Words Fail

When I was 16 years old, already feeling exiled from the effortless joy and magic of childhood and seeking to recover it, only this time more consciously, I had just discovered the book Walden. Thoreau spoke to me of things that I could feel or hope to feel. I also now could drive to Watchung Reservation, my own little Waldenesque Park and roam through the woods. 

 

I remember one occasion taking a walk to Surprise Lake and standing watching the water until observer (me) and observed (the waters of the lake) seemed to merge into one unified whole. Walking back through the woods to my car and passing people coming the other way on the path, I gave them a greeting and a smile, my meager attempt to communicate the little heart-opening experience I had just had. 

 

For us human social creatures, the first impulse when we discover something worthy or beautiful is to communicate it and share it with others. I suppose that’s the whole point of these almost 5,000 blogposts. Also the musician’s need to perform what has been practiced, the artist’s need to display what has been painted, the author’s need to publish what has been written. 

 

But at 5:30 in the morning after a most memorable and extraordinary day, I feel defeated by the challenge to share what happened yesterday. Of course, I can give some details. The first “Wake Up to Life” group Zumba class, Kofi-style, a session of games led by James, Sofia and myself, revealing our names, places we live, birthdays and days of the week we were born in the fun and musical way that we Orff teachers do. Then a lecture by Kofi about the continent of Africa, revealing the deep ignorance and shameful images most of us were fed by media, books, teachers who failed to show us the extraordinary breadth and depth of this continent—geographically, anthropologically, historically, biologically, culturally and more. The morning was enough to mark the day as important, connective, revelatory and special.

 

But we were just warming up. After lunch, we boarded the bus to go to a formal welcoming ceremony and as we stepped down the dirt path into the heart of a town’s neighborhood, the distant drums sounding closer greeted us as they always do on this opening day of the Orff Afrique course. 

 

And here is where words begin to fail. The powerful and complex drumming and singing, which I’m still trying to figure out after all these years, drew us in to the world where words leave off into the direct bodily experience of the power of human community wholly connected to the seen and unseen worlds, the ancestors and descendants, the multiple faculties of soul within us all that mostly lie dormant during our business-as-usual days. In music as healing circles, it is well known that rattles serve to awaken and electrically charge us with their vibrations while the drums balance the energy with deeper vibrations that unify body and soul. 

 

With some 30 women playing rattles and 20 men playing drums, we were lifted into a larger consciousness made yet more powerful by the invitations to come into the circle and dance, not to passively listen, but to wholly participate in the feast of healing vibration. Someone invites you into the circle to do a simple (but still room to do better with consummate style) dance move with a little ritual ending that you can quickly learn, little movement punctuation marks that signal the end of your time together.  If you want a break from dancing, you can also join in picking up a rattle and joining in with a simple, playable pattern. 

 

For an outsider and rank beginner to get into the center of this complex music with a doable dance move and playable rattle part is something apart from any musical experience I’ve had in this world. I’ve admired and been uplifted by the community gamelans in Bali, that have their own spiritual power and musical complexity. But no casual observer can just get up and dance or sing along or sit in with the band. Likewise difficult to jump in on a complex Bulgarian folk dance without considerable practice nor join in with the music. You can sing along in a neighborhood hootenanny, but minus the integration of playing, singing and dancing and the thunderous power of exquisite music crafted over centuries Dancing on the street to a brass band in New Orleans comes closer to the Ghanaian invitation, but as fun as it is to shake your booty, it still doesn’t approach the multiple layers of this experience. 

 

There’s so much we don’t know about the way the rhythms work together and how they speak musically some deeply meaningful proverbs, how the singing works and what they’re singing about, how the ancestors are invited into the dancing ring to participate in community life. How the whole experience, which happens often in different contexts, creates and sustains a meaningful community of shared wisdom and values. One can dance (as I did) with Kofi’s 98-year-old mother and then a 4-year-old child, dance with women or men, observe the baby on the back of the dancing mother, without thinking about what a different world it creates when all ages gather together and mutually celebrate. 

 

Again, words fail. These gatherings express everything I think the world could and should be. When I compare the depth of this kind of community with the way typical Americans relate to each other in offices, workplaces, schools, churches, sporting events, family gatherings, I can’t help but feel that we are in kindergarten in the school of communal engagement. Not to shame or blame us — any sincere attempt to come together with a sense of welcome and celebration is worthy of praise. But given how we have been fed the lies of Africa as a backward and undeveloped continent, it is maddening to think how our arrogance and ignorance keep us from realizing how extraordinary this Ewe (and some 2,000 other ethnic group cultures) are in this regard and how very much we have to learn from them. As I said, words fail to express this clearly. 

 

But there’s more. 

