The Wind of Calligraphy Blows Between Us

We moved to our fabulous new space for our monthly Saturday shodо̄ calligraphy group, a large and bright room at Woodside Library, on a very wild and windy autumnal day, which was fitting given that one of kanji characters was 風 kaze wind itself. We are thankful for everyone’s support and enthusiasm, allowing us to run an afternoon class as well as the usual morning class.

Our characters for this month followed on from September, this time we brushed the 同風 dōfū part of the phrase Senri Dōfū 千里同風, which literally translates as ‘thousands of miles/villages, yet the same wind blows’. This is a 禅語 Zengo (‘zen language’) phrase, which Blair described the background for, looking at the meanings and visuals for each character, as well as what Senri Dо̄fū conveys, including meanings of fostering connection and community even where there are vast spaces or obstacles separating people.

We had a lot of new folks joining us so we had plenty of time for introducing the traditional materials and demonstrations of the basic strokes in the standard 楷書 kaisho style of 同風 dōfū. Then we had demonstrations of brushing both kanji together in this style as well as the fully cursive 草書 sōsho ‘grass’ style. In the sо̄sho we practiced joining the kanji with flowing 連綿 renmen continuous strokes linking characters.

At our online monthly group brushing the same kanji we also had some additional time for the 行書 gyōsho semi cursive script.

After the groups Blair shared a video with participants, of his brushwork of this month’s calligraphy.

Blair also shared a bonus autumn themed haiku poem (yes yet again by his favourite Bashō!), perhaps Bashō’s most vivid autumn haiku poem (the Heavenly River is the Milky Way):

rough sea,
stretching towards Sado Island,
and the Heavenly River

(荒海や　佐渡に横たふ　天の川   araumi ya, Sado ni yokotau, amanogawa)

Thanks for joining, as well as to the participants for sharing some images of their shodō brushwork, and we look forward to brushing more characters with you next time. Otsukaresama deshita, well done!