[quicktime width=”240″ height=”170″]http://www.niksnexus.net/media/tuck.mov[/quicktime]

Looking like he just stepped out of period Versailles – eccentric virtuoso, ghostly pale, long slender fingers, curly locks – Tuck strutted and Patti scatted and we sat on the grass at the ocean’s edge, listening and that was cool – didn’t reach down into my soul or anything, but it was cool. Until … Tuck did some solo work that made us stop and really listen and the jaws started dropping to the grassy floor. And Patti, after appreciating him and us and the hallowed grounds of Esalen dropped into her heart and began to sing pure untill the tears began to flow down her face and then mine and I looked around me and we were apparently all blow away (this coming from a jaded skeptic). It’s not something you can really capture, but only appreciate the moment.

And Rumi says:

Don’t worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn’t matter.

We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.

The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the whole worlds harp
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing.

So the candle flickers and goes out.
We have a piece of flint, and a spark.

The singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a
pearl somewhere on the ocean floor.

Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge
of driftwood along the beach, wanting!

They that we can’t see derive from a slow
and powerful root.

Stop the words now.
Open the window in the centre of your
chest, and let the spirit fly in and out.