run so perfectly, so gently, that it gives me a sensation of pleasure in my spine.  I reach a high voice summit and glance at Tristan and he smiles, then takes off on a brilliant riff all his own.  Christopher cuts in to support me; I am overwhelmed at our timing and our compliment.  We are extremely hot tonight.

At the end of the number the audience rises to its feet, clapping and shouting.  I am starting to fatigue, and my throat is dry, almost raw.  We take a thirty-second break and share a cola drink while the audience sits back down.  It is time to do our most popular album; we decide as we drink to play the whole album.  There are only four songs, but they are all ten to twelve minutes long.  We will do the title song, The Quest, first.  Then, Resurrection, then The Fires of Eden.  Tristan wants to do The Portal last.  We understand without speaking that that will be the time for us to try to join our minds.

I take up the flute; I am ready.  The Quest is the most exhausting number for me.  I make the flute reach notes and split notes and warble notes that I have never before mastered, but they are here in this version, for this crowd, tonight.  And for myself.  The lights gleam an iridescent opal-blue off my wet fingers.  I know I must appear like a blue flame; that is the way I feel.  I can see would-be flute players as far out as the twentieth row swaying with me and working their fingers in the dark like so many spastics.  Go for it, I say to them with the music from my flute: I am.

Resurrection is Christopher’s number, and he is unconscious with concentration.  Sweat rolls down his brow and drips from his parted lips as he leaps from one keyboard to another, pounding with his fingers, and a few times with his fists.  Once he jumps up and lands a loud bass note with the edge of the wallet bulge on his ass, and the audience roars its appreciation.  Christopher’s hands blur in my side vision, blue and red spots reflecting off his wet arms like night traffic in the rain.  I see his head swaying slowly as he smiles into the last note, held with one hand and syncopated with the other like a rippling brook.  His matted hair hides his face almost completely.  When the audience stands, Christopher sits on the floor to catch his breath.  He grins at me; I give him the thumbs-down sign.  We both know it’s a lie.  Christopher has never been better.  He towels his face and waits for the next number. 

The Fires of Eden centers around Mark Kreutzer’s famous drum solo; he and Tristan take it almost alone.  Mark breaks a drumstick part-way into the solo, and never misses a beat; he double times with one hand while he reaches for a spare stick with the other.  The audience catches that action and gives him a standing ovation.  While they stand, Tristan cuts in with a melody run, his treble gain on full, ripping into the heart of the sound like a buzz-saw.  Mark catches the increased tempo and attaches himself to it like a pilot fish.  But Tristan is all alone now. I just have a tambourine for a prop, and Christopher only touches a key every third or fourth beat.  Peter works the bass down to its lowest sounds and adds tremolo so that Tristan’s searing runs seem to have a reverberation from the core of the earth itself.  The audience cannot sit down; they are jumping and clapping their hands over their heads.  There are screams—Tristan, Tristan—We can all hear the voices except Tristan, who is deep into the sounds he creates until the very end. 

The ovation lasts almost five full minutes.  I have never had so much time to simply stand and watch the frantic movement of thirty thousand arms.  This is the roar of the fires of Eden; Tristan named that number well.  I am with him now, and I can feel him smiling, like a man climbing a rope up a steep cliff, just before he reaches the summit.  We have one more number to do.

The Portal is our longest piece, and it is Tristan’s theme song.  Everyone in the Palace has heard The Portal; they have shouted for this song more than any other.  It is our platinum, our masterpiece, the song that launched Tristan’s poster onto bedroom walls all around the world.  The audience awaits us with a growing noise, like an incoming tide.  “Do The Portal!” A high voice screams, then lower voices: “Do The Portal!  The Portal!”  Tristan smiles, prolongs the suspense by taking a slow drink of water.  Then he passes the water pitcher, and we all drink.  The water cools my throat. 

Mark Kreutzer checks his drumsticks, then signals Tristan.  Tristan’s smile fades into a tightness through his jaw.  He gives the signal and Mark sets the beat, Then Peter joins in with that incredible low bass, just above perception level.  Christopher joins in with his measured flourish; he is frisky tonight, but adds nothing to Tristan’s song but the perfection of his keyboard. 

I raise my flute to my lips awaiting the note of my entry.  I begin my harmony and I hear a voice.  It is my own voice, and not my own.  Welcome, it says, and in that instant I know the drug was in the water pitcher and there is no holding back for I am the flute and I am the drums and I am the keyboard and I am the bass, and welcome, welcome, say the voices; I am the band.

