In a Silent Way, Under a Willow That Weeps

The best place to install “In a Silent Way, Under a Willow That Weeps” is in your own garden, if you have one. The presence of a reasonably large and well developed weeping willow helps, though other trees may also just about work.

The device itself is simple, consisting of an array of bark coloured tubes that you run along the limbs of the tree, adding smaller and smaller capillaries until you reach almost to the end of the branches. This tubular network is then connected to a remote, pumped water supply.

Now all you need do is to sit under your tree, and turn on the water. A continuous curtain will descend, connecting the remaining free space under the drooping branches with the ground to form an unbroken barrier, behind which you should be just about invisible. You will equally be isolated from the outside world, which will be invisible to you, and subject only to the sound of falling water all around you, though you will remain dry and sheltered.

Finally, select your favourite Miles Davis track from “In a Silent Way”, followed up by Tord Gustavsen’s “Kneeling Down” and “Colours of Mercy”, and complete your revere of quiet melancholy with Harold Budd’s “Pulse, Pause, Repeat”.

As the nearly matching notes of the last track chase each other and fade away, their echoes meet in a single combined harmony, and become lost again in the dappled sound of constantly falling water.