Love in the Room

Any tiny doubt I had about getting back on the plane and spending the next eight out of nine days teaching has now been thoroughly dispelled by the first morning of teaching in Hangzhou. There are simply fewer things more pleasurable to me in this life than to witness the release of the adult’s locked-away child-self in pure, unadulterated play. (Perfect adjective that—unadulterated). The sheer joy of mature, responsible, grownups playing variations of a rock-scissors-paper game, creating fun and fanciful circle dances, creating musical conversations from the first sounds of one’s name, mixed with the intelligent and articulate pedagogy behind it all, clearly and eloquently expressed by my half-century-plus of reflection alongside practice— well, it doesn’t get any better than that. At the end of the morning, I asked the group, “Is it fun? Is it interesting? Is it useful? Are you ready for lunch?” and each one answered without hesitation with an exuberant “YES!”

 

My last course proved that I can still teach at my highest power even when there is a negative vibe in the room, but that doesn’t mean it was easy or I would ever choose to do it again. Working alongside my friend and translator whose company I have effortlessly enjoyed for the 23 years we’ve known each other is such a welcome contrast. There is nothing but love in the room and that’s how it should be. 

 

Still cut off from the outer world by an uncooperative Wifi but re-connected to an inner world that is more important and meaningful. An hour left in the lunch break and the daring risk to lie down for a bit. A glorious afternoon awaits—I have no doubt about that. Don’t know how much more grateful I can be that my vision and my life are still joined at the hip, but if there was room for more gratitude, I gladly give it. 

The Romance of Travel

 (A bit of a miracle that just when it seemed I'd have absolutely NO Wifi connection of any kind, I figured out a workaround. Including the ability to keep posting Blogs! So here are the last two.)

Here we go. 1:00 am in the Hangzhou jet-lagged morning with 8 hours before I teach for 6 hours and not much chance of sleep ahead. Partly my fault, because arriving at my hotel, I decided to “lie down for a bit” and slept for five hours straight. Usually, I would force myself to stay awake until the new evening time, but hey, through that decision, I literally made my bed and now I cannot lie in it. 

 

Meanwhile, had a nice dinner reunion with my host Tonny and good friend/ student/ colleague/ translator Cao Li, a lovely person I met on my first trip to China in 2006 and taught later in Salzburg, San Francisco and in other trips to China. We went to a restaurant and sat briefly at a table with a No Smoking sign over our heads and three people at the table next to us smoking. The waiter just shrugged his shoulders and we got up and left. 

 

Back at the hotel, Li helped me translate with three different people who came to my room to try to connect me with WiFi and an hour later, still nothing. They promised to come back tomorrow with more people and I’m picturing a Marx Brothers scene from A Night in the Opera where some thirty people gather to try to get it to work until one knocks at the door, I open it and everybody falls out. I’ll spare the reader the details about how my efforts asked me to get a code but it was impossible to send it to my foreign phone or asked for something else that I needed WiFi for in order to sign up for WiFi. The song Hole in My Bucket and the novel Catch 22 came to mind. 

 

Ordinarily, I could ride out the long night watching Netflix or catching up on e-mails or researching a thing or two for my class tomorrow, but that’s the price you pay for outsourcing your whole life to be dependent on electronic connection. I do have a good book, my cards for Solitaire, my Crostic book. I could get started on collecting my poems from the last 50 years or so and consider putting them in a publishable form. I could give myself a little meditation retreat and sit a few hours of zazen. I could pull up the list of poems I’ve memorized and kept in a folder and re-thread the challenging Keats poem whose title I can’t remember and can’t look up. Coming from an analog childhood and much adulthood, I have resources to fall back on. 

 

Maybe it’s a good time to report back on the fabulous play The Lunchbox that my wife and I just saw at the Berkeley Rep Theater. Made yet more sweet by hesitating at the $150 tickets and then discovering that if you call on a Tuesday at 1:00 pm, you might get seats in the front row for $25 each!! Not only an amazing bargain, but a fabulous close-up way to see a fabulous show. We got them! 

 

The show is about a fascinating lunch delivery system that exists in Mumbai, India where delivery people (doomballahs) bring lunches daily to millions of people in ecological metal containers (tiffens) and using an analog system that has been in place for a hundred years or so, literally never makes a wrong delivery. Except once in this story. 

 

At a time when the world is dependent on QR codes, phones, robotic voice mails, AI and other all-electronic systems, this remarkable way of organizing a business is ecological, offers employment and is supremely efficient. Nothing is broken that needs to be fixed with an electronic solution and it’s the perfect answer to the sheer wonder people feel when they ask, “How did we do this before cell phones?” The answer is thousands of different ways and many of them more efficient, more pleasurable, more human-centered.

