It Goes On.

When asked for his philosophical view of life, the poet Robert Frost famously answered, “It goes on.”

 

There’s a lot packed into those three words. We worry about the end of relationships, the end of our lives, the end of democracy, the end of life on earth. But even in a nuclear holocaust threatening the extinction of the human species, there is a speculation that the cockroaches will live on and still inhabit the planet. It goes on. 

 

When it comes to our work life, the same truth holds. In the movie About Schmidt, the Jack Nicholson character retires and soon after, keeps coming by to see if the new guy needs his advice about anything. He makes it clear— he doesn’t. All those years and poof! “Bye! We’ll be just fine without you.”

 

In my own school, I knew that my colleagues of decades, Sofia and James, would carry on without me when I retired. I did hope they’d invite me back occasionally to play bagpipe for the Intery Mintery celebration or lead the Wrong Words Day singing. But between the post-pandemic, the sense that they’d rather continue the traditions their own way, the overall feeling in the school that I indeed became “progressively unnecessary,” life there has certainly “gone on” without me and that’s a natural progression. 

 

If these three words are irrefutable truth, how things go on and what things go on can make all the difference in the world. Something beautiful— a work of art, a school culture, a just political system— can be smashed or erased in a heartbeat by the human error of bad choices. Something toxic and harmful can be refused and lines drawn so a parents’ abuse or alcoholism does not get transmitted to the next generation. 

 

Likewise, something hurtful that we thought we solved— racism, sexism, unchecked capitalist greed— can raise its ugly head again in new forms. Something healing and beautiful can continue carried by new hands and evolve with new touches. That’s the one I’m feeling now. That all the work I—and my colleagues—put into cultivating a certain quality of community, a certain set of values, a certain way of dynamic and effective pedagogy in teaching, will continue beyond our physical presence. In the hands of others, it will invariably change and there will be different energies and nuances, but the essential spirit will remain intact and continue to evolve and prosper.

 

That is 100% true at The San Francisco School, not only in the music program carried forward by James and Sofia, but in the overall school culture carried through by the remaining veteran teachers, the six or seven alumni teachers (including my daughter!), the two alums and promising new people in administration. I still go to their concerts and plays, have subbed at least a few times a year (with a two-week stint coming up), so the personal connection continues. But again, if I never stepped foot into the school, the work that my wife and I and all our colleagues did can still be felt and gloriously so. Of course, that can change in a heartbeat, but while it’s so, it’s a cause for celebration. 

 

I also felt this at the recent national Orff Conference, where some nine teachers who had studied with James, Sofia and me presented workshops and carried forth the style we have so carefully cultivated—enticing beginnings, connected middles with clear shape and design, satisfying ends, no unnecessary talk or explanations, no Powerpoint at the center of it all and relaxed, warm feeling from the teacher presenting their authentic self. 

I still gave a workshop— a children’s demonstration— that I believed offered yet more details and nuances useful to the up-and-coming teachers, so I’m not done yet. But the dual sense of being “progressively unnecessary” and so happy to see that what my teacher Avon bequeathed to me drawing from what Orff and Keetman bequeathed to him will lives on and will hopefully continue to prosper. 

 

It's a fine feeling when “life goes on” just in the way we hoped that it would. 

May it continue!

  

Progressively Unnecessary

 

“ A real teacher becomes progressively unnecessary.”

 

Today I put on my Icelandic sweater, gloves and a winter hat (it’s cold in San Francisco!) to bike to yet another class helping out my mentee Yari Mander at the school where he works. I’ve been doing this for four years now and for the first few years, the school paid me a modest consultant fee. This year they decided enough was enough, but Yari was still hoping I’d check in once in a while. 

 

The given wisdom is that in accepting work, there are three factors. 

 

1.    The money.

2.    The people. 

3.    The work itself. 

 

Two out of three is reason enough to accept the work. One usually not, unless the one is the money and it’s twice what you’d ordinarily be paid. 

