I am always leery of pronouncements that break things into two parts: "There are only two kinds of people in the world--givers and takers." As helpful and simple as such divisions can be, they always break down on even the slightest inspection. I, for example, am sometimes a giver, sometimes a taker.
A first look the familiar Taoist symbol of yin/yang (a circle containing a black shape and a white shape, whose curving lines interlock, with a smaller circle of the opposite color in the "foot" of each) might seem to be such a simplistic division. Yin is the female element: creative, dark, heavy, and negative. Yang is the male element: disciplined, bright, light, and positive. If this were a simple division, yin and yang would be only another duality that reveals much but breaks down on closer inspection. But instead of a duality, it is a unity, with the two parts interpenetrating each other. Yin is a part of yang, and yang is a part of yin. One flows into the other. That's why there's white in the black and black in the white in the symbol. (That's also why, despite its appearance, yin and yang is not really sexist. Even though I am a man, I am both yin and yang, just as my wife is.)
Now what in the world does yin and yang have to do with the mandolin? I would answer, only everything!
To play the mandolin takes both yin and yang. My yang side practices with discipline, learning scales and patterns, then applying them to the whole fingerboard. My yin side takes those patterns and scales inside and lets them flow out in beautiful musical statements (on my good days!). Yang makes me learn theory and note names. Yin lets my fingers walk on top of theory. Yang shows me how much more I have to learn. Yin shows me how much I already know. Yang disciplines me to practice daily and endlessly. Yin releases the creativity that is inside me.
I must have both, and I must let each have its full time. I can't be all yang. Then I would be wooden, stiff, and mechanical. Nor can I be all yin. Then I would be formless and unfocused. But yin and yang together, in harmony, each flowing into the other--that makes music. Music is cold black notes on the white page (yang), as well as the notes flowing from the throat of the cardinal outside my window right now as I type (yin). Yin is Joe Pass playing live at Montreux, solo, in both 1975 in Switzerland and downstairs on my CD player right now in 1999. Yang is my upcoming mandolin practice, which will begin as soon as I stop writing. (Yang is all the hours of practice Joe Pass put into his guitar so that he could stand all alone on a great stage and let his yin flow so freely.)
In looking over at my mandolin on its stand just now, I have suddenly realized how inspired Orville Gibson was. The mandolin itself is a yin/yang symbol! The circles and curves and scrolls and holes are the carved wooden embodiment of yin and yang! (So it's not mere scroll envy that drives many of us to this design--it's a yearning for the Tao.) Orville Gibson was, I am convinced, a Taoist master, even if he never heard of the term. And if he was a master, what of Lloyd Loar? Yin and yang is in the very design of my mandolin. It is in me. It is time to let yin and yang penetrate each other. It is time to make music.
© 1999 John Bird
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