 

My daughter Talia will soon come back from a 14-day back-packing trip where she was entirely off the grid. Could be the same for me here in the next 12 days, though instead of bathing in alpine lakes and lying awake at night looking up at the stars, I’ll be back in the teaching circle in my own form of renewal. For two weeks, none of my family or friends will be in touch, no folks in my Facebook virtual community will see photos of my work and needless to say (but worth saying these days), we’ll all be fine. 

 

There you have it. It’s now 2:00 am and dare I hope that I feel a little drowsiness? Is anyone waiting on the edge of their seat wondering if I got back to sleep? Just by daring to write as I do and following some inbred dubious character trait, I clearly think that I’m the hero of my own story, but at the end of the day, know that no one really cares that much and neither should I. The whole point is that you kept me company in my jet-lagged middle-of-the-night and perhaps a thought or image or reflection spoke to you for a moment and that is enough. If nothing else, a little moment of schadenfreude if you’ve felt I’ve boasted just a bit too much about the romance of my traveling life and you’re comfortably in the midst of your own lovely life where you don’t have to deal with passports and visas and lines at the airport and three days of dazed jet-lag and such. Enjoy it!

 

Good night!

 

P.S. The conclusion to this gripping story? Got back to sleep at 3:00 and slept to 7:00. Yay!

 

Gone Fishing?

 

I miraculously weathered all the mini-crisis’s of the past 6 days— like my hearing aids not working on the date of my departure— and here I am at 9:00 pm heading to the airport for my midnight flight to Hong Kong and then on to Hangzhou. My biggest worry is that I’ve seen all the movies I care to on these flights and any new ones will certainly be the usual fare of guns, guns, guns, superheroes, end of the world, brutality.Snore. Does anyone make real films anymore? (I did see a reasonably good one on my flight from New Orleans called Tow, but having surfed through some 65 movies to find that, the pickings are slim.)

 

China will present the usual challenge of access to the Internet and even e-mail— though I think the Surfshark ap I got last time might solve the e-mail problem, if I remember how to use it. But no Internet means no Blogposts, so if you don’t see anything here for the next 12 days or so, that’s why. Don’t give up on me! And I’ll dutifully write them anyway and post them when I get home. 

 

Dear reader, it’s a blooming miracle that any of you are still reading these things. I wonder if anyone has been following these for the entire 15 years I’ve been posting! Is there really anything that continues to hold your interest? I guess I’ll never know and that’s okay, but in the past months, the readership has skyrocketed to some 10,000 readers per day! But really? Are these real people or bots? And if the latter, why? And if the former, it does give me that little dopamine rush, but as mentioned last time, that kind of “success” is meaningless. It literally changes absolutely nothing about my life, financially and otherwise. It hasn’t brought more people to my books or Podcast or movie or CD, all of which would give me a little thrill and a little money. And if those 10,000 are people, I have absolutely no relationship with them. So better to have one genuine friend than 10,000 fans. 

 

But meanwhile, for you handful of faithful readers, some of whom I know and some of whom I don’t, assume I’ve “gone fishing” and look forward to re-uniting somewhere around July 20^th. Meanwhile, let us see what awaits that justifies the long hours of travel, the carbon footprint and missing the next episodes of the engaging Shetland TV show I’m watching! 

 

Note to Self

Still in the midst of a funk, not so surprising with the windy, foggy, grey weather for six days straight, the return of some chronic dizziness and still reeling from a betrayal hinted at in these last posts. Playing a little game with myself, I wondered what news could possibly come from the outside to lift me out of it and my first go-to answers were revealing. I imagined things like the interview invite from Terry Gross or Oprah, the Podcast gone viral or a Netflix offer to film my Jazz, Joy & Justice book. Interesting that my choices are all about recognition and accomplishment. But when it comes to true healing, that’s exactly what it’s not about. 

 

We all should give ourselves a stern talking-to every now and then and here is mine. I don’t need more recognition or respect or appreciation or mild adoration. All of that, like my favorite quote about money (“How much is enough?” “Just a little bit more.”), are insatiable. They will never be enough.

 

Instead, I just want what we all do— genuine friendship, enjoyment in my company (and vice-versa) and a love that sees all my foibles and loves me anyway. Perhaps loves me because of them. 