 

Now it was time for the formal ceremony where the chief, the elders, the priests (of the traditional religions) welcome us. First with a libation to the ancestors—water, whisky and watery corn flour poured on the ground to make sure we come with pure intentions and don’t have any hidden agendas to harm. Given the history of colonialism here— still afoot with missionaries and capitalists— that feels like an important test to pass. And we did. 

 

We then stood up one by one and shared our name and place and then came forward one by one to receive a bracelet from the chief and shake hands with the entire welcoming committee. 

 

But the most moving moment is when any people with African-American blood in our group—and we had three—come forward again to receive a beaded necklace and a “Welcome home” from the chief. Kofi prefaced by acknowledging the role of ancestral chiefs in gathering people to be sold in the slave trade and apologized for their part in the horror. While also acknowledging the European’s role in decimating their land, depriving them of human resources and shredding the fabric of traditional culture. Here was truth and reconciliation at its finest— a blend of sincere apology, remorse, grief mixed with joy of homecoming. Not a dry eye in the house. 

 

More festive dancing, off to Kofi’s childhood home where his mother played a bell and sang a song to us (again, 98-years-old and so sharp and present) and then to Nunya Academy, the school Kofi dreamed of and completed for a delicious dinner prepared by his extended family. (The story of Nunya School is an entry in itself for those who don’t know about it. If you’re impatient to know more, check them out on the Website). Finally, back to the hotel and a de-brief with Kofi as he revealed so much of what’s happening behind the scenes of everything we just experienced. 

 

Words keep failing, so I’ll save for another time the role of collective meaning and wisdom present in every corner of this extraordinary culture. Suffice it to say that is more highly evolved, sophisticated, intricate, spiritually potent than what most of us have ever had an inkling of a dream about, never mind experienced. 

 

Meanwhile, there was a moment wholly immersed through the senses, heart, body and mind in a dance with purple scarves, when I felt so clearly, “This. This is the only antidote I can imagine to the ongoing horror back hom and worldwide." I began to dream of a global “We Are the World” mass event where for one day (or week or month or year!), people in every corner of the planet at the same time in their own way with their own music filled the planet with music’s healing vibration. But not the big glitzy show with corporate sponsorship, ads, TV coverage—that’s part of the problem not the solution. But this model of one afternoon in the town of Dzodze, Ghana.

 

A new day dawns. Let us awaken with it. 

 

Miawoezon!

In Accra, the Ga people say “Akwaaba!” to welcome us to this beautiful culture.  In Dzodze where we arrived today, the Ewe people say “Miawoezon!” which adds this sentiment “Thank you for the trouble you have taken to come here.” Appropriate indeed, not only because it is not a casual thing to take the time away from home and family, save the money for the expensive plane flight alongside the tuition and come to a continent where most have never been. 

 

But in addition to that, many of us 30 music teachers from here, there, and everywhere worked against all odds to solve the problem of the U.S. Ghanaian Embassy shutting down due to an internal crisis, with many of our passports sent there to get a visa stuck there with a. distinct possibility that they wouldn’t get back to us in time to make the trip. A week of desperate phone calls, WhatsApps and e-mails and some getting new passports to get a Visa at the Accra Airport upon arrival, and miraculously, no one was turned away. So “Miawoezon” now has an additional meaning—trouble indeed, but finally, here we are.

 

It has been a promising beginning. Before we have even begun the official teaching in our Orff Afrique course, the magic is afoot. A day in the marketplace bargaining with glee and finding some lovely things. A lunch at the marketplace that included a band showing up playing xylophone, drums, shaker and bell with such joy, musicality and great energy— and my delight in recognizing three of the xylophone pieces. In fact, they invited me to sit in on one and play shaker (ahatxe) on another. And then invited people to come up and dance one or two at a time and finally to sit in on some drumming. Sheer delight!

 

Some of the more adventurous young people ventured out in the town at night and came back with fun stories. Then today a long 4-hour bus ride to Dzodze, people still catching up on jet lag and another extraordinary welcome with the Nunya Academy Students all lined up holding cards with our names. 

 

We each met our student host (anywhere from 6 to 28 years old), who took us to our room and then the games began. I’m familiar with many now, so that made it an extra pleasure to play them all. A rhythmic math game, a go-in-the-middle and show- us- your- motion game, a duck-duck-goose kind of chasing game (6-year-olds chasing 40- year-olds!). Finally waved goodbye to the kids while we had our first dinner at the White Dove Hotel. 

 

After dinner, I got together with my xylophone teaching partner Aaron (he’s the expert, I’m the translator to the Orff classroom) and discussed what pieces we might be teaching and played snippets of them together. With Wi-Fi not set up yet so freed from their phones, people drifted over to the music and then sat down at one of the 22 xylophones and we all began jamming with Aaron in the lead. For about 40 minutes straight without a pause. Once again, welcome to Ghana!!

