limpid

Directly across from the local Chamber of Commerce’s “Welcome to Joshua Tree” sign on the Twentynine Palms Highway, a makeshift billboard declares “JTAM” in tall black letters set over a broad strip of limpid blue.

The voice, Mersal later wrote, was “modern, strange, limpid and beyond categorization.”

That nimble versatility also made for fluid shifts between limpid precision and alluring rubato, between concerto virtuosity and the recital-like intimacy with which he opened the famous 18th Variation.

“Go for Qatar, go for Qatar!” he pleaded as he unleashed his bird into the limpid desert air.

At moments, it seemed that the clouds resembled a dazzling coral reef, set not in the sea but in the limpid blue of the sky.