 

This is not easy to share publicly, a confession more vulnerable than my usual, but I’ve done my best to be honest here about whatever’s happening for me, highs and lows. Mostly in hopes that others recognize themselves there as well and here we are, together, all the walking wounded just keeping each other company with a spot of tea or coffee and pastry. 

 

Years back, I wrote a poem about it, revealing more than I usually do here, but hey, while I’m at it, why not include it? It is me talking to me, in the most honest voice I could find.

 

These days, most every place you travel to

 

          is where you wholly belong, 

 

arrived at through the ten thousand small steps

 

       you have been walking your whole life long.

 

guided by the thread of your steadfast loyalty

 

    to the things that fit your peculiar blend of being. 

 

 

From childhood, you’ve moved forward confident

 

   that you would arrive and yet… 

 

always slightly astonished to find yourself there, always

 

        the sliver of doubt that you are worthy and deserving. 

 

 

Along the way, you have learned to turn loneliness

 

     to solitude, lovelessness to a love 

 

for all of humanity. 

 

 

But in the end, it is not enough. 

 

Humanity won’t bring soup when you’re sick 

 

             or cast a flirtatious eye or 

 

                 hold you close simply to share the wonder of it all. 

 

 

This you did not expect. That all the love you hoped to give

 

       and all the love you hoped to get

 

              is still waiting to arrive.

Old Tricks

 

Tomorrow I’m off to China to teach for the third summer in a row. When I came to teach in 2024, I figured out that I had taught before in 2006, 2012, 2018 and now 2024. Some mystical 6-year rotating pattern. I joked to my host that it might be a good idea not to wait until 2030 for the next invitation and I guess he agreed, because he immediately invited me for 2025 and again for 2026. 

 

In starting to prepare for the two courses I’ll teach, I asked my host what percentage of the first course’s participants had worked with me before and his answer? Some 75% of them! Last year! That is a game-changer.

 

I looked at last year’s material and noted that we had done some fifteen games, five folk dances and ten arrangements for Orff instruments, amongst other things. I’ve finally come to peace with the truth that you can repeat material in situations like this without apology. The brain’s need for repetition means participants actually often welcome it, having forgotten most of it and needing a reminder. They also feel a bit more familiar with both the material and the way I teach it, allowing them to focus on details impossible to fully appreciate the first time. They also might note how I never do things precisely the same and enjoy, as I do, new twists to the familiar. So truth be told, I probably could do the exact some material and they would be fine with that. All my old tricks cultivated over a lifetime of teaching still with something new to offer. 

 

But I also see each workshop as a new opportunity for me to keep growing and to keep things fresh. I did have the idea of focusing exclusively on the pentatonic scale, so familiar in China, with the idea of comparing their use of it with pieces from some 12 other countries on all continents. I’m also very excited to be collaborating with my friend/translator and let her teach some traditional Chinese pentatonic songs within the framework of the Orff approach. However, it does mean that all the modal and harmonic material I’ve developed will be off-limits for these five days, so that’s both a challenge and an opportunity. Looking through the repertoire stored on my computer, I came up with fifteen new games and twenty pentatonic pieces for Orff Ensemble. That should keep things interesting!

 

Much more planning to do—and once again, packing! See you at the airport!

 

New Tricks

When whoever wrote the inscription on the Temple of Apollo in Delphi reminds you to “Know thyself,” they probably weren’t thinking of Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences. But one facet of self-knowledge is indeed an understanding of how your particular network of axon and dendrite connections work. When you notice what comes easily to you and what is challenging, you have the possibility of following the one in your life-choices and forgiving yourself for the other. We all seem to be gifted one for free— without effort, find ourselves singing notes in our mind or crafting words or imagining shapes or colors or noticing patterns and such. That’s important information. 

 

As is the flip side. When we wonder why this person can so easily perform a musical passage that trips us up or notice the social undertones in a gathering that completely eluded us or speaks with an eloquence beyond our reach, the idea that we are all a unique blend of intelligences is useful. And yet more important, the understanding that we don’t have to be —indeed, cannot be—equally smart in them all. 

 

From my childhood until yesterday, I’ve been terrible at the kind of follow-the-given-direction thinking that had my friends putting together model airplanes, my biology lab partner finishing way ahead of me, my friend taking apart a car engine with the ease I felt in playing Bach. Yet as a young adult I realized that I could keep working on Bach and hire a plumber or a mechanic to deal with the things that I could not. I did feel some slight shame as a man who was never handy, but hey, let’s hear you solo on some blues!