 

Is it enough to simply share the news of good-hearted people in a culture that teaches its people to welcome people with smiles and sincere interest in enjoying our shared humanity? Sometimes. But when a building is on fire, casual conversation as if everything were normal makes no sense. After we’ve sounded the alarm and retreated to safety, all talk should focus on how to fireproof our house and prevent another disaster from happening. 

 

So imagine with me here that in 1957, the same year that Ghana won its independence from Britain, the students in Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, lined up like the Nunya students, some holding signs of the names of the 9 black students poised to walk into an all-white school upholding the law approved by the Supreme Court. All of the white community—including parents and teachers and the Governor himself— singing a song of welcome as they walked the students to their lockers and desks.

 

Once in school, all of them, black and white, would learn the history of what happened to so cruelly divide the blacks and whites and make vows to stop the poisonous narrative that had brainwashed potentially good people into performing unspeakable acts of cruelty. It would have been such an important first step in healing the sins of past ancestors and stepping forward into a kinder, fairer and more loving future. 

 

But of course, that didn’t happen. We see the photos of the faces of white women contorted and twisted in hatred shouting their contempt, scorn and vitriolic bile toward Elizabeth Eckford, a dignified girl who never did them any harm, just walking to school with her books. Mothers who went through the sacrifice and pain of giving birth to life and nurturing their young turning against an innocent sweet young woman because their brains had been twisted by an ugly story passed down to them. And once in the school protected by the National Guard, those 9 students would hear that Africa is a place of savage people, a continent filled with what a later President would call “shithole countries.”

 

So to all of you who supported and continue to support that guy and the spoken and unspoken doctrine of white supremacy, look at the photos of those women and then the Nunya kids. Who are the savages? Who lives in a shithole country? Consider re-thinking all you’ve been taught or think about what you’ve never been taught and join those of us working to flush this purposefully perpetuated poisoned hatred from our system. Choose to refuse it. Consider that a life lived with great music, open hearts and minds, warm welcomes to fellow humans no matter how they look or where they come from, is ten thousand times more fun and fulfilling than the opposite. Come to Ghana and see for yourselves. 

 

And yes, humans and human problems here as you will find anywhere— no romantic portrait of paradise with no conflict and no issues that need attention. But from my point of view, all of it in proper proportion standing firmly on the ground of music, dance and a welcoming humanity. 

 

Today will be a formal welcome from the Chief and then a dinner hosted by our venerable teacher, Dr. Kofi Gbolonyo’s family at their home compound. A generosity and hospitality we all deserve here while my country’s shithole leaders are sending death and destruction bombing the land of my many friends in Iran. When will it all stop? When will we finally civilize the savages? 

 

Summer Solstice

Amidst the whirling and swirling of the daily news, the calendar marches on and the Seasons make their appointed rounds. Today marks the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. Back in England, it was getting dark close to 10:00 pm, here in Ghana it’s around 6:00.

 

But much more than the length of days is the deeper meaning of summer for this lifetime schoolteacher. Whether I simply tolerated school as a kid or thoroughly enjoyed it as a teacher, summer always signaled a release from schedule and responsibility. It sometimes felt like Fall, Winter and Spring where simply warm-up acts for the real deal of the way life is supposed to be. Long days that invited you to simply be, temperatures that threw off the burdens of layered clothes, beaches and lakes that offered both refreshment and some primeval return to the watery womb. The music of the ice cream truck and the dance of cool sweetness on the tongue. Lying in a hammock reading a book, the smell of grilled chicken and vegetables on the barbecue, fresh tomatoes and sweet corn and eating outdoors, sitting on the front porch at night watching the fireflies or looking up at the star-studded sky. 

 

And of course, travel. Breaking free of the overly familiar and drinking in large gulps of the new and exotic. The ecstatic call of “Road trip!” watching the road spool out before and behind you, digging up the passports from the filing cabinet, stepping out of an airport into a new world with new sights, sounds, tastes and textures. However you spent it, wherever you were, Summer’s rallying cry was “Renew! Refresh! Rejuvenate!” And you happily answered the call. 

 

Now that I live in a perpetual retired summer, the yearning for the day of school, our family’s ritual celebratory dinner in San Francisco’s Tadich Grill, Fog City Diner or Il Fornaio a scrapbook memory, the lure of the Michigan beach partnered with the delight of teaching Orff Courses has changed a bit. Not the dramatic contrast it once was, but still with same forever circling pleasures. Happy to wake up in a Ghana hotel room under a ceiling fan with people I’ve already shared summer Orff teaching delights with before in San Francisco, Carmel Valley, New Orleans, Salzburg and beyond. And equally delightful to hang out around the swimming pool yesterday afternoon. Leisure, work and study all of one piece and so delightfully so. 

 

Happy summer, my friends!

