Here’s Omar Pérez improvising on cajon with a stick and a hand in the Mojo Dojo.

With the cajon in its Cuban incarnation as a standing, or (more exactly) slightly slanting, instrument—vs. the cajon you sit on to play—with its relatively square, upright space, one is struck by its likeness to the page, or sheet of copy paper: or playing it, one imagines entering percussively  the act of “writing” (etym. root in “carving”).

This is particularly evident in this instance of Omar playing with a stick, which is pencil-, if not wand-, like. And as though writing were not just an act of carving away, revealing—is writing, more than adding, a subtractive act?—yet also tapping, knocking—even banging—a door.

And, if all that holds even if imaginatively, is that door one of entrance into a place—house of mirrors, etc.—or a door out of enclosure?

Stay tuned.