Seasonality and Music

Last fall, the Washington DC branch of the Urasenke school closed its doors. This spring, likely in March, a new complex of classrooms will open up downtown, in a Metro-accessible location. There is a lot of good to this change, some bittersweet, and the inconvenience of a solid half-year without tea classes.


Happily, tomorrow I will be in a tea class for the first time since early August. It will be a refresher course on the most basic tea preparation. As part of my preparation, I pulled out my books last night to research seasonal names for February.


Tea is deeply attuned to the seasons in an oddly stylized way. Last year on a very cold April day, I used a seasonal word that seemed to fit the weather perfectly. I was told that the word was inappropriate, since it was a word for February or March. The seasonal conceit of Tea looks forward, toward what is coming.


Looking for seasonal words, I decided that February might be the most ascetically appropriate month for Tea. There is a poem appropriate to this time of year that is basically Tea, crystallized and frozen:


To those who lust after only cherry blossoms, I want to point out the mountain hamlet spring grasses breaking through the snow. -Ietaka*


I spent the early evening reading about February and contemplating the rich tapestry of seasonality, where an icy wind can bring about a parting of snow, which implies that spring will come eventually, but which also tells us that it is February, that there will be a fire in the hearth. There will be specific bowls and certain sweets to keep the guests warm but to remind them that trees will be budding soon.


After a while, I exchanged the Tea books for prayer books so that my husband and I could greet the Sabbath. When we reached L'cha Dodi, a mystical celebration of the coming of Shabbat, S--- chose a tune normally associated with a bedtime song about four angels. It's a very common thing in Judaism to use the tune for one song/prayer when singing another. In this case, whether or not S--- meant it, I saw a connection between the mystical Jerusalem-of-the-mind Shabbat and the angels that visit the house at the beginning of the meal. 


It's good to live in a world of implications and deeper meanings, where an insight into one part of a tradition will open up another part, drawing new meaning along with perspective. It's also good to sing, and it's good to keep an eye on nature.




*Translation from Chado: The Way of Tea, A Japanese Tea Master's Almanac, by Sasaki Sanmi.