 

 

The Real News

The air is hot and sticky and there’s a palm tree outside my window. I had jollof rice and fried plantain for dinner and waiting for my luggage at the airport, I was a dot of white in a sea of beautiful black bodies. As Dorothy noted to Toto, “I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” Welcome to Ghana. 

 

Meeting some of the lovely people who have convened here for our 5^th Orff-Afrique course, we were happily eating dinner under a TV set that was showing the same-old same-old. That was a deep cognitive dissonance and got me thinking about the news. 

 

The dictionary definition of “new” is: Produced, introduced, or discovered recently or now for the first time; not existing before.

 

In light of that definition, why do we call it the “news?” Pick any day and you’ll see that there is nothing new whatsoever about people thinking bombs solve problems, that politicians lie and cheat, that a traumatized population is addicted to drugs, violence, alcohol, chronic abuse, depression. The news is nothing new at all, just the endless sad list of human failing and folly replayed over and over and over again. What would really qualify as news?

 

• The President admitted that he has lied repeatedly to the people, is supremely unqualified to meet the requirements of this esteemed office and hurt innocent people. Showing deep remorse, he resigned from his office, fired JD Vance and Mike Johnson, appointed Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to take over and assigned Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, replaced Clarence Thomas with Barack Obama, Brett Kavanaugh with Stacey Abrams, Amy Coney Barret with my SF School alum lawyer David Edeli.  

 

• Israel, Palestine and Iran have convened a cabinet of mothers with young babies to meet and watch their children play together before making any decisions about sharing land, resources and laws that protect human rights. All men previously in power are sent to a rehabilitation camp to care for young children and learn the lessons they’ve refused. 

 

• FOX news has announced it will be off the air and deeply apologized to the American people for filling their minds with fear, disinformation, misinformation, truly fake news and overall brainwashing of a population clinging to an identity formed by a white supremacy and patriarchal narrative. They will pay back all the money they earned to invest in free health care, free college tuition, arts programs and trauma healing centers. 

 

• Hollywood has agreed to stop making its relentless movies with macho men, sexy women, mindless plots and guns, guns, guns to help lead viewers to better versions of themselves. 

 

• The NRA disbanded, stopped the manufacture of assault rifles, lobbied for strict gun control laws, apologized to families of school shooting massacres and signed up for perpetual community service. 

 

• Dr. Kofi Gbolonyo has been appointed by both Canada and the U.S. to be the Minister of Art and Culture. He is currently training 35 music teachers from around the world in the fifth Orff-Afrique Course as ambassadors to their respective shithole countries to show how playing, singing and dancing help create a genuine and joyful community.

 

Now that would qualify as news!

Onward and Upward

If you ever need a place to stay near the Munich Airport, maybe I recommend the nearby Premium Inn? A short bus ride from the terminals, best bed ever, good pizza at the bar and best price all trip—63 Euros! A happy ending to a happy six weeks on this most marvelous continent. Here’s what I posted in Facebook. 

 

And so a farewell toast to Europe with my favorite Austrian beer. Six memorable weeks in the Dordognes, Paris, London, Oxford, the Cotswolds, Vienna, Salzburg, Linz and now the Munich Airport. A grand pleasure to meet old friends and make new ones, to bike, hike and wander and also to teach, to feel touched by the exquisite aesthetics of these European cities, the beautiful countrysides, the uplift of art and architecture and cultivated cuisine, the kindness of strangers and shared concern with just about everyone I met about the unravelling of the world and the shared commitment to help stitch it back together. 

 

Tomorrow it’s off to Ghana and a different kind of uplift from extraordinary music, dance and song and the exuberant welcomes the Orff Afrique students always feel. On this Juneteenth day, the Civil War is raging again back home, but I’m here to report that healing forces are everywhere. A toast to what has been and to what will come.

 

There were some lovely comments:

 

• Thanks for letting us all travel vicariously through your posts and keeping hope alive.

 

• Thank you for your positivity, Doug.

 

• It is to the benefit to so many during this stressful global time that you share yourself and your wise thoughts. Thanks for your vision of healing. It does not go unnoticed.

 

These meant a lot to me to read. When the unimaginable happened back in November, I didn’t know how I would survive it emotionally. I’d been there for four terrible years, living reactively and in a constant state of outrage and despair. 

So this time I made a vow: “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” Still speak out at workshops and on this blog/ social media, show up at protests, write letters or make phone calls—no head in the sand ostrich escapes. But focus on positive action, not negative reaction. Play defense as needed but keep playing the offensive game of aiming for the three-point baskets of love, fun and compassion, focusing on my great teammates more than the opposing team’s cheating and rough play. In short, living well is the best revenge. 

 

Of course, I have my days when I hunker down in the dark tunnel of despair—don’t we all? But as the old African American ring play suggests (Little Sally Walker):

 

“Rise, Sally, rise. Wipe those cryin’ eyes. Turn to the East, Sally, turn to the West, Sally, turn to the very one that you love the best.”

