'They have certificates, but no flower!'

The exclamation in the title of this post came from a street-busker I have met, a number of years ago. He was commenting on the quality of music-playing that came from young musicians nowadays.

“What is ‘flower’?” I asked him.

“Flower? Flower is this!” he replied, before launching into a song, on his guitar, which I couldn’t help but dance to.

So what is flower? I couldn’t help but to want to have a more theoretical, or even academic, perspective on the terminology of this street-busker.

Finally, years later, with glory to my god - and thanks to Him, of course - I found a mention in a book called “Nine gates: Entering the mind of poetry” by Jane Hirshfield.

Hirshfield mentioned the concept of hana in a form of Japanese theatre called Nō. Supposedly, hana - which, interestingly enough, means ‘flower’ in the Japanese language - is the quality by which an actor can move the audience, despite being hidden behind a mask and standing motionless on stage. Supposedly (according to the claims of Hirshfield, who in turn was quoting a practitioner or observer of Nō), hana can be accessed sometimes in youth, but in maturity, hana… - oh, I forget what Hirshfield wrote.

Perhaps this might be interesting enough for me to investigate further.