“The Ainu say that the deer, salmon, and bear
like our music and are fascinated by our languages.
So we sing to the fish or the game, speak words to them, say grace.
We do ceremonies and rituals.

     Performance is currency in the deep world’s gift economy.”

Performance is art in motion,
in the moment, enactment and embodiment:
which is exactly what nature herself is.

~*~

“Ripples on the surface of the water—
were silver salmon passing under – different
from the ripples caused by breezes.”

A scudding plume on the wave—
a humpback whale is
breaking out in air up
gulping herring
     –Nature not a book, but a performance, a
high old culture

Ever-fresh events
scraped out, rubbed out, and used, used, again—
the braided channels of the rivers
hidden under fields of grass—

The vast wild
     the house, alone.
The little house in the wild,
     the wild in the house.
Both forgotten.

          No nature.

Both together, one big empty house. p. 35

Back On The Fire, essays by Gary Snyder, Ecology, Literature, and the New World Disorder (based on a keynote talk at the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment international conference held in Naha, Okinawa, March 4-6, 2003)

Later today I will attend an end of the season performance at the Byron drag strip just outside or Rockford. That is what racing is after all – it’s a grand performance.

Moreover, tomorrow I plan to be present for a house-concert in North Aurora, a vocal concert of classical music. Both performances are ineffable works, presentations representing a life time of attention, skill-building, practice and risk. You may be lead to think from surface appearances, these events could not be more different, different in so many ways. However they have a great deal in common.

And what is the performance for, who is it for? Why, it is for those who observe and appreciate. For you and I.

The performers themselves are not excluded from the purpose. It is for the crew chief, for drivers, crew members, — everyone supporting the creation and function of the race car. The same can be said for the vocal performance event.

I and everyone present observing, appreciating will wait breathless — to see them surprise themselves!