 

Onward and upward!

Renewed Again

One of my class goals that I communicated with my students over the years was simply this: That you walk out the door feeling happier than when you walked in. Did that always happen? Of course not! Life is unpredictable, consistent good behavior is unreliable, moon cycles and biorhythms and the toxic leakage of the daily news makes an impact. 

 

But more often than not, that’s exactly what happened. 

 

And it’s exactly what happened today. I got picked up by my host, who I had never met, and we drove to a site where I had never been (Anton Bruckner Private University) meeting mostly college students who didn’t know me. I had a plan drawing from material I had just done in London/ Vienna/ Salzburg, but the moment I walked into the room, I threw it all out. Here were two giant marimbas, a drum set, a stand-up bass, chromatic Orff instruments,  many bass bars, conga drums and Latin percussion and within one minute I knew what to do: Jazz. Quickly put together an outline in my head from my considerable storehouse of fabulous pieces and magical sequences. 

 

Two minutes before I started, I felt that damned dizziness again, fairly strongly and was briefly terrified that I might fall to the floor in front of the students and not get to do the workshop. But the moment I started in the circle, it all disappeared and I never thought about it again for the next 7 hours. Just dove into the refreshing waters of jazz taught Orff style and felt the infectious energy of these young people with great skills, great spirit and great enthusiasm. By lunchtime, we all walked out the door buzzing with excitement and glowing with happiness. 

The afternoon never sagged and had the good sense to end with one of my favorite games, Johnny Brown. On the last note, I had them look at the clock and it was exactly 5:00 o’clock (our closing time) to the second! How satisfying was that?!

 

My host offered to drive me back to the hotel and asked if I was exhausted and once again, I could honestly testify, “Not in the least! I feel more energetic and happier than when I started!”

 

Because of wanting to hear the reports of the marches on Saturday, I’ve been dipping back into the cesspool of the news and starting to feel dirty all over. So I will take a break again, focus on the living beautiful beings around me and continue this extraordinary blessing of releasing music at its height and depth everywhere I teach and to everyone I teach. I don’t know what I did to deserve it, but I accept it all with a grateful heart. 

Dear Dad

Sorry I missed writing to you on Father’s Day, but I did begin a letter and certainly thought of you. 18 years gone, but always my father. And I’m grateful for that. You provided the needed food, shelter and safety,  got me started playing the organ and then piano, let me play your great collection of records—Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Debussy and beyond, filled the house with good books and your own paintings, paid for private high school and then college, never said the “n” word as many of my friends’ fathers did, spared me the shackles of organized religion, introduced me to Crostic puzzles and Solitaire and in your own way, let me find my own way in turbulent times—long hair, hitchhiking, political protest, Zen practice— with a caring measure of acceptance and no judgement about refusing the good ole American way. Though never outwardly effusive in your love, I knew it was there and certainly in our later years, you found your way to let me know. Likewise moving from perhaps reluctant acceptance to genuine pride in who I had become and what I did and how I did it. And I think you know how I moved from the typical struggles between fathers and sons, the critiques of what you didn’t give me to the deep appreciations of what you did. At the end, there were no unspoken words that needed to be said.

 

In one of your letters I unearthed recently, you wrote “This is a lousy world” and you lived in a time when that was accepted as just the way things are and nothing you can do to change it. But somehow, some foundation of my childhood convinced me that everything could be changed. I could work on myself through meditation, music, reading and more, I could change little parts of the world like trying to transform music education to something more joyous, more musical, more community-bonding. I could join others trying to change big parts of the world by standing up against injustice, war, greed, racism, sexism, tyranny and speaking up for more kindness, fairness and inclusion. Often, but not always, with some deep optimistic conviction that we are moving, however tiny the steps, towards the world as it could and should be. 

 

But in the past week, events in the United States, Turkey, Colombia, Iran, Palestine (as always) make me wonder if you’re right. This is a fuckin’ lousy world! And yes, I was uplifted by the massive protests, but this morning, even though the sun shines in Salzburg and the distant mountains and nearby park offer solace, I’m feeling the darkness spread over me. Hasn’t happened often lately, but here it is. So in this simple act of writing to you and thanking you yet again for both the gift of life and the gift of loving life, I hope you’ll take my hand and walk me back into the light. Let’s go.

 

Your always loving son,

 

Doug

 

Decency

I’ve long been so impressed by the way Germany and Austria handles facing the horrors of their history. Amongst other things, every school child takes a mandatory trip to a concentration camp, is prepared for it ahead of time and discusses it afterwards. No one has shut down that practice because it “makes the children uncomfortable” and teachers don’t impose shame and blame on innocent young children. They simply understand that the children have to know what happened and recognize the toxic narratives that made it happen so that it will never happen again. We have so much we can learn from Germany and Austria in this regard. 

