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Good Blessings

We were tucking into a delicious Sunday morning boarding house fry-up and our Edward said, ‘Have you seen the artwork the Tibetan Monks have been doing?’ I had to confess that I hadn’t. I told him that I’d had a cup of tea with three of them and I’d smiled when I saw them watching a live feed from the main stage of some wild dancing. I said it was a bit incongruous that we were in Bridlington with Tibetan Buddhists in maroon robes nudging each other as they watched some African moves, but no I hadn’t seen the artwork. ‘You should look at it Dad,’ he said, ‘it’s called a mandala, they’ve been tapping sticks and making it with one grain of sand at a time and today they’re going to give it back to the sea.’

Later that morning, I talked to one of the people with the monks of the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery and he told me that even beautiful things like this mandala cannot last forever, and that in a ceremony it would be blessed and then put in to the sea so that the blessings could travel far and wide. I watched the ceremony then followed the monks down to the sea and saw the remains of the mandala washing away, taking good blessings on a journey.

Musicport is about journeys. We wash up here for one reason or another; some of us to be entertained, others to entertain, some to be helpful and yet more to share ideas. We are on a pilgrimage, making an escape, striving for a bit of self-discovery, laying around, playing around and travelling on.

Musicport is a meeting place, gathered threads, a favourite deck chair in a row of them, a café, the shade of a big tree under which to while, it’s a bandstand, or going to the pictures in the olden days… together. Musicport is human’s being. Musicport is a festival I can’t wait to come back to even as I’m leaving… a beautiful mandala.

At teatime on Sunday I looked through a window out to the sea. Egbert Derix, the Dutch pianist, was standing at the side of me. We just looked. He pointed out and said, ‘Where is that over there?’ I followed his finger and said, ‘Well, Denmark eventually.’ He moved his finger to the right, ‘Holland’ I said. ‘I’ll be sailing over to there in a few hours time,’ he said. ‘Yep, you and a lot of blessings.’

Musicport is like the tide. It comes and it goes then it comes round again, like all good blessings. In this book we have tried to capture some of the essence of this year’s festival. Think of these words as little coloured stones amongst millions of others on a beach, something to pick up and put in your pocket.

Musicport is a pocket to hold a moment.

Ian Clayton, 7 November 2011.