The Flute Maker: Legends and Folklore
The Native American flute has a distinctive sound—beautiful, ethereal, soothing, and always a little sad. Stories vary as to how the flute came to exist, but as I navigate this holiday season, one particular version of this story has been on my mind. I’d like to share it with you, although it’s better told by Joseph Marshall III, an amazing Lakota storyteller.
The story of the flute maker begins with a boy and a girl who lived in neighboring villages. Even as children, they knew that they completed each other, and they promised to spend their lives together. In this way, the boy and the girl grew into a young man and a young woman.
When they were old enough to marry, the young man went to the young woman’s village. But when he got there, the villagers told him that she had agreed to marry someone else. He couldn’t believe this was true, so he went to her and asked if she’d forgotten their promise.
“No,” the young woman replied, “I didn’t forget, but we were children then. What is the promise of two children compared to the difficulties of life? I need a good provider and a good husband.”
The young man was filled with profound sadness, and he ran away from the young woman’s village, far into the woods until his legs would carry him no further. He collapsed upon the ground, and there he remained, oblivious to the earth and the ants and the birds and everything else that surrounded him. He felt no cold, no hunger, no thirst. He felt nothing but grief, until a sound registered in his ears—a song as melancholy as his heart.
He rose to search for the voice of his grief, surprised to discover that it wasn’t a person singing. It was the wind echoing through a dead, hollow branch of a cedar tree that had been drilled through by woodpeckers. He cut the branch from the tree and spent the rest of the night and the following day fashioning a flute.
The young man found glimpses of peace as he learned to play his own sad song on the flute. He wandered the forest for days, the emptiness of his heart flowing with each melancholy note he played. He couldn’t eat or drink or rest, for as soon as he stopped playing, he was overwhelmed with grief. Eventually, weak and weary, he emerged from the woods onto a familiar river bank. He had wandered back to his village.
All the women from his village stood on the far bank of the river, entranced by the music he played on the flute. Then he noticed someone else among the women. It was the young woman he wanted to marry, the one from the neighboring village. She crossed the river to speak to him.
“I knew a young man who made my heart fly,” she said. “But now he plays a sad, sad song.”
“The flute is the voice of my pain, since the woman in my heart has married another.”
“Can your flute sing a song of joy?” she asked.
“No. Its voice comes from me, and I have no joy to give it.”
“But I feel joy,” she said, “because you have returned. I realized that my life without you would be lonely, so I have married no one. I will take no husband, unless it is you.”
The young man’s sorrow was transformed into joy, and he began to play the flute once more. This time it sang a song of hope and celebration, a song that danced on the breeze and drifted across the water.
As you might expect, the couple was married and lived happily ever after. The young man went on to make many flutes, and he taught many to play. With each lesson, he would explain that no matter how joyful the song, the flute will always sing with an echo of sadness. The chance of love always comes with the chance of a broken heart. Sweet but sad. Beautiful but haunting.
The story reminds me that a balanced life isn’t a flat line. Rather, we soar and then we sink. Highs offset by lows. I’ve been thinking about my own highs and lows, writing about them as I work on a memoir and await editorial feedback on the sequel to Evolving Elizah: Initiatum.
It’s no easy task to look back on a life lived and see it with clearer eyes, to relive all the love found then lost, people and places who came and went. It’s not easy to see how often the valleys dominate the peaks, to wonder if there’s a better way, to wonder if the future will be better.
It’s not easy to look back on the holidays I spent alone, or even worse, ones spent with hateful, angry people. I hoped and tried to be happy, but now it feels like time and energy misspent, the pain of it all magnified by misplaced optimism that “this year will be better.” Why did I think the holidays contained enough magic to transform bad into good? When did I start believing in Christmas miracles and New Year’s resolutions?
This year, I managed to let go of my holiday expectations. Does that seem sad to you? It didn’t feel sad. It felt free. It was enough to walk in bare feet on wet sand, cool surf swirling around my ankles. It was enough to share a meal with my sister and brother-in-law and watch a movie together, even though none of our children were present. It was enough to call a friend, skipping cheery formality and instead greeting her with a heartfelt question—”how are you faring today?”
As the New Year approaches, I stand strong on feet planted in sorrow, and my hands reach high toward joyful peaks. Perhaps in this way, I can span the highs and lows and find balance. Love with a chance of heartbreak. Joy with an echo of sadness. Perhaps in this way, I can appreciate the fullness of life.