Butterflies in the Clover

Thanks to a thoughtful gift from a Level III student, I re-read the book Demian by Hermann Hesse. I read a lot of Hesse’s novels in college and was curious to see if he held up.  And the answer? Somewhat. The ideas that seemed so radically important to consider back then were now familiar lived territory and didn’t so much open new worlds as they once did but captured parts of them in print. The story seemed like an excuse to expound the philosophy, but still I found some resonance in the seeker who refused the herd mentality. There were many notable quotes worth marking, but I was particularly astonished to read the following near the end of the book that evoked the essence of our recent Orff Level training:

 

(I was) surrounded by nothing but beautiful, pleasant things and feelings. I  could tell that this was a foretaste of the new, higher community we were imagining. Occasionally I would be seized with mourning for this happiness, since I knew full well it could not last…I could feel that one day I would wake up out of this beautiful picture of love and happiness and stand alone once more, completely alone, in the cold world of other people, where my only choices were solitude or struggle—no peace, no shared life. 

 

…I clung to these beautiful days like a butterfly to the honey clover. This had been my time of happiness, the first time in my life I had found fulfillment and been welcomed into a group of like-minded individuals. (pp, 128-129)

 

Butterflies in the clover. A good image to give the feeling of like-minded music teachers gathered for 10 days of playing, singing and dancing. Perhaps ever more poignant as they returned to school where, as noted in yesterday’s post,  teachers and admin didn’t share their experience and they perhaps found themselves feeling yet more alone and isolated than ever. The price we pay for growing larger and deeper and closer to our true nature and immersed in “the higher community we were imagining” now given muscle and breath. 

 

Years back, I gave a talk near the end of the training warning people of their re-entry to what many called “The Real World” but reminding them that that world of “getting and spending and laying waste our powers” (Wordsworth) is actually the false world and what we have just experienced in our gathering here is the real Real World. Like the Velveteen Rabbit, we were a bit ragged and torn from the way our child-within played and roughhoused and hugged and loved us, but that’s what made us real. Certainly a hundred times more than the bright and shiny toys and devices we had been tricked into buying. (Decades after The Velveteen Rabbit, we now have Toy Story Five to remind us.)

 

So a word to all the summer Orff students far and wide—keep frolicking in the honey clover, only now with the children you teach.