 

Having made it almost 75 years without having done more than change the oil or a tire (I can do both!), it has worked out okay. But the advent of the computer and the new way of getting through the maze of voice mail and codes and Youtube instructional videos has forced me to try to up the game in my non-preferred intelligences. And when it succeeds, there indeed is some satisfaction in knowing that I’m not as stupid as I’ve thought I was. 

 

For example, in the last two days, I finally figured out how to unsubscribe for thebestpdf service that I kept seeing on (and paying for on) my Visa bill. I finally figured out how to pay UPS bills online and find the shipping info on the invoice. I restored a mysteriously disappeared Britbox on the TV. And most remarkable of all, I solved the problem of being out of my Now’s the Time CD’s that accompany my book by remembering that I had an external disk drive and could upload the one remaining double CD that a friend in Bangkok had leant to me and upload the songs to the computer, to be converted into a shareable and sellable item. Go, Doug!

 

All of this drives me mad, but yes, it feels good to finally sit down, be patient, feel some confidence in my overall intelligence and discover that (sometimes) I can do it! Turns out you can teach an old Doug new tricks. 

 

But please don’t ask me to fix your car or plumbing.

S.A.D.

S.A.D.

 

“During my life I have often had to eat my own words, and I have found them a wholesome diet.”   Attributed to Winston Churchill

 

 A few posts back, I wrote about San Francisco’s natural air-conditioning of summer fog and said, “I’m loving it!”

 

That may have been true for a short time after the 95-degree New Orleans sun, but now it just makes me S.A.D.—ie, after three days of it, I’m suffering from Seasonal Affect Disorder. It’s foggy, cold and windy and I’m longing for the sun. I take it all back!

 

And it’s not the only reason I’m sad. Any alert reader will have noticed my generally happy countenance and perhaps over-the-top praise of the life I’ve been blessed to lead. Such joyful, satisfying work in such good company and the great pleasure of being of use and often (but not always) inspiring others to a greater happiness through music, good work and my praise of their gifts and particular genius. But the shock and mild trauma of the recent betrayal I’ve alluded to a few times keeps echoing and I’m having trouble finding the on/off switch of its dark music. 

 

Looking for that Winston Churchill quote cheered me up a bit and rather than invite you to my pity party, I'll share a few of his choice witty words. Hopefully they’ll make you smile as well and justify taking the time to read this post. Meanwhile, I’ll try to take his advice in his last quote. Enjoy!

 

"The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." 

 

"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something in your life."

 

"I'm prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter."

 

"I may be drunk Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly."

 

"Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip." 

 

"If you are going through hell, keep going." 

Two Views of the 4th of July: Second View

“I had the misfortune to be nourished by the dreams and visions of great Americans—the poets and seers. Some other breed of man has won out. This world which is in the making fills me with dread. I have seen it germinate: I can read it like a blueprint. It is not a world I want to live in. It is a world suited for monomaniacs obsessed with the idea of progress—but a false progress, a progress which stinks. It is a world cluttered with useless objects which men and women in order to be exploited and degraded, are taught to regard as useful. The dreamer whose dream are non-utilitarian has no place in this world. Whatever does not lend itself to being bought and sold, whether in the realm of things, ideas, principles, dreams or hopes, is debarred. In this world the poet is anathema, the thinker a fool, the artist and escapist, the man of vision a criminal.”    

 

As the Quakers say, these words from Henry Miller’s book The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (p. 22) “speak to my condition.” Though written over 80 years ago, their truths (sadly) still are true. Both the portrait of who seems to be running the show and the reminder that they're not the only show in town. As a part-time poet, a thinker, a musical artist and a person of vision, I am at once exiled by the mainstream of my home country and aligned with a glorious counter-culture of American poets, novelists, musicians, artists, thinkers, visionaries. I started making a list and it’s long. Americans I’m proud to claim as fellow-citizens who not only refused the materialist nightmare of exploitation and degradation and monomania, but actively cultivated an alternative vision. 

And not only those whose voices were carried into the national discourse through books, films, recordings and such, but millions more decent, caring, hard-working, playful and loving people whose names we’ll never know. And those whose names we do know, not as famous people or celebrities or stars, but as friends, neighbors, colleagues and family. It is important to remind ourselves and each other that we, too, are America and that flag flies for us as well as the others who are creating such havoc. 

 

So if you choose to celebrate the day, let’s take back the original vision of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” feel the fireworks not as traumatic explosions from the war-machine, but our inner skies lit by the color, design and drum-beat epiphanies celebrating a life well-lived. 