 

How many mandatory fields trip do American school children take to plantations? And if they did, how many of the tours would accent the beautiful architecture and the genteel sipping of mint juleps on porches? As far as I know, there is only one place that tells the real story of these forced labor camps that made America rich through unimaginable systemic brutality—the Whitney Plantation outside of New Orleans. I’d like to think that some school groups do go there, but how many in the face of all the schools in the United States?

And of course, there are many sites school groups could go to to learn the stories of the places where witches were burnt, Native Americans were exterminated, striking laborers were beaten or murdered. The surest ways for such atrocities to continue (see this week’s news) is to make sure the population is ignorant, forbid the teaching that reveals the narratives behind the curtain, pump the people full of lies, misinformation, distraction. And we're doing that very well. 

Here is my Facebook post on the subject. 

 

This sign on one of the Salzburg bridges. This is what it looks like when a country owns the horrors in its history, educates its children to take “never again” seriously and refuses the toxic narrative of white (Aryan) supremacy that makes otherwise decent people behave indecently. A timely reminder to your cousins and such still in the grip of the Fox News brainwash and the depraved “decency is weakness” storyline to get off the hatred train and join the 5 million plus Americans who rallied on No Kings Day. 

 

And please note: The Toddler King and his goons called the violent insurrection and riot of January 6^th a “rally” and the peaceful rally in L.A. a “riot”. Watch the language closely—it’s a huge part of the strategy to again make otherwise kind people do cruel things. Part of the conspiracy against decency and kindness is also mainstream media reporting their bias as fact, most casually saying “thousands of people protesting” far below the millions obvious inn all the postings from the 2000 different towns and cities. 

 

What made Saturdays gatherings so hopeful was that people were not proclaiming a new political dogma to replace an old, which invariably, as history shows, creates the next round of havoc and horror. They were simply saying, in their own words artfully shown on creative signs, that they choose decency over brutality, kindness over cruelty. And are waking up like slumbering lions, learning to recognize the language, hidden narratives and the torrent of lies that make monsters of us all. And as more and more awaken, the empire begins to crumble, the few lose their grip on the many. If the poet Shelley would have been on the march, this would have been his sign:

 

"Rise like Lions after slumber. 

  In unvanquishable number, 

  Shake your chains to earth like dew. 

 Which in sleep had fallen on you 

 Ye are many – they are few." 

Three Homecomings

“Home is where the heart is” is one of those clichés that rings true. You might also say “Home is where the heart has fully opened” and when you find yourself in the physical place where that has happened, the cellular memory of it all kicks in. 

 

So here I am in Salzburg again and this indeed is where my heart has opened time and time again these last 35 years. The whole city, to be sure, but also in the hallowed halls of the Orff Institut, alive with the echoes of Orff’s vision come alive these past 62 years in the place where he laid the cornerstone. The vibrations of the Orff ancestors present and palpable. Likewise the felt presence of all the marvelous people I’ve met here who became such a notable part of my life. First and foremost, my colleague Sofia Lopez-Ibor but then expanding out to so many others from this world over who I first met here and later was invited to teach in their country. Spain, Finland, Iceland, Germany, Italy, Greece, Portugal, England, Estonia, Turkey, Russia, Taiwan, China, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Brazil and some 30 more countries! More importantly, such sweet memories of all the stirring music and dance we shared together in rooms 5 and 4 and 27 and 9, the joy and laughter and comradery, the walks and bike rides and lunches in the park and dinners at the biergarten and on and on. So to teach yet another workshop yesterday to yet another Special Course and some 20 others folks in the Orff Institut was indeed a homecoming.

 

The second homecoming was simply yet another opportunity to teach a workshop and create yet again that miniature universe I’ve crafted for over a half-a-century. It was three hours of laughter and tears and my ideal world given body. 

 

The third homecoming is described in this Facebook piece I posted: 

 

At the end of my workshop yesterday at the Orff Institut, I said: 

 

“Never have I been more ashamed to be American and never have I been more proud.” The pride swelled when that night I spent over an hour looking at Youtube videos of the No King Rallies in some 2,000 cities and towns across the country with the millions and millions of American citizens standing together peacefully in strength and humor to say “Enough.” Alongside the contrasting footage of the pathetic tanks rolling down empty streets revealing the empty strength of this soulless pitiful excuse for a human being and his equally dismal enablers. 

 

What happens in America reverberates around the world, where evil is afoot unleashing chaos in the Ukraine, Iran, Colombia and beyond. There were students in the workshop from all those places and we ended singing This Little Light of Mine sending love and light to these countries (including the U.S.) and more. 

 

Not one of us can predict how this will ultimately play out, but I believe the tide is turning and the tsunami of love and compassion and justice and just plain human decency is rising to wash away the cruel and greedy and hateful and deceitful from the halls of power.  Stay together, friends and keep singing!

