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I was in Spokane, WA the summer, fall and winter of '91-'92 when I overhauled the motor of a '66 VW squareback I lived out of a dozen years from '82-'94. I'd had to do this twice due to leaving out $15 worth of parts I thought I didn't need, and the second time ended up sleeping in a tent in an alley behind an older woman's house whose back yard I was using to work on my car.
That was in the fall, actually from the beginning of August until after the first of the year, and during this time I was in a local second hand store and found a flute they were asking $12.50 for made out of what I think was an old piece of copper boiler pipe, with ten tone holes and an embouchure plate of high-grade aluminum. They sold me the flute for ten dollars, they said because I was the only one who'd ever been able to get a sound out of the instrument; and with that for encouragement I began trying to play sometimes in the wooded area where me and my car were parked.
This flute had been etched "FANTASY FLUTE" below the embouchure plate with a device like tools are marked "stolen from..." with, and had been similarly marked on the back "c. 1982" and "J. Duel"
I'd learned how to play the Boehm style flute with keys and pads this copper pipe flute was pitched identical to in C, but since the left thumb hole on the copper flute was so different I'd at first had difficulty holding my new instrument properly.(I remember the last time I saw "val" Robin Culver from Thousand Oaks, CA who'd been the piccolo player in the symphony at North Texas University the '70-'71 school year when I was undoubtably the worst of 2000 music majors that year as a saxophone major, who'd shown me the "baby tones" exercise on my flute...who ten years later had two young sons and had married a very handsome man with the last name of Le Duc whose mustaches were so large they could be seen from behind, who she'd gotten hitched to when she said she'd been trying to decide between Jean Pierre Rampal and Julian Baker for her next flute teacher...I'd lived in Ojai, CA and had been riding a '73 Aermacchi 350 cc motorcycle through Thousand Oaks from Malibu in '82 and her uncle had been in the phone book and given me her number then)
Not until that December when I wandered uptown the day after Thanksgiving when I made $29 standing on a street corner with my flute did I start to get serious about playing it,* and after a week or so of playing about four hours a day on the street and practicing four additional hours in private in all twelve keys I began to get really proficient. Ultimately I made $700 that month, but had the great disappointment of having the flute stolen between X-mas and New Years.
This flute was really elegant and the metal around the tone holes began to shine with a warm glow after I'd played on it awhile and they became polished with use.(I'd gotten a cheap pair of knit synthetic material bright red gloves in the PAYLESS drug store across the street from the corner I found I liked to play at best, and cut off all the ends of the fingers and thumbs)
The thing was also a lethal weapon, a heavy metal pipe a person could've laid someone out with for good, and which knowing the story of the Japanese samurai inventing the shakuhachi flute which doubles as a similar weapon, when forced to give up their swords by the government, I thought very highly of this aspect of my flute, too.(and was mildly terrified as I'm pretty lame as a martial artist!)
Years later in October of '05 I was visiting Bert Wilson and Nancy Curtis in their Olympia, WA home and told them about this flute and Bert was interested since he told me that "DuEl" was what Duke Ellington's friends had called him.(both are very accomplished avant garde jazz musicians as woodwind players, and Bert calls Nancy "the flute God!" <www.bertwilson.com>)
*For months I'd thought this flute was some hippie's mistake and had only tried to play to birds to see if they'd talk back to me. They always had, except the day after Thanksgiving a lonely seeming pigeon on one of the two crosses on top of the Lady Of Lourdes Catholic Church in Spokane had refused to make any comment, which led to my wandering uptown a short ways from there when I made the $29 without sounding remotely like any music I'd ever heard, and similarly that weekend when I made $60.
Two other experiences stand out from that month, one of which was making friends with homeless "ex-east coast radical lesbian" Dixie who was belle of Spokane's skid row I got a big crush on, who was ringing bell for the Salvation Army and who asked me to play "Amazing Grace" for her which I did perfectly without knowing the words.
The other remarkable experience was one day when I'd had my flute with me under my green wool forest service jacket I always wore when I played, with one end in one of my front pants pockets and the other under an arm pit.
I was crossing the street near the big Bon Marche' department store's main entrance in a busy part of downtown, and a nice looking middle aged woman had been crossing just where I was going in the opposite direction, and we'd both noticed at that moment that there was an amazing pause in reality all around us where absolutely no noise of street traffic could be heard in any direction, a fluke of the cosmos so to speak and likely incredibly rare, when for some reason all the cars, trucks and buses which usually were to be both seen and heard in any direction simply somehow were absent from their usual patterns.
This gave a sense to me of being out in a remote rural country side in mid winter when a simple sort of quiet prevailed compared to other seasons of the year, perhaps muffled by a layer of freshly fallen snow.
