To return briefly to the single globular flute, I did produce singles (for money-making purposes) made out of wood, of ceramics and of pewter. In around 1977-8, David Petraglia, Alan Supina and I----all members of the crafts collective known as Chardavogne--- put our heads together and worked out all the technical details of producing pretty little Brancusi-like ocarina-pendants from rubber moulds. We had visions of material fortunes amassed from the light manufacture of what we hoped would be a popular success. We did not count on our own own capacity for personal misunderstandings and the difficulty of human enterprise in small groups. However, we did inspire a couple of competitors at the WBAI Christmas Craft Show---Doug Diehl and Robin Hodgkinson--- to take up the idea of the four-holer and make their own versions from extruded clay. Although these craftsmen first denied that their creation had anything to do with us---despite certain obvious details---Doug later fessed up after he had struck off on his own. Robin is still at it 22 years later, "THE" ocarina man on the crafts circuit.

In my short experience, there were two other whistle flute makers whose development had nothing at all to do with my instruments: Farmer Fartwhistle (who was at Bennington in 1970) and Anita ***** who first worked out of Rhode Island and now lives somewhere in the Midwest or the West, I believe.

In any case, single-voiced wind instruments never interested me as much as the doubles. Even a triple wasn't all that interesting. I suppose that, beyond the obvious needs of a piano player without a piano, I was attracted to what is embodied in the old mythical "aulos" which one sees represented on Greek vases....or foisted off on tourists, in most approximative form, as double-whistles coming from Yugoslavia or Roumania:

The double flute is both metaphor and illustration of the mystery of duality: two in one. How can two seemingly independent voices emanate from a Single Source? Aha! Advaita Vedanta or not, I can tell you that it's something that's fun to do!

Falmouth-Foreside, Maine
The morning of the eclipse, August 11, 1999.