It’s a beautiful sunny day outside and I’m ready to get out, with three homes alive and singing in my heart.

Next Stop

True to my ritual greetings (and farewells) while traveling, I feel compelled to say something about Vienna. As a musician, this is a no-brainer. Like New York was to jazz, Paris to artists, London to novelists, playwrights, poets, Vienna has unquestionably been a powerful constellation in the galaxy of European composers. Though not all of those mentioned below were born here, many lived and worked here and you’d be hard pressed to find more exalted company in the world of classical music than Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Strauss, Mahler, Schonberg. Even Vivaldi came to Vienna from Venice at the end of his life, though it was a sad event as his patron died soon after,  leaving him impoverished. He died at 63 years old (like Bach, on my birthday!) and is buried in Vienna. 

 

No one is going to add my name to the list of Viennese music history, but I believe I gave a memorable workshop yesterday at the University of Music and Performing Arts—on Anton-von-Webern Platz right near the Arnold Schonberg Center! These folks know how to honor their artistic legacy!. 

So very few people actually listen to the music of Webern and Schonberg, so far removed from earthy rhythms and recognizable tonal centers and I understand why. The calm serenity that settled over the room as the participants played my arrangement of Rain Rain Go Away on the elemental wood and metal Orff instruments was an affirmation that simplicity that reveals the beauty of the harmonic series, based mostly on the first five overtones, is powerful and delicious. Not a virtuosic complex meal, but the grand pleasure of picking a ripe tomato from the garden or crisp apple from the tree. And then the dynamic rhythms of Boom Chick a Boom brought a different kind of life-giving energy into the room. I wish Schonberg and Webern could have been there and let me know how they liked it. 

 

If you’re reading this and wondering, “Who the heck are Schonberg and Webern?!!” my point holds true. Even if you listened to their music, you wouldn’t leave the concert whistling it. Still, I’m not dismissing them here. They came on to the scene after a long evolution stepping up the harmonic series into the distant realms of that stratosphere and made their mark, even if it proved to be a comma rather than an exclamation point. Schonberg wrote a supremely engaging and intelligent book called The Theory of Harmony  and though he was credited with dismantling functional harmony in favor of an “all notes are created equal” 12-tone system, he knew harmony down to its bones. No casual tearing apart of the past there. 

 

So that's my little lesson in "modern" (over 120 years old!) classical music. It's hard for me to talk about anything these days without a reference to what's going down in today's Disunited States of America. When I introduced Boom Chick a Boom and the legacy of black musical roots from whence it sprang, it was the moment to acknowledge the horror of what’s going down back home. I told the people that I have never felt more ashamed of my fellow American citizens who brought this on and who still mindlessly and heartlessly support it and have never felt more proud of my fellow American citizens who are speaking out when they used to be silent and showing up on the streets when they used to stay home. 

 

Of course, Vienna has its own history as some of the high points of human culture (the aforementioned culture of composers) and the lowest (Hitler was born in Austria and spoke in Vienna). The light and the deep dark shadow—it is everywhere in all times.

But it is one thing to read about it in history and another to live it in the daily news. I’ve been far away from it these last five weeks, but these days, one is only as far as a click away. It helps to be surrounded by beauty, meeting only lovely, intelligent and sympathetic-to-our-plight people and now, doing my work again that aims for healing. But it still hurts like hell. 

 

And so my brief stay in Vienna and on to the next stop of the train. Where this all ends is anyone’s guess, so nothing to do but live as fully as we can each day of the journey. 

  

The Three C's

Years back, I wrote an essay that nobody read titled The Three C’s: Conquerors, Caretakers and Consumers. It was one of those “the world is divided into 3 kinds of people” * reflections, as follows:

 

Conquerors: These people are endowed with an extra-strength dose of energy, charisma, determination and power. They use it in service of their own personal gain, stuck in the lower chakras of food (resources), sex and power. Their primary aim is to harness their excess energy to dominate others. Money is to be amassed and hoarded far, far beyond their fair share. Sex is conquest, satisfying their needs and proving their dominance with no love or care for their partner. Power is to make all subservient to their wishes and commands to inflate their fantasy of superiority. 

 

Caretakers: These people are endowed with that same extra-dose of energy, but move it up the chakras into the higher realms of love, eloquent speech, wise insight. They use their power in service of others, to caretake our precious land and waters, to bless the poor and the meek, to stand for social justice. The only conquest that interests them is self-conquest, using their energy to nourish their gods and damp down their devils. 

 

Nobody has done a statistical survey, but I imagine perhaps 5 to 10% of the population at both ends. Genghis Khan, King Leopold, Queen Victoria, Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin, Trump, Putin and their ilk at one end of the spectrum, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, Roberta Menchu, Martin Luther King, Fannie Lou Hamer and more at the other end. Same energies beyond the norm, different uses of those energies that either destroy or preserve life. 

