[Harp-L] Two People in a Ring

[Aeskow@xxxxxxx]

Two ideas come to mind as I think about recent threads: both of them  
reflections on music and combat.
 
I can't speak with authority about martial arts, but I fought a lot as a  
kid, and some of it was actually sanctioned by grown-ups in the form of Police  
Athletic Leagues and small-town tournaments.  Over the years I've had to  
defend as well as explain my continued love of boxing to various peace-loving  
friends, and to wives (and to a few people who were both.)  Certainly  boxing 
doesn't appear, on its vicious surface, to have the transcendent spirit  of Asian 
martial arts.  But its relationship to music is deep and  multi-layered and 
relevant here, I think, in two ways.
 
The first way has to do with the Science and Ethics of Head-Cutting.
 
Sonny Jr said an interesting thing: "Big Walter could impose his will with  
ONE note, the king of tone.  I saw him toy with the great Jerry Portnoy  at a 
club in Boston, and Jerry loved  it too. "  Newcomers to  boxing find it 
bizarre that two fighters can do everything in their power to  assault each other 
for 9-36 minutes at close quarters--not only punching but  head-butting, 
kneeing, biting, and dragging laces across each others'  faces--only to fall into a 
warm, even loving embrace at the end.  But as  with any kind of head-cutting, 
when it's done with a reverence for the craft,  how can it be A) anything but 
the highest compliment, and B) a way of allowing  both "combatants" to raise 
the level of their game to its highest, purest  form?  
 
The second way is harder to put into words, since it has to do with  rhythm.  
When you first learn to box, your coach often talks about the need  to "get 
off first," which becomes a mystical incantation you hear over and  over.  On a 
basic level, it means to--duh--punch the other guy before he  punches you.  
But obviously, beyond second grade, fights don't consist  of two guys running 
towards each other and blindly windmilling punches at each  other.  There is 
the stalking, the falling back, the circling...and then  the eerie knack that 
good fighters have picking for the exact right  millisecond--like syncopating 
off a backbeat that nobody else even hears--and  striking.  In that tiny arc of 
time--an almost-invisible movement of the  second-hand--you have dismantled 
the other man's rhythm.  You've  anticipated it, broken it down, and basically 
stepped inside his  time.  And once you've got a foothold inside his 
body-time--assuming  you have the skills to maintain that grip--you've won the fight, 
because you've  begun to dictate its time.  In that way, also, you need your  
"opponent"--the other fighter, the other musician--to help you define a higher  
rhythm...OK, OK, I just caught myself going off the rails, and I apologize for 
 the length and possible vagueness of this, but I've been very interested in  
these recent threads and wanted to take a shot at contributing.
 
Peace and Respect,
Johnny T