The Change Is Now

          

           Be the change you want to see in the world.— Gandhi

 

Gandhi’s simple, but powerful advice, well describes the way I planned and lived every music class I’ve taught in my life, be it with kids or adults. I wasn’t ticking off lists, but trusting my intuition as to what felt right, what seemed to bring happiness and joy and connection. Testimonies abound to affirm that indeed these classes were—and are— something notably different than business as usual, in ways that echo on in people’s lives. Of course, my own included. 

 

This past week I’ve noticed that life in San Francisco is indeed the change I want to see in the world. Of course, the 70-degree weather and flowering magnolias and budding cherry trees and blooming daffodils helped. As mentioned in the “Small Gestures” post, people are out and about on the streets and mostly not hunkered down into their devices. I’ve spent much time in Golden Gate Park as I often do, but now with new eyes after going to our friend Marta’s book-release reading at Green Apple bookstore. Seeing it all with fresh appreciation of its many remarkable trees, its gardens and groves, its ponds and lakes, its each with their own character, the remarkable variety of active sports available—lawn bowling, bocci ball, pétanque, cornhole, ping-pong, frisbee golf, real golf, archery, horseshoes, handball, racquetball, baseball, basketball, volleyball, pickleball, tennis, rollerskating, skateboarding, fly-fishing, not to mention the playgrounds, the art studio, the Lindy Hop Dancing, the pianos, the Senior Center, the Art Museum and Academy of Science. In short, innumerable ways to awaken the senses, exercise the muscles, feed the imagination, nurture intelligence, all of it three-dimensional with textures and smells and sounds and most of it in company and communion with fellow human beings, people in all shades and sizes and ages and not a single one excluded. 

 

Yesterday, I led singing at the Sequoia’s Senior Living and accompanied a resident who came forward and surprised us all with her artistic rendering of My Funny Valentine and this afternoon, a regular at my Friday Jewish Home music sessions requested Amazing Grace in C and brought the room to pin-drop silence with her soulful singing. In the next few days, I’ll bike to a church to attend a free singing event featuring Gospel, Old-time music, Broadway tunes, jazz singing, Balkan singing, Body Music and more, go to a house concert honoring a singer/songwriter, shop at the Farmer’s Market. All of this is par for the course for my life in San Francisco, but it struck me today in a different way. 

 

Because outside of this bubble, a war has begun, Gestapo ICE agents continue to tear families apart and hurt and terrorize for no justifiable reason whatsoever, spineless politicians keep feeding the monster with their compliance with no consequences. When I asked to sing some songs for my nephew’s children’s class in Portland next week, the first response was I had to submit to a 10-day-to-process background check. (I refused and they relented). But if I have to do so out of some fantasy of protecting the children, shouldn’t the President have to submit to a thorough background check to see if he’s safe to assume power? Every day, people who have chosen to care are feeling their hearts trampled, their sanity threatened, their outrage fueled, their sorrow deepened and we’re all crouched down in a defensive posture wondering “What’s next?” Not an easy time to understand that the change we long for is already here with us. 

 

But that’s what I felt today. I—no one—can’t dismiss the horror, but on a level, the life I long for us all to enjoy is already happening right here where I am. We don’t have to wonder about how much better it could be or how to make it better— it’s happening right here, right now, side-by-side with the needed efforts to topple the monsters of indifference and greed and hatred. If you’re wondering what that life could be like, come walk with me in San Francisco.

 

Of course, we are far from immune. Our unsolvable homeless crisis, our garbaged streets, our relentless AI billboards and armies of Waymos roaming the streets are most definitely not the change I want to see in the world. But the parks I walk in, the people I know, the things we do, are indeed precisely what we all could be enjoying, all available for you to try and test right here, right now.

 

When I was a college freshman at Antioch College back in 1969, there was a cool class titled “The Future Is Now.” None of us had any idea what that meant, but we just thought it sounded profound and enigmatic. But now I get it. The future we could have is indeed happening already, right here, right now. And of course, not just in San Francisco. Wherever people are gathered and committed to leading happy, caring, connected lives. Let’s go.