 

Consumers: These are the people who make up “the norm,” who just go about their daily business and are content to consume the products of the go-getters, adore the pop music stars, athletes and movie celebrities (also members of the above two categories). They’re perfectly content to give over their potential personal power to others, some part of them knowing how difficult it is to fully own one’s authentic genius. 

 

History suggests that the conquerors and caretakers will always take the starring roles in the movie of life and there is little we can do to change that archetypal dynamic. If we are to tip the scales towards one or the other, it is the middle group that is most important. These are the people that need to move towards their obligation to caretake, break the consumption habit, stop giving all their power to the “stars.” Whether it's Taylor Swift, Jesus, Allah or the Toddler King, their dependence on someone else taking care of it all so they can be free to indulge in their endless distractions is not what we’ve ever needed and certainly not now. As the Hopi Prophecy suggest, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”

 

And I feel it. The pandemic opened some doors to some people and the only up side of the every-day-more-outrageous-outrage of the Orangeman is that some people are finally saying, “Enough.” Might he have been sent by the gods not to punish us, but to wake us up through a Via Negativa? Whatever the case, I do see people who would have been content to coast through life as pleasant consumers stepping up to their own power and place in the Universe. If we can reach a critical mass of consumers turned caretakers, I believe the tide can turn. 

 

But please soon. 

* My favorite short joke: "There are three types of people in this world. Those who are good at math and those who aren't. "

History Rhymes

        “ History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”  - Mark Twain

 

The highlight of the day/ evening was going to the play Retrograde at The Apollo Theater, a perfect extension of my questions yesterday. It’s about the choice given to a young Sidney Poitier to enter his film career on the white man’s terms—signing a loyalty oath and denouncing Paul Robeson during the McCarthy Era. We watch him struggle with all the justifications to sell out for his own personal advancement in his career. I’ll resist spoiling the end but suffice it to say the London audience rose to its feet at the end in sincere appreciation of the play, the actors and Poitier’s courageous decision. It was a good reminder that we already have lived through an era that demanded to either “give in or speak out.” Many people were hurt, but we eventually came out of it. 

 

The nightmare of the McCarthy Hearings, begun in 1947 with many Hollywood directors, actors and screenwriters accused of being Communists and subsequently blacklisted, ended in June of 1954. By then, McCarthy had begun targeting people in the Army. On June 9, 1954, McCarthy began his vicious attack on an accused person.  The man’s lawyer Joseph Welch answered the attack with these memorable words:

 

“Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness ..."

 

When McCarthy resumed his attack, Welch interrupted him: 

"Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, Sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" 

 

Those days were like these days—small people with great power attacking fellow American citizens and manipulating the public to support them through the tactics of sowing fear into the minds of people. Once the public could be brainwashed, they would  t justify, excuse and support such outrages because of the “Red Menace.” McCarthy’s main assistant was someone named Roy Cohn whose Machiavellian strategy became the playbook for all dirty politics to follow. Indeed, it led directly to the rise of the Orangeman via Nixon and Reagan. (For more about Roy Cohn, see the play/film Angels in America  and the film Where’s My Roy Cohn?)

 

The difference between those times and ours was that there was enough of a sliver of moral decency and conscience back then so that the question “Have you no sense of decency?” could hit that moral fiber. The hearings ended soon after and McCarthy was formally denounced by Congress. 

 

Trying to imagine the same effect today, 71 years and 2 days later. Picturing someone standing up before the Toddler King and asking the same question. The response would probably be, “Of course I have no sense of decency and that’s what makes me great. Decency is only for weak people.”

 

That’s one of the hidden agendas that needs flipping. There are far too many people that associate kindness with weakness and that’s a dangerous place to be. In a gem of a book I picked up the other day, Question 7, author Richard Flanagan describes his father’s attitude towards life:

 

“ My father believed that you went under alone but together you could survive. When someone was down you helped, not out of altruism, but an enlightened selfishness: this way we all have a chance. The measure of the strongest was also the guarantee of ongoing strength: their capacity to help the weakest. Mateship wasn’t a code of friendship. I t was a code of survivors. It demanded you help those who are not your friends but are your mates. It demanded you sacrifice for the group. It is a deeply old, serious idea of humanity.…

 

…without kindness, we are nothing. Kindness and courage are synonymous.”

 

There are so many narratives to attend to out there that our heads are spinning. But one is the conviction of so many, led by the scared little boy who’s trying to act tough, that kindness is weakness. In response, I feel so many of us calling up our caring resources and gentle strength in the face of the outer weakness armed with clubs and guns. If we could only teach our children that kindness and courage are synonyms, that it’s more cool to be nice than mean, more courageous to be compassionate than cruel, we can restore some hope in this broken, broken world.