 

The 8^th graders I’ve worked with this Fall were in 5^th grade when I started and from the beginning, were a musically impressive, highly focused and socially affable group. So it was enticing to work with them yet one more time in their last semester of the music program. Check people. 

 

The work is, of course, what I still love beyond any reasonable measure. Making music with anyone, but especially kids and with an extra boost when they’re in 8^th grade and can play some complex, swingin’ and satisfying pieces. They’ve come a long way in terms of technical skills, listening skills and ensemble cohesion. Their repertoire is taken from my own arrangements taught to Yari over the years, so both the choice of tunes and the particular forms and improvisational structures are not only familiar, but all pieces I chose because I loved (and love) them. The kids are playing them so well and so the energy comes back to me (and them) and does what music well-played can do— boosts my vitality, soothes my soul, restores my vigor. Check work.

 

Following my two out of three ratio, I agreed to do it without getting paid. Uncheck money. Ironically, I’m working more than I did when I was paid, sometimes two or three times a week and sometimes five classes for a whole day. And with one extra perk— I ride my bike there and back, so there’s a guarantee of needed exercise in fresh air. 

 

While I write this, they’re playing Herbie Hancock’s Chameleon with a killer groove, led by a girl playing drum set (who had never played it before). Now comes the electric guitar solo. Yeah!! And why can I be writing while they play? Because they don’t need me! They have it down, so Yari and I can just say, “Go!” And they do. 

 

It also happened in the 7^th grade class just before us. With a concert coming up next week, they went through their repertoire— a marimba piece on Zimbabwe marimbas, then C-Jam Blues and Mo’ Betta Blues arranged for Orff Ensemble. They played each expertly and did such a good job that there was still 20 minutes left in the class. Yari asked if they’d like to play the marimba piece again and they enthusiastically shouted “Yes!!” and ran over and just started playing on their own. Again, expertly. 

 

This is a music teacher’s dream. To be wholly present each step of the difficult journey from just starting a piece to performing it and then stepping back. As the kids gain understanding and begin to master the parts, the teacher takes tiny steps away from center stage, transferring their knowledge and power to the kids. 

 

And the enthusiasm in that “Yes! Let’s play it again!” is testimony that they are so happy to feel their own power— both individually and collectively. They feel in their bones that it’s so damn fun to be connected through music! Remember these are Middle Schoolers who according to our slightly weird cultural perceptions, are supposed to be disengaged, eye-rolling, arms-folded-across-chest, shut-down students. Instead, they’re spontaneously and enthusiastically shouting and feeling “YES!!”  like kids on Christmas morning unwrapping their favorite present. 

 

I made a good choice to be part of this all. Money is money, but to help create this kind of musical community is a rare opportunity and gift worth more than all of King Midas’s gold. I like the kids and I let them know it and they are warm with me. To keep this kind of social engagement and connection is another perk far beyond any monetary value.

 

And to be clear. “Progressively unnecessary” doesn’t mean leave the room— it’s just about changing the weight of each of the ways you are necessary. You move from leading the band to playing with the band to letting the band play alone sometimes and then offering both the next detail and the earned praise. The class before me at the moment just finished their pieces and erupted into a spontaneous percussion jam session — and they sound great! 

 

My cup runneth over. And their’s too. 

Kiss the Clock

My grandkids taught me to "kiss the clock" whenever the numbers read 1:11, 2:22, 3:33 etc. and wish for something. (I think this game must have begun with digital clocks.) Rather than wish for something that some abstract deity is supposed to put on his/her list, I always wish for "good health." Not only because I want to feel well, but because I want the strength to do the work myself to bring more peace and happiness to the world. Good health is not a badge to wear proudly to announce to others suffering from less than it that we have beat the system (for now). It is a gift that is best repaid by using every ounce of your physical well-being and strength to serve the world as best you can, to attend to its wounds and your own invisible ones. 

