The Bird & The Bowl:
Why BlackCrow?
I fell in love with black crows when I visited Nepal. I saw them everywhere, heard their caws scrape across the sky like 100-year cigar smokers. I watched them congregate in trees, confer with each other, and fly off again in different directions, always returning simultaneously to the same tree. I imagined the crows on a mysterious mission, and I was bewitched.
They reminded me of my childhood, since they are also birds of the Pacific Northwest. I grew up surrounded by their scratchy caws that echoed in hollow winter skies, but gave them little regard for being anything more than an ordinary black bird.
Decades later, around the time that singing bowls properly entered my life, I learned that in Nepal, black crows are regarded as messengers between worlds. In Hindu mythology, they are associated with Yama, the God of Death. While that might sound ominous to some, death symbolizes transformation, of crossing a threshold—a void between the seen and the unseen.
And on Kaag Tihar, the first day of the Hindu Tihar festival of lights, Nepali people worship the crow (kaag = crow). They offer food on rooftops and open spaces in both reverence and request for protection—for staying on good terms with Yama.
Far from an ordinary black bird.
The pairing of the bird and the bowl extends beyond geography. Over time and through hundreds of conversations with bowls, I have come to regard their sound as far more than just a beautiful art. For me, singing bowls are also messengers of the in-between spaces—those gaps between what our senses can register and some other porous and unnameable place. In a sense, the bowls bridge that gap, much like the crow relays messages from one world to another.
So, when the time came to name this new venture—which I had not formally planned and whose direction shows itself one day at a time—BlackCrow was the obvious, heart-home choice. It exists to bridge the gap between seeker and bowl, to help others cross over from curious to captivated by the simple, sacred beauty of sound.