[count your breaths, can you keep the time?]

he drives in from the east, an ache in his back. affordable acupuncture is rare these days, especially this side of the mighty Mississippi, and that spot in the driver’s seat has folded under the weight of a thousand trips. the body keeps account while the soul calls the shots. so again, out the door; the aroma of another van-cooked meal mingles with the petrichor, the humidity already here (it’s always been here).

[a high-toned whine where you might expect a resonant bellow]

Tatsuya-san’s work is at home in the space between notes, using handmade bows and the air in his lungs to coax out frequencies otherwise unheard of from gongs, singing bowls and cymbals. he uses the word ma (間): derived from the characters 門 ("door") and 日 ("sun"), as in “the light that streams through an ‘empty’ doorway.” like the water that puddles in the tire tracks as he pulls away from another stop, the life lived between venues. call him a percussionist, a sculptor of sound, an enigmatic and amiable traveler of the long road.

[the sun in your eyes at once blinds you and beckons you onward to the horizon]