 

I remember as a child a section in the newspaper highlighting the hard stories of the needy at this Season and asking for your charity. I also watched that bizarre TV show Queen for a Day, where contestants competed for the most heart-rendering story and the “winner” got a big cash prize. In both cases, the intention may have been a good one, but in the twisted way of our “I got mine, sucker!” American culture and making a television game show out of deep suffering, the effect leaned more towards pity than compassion, entertainment than genuine concern. 

 

So maybe I should pitch my own TV show called “Kiss the Clock.” Contestants write down their wishes from a pre-set list of choices and like musical chairs, they have to walk around a clock while it ticks toward 5:55 and the first one to kiss it wins. Meanwhile, I’ll keep alert and keep wishing for good health.

  

Two Popes

Like so many, I continue to be aghast at the low, low (and every day lower) level of human discourse, thought and feeling modeled by so many we have willfully chosen to represent our hopes, ideals and aspirations. I’m alarmed by the unbroken fantasy that machines will solve our human problems and that we can outsource our intelligence, our physical grace, our capacity to feel to calculating technologies without a beating heart. I am astounded time and time again that centuries of evolution should be sliding back to a Stone Age yet more dangerous as powerful technologies create exponentially greater catastrophes than clubs and spears ever could. 

 

At the same time that I vigilantly take every opportunity to speak out and act and resist, I can sometimes take a step back and consider that the monsters we’ve created— the Toddler King and his henchmen, the shameless billionaires with sharp-toothed devouring mouths and insatiable stomachs, the cold circuitry of AI and such— are here for a purpose. To teach us what paths not to take and return us to an inner nobility and outer charity that is waiting for us to reclaim them.

 

And so many have and so many are. I read their eloquent and heartfelt posts (ironically) on Facebook, see them turn out to rally together (7 million and more on one day), meet them every day in my classes and workshops and neighborhood gatherings. It’s a twisted, dangerous and convoluted route we seem to be taking and the damage is real, but it seems to be headed to Oz, where we will finally expose the scared and pitiful man behind the curtain pulling the ropes and throw water on the wicked witch as the monkey army disperses. Tap our red shoes together and through revived courage, heart and brains, come home again. 

 

So to give one example from my-sense-of-evolution- playbook, consider Pope Nicholas and Pope Leo. Both part of a lineage theoretically devoted to the radical teachings of Jesus Christ, but long diverted by the human failings of power, wealth and privilege. The Inquisition, witch-burning, Colonialism, slavery, physical and sexual abuse in schools— there’s a lot to answer for! 

 

But comparing a quote from Pope Nicholas in 1452 to a quote from Pope Leo yesterday, I think you might feel, as I do, that evolution is real. Here’s what Pope Nicholas wrote to the King of Portugal: 

 

“We grant you, King of Portugal, by these present documents, with our Apostolic Authority, full and free permission to invade, search out, capture and subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be, as well as their kingdoms, duchies, counties, principalities and other property and to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery. “

 

Here's what Pope Leo wrote yesterday: 

 

“Human beings are called to be co-workers in the work of creation, not merely passive consumers of content generated by artificial technology. Our dignity lies in our ability to reflect, choose freely, love unconditionally and enter into authentic relationships with others. Recognizing and safeguarding what characterizes the human person and guarantees their balanced growth is essential …”

 

Two Popes. Two very different world visions. To my mind, that’s progress. Onward and upward!

 

Who Are These People?

For Pete’s sake, why is every Tom, Dick & Harry exclaiming “Heavens to Betsy!” when they choose a tasty dish from the lazy Susan? By George, it simply baffles me! What in Sam Hill is going on? 

Wrong Words Day—Again

As promised, here is the reprint of the article I wrote fifteen years ago! Still holds up, but do read the previous post Naughty and Nice as well to consider how things have changed. Enjoy!                                                            

                                                             Wrong Words Day

© Doug Goodkin 2010

 

“Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg….”