My rhythm is a pulsing deep within the earth and my chorus is a flight of long-winged birds and the sound of the wind in the valleys, and soaring down through them, and my keyboard touches are the heartbeats of lovers I have lain with long after the heart has calmed; I am Peter and I know the loneliness of the dark within the soul, and I am Mark the drummer and I see those valleys full of birds and below them, skiers, and I feel the rush of chill against my face, and I am Christopher, oh, this dream so bittersweet, a woman with dark curly hair who is holding aloft her wineglass to me, and I click it with my own, and click goes the keyboard, and I am Clayton St. John, I know the uncharted beaches on which we rest, the taut sails canting the schooner I dream of, their rigging lines singing in the wind like music from a wooden flute, welcome, Clayton.  And welcome, you in the audience; I feel you join me, for now I am a carpenter and I am a seamstress and oh yes a coliseum guard, and I am a student of mathematics and a student also of economics, and of literature, and a plumber as well, and I am a retired mailman and a football player and also a politician; that is to say I am one who is a burglar and a prostitute and a minister, welcome, welcome.

I reach to you and give you my all, Tristan sings, leaning over the mike like a man about to perform a sex act.  Where is Tristan?  Our bodies are the moon and the sea, Tristan breathes.  Come on in, Tristan, I hear the plumber say deep in his heart, and I say from mine, I am just a teacher, Tristan, but take me, take meee…  Touch me, take me, hear the voice from my soul, Tristan is taut-necked and his eyes are shut tight as if in pain.  I can see from the bass that the left side of his face is twitching rapidly, and from the flute I see his right side is covered with sweat which is dark like blood.  Where is Tristan? I ask.  I see the band from back rows; he is so small, so distant… I hear a voice, Where is Tristan?  And we pass through the portal, Tristan is singing; I see his face slacken, and there is a rush of feeling like a runner passing by a walker, and I hear a voice that says, follow me, and I know that it is—

Tristan, welcome, Tristan, welcome, and I scream and I applaud from the twentieth, the thirtieth, the fiftieth row.  I am in the fifty-second row, oh Tristan, I want you, my crotch is so wet and here I am oh Tristan, and I play my flute as though it we a part of my face, and my keyboard is like soft skin to my fingers upon it as my bass reverbs a sound from deep within the earth and I rise out of my chair and clap my hands over my head and I am the beat of my own drums as I sing, Pass through the portal, pass through the portal, and I hear the run of my lead guitar split into my ears like a wedge in the brain; the run takes off out of the script of the melody like a bird of prey rising for the hunt.  My eyes are the eyes of the eagle as I search the highest drafts and I know something is wrong, for my lead guitar is a hunter now, and I seek the hardest pounding of the heart, the beat past the one that keeps us alive.  I am the voice of a man falling into that beat; Follow me, the voice says, and I am with you, Tristan, and I am terrified, and I seek the hole in the temple through which the soul escapes at the moment of death and my voice is the voice of screaming and my wind stops in my flute and I hear the words that are not in the scripted lyrics, And I am shouting, We shall be immortal!  And I feel a coldness sweep over me from the back of my head; there is pain.  I have gone too far and, as we pass through the portal, I hear my voice depart from me, and the space it leaves behind is blackness, and that blackness expands around me and settles upon me like a vast, buzzing tunnel…

I awaken slowly into daylight.  I am undressed, and there is a white sheet over me up to my chest.  A tube from a hanging bottle disappears under the sheet, and I can feel something like a beetle buried in the tissue of my arm. 

“Clayton?  It is Christopher.

“Where am I?” I say.  My mouth is dry, my tongue is sticky.

“Hospital.  It was touch and go for you for awhile.  You’ll be okay now though.”

“Last thing, I remember is the concert last night.”

“It was two nights ago, Clay.  You’ve been out more than thirty hours.”

“What Happened?”

“Maybe later, when you’re stronger…”

“Tell me now, Chris.”

“It was Tristan.  He went too far again.”

“Oh God, no…”

“Four people bought it, Clay.  A plumber, a teacher, and a guard.”

“And the fourth?”

“Tristan.”

“I felt it coming, Chris.  I couldn’t do anything.  I couldn’t stop him.  I knew he’d go past the limits.  Why?”

Christopher wiped his face with both hands as though molding a piece of clay into place.  “I don’t know.  We have so much trouble with the lead guitars.  They all have a kind of hollowness that haunts them.  They’ve got to run away as hard as they can from something inside.  Peter calls it the Nemo drive, you know, like the captain in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.  He says some guys just can’t take being, you know, just another regular human.  I don’t understand what Peter says most of the time.”

“What’ll we do?  Can we get a replacement?”

“It’s all taken care of, Clay.  We have an understudy already polishing his act.  He’ll go through the plastic surgery tomorrow.  Then he’ll be hair-styled, and that’ll be it.”

“What’s he like?  What’s his name?

“He’a a lead guitarist.  What are they all like?”  Christopher drummed his fingers on my bed railing.  “And after tomorrow, his name is Tristan.”

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