Last night our friend, the fine art photographer Mitch Epstein, read a few words of his correspondence with Mikio over the last couple of years. The one that has stuck in my mind came after Mitch had sent Mikio a photo of a tree . “Thank you for a beautiful work given to me. The meaning of my name Mikio: miki means trunk, o is a man. A man of trunk, a man of tree, the image speaks a lot to me. Thank you, best, Mikio.”
Bill T Jones, the choreographer, said last night that Mikio always liked him to sing of spiritual things. So Bill sang to us in his deep, resonant voice, dressed handsomely in a big black hat and yellow scarf.
“I shall not,
I shall not be moved
I shall not be moved
just like a tree
planted by the water.”