The Canon That Caught Up With Itself

It was a Dalcroze teacher who I picked up the airport once who came up with this insightful musical perception:

Me: “How are you?”

Him: “My body is in canon with itself. “

(For you non-musicians, a canon is a round a la Row Row Row Your Boat)

Brilliant!

With my recent flight marathon from Switzerland to North Carolina to San Francisco to Borneo, my body was in four-part canon! But unlike Da Pacem Domine, the parts were far from harmonious. I could teach and carry on conversation as if everything were copasetic, but inside was the whirl and twirl of confused biorhythms searching for their lagging counterparts.

And then comes that amazing moment when “click!” The various parts have arrived and merged and become one voice again— and in tune! One moment you’re dizzy with disorientation and the next, the world is whole again and everything in focus.

It might be premature, but I thought I felt that click walking back from the Cocktail Hour Reception. I was wandering around with a plate filled with chicken satay and peanut sauce and shrimp and egg rolls in the unusual circumstance of 1100 teachers and barely any I know (I’m apparently the main music gig in this focus of literacy and early childhood), wondering if anyone from my 60 plus people workshop today would rescue me from my wallflower status and strike up a conversation. No one did— perhaps my usual electro-magnetic charismatic field that attracts a crowd ( ha ha!) got its signals obscured by the out-of-tune canon. Or maybe just because I’m old, not as good-looking as I used to be and boring. Whatever. I was fine, just me and my sate skewers trying to look cool and get away from the blasting disco beat.

And then it dawned on me. This is not fun and I have legs! So I walked back to my room and that’s when I felt the little click. Yeah! But the real acid test is tonight’s sleep. Sorry to bore you all with this, but jet lag seems an appropriate theme for confessions of a traveling music teacher, yes? Tomorrow I promise something more interesting, like the crowd of adoring attractive women taking me out to dinner after astounding them with my riveting performance of “criss-cross applesauce.”

Well, in my dreams. At least if I can get to sleep long enough to have dreams. Good night.