Saturday, June 23, 2018 5:52 AM

From a distance, as I walk along the Boulevard, I hear the moving wind, a low whistling of buildings and trees. The air where I am, though, is still. It remains still as I travel toward the sound. The whistling takes on tonality. As the reverberations lessen, it separates into phrases the length of a human breath. It's from a cafe nearby, I imagine, or a house with open windows, playing a disc of new age ambiance. I get closer and see a person in front of a pillar of posters, bobbing and moving to the music. Closer still, I see that he is playing a side-blown bamboo flute. Its pale surface contrasts with the dark skin of his face and hands and with his long black hair. To my surprise, the flute is unamplified. Its natural tone carries well through the still air of the night. The small speaker near him plays a steady drone, so quiet that few other than he can hear it. As I walk past and beyond him, down the Boulevard toward the national theater, the sound again reverberates and reverts to a general haze, then to the whistling of disembodied wind. But now I have heard the source of the music and seen the person from whom it flows. I can no longer hear it as mere abstraction, forgetting what I know.