Shakuhachi, shoes and screenshots

I heard of the Shakuhachi concept at a meeting of the local recorder society, when a guest conductor came, many years ago, to demonstrate and discuss the Japanese shakuhachi wooden flute. 

It has a long and complicated history, and was originally an instrument  on which monks played long tones as part of meditation practice. It was not a performance instrument.

The guest, a westerner who had studied for many years with meditative monks in Japan, explained how he had not realized this at first,  when he asked a great player to play some tones.

The idea is to let them sound until the sound ends. He was worried in case any other sound, a dog barking outside,  a shout from the street, would interrupt and ruin it. 

The player explained, no, any sounds that happen during the tone are part of it. Nothing is an interruption. 

I decided to think of it as the Shakuhachi effect, because it profoundly changed how I saw the many detours my life had taken. I realized they weren't detours at all, just the unfolding pattern, the fabric, some delicate soft colors, some dark rough threads. But they all belonged.

This was quickly demonstrated this morning when I joined a Zoom presentation on embroidered shoes from the collection mainly of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto. 

If you live around there, it sounds worth a trip once possible. It's a wonderful history in itself of the changes and art and politics and economics  of shoes. And you can check their website.

The shoes shown today are all very high end, custom created for fashion, dating from the 18th century to the 20th. They reflect the economics, about which a bit after you've enjoyed the craftsmanship. And I'll explain about today's Shakuhachi manifestation then, too.

These are screenshots which I accidentally learned how to take on my android phone by pushing the wrong button. This was after my computer shut down to do something or other, and I had to quick try my phone in which I luckily had Zoom loaded.

And caught up, then found a screenshot thing while I was trying to turn it for horizontal viewing, which I clicked happily to get better pix for your viewing pleasure. That led to learning how to find them again, hm, and finally how to edit and load here.

The computer is still not remembering how to get online, but it's in fact been a useful path this morning. The computer breakdown turned out to be a door opening.

About the shoes: the broader heels were to improve balance when the wearer was navigating wide panniered dresses. As dresses got narrower, so did heels. And eventually heels vanished, so regency indoor styles were pretty much flat slippers.

Precious metals were used for embroidery, usually indicating men, from the Guilds which barred women from metal stitching, were the workers. They claimed women would tarnish gold. Since nothing does, a likely story! 

If you're an embroiderer you'll have spotted bargello and stump work and other stitches and beautiful beadwork. The bootlike design was napoleonic, he fancying Roman concepts, laurel wreaths and all that, so he wore this style. Probably not in battle, I'm guessing, those bare toes, ow.

 And you'll have noticed the beetles, familiar from the Peacock Dress by Worth, if you're a reader from Art the Beautiful Metaphor where we've looked at motifs which I adapted to my Robe wip.

The wedge heel, here's politics and economics, , was invented by Ferragamo after Italy's 1930s incursion into Abyssinia resulted in an embargo on steel into Italy. The steel shanks Ferragamo used to strengthen the soles of high heeled shoes became unavailable. 

So he built high heels out of wine corks, a true inventor, needs must, and there's the wedge heel. We still have cork wedges because it's light in weight and can be shaped. Who knew?

This was a Zoom presentation you might want to check in case they upload it. It's recorded, but I don't know if it is to be generally available. Great if you love shoes and if you love fine stitching. These are artworks. Even the soles were painted as part of the design.

First day of spring, new learning, great start.