Such a subtle pause that day we'd both appreciated and noticed of each other amidst all the confusion, heavy traffic, noise and jostling of the season's commercial rush.(the 23rd & 24th both I'd made $150 each day, but on the 23rd people were almost throwing the money at me, insane with the whole long drain of emotions and pocket book and with a very palpable anger at having to be there then; while on the 24th I think most of the people still in downtown were merchants or their employees-all of whom seemed to float about six feet above the sidewalk as they came by me, all their tasks finally fulfilled and their coffers full, ready to relax and enjoy themselves)
That was in the fall, actually from the beginning of August until after the first of the year, and during this time I was in a local second hand store and found a flute they were asking $12.50 for made out of what I think was an old piece of copper boiler pipe, with ten tone holes and an embouchure plate of high-grade aluminum. They sold me the flute for ten dollars, they said because I was the only one who'd ever been able to get a sound out of the instrument; and with that for encouragement I began trying to play sometimes in the wooded area where me and my car were parked.
This flute had been etched "FANTASY FLUTE" below the embouchure plate with a device like tools are marked "stolen from..." with, and had been similarly marked on the back "c. 1982" and "J. Duel"
I'd learned how to play the Boehm style flute with keys and pads this copper pipe flute was pitched identical to in C, but since the left thumb hole on the copper flute was so different I'd at first had difficulty holding my new instrument properly.(I remember the last time I saw "val" Robin Culver from Thousand Oaks, CA who'd been the piccolo player in the symphony at North Texas University the '70-'71 school year when I was undoubtably the worst of 2000 music majors that year as a saxophone major, who'd shown me the "baby tones" exercise on my flute...who ten years later had two young sons and had married a very handsome man with the last name of Le Duc whose mustaches were so large they could be seen from behind, who she'd gotten hitched to when she said she'd been trying to decide between Jean Pierre Rampal and Julian Baker for her next flute teacher...I'd lived in Ojai, CA and had been riding a '73 Aermacchi 350 cc motorcycle through Thousand Oaks from Malibu in '82 and her uncle had been in the phone book and given me her number then)
Not until that December when I wandered uptown the day after Thanksgiving when I made $29 standing on a street corner with my flute did I start to get serious about playing it,* and after a week or so of playing about four hours a day on the street and practicing four additional hours in private in all twelve keys I began to get really proficient. Ultimately I made $700 that month, but had the great disappointment of having the flute stolen between X-mas and New Years.
This flute was really elegant and the metal around the tone holes began to shine with a warm glow after I'd played on it awhile and they became polished with use.(I'd gotten a cheap pair of knit synthetic material bright red gloves in the PAYLESS drug store across the street from the corner I found I liked to play at best, and cut off all the ends of the fingers and thumbs)
The thing was also a lethal weapon, a heavy metal pipe a person could've laid someone out with for good, and which knowing the story of the Japanese samurai inventing the shakuhachi flute which doubles as a similar weapon, when forced to give up their swords by the government, I thought very highly of this aspect of my flute, too.(and was mildly terrified as I'm pretty lame as a martial artist!)
Years later in October of '05 I was visiting Bert Wilson and Nancy Curtis in their Olympia, WA home and told them about this flute and Bert was interested since he told me that "DuEl" was what Duke Ellington's friends had called him.(both are very accomplished avant garde jazz musicians as woodwind players, and Bert calls Nancy "the flute God!" <www.bertwilson.com>)
*For months I'd thought this flute was some hippie's mistake and had only tried to play to birds to see if they'd talk back to me. They always had, except the day after Thanksgiving a lonely seeming pigeon on one of the two crosses on top of the Lady Of Lourdes Catholic Church in Spokane had refused to make any comment, which led to my wandering uptown a short ways from there when I made the $29 without sounding remotely like any music I'd ever heard, and similarly that weekend when I made $60.
Two other experiences stand out from that month, one of which was making friends with homeless "ex-east coast radical lesbian" Dixie who was belle of Spokane's skid row I got a big crush on, who was ringing bell for the Salvation Army and who asked me to play "Amazing Grace" for her which I did perfectly without knowing the words.
The other remarkable experience was one day when I'd had my flute with me under my green wool forest service jacket I always wore when I played, with one end in one of my front pants pockets and the other under an arm pit.
I was crossing the street near the big Bon Marche' department store's main entrance in a busy part of downtown, and a nice looking middle aged woman had been crossing just where I was going in the opposite direction, and we'd both noticed at that moment that there was an amazing pause in reality all around us where absolutely no noise of street traffic could be heard in any direction, a fluke of the cosmos so to speak and likely incredibly rare, when for some reason all the cars, trucks and buses which usually were to be both seen and heard in any direction simply somehow were absent from their usual patterns.
This gave a sense to me of being out in a remote rural country side in mid winter when a simple sort of quiet prevailed compared to other seasons of the year, perhaps muffled by a layer of freshly fallen snow.
Such a subtle pause that day we'd both appreciated and noticed of each other amidst all the confusion, heavy traffic, noise and jostling of the season's commercial rush.(the 23rd & 24th both I'd made $150 each day, but on the 23rd people were almost throwing the money at me, insane with the whole long drain of emotions and pocket book and with a very palpable anger at having to be there then; while on the 24th I think most of the people still in downtown were merchants or their employees-all of whom seemed to float about six feet above the sidewalk as they came by me, all their tasks finally fulfilled and their coffers full, ready to relax and enjoy themselves)
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