 

And, of course, don’t forget to wish Louis a happy birthday. 

Two View of the 4th of July: First View

July 4, 1900. This was the day that Louis Daniel Armstrong was born. 

 

Or so he thought. Later, a piece of paper was found that claimed it was actually August 4, 1901. 

 

Which is true? The second may be literally accurate, the first a mythological truth. The Angel Gabriel descended to Earth to remind us mortals what true freedom and independence looks, feels and sounds like. That date also acknowledges “Pops” as one of the founding fathers of our countries and the one best qualified for that title. Why? Simply because 41 out of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence owned people as property while claiming that “all men are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights.” And so on Independence Day, I go around greeting people with “Happy Louis Armstrong’s birthday!”

 

Today, I’m willing to split the difference. Keep the day on July 4^th and the year as 1901. That means that this would be Louis’ 125^th birthday, exactly half as long as the 250 years we’re supposed to celebrate today. In 1901, Jim Crow was still in effect, women did not yet have the right to vote, homosexuality was illegal, labor unions where on the rise but most strikes resulted in violence coming from police backing the bosses. It would be two more years before Mother Jones organized working children in the “Children’s Crusade” with banners demanding “we want time to play” and “we want to go to school.” Though the President refused to meet with the marchers, the incident brought the issue of child labor to the forefront of the public agenda. That’s where we were at the end of the first half of our 250- year history.

 

The next 125 years saw the rise of movements that moved the moral arc closer to justice, that filled the spiritual bank with sufficient funds to allow all to cash the promissory note the Constitution and Declaration of Independence promised—that all Americans would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (See MLK’s I Have a Dream speech.) The Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement, the Gay Rights Movement, the Anti-War Movement, the Environmental Movement, the Free School Movement, the Occupy Wall Street Movement, the Trans Movement and more all rose up, with a Jazz and Rock and Soul soundtrack that began with Louis Armstrong. 

 

Had more Americans followed the trend to more justice, more care for each other and our precious resources, more acceptance and tolerance and celebration of difference, more commitment to our own spiritual promise and liberation, this day would indeed be something to celebrate. Instead, the backlash of those determined to put unchecked greed, unearned privilege, purposely manufactured ignorance, mean-spiritedness and vitriol and division and hatred at the front of the line has pushed us further away from our spoken founding vision than any of us could have imagined. It is most decisively NOT a moment to celebrate. 

 

And yet. If we can see this as the dying gasp of the worst that we have been, the almost unbearable labor pains of the new world that awaits us, there is still room for hope. Let us consider Henry Miller’s words written in 1941 and re-double our efforts to bring this vision back to life as we enter the next 125 years. 

 

“ If it takes a calamity to awaken and transform us, well and good, so be it. Let us see now if the unemployed will be but to work and the poor properly clothed, housed and fed; let us see if the rich will be stripped of their booty and made to endure the privations and sufferings of the ordinary citizen; let us see if the people can voice their wishes in direct fashion, without the intercession, the distortion and the bungling of politicians; let us see if we can create a real democracy in place of the fake one we have been roused to defend; let us see if we can be fair and just not just to our own kind, but to all…”

 

                                             The Air-Conditioned Nightmare: Henry Miller

 

Then we might finally sing along with Pops: “It’s a Wonderful World.” Oh, yeah. 

 

The Air-Conditioned Nightmare

My plane predictably delayed and after 7 hours in the airport, finally heading home to San Francisco. Back to my house at 1:00 am SF time, the air chilly, the Lyft driver untalkative (I was spoiled by New Orleans) and my home a bit cold, but with real air. Such a relief after two-weeks in the over-air-conditioned dorm room with absolutely no way of adjusting the temperature or fan. My three roomies in the suite liked it fine, but they agreed to help me duct-tape my vent in my room and that helped. But between the air-conditioning in the Dolomites and again in New Orleans and soon to be in my next trip to China, I couldn’t help but thing of the title of one of Henry Miller’s books, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare. 

 

 I don’t love trying to sleep in hot rooms, but 9 times out of 10, a simple ceiling fan is enough. It seemed that our environmental awareness made it common knowledge that air conditioners contribute to global warming, an irony since the rising temperatures drive us to seek cooling solutions that contribute to the rising temperatures. There are now roughly 2 billion air conditioners  worldwide, with the number set to almost triple to 5.6 billion by 2050. According to a UN report, air conditioners will account for 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to environmental affects, air conditioners suck moisture out of a room to bring down the humidity and cool it off. This can pull water from your skin, drying it -- and you -- out. Some studies show that people who work in air-conditioned buildings suffer from more respiratory issues and are vulnerable to headaches, dry cough and sensitivity to odors. 