 

It is time for the annual school holiday sing and I know what’s coming. Three notes of Jingle Bells and Batman will make his unwelcome appearance. Consonants and vowels will clash as some children sing the right words and others don’t, producing a musical mush intolerable to a sensitive music teacher’s ear. What to do?

 

Luckily, I’m prepared. I’ve been here before and I have a plan. I drop my voice to my “this is serious mode” mode and dramatically issue a warning:

 

“I know what you’re thinking. But let me be very clear. If so much as one child out of the hundred gathered here today sings or mouths or even thinks the wrong words to this song, all of you will be punished. I think you know what I’m talking about. (Dramatic pause here) Yes, Wrong Words Day will be cancelled!!!”

 

A hush falls over the room and as we begin dashing over the snow in a one-horse open sleigh, I look at certain children—I know who they are and so do you—struggle mightily to keep from blurting out what their heart’s desire longs for more than anything. This is the ultimate lesson in delayed gratification. If they can beat back their impulses and somehow keep the words from leaping out their throats, they will be richly rewarded—Wrong Words Day will finally arrive.

 

Let’s face it. Singing naughty words to certain songs is a natural force of childhood as inevitable as candy. If you are trained, as I have been, to meet children at their level, to lead them to who they might become by starting with who they are, you must come to grips with this conundrum. To forbid it is pointless— it merely creates the type of student who behaves in front of the teacher and goes crazy when the teacher leaves the room. To encourage it is worse. Kids learn that nothing is sacred, everything is fair game for ridicule and adults stuck at a seven-year old mentality are cool. To ignore it is to fail your obligation to your discipline— as noted, two texts to the same melody is musical murder. How we as adults react to the impulse to sing the wrong words—forbidding, encouraging or ignoring—will give it a particular sort of power. The question that faces us is “How much weight does it deserve?”

 

Enter Wrong Words Day. The concept is simple. Neither entirely forbidding them nor overly encouraging them, we put children’s mischievous impulses into an appropriate container. For one madcap singing time, we give kids the chance to sing out to their heart’s content, “Set the old man’s beard on fire” right in front of their teachers—and not get in trouble! “Amazing!” the kids are thinking, “Here they are, those same teachers who daily remind me to raise my hand, not run in the hall, share my markers and play fair, and I get to sing ‘Deck the halls with poison ivy’— and some of them are smiling! This is as good as it gets!” 

 

You may be wondering, “Why would a morally upstanding music teacher such as myself, someone responsible for teaching children to behave properly in a civil society, create such an event?” And the best answer is, “Come see for yourself. “ For if you would be so fortunate as to witness this spectacle and take off your judgmental glasses for a moment to truly watch the children, you would see them grinning from ear to ear as they shout out those deliciously sinful words “We three kings from Orient are. Tried to smoke a rubber cigar…” “Shalom chaverim, shalom chaverim..let’s eat raw oats, let’s eat raw oats…” “He sings a love song, as we walk along, walking around in women’s underwear.” You would see kids being 100% kids as they’re given a 20-minute pardon from the hard work of stretching towards adulthood. 

 

And then—please note—after this feast of bawdy irreverence, you would then hear them sing the right words to the same songs in lovely light singing voices with an equally appropriate reverent quiet. I might even suggest that the depth of that reverence is in proportion to the height of the irreverence. Since both impulses reside equally in all our breasts, it won’t do to simply try to choose one over the other. Instead, we should recognize both, learn the value of each and figure out where to place them.

