The Irish bassist Malachy Robinson wrote recently about the job of transporting the double bass — he jokes that people who treat travel as relaxation should consider being a freelance musician. He wonders who is in charge, the bass or the musician, and cites the concept of ‘phoresy’ in which one organism transports another of a different species.

The bass can’t move so I move it. Furthermore, the bass will outlive me because I take such good care of it. But I get plenty out of this too, it is after all both a livelihood and an artistic pursuit. In the case of a wooden passenger the word could be phorestry? Which would make me a phorester, engaged in the lifelong nurture of a sort of strange, itinerant, composite, hollow tree. 

malachyrobinson.com