 

But I don’t need a report to tell me I just don’t like spending days in over-air-conditioned rooms. And ironically, for my taste, most are much colder than they need to be to take the edge off the unpleasant heat. 

 

Meanwhile, it was interesting to look through Henry Miller’s book again. Browsing through it, I never find a sentence that quotes the title, but it’s a worthy look at a trip through America he took in 1940-41 after living abroad in Paris and other places. As the title suggests, he is not impressed by the land of his birth. Virtually every chapter holds our materialistic culture’s feet to the fire and below is just one example:

 

“The most terrible thing about America is that there is no escape from the treadmill which we have created. There isn’t one fearless champion of truth in the publishing world, not one film company devoted to art instead of profits. We have no theatre worth the name, we have no music worth talking about except what the Negro has given us and scarcely a handful of writers who might be called creative. We have murals decorating our public buildings which are about on a par with the aesthetic development of high school students. We have lifeless museums that are crammed with lifeless junk. We have an architectural taste which is about as near the vanishing pointa as it is possible to achieve. In the ten thousand miles I have travelled thus far I have come across two cities which have each of them a little section worth a second look—Charleston and New Orleans. “   (p. 31)

Note the reference to black American music and New Orleans. He had his finger on that pulse some 85 years ago. In another section, he shares a conversation with a black woman who told him: 

 

“I do think we have more love for you that you have for us.”

“You don’t hate us ever?” I asked.

“Lord no!” she answered, “we just feel sorry for you. You has all the power and the wealth but you ain’t happy.”

 

I think of the fine architecture of New Orleans, the exuberant, joyful music we heard each and every night, the black women Lyft drivers so fun and friendly— and I believe Henry got it right. So many sit in the comfort of an air-conditioned nightmare as miserable as can be.

 

So a thankful farewell to New Orleans and a thankful hello to San Francisco that has one thing over that fine city— the natural air-conditioning of summer fog! I’m loving it!

  

Walking Out the Door

At Louis Armstrong Airport, with a live band on a stage and people line dancing— only in New Orleans! As hinted at many times, it has been a wild ride past 10 days, but at the end of the day, I set out to do exactly what I hoped to do with the 17 eager students who took time to become better teachers, more confident and skilled musicians with enough understanding about jazz to make some sincere music with their kids and more knowledgeable citizens with renewed energy to speak on behalf of social justice. 

 

The course began with an invitation to the Ancestors to bless us with their presence, continued with those here in the present moment making clear progress in their skills and understanding of this remarkable American art form bequeathed to us by its black creators and ended with me taking a nod to the Descendants, the children who will receive the fruits of their teachers’ labors. To bring them into the room, I read some quotes from the last chapter of my Now’s the Time book, something I often convince myself I don’t have time for in this Jazz Course. But it was so inspiring to remember the words of the kids who I quoted— kids like my daughter who were 13 when they wrote them and are now 46. I was struck by them all, but this one really touched me, as she captured my entire vision of Jazz Education taught through an Orff Schulwerk practice:

 

“One of the highlights of the year was the feeling I got as I performed in the concert. Not only did I know how the play the songs, I knew the people, the history, the form, the stories behind them and the practice I went through to learn them. I was proud not only of my playing, but also how I learned to play it and what I knew about the music.”       —ELLA CHRISTOPH 

 

There you have it. Not just the notes alone, but what’s behind them. Not just playing patterns with the hand but understanding the deeper structure behind them. Not music as a disembodied collection of sounds, but as the living, breathing voice of a people who suffered, exulted, triumphed. Not just listening to music or knowing about it, but actively playing it in your own hands, in your own style, in your own voice. And not just the pleasure of individual accomplishment hard-won through practice, but the joy of sharing it with others in a concert. 

 

I began the course framing it as a blessed marriage between Orff Schulwerk and the Black American Music known as Jazz and we were there not to just witness the ceremony, but to help raise the children birthed from the marriage. And I believe that’s exactly what we did in the nine intense days of this life-changing course. As testified one-by-one in the closing circle, people left with dynamic material—games/ songs/ dances/ tunes— that they’re eager to share with their children. They named pedagogical ideas that will be game-changers in their work, making both the children and themselves more happy. They walked out the door with renewed confidence in their musicianship, as they took risks to play new instruments and succeeded so wildly in their first steps. They felt the grief that is lighter when more people agree to carry it and emerged with renewed determination to tell the needed stories and stop accepting, ignoring or sugar-coating the toxic narratives. 