 

Ancient ritual, modern psychology and the children’s instincts suggest that acting out darker impulses in fantasy play, ritual and art is a healthy way to deal with them and helps children (and adults!) not have to act them out in real life. Our job teaching children is not to wag our fingers at them with stern lectures, but to give them plenty of opportunities to try out different roles, behaviors and thoughts in safe containers. That can mean leaving them alone to play— not feeding their fantasies with killer video games and Barbie scenarios, but letting their own imagination roam freely in the kind of fantasy play—house, guns, doctor—that children need to sort things out. It can mean reviving a genuine arts curriculum in schools so that children can personify a quirky part of themselves as a character in a story or put their strange visions into a painting or work through their powerlessness being the king or queen in the school play. It can mean creating events like Wrong Words Day or Come to School in Pajamas Day. It can mean acting out the story of the 12 Mischievous Icelandic Trolls, with the kids themselves brainstorming all the bad things they can think to do. Paraphrasing Blake’s “You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough,” kids will learn more about what’s good by acting out what’s bad (in play, art or ritual) than by memorizing the Ten Commandments. 

 

Not that such moral codes don’t have their place. From Buddha’s Eightfold Path to Mohammed’s Five Precepts to the Confucian Analects to Miss Manners, cultures and religions of all times and places have understood that society requires agreed-upon conventions and standards of behavior to operate smoothly. But most have also recognized that our efforts to behave properly and follow the path of moral rectitude take their toll on the psyche. Simply put, our attempts to be constantly good are dangerous when we ignore our irrepressible desire to be bad. We all want to eat the whole carton of ice cream sometimes or skip work and go fishing or tell the minister he’s a pompous old bore instead of thanking him for the lovely sermon.

 

Recognizing these desires, many cultures have built-in release valves that give us an opportunity to let some air out as we expand towards our higher nature. For many, this comes in the form of humor. Humor is the pin that can pop the balloon of over-inflated moral purity and save us from a devastating explosion down the line. Virtually every major religion has a figure who functions as the fool or trickster or clown. Hindus have stories about Krishna as a mischievous boy, Muslims have the tales of that fool, Mullah Nasrudin, Eastern European Jews a cycle of Chelm stories, Buddhists have a big jolly Laughing Buddha and various Native peoples worldwide have their trickster stories with Coyote, Raven or Anansi the Spider. Even the Catholic Church once celebrated the Feast of Fools where everything was turned upside down for a few days in the New Year— in the church itself, the town drunk might be crowned the Pope, old shoes burned instead of incense, lewd songs sung, and sausages eaten at the altar. I imagine that there was a different quality to the genuine reverence when the normal Mass resumed. 

 

We seem to have lost touch with that sense of humor folded within civil conduct and spiritual reverence. Without official sanction from our religious or cultural institutions— be they school, church or Congress— sacred and secular, light and dark, good and evil, are pulled apart and seen in opposition to each other. The ancient Greeks seemed to understand that our need to cause trouble and get into trouble was connected with our divine urges and thus invested their gods with all sorts of human foibles. But now, we are back in the world of two colors only— the Fundamentalist mentality that preaches moral virtue (and inevitably practices something quite different) and the Hedonist mentality that preaches fulfilling every whim and desire. The conversation between our sacred and secular selves has become a shouting match with both sides losing.

 

So I return to my job as a music teacher with a charge much deeper than sharing a few cute songs and making sure that kids recognize quarter notes. With the demise of official fools and tricksters, inspired ritual and soul-serving mythology, it is art that has kept the conversation going between the Heaven and Hell of the human psyche. (Think of Bosch’s painting, Blake’s poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Coltrane’s probing saxophone on his album Ascension.) My job is to pass on the tools of art so that children can explore the heights and depths of their minds and hearts. For though we may need some degree of moral codes to guide us, we first need to experience the full range of who we are. Art gives us experiences in images, motions, sounds and stories that lay out the complexity of desire and erase the conventional lines between saint and sinner.

 

Children, so close to the root of life, are a strange mix of extravagant desire and wondrous imagination, narcissistic indulgence and selfless giving, thoughtless cruelty and tender caring. They equally have the Spirit’s thirst for light, clarity and order and the Soul’s need for the dark, the strange, the extraordinary. If we are to be effective teachers, we must come to grips with all sides of the child’s nature (which, after all, is our own), leading our students towards civil conduct and spiritual progress while still recognizing and finding forms for the soul’s darkest needs. 

