Graceful Instruments

Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right

An elegant physical design, lyric tones flowing in a cascade of color, with rhythm and timbre, rising and falling to accentuate the melody are qualities by which all graceful instruments are known. They make the music soar, and ripple and rise in waves, or glide effortlessly. Warm and rich with deep resonance, or cool and light and airy trilling their way through in soft gossamer tendrils.

They aren’t from the world of the boldly unapologetic aesthetic of the Silver Doctor

Or the strident parrot hues of the Green Highlander

But rather the flowing sweep of a Spey variant of a Green Butt Skunk.

Or the ephemeral lightness of a Coffin Fly, pale and shimmering in monochromatic splendor.

Or the lightness of being of a Hendrickson Dun, cast in that pale pink tone

so sought for by a multitude.

In the sharply delineated form of a darker pheasant tail soft hackle

or the blowsy, ethereal carefree form of a lighter, teased out one.

It can be found in the clear, clean lines of a small winter stonefly

or a fluttering caddis

You can find the grace in a nymph

Or even a lowly Wooly Bugger

I tie flies. That is what I do. Sometimes I look at them and delight in what I have done.

And sometimes in the fish they catch