 

And so after a stirring Johnny Brown game where we laid our comfort down, held up by the love and energy of the circle, showed our motion, felt it come back to us (“we can do the motion”), we had a final hug and ended, as I often do, with: 

 

“Uh huh. Oh yeah. All right. That’s all.”

 

For now.

Hills and Dales

One month ago my wife and I were walking up the hills and down the vales of the physical landscape of the Yorkshire Dales. Now near the end of this New Orleans Jazz Course, I’m moving through the hills and dales of an emotional landscape that is steep and dangerous and treacherous. Not the jazz material, but other things that I will politely decline to share now. 

 

After a restless and too-short sleep, I awoke to six hours of teaching before me and it proved that perfect medicine. I taught well, the material was engaging, the group was responsive, there were profound moments of hush and tears, and exuberant moments of riotous laughter— especially when one group choreographed new Lindy Hop steps based on their dorm experience that was hilarious. It ended with a beautiful Langston Hughes poem read over a sung chorale. 

 

So my spirits are uplifted and I’m ready to go out on the town on this last day of June.  

See It. Say It. Sort It.

I’ve had this title ready to go since our trip to England a month ago. This pithy mantra is spoken over and over again on the subway train (with one difference, to be noted), the British equivalent of “If you see something, say something.” These kind of short phrases are the kinds of proverbs, maxims, aphorisms, that are the legacy of oral cultures, leaning on the way the brain is designed to remember pithy, rhythmic, alliterative and musical information and then expand it from there into a living, breathing guide that helps shape our conscious life. 

 

This one works for me on so many levels. On the political level, it means our job is to truly see what is going on and that means going to multiple sources to hear diverse accounts. Read books, watch documentaries, go to lectures, listen to songs, talk to people. In my present moment of this Jazz Course, we went to the Whitney Plantation Tour, one of the few places in America where the story is told by black people telling the truth of what happened in these places and why. 

 

Then say it. Once you know the stories that no one ever told you and the people in power who benefit from them don’t want you to know, speak out about it with others who don’t yet know them. Share them, let your voice be heard when you see them at play in the present moment. 

 

And at the same time, sort it. Notice how Fox News benefits from spinning the story in their slanted way or how they and the people they represent try to keep you from hearing the story at all— the current epidemic of book-banning, for example. 

 

The same process is true on the personal emotional level. Try to see what’s going on inside of you, try to say it by giving it a name and now you’re better prepared to sort it. Where does that voice come from that turns you in certain directions in each and every life choice? Was it drummed into you by your family/ school/ church/ culture/ mass media and accepted without question, regardless of its toxic ideas and effects? If so, can you sort it and give weight to other voices that offer love, acceptance, kindness, healing? When you’re in conflict with people you care about, can you both do the work of sorting through all the defenses and justifications and getting closer to the root of what’s really going on? 

 

After hearing this over and over again on the London train, I saw it printed on and was surprised to see that the last word is actually “sorted.” Meaning if you see something edgy going on, say something to a police officer and their job is to sort it. They’re trying to assure you that if you share the problem with them, it will be sorted. 

 

In some cases, that might be the wise path to take but given the history of police in the United States, not necessarily. And in the larger picture, I much prefer my version, not giving over your power and assume someone else with sort it. We—each of us both alone and together—have to do the work. 

Today I’ll ask the students to discuss what they saw, what they want to say about it and who they will eventually say it to and how they will help their students and fellow citizens sort it.

 

See it. Say it Sort it. Keep these words close by. 

Elemental Music Rap

 

With those of us who depend upon the faculty of imagination to do our daily work, we are mostly indebted to some quality of the Muse that dictates to us through dream—the night or day variety. Our qualification for such work begins simply by tuning ourselves to that channel and keeping the power button on 24/7. And paying attention to the voice when it speaks to us. If we’re distracted by any of the thousand channels competing for our attention, we’ll miss it. 

 

 But that’s just step one. Having received some creative impulse, now we need to set it down in whatever form is appropriate for our craft— writing the words of the poem or the notes of the tune or the gestures of the body, etc. Then comes the hard work of shaping it, extending the form, balancing all the parts. Followed by final edits— deciding what to leave out and when leaving it out makes the work more clear, more expressive. (Schoenberg’s fabulous quote: “The composer’s most important tool is an eraser.”)

 

Then there’s the work of getting it out to the public through performance or publication or recording, what have you. That’s a world unto itself.