 

And a good place to start is Wrong Words Day. 

Naughty and Nice

At this time of year, I almost always re-post my favorite article: “Wrong Words Day.” The surface theme is what to do when kids in your Singing Time class want to sing the wrong words to the Holiday Songs. The deeper message is how to acknowledge these twin sides of our character and find the proper container for the naughty part so that the nice is more genuinely authentic. 

Every religion, every civilization, every culture, attends to the idea of moral precepts— from the Jewish Ten Commandments to the Christian "Love thy neighbor" to Buddha’s Eightfold Path to Islam’s Five Pillars to the Constitution and beyond, all suggest that we strive towards justice, compassion, charity to foster peace and ethical conduct in the communities where we live. 

 

In actual practice, of course, we fail miserably and have to confess our sins or sit for longer meditation periods or pay back to the community. The culture expects us to admit wrongdoing or with judges and juries, insists that we pay the price when guilt is evident. At every level, the principles of ethical conduct are expected to hold firm and atonement is in order. 

Again, because we are granted with a mind that can be used to propagate good or evil, a heart capable of both love and hate, human desire that can aim for beauty or greed, we’re also capable of astounding hypocrisy—showing up at church for one hour a week and wreaking destructive havoc the other 167 hours. We can rig juries, bribe judges, create laws that hurt the innocents and reward the privileged—you know the story. But even when it’s only lip service, it still agrees that there are moral precepts to at least to pretend to pay service to and some level of expectation that the ratio of nice to naughty is somewhere around 7, 8 or 9 to 1.  Or at least in today’s popular jargon, 6-7!!! :-) 

 

So as you’ll see in the article, we spend some 14 days at Singing Time singing the right words to songs that promise communal festivity, peaceful scenes in a manger, light in the darkness, joyful hora dancing, exuberant sleigh rides and more. And then one day proclaiming that it’s the season to be naughty, a time to decorate with poison ivy, take a ballet class with the Joker, set Barbies and beards on fire. In order for kids to feel the full delicious weight of controlled naughtiness, they have to be firmly established in what it feels like to be nice. It's a 14 to 1 ratio.

 

All of that has changed. When the leader of our country spews an unrelenting flood of verbal garbage 24/7, proclaiming without an ounce of shame an onslaught of abusive, insulting, offensive, malicious, slanderous, vituperative attacks on people who deserve none of it, any one of which would have had any parent washing their kids mouth out with soap, when his fellow party leaders and citizen supporters let it pass without a single critical comment, we are in a new world. Where EVERY DAY is Wrong Words Day and there’s no guilty pleasure in being a little bit naughty because it’s all naughty. 

 

In a festival of mixed metaphor, we can say that the guard rails have been taken off the highway, the lanes obliterated, the stoplights and stop signs torn down, the speed limits no longer posted. Anybody can drive anywhere, any way, any speed, crashing into each other without legal consequence. We can say that the whistleblowers are shrieking without pause so their alarms are now just background noise. The 10 Commandments, every one of which our “leader” has repeatedly broken are now used for toilet paper (in spite of the Louisiana Governor demanding they be posted in every school in the ultimate act of hypocrisy). The levees have been torn down and the floodwaters washing away the last vestiges of human decency. The wild dogs are rampaging through the countryside with no attempt to get them back in their cages and no one allowed to ask “Who let the dogs out?” “Naughty” is now our default setting, our screensaver and our new idea of a criminal is someone who dares to be empathetic, vulnerable, kind, nice. You get the idea.

 

This changes my pleasure in my article. But nevertheless, I persist and will post it following this. In light of all the above, I paraphrase Tiny Tim:

 

“God help us, every one!”