 

This is on my mind because another step is to remember you’ve created something! It seems like a while ago, I rediscovered a little fun way to teach the basics of what Orff Schulwerk calls elemental composition in the form of a rap. Given my poor skills in the actual rap style simply because I haven’t paid enough dues in listening to that music, it might more accurately be called a spoken word rhythmic rhymed poem. But indulge me here with the terse “rap” that people are familiar with as a creative genre. 

I don’t remember where I found it on my laptop or why it appeared, but apparently put it in a folder called New Ideas. Since I composed it in 2011, it wasn’t actually a “new” idea, but somehow I never folded it into my workshop repertoire. And again, through what feels like a serendipitous moment, I re-found it again when I opened that folder today. 

 

Now since I had just done last week everything the rhyme talks about with my jazz class to introduce elemental composition and its eventual relationship with jazz, I felt I missed an opportunity! I still may do it with them as a review and I will certainly do it in my Level III class coming up. I like it!

 

Of course, it will mean nothing to the non-music teacher reader, but I include it here anywhere. If you do take the trouble to read it, read it out loud. And try the things it suggests!

 

Enjoy!

 

ELEMENTAL MUSIC RAP

© 2011 Doug Goodkin

We ain’t the Offshore Workers loadin’ boxes at the wharf,

Instead we’re learnin’ music, in the manner of Carl Orff.

The body comes before the head, the music’s not just mental

We do it first, then name each part in a style elemental. 

 

Now you start off with a rhyme, got to say it right on time

Then you start to play the beat, on your knees or in your feet.

“Pease porridge in the pot, Pease porridge cold,

Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old “

 

If you can rap it, you can clap it, playin’ each and every word.

You might think that it’s too simple, you might say that it’s absurd.

How can you make good music with just rhythm and the beat?

Try it out, clap the rhythm, put the beat into your feet.

(clap rhythm of Pease while stepping the beat)

 

Just the rhythm and the beat is soundin’ kind of sweet

But if you think it’s boring and nothin’ could be duller,

Look for a place to snap so you can add a little color.

“Pease porridge in the pot * Pease porridge cold *

Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old * “

 

“Rhythm, beat and color make the music” is our motto

But now add more into the mix, here comes the ostinato.

A pattern that you play that’s different from the rhythm

Better complimentary than when you play it with ‘em.

“Here comes   the ostinato, here comes     the ostinato” 

 

Now play the beat with mallets, both hands upon the floor

If you can keep it steady, you’re ready for one thing more.

Move them to the xylophone and play on C and G

Welcome to the drone, first step in harmony.

 

Next take the rhythm of the text and play on G and E

Without a lot of effort, why, you’ve made a melody!

 

You can add a splash of color, if that’s the way you feel

It works out rather nicely on the metal glockenspiel.

 

If you want to further mine the elemental riches

You can play an ostinato on many different pitches. (GG CAGE)

 

We’re making some fine music, which clearly is our mission.

Now we got ourselves an elemental composition. (ALL)

 

Now basses you keep going, go ahead and move a tone, 

To make up something that we call the single moving drone

It’s about as easy, as easy as can be

Just move that bottom note from the C up to the D (CGDGCG )

 

It’s sounding pretty good, but on another day

You can do the same thing and move the G up to the A (CGCACGA)

 

It’s really pretty simple, it’s not a lot of trouble

To make yourselves a moving drone that now we call double. (CGDA)

 

Now that little two-note melody can grow to more that’s sonic

You can use all five notes in the scale called pentatonic.

Remember there’s a home note, back to which you’ll go

You can call it C for now, but it’s better known as Do.

 

You’ve learned a lot of concepts, you’ve tried them on for size.

Now you show just what you know when you improvise.

Using all the tools and remembering all the rules,

You can make it all your own and make up something cool.  (Improvise)

 

Now we need some structure, we need some kind of form

There are many possibilities by the Rondo is the norm.

We’re playin’ some hot music, the room is getting’ warm

Time to bring some folks inside, get ready to perform.

 

Here comes the 1^st grade teacher, the visitor from Greece,

Here comes your Aunt Elizabeth to see her favorite niece

All come to hear us sing and play our very own piece.

In hopes that all will feel their happiness increase. 

 

So off we go with music that we made from this poem

And when the show is over, the audience goes home.

We’re feelin’ kind of empty now, a little sad within, 

But next week we can choose a rhyme and then begin again.

 

Some like it hot! Uh-huh! Some like it cold! Oh yeah!

Some like it in the pot, nine days old! (That’s all!)