Bird Wisdom.

Sitting on a park bench today, I had the wisdom to turn off my Audible story and pay attention to the surroundings. 

 

Okay, I just lied. I actually finished my story about mayhem and murder and other delights of the human species and didn’t have another recorded story in the pipeline. But still it was a good idea to just sit for a bit and observe.

 

First I noticed a tapping sound in the branches above me and lo and behold, it was a small woodpecker searching for its lunch in full woodpecker style. Then there were all the small chickadees (I think—I’m no birder) flitting around from tree to tree and then down to the ground pecking away to find their lunch. I say lunch, but as far as I can tell, most birds spend the entire day foraging for food. 

 

So in those ten minutes or so of watching and listening, I came away with four words of wisdom from these fellow creatures that is as good advice as any that I might read in a book. 

 

“Find food. Sing. Fly.”

 

That about sums it up. 

  

The Stories They Tell

Five days ago, we took the live Norfolk pine from our deck into the house and strung it with lights. Two days later, we added the stringed beads, the gold and silver balls and the delicate baubles from our childhood packed in a small green box. Last night, we completed the tree decoration with the ornaments collected in 45 years of sharing life together. It was a progressive decoration project and a fun way to do it.

 

So now the tree is complete, adorned with the carefully-collected decorations that like wrinkles on the face (but a bit more attractive) tell a story of our life. Amazing that the thin glass ornaments that hung over 70 years ago on my Christmas tree in Roselle, New Jersey, are still intact (minus one Silent Night ornament my wife dropped and broke several years ago). Then there are the first ornaments we bought as a married couple, for 75 cents at Cost Plus. Out from the box came baby’s first Christmas, gift ornaments from old neighbors Peggy and Richard long gone from this world, a few from school parents expressing appreciation, a couple our older kids gave us as stocking stuffers. As we take each one out of the box, we pause and remember the stories they tell. 

 

To celebrate the completion of the decoration project, we treated ourselves to a viewing of Christmas in Connecticut  with Barbara Stanwyck. Easy to scoff at the old-fashioned men-women roles, but in truth, they were nuanced and shaded and the characters had a depth distinct from their modern Hollywood versions. Always a sucker for the old black-and-white films, the opening music, the credits that almost always include “costumes by Edith Head,” I could feel myself almost longing for those innocent, more unified times. 

Of course, they were anything but simple and certainly not unified when it came to racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny and beyond. But the combination of the films and music that defined American culture, the ethos that It’s a Wonderful Life when the greedy capitalist bastards like Potter are defeated by the good-hearted neighbors, the sense of working together and uniting against common enemies (the above film during World War II) feels so much more appealing than our current deep divisions, the clown-cars careening us towards oblivion, the superficial and musically dubious pop culture, the explosion of super-hero and violent films dominating the few movie theaters left standing.

 

Meanwhile, our tree lights up the room and stands as the testimony of the wonderful life we have lived. It evokes the presence of all those now gone whose prints are on these ornaments. It brings beauty into the home and revives the perpetual promise of the elusive peace the carols sing out. For a few weeks a year, there is a special magic in the air and don’t we all need it. Then the boxes will be re-packed and brought down to the basement, the tree returned to the deck, the colored lights sparkling throughout the city dismantled and we’ll be back to business as usual. 

 

But for now, the tree glistens, a living testimony and memorable gathering of our collective stories as we prepare to turn the page to the next chapter. 

 

35 Years

 

Monday night was our annual Men’s Group dinner out. Except that we had it “in” instead. We have enjoyed the decades of getting out into the world to different restaurants every December and the last eight or so at Zazie’s Restaurant on Cole Street, always on Tuesday when they offer a no-corkage fee. But the combination of the still-rising extravagant bill for food that is not wholly fabulous for this vegetarian and a noise level increasingly difficult to navigate, I suggested a new idea: a potluck at one of our houses. It was enthusiastically received and offered an extra perk as the member who hosted it recently split up with his partner and was feeling lonely in his large empty house. So we filled it with our good cheer and saved hundreds of dollars at the same time. With better food, I might add—these men are all good cooks!

 

“The good cheer” was not as cheerful as it might be, as now about to begin our 36^th year together, our check-ins almost always include the “organ-recital” of our declining physical bodies. I’m the youngest at 73 and the oldest member is 84 and for all practical purposes, not an active member of the group, living now in a home in Marin County in his 8^th year of Parkinsons. (Needless to say, he didn’t attend the dinner.) Another (82) was getting a new stint in his heart, I reported on my wisdom tooth extraction and Vestibular Hypo-function situation, another is having knee issues and so it goes. 

Then there were the reports of sadness from the relationship break-up, the daily visits with a 102-year-old neighbor who wants to die but can’t, the darkness of the season, the darkness of the political landscape (a topic we expressly forbid for the evening) and so on. 

 

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. There were the reports of visiting grandchildren, the progress on an addition to a house that will serve as a “retirement home” as one of the kids will take over the main house, the upcoming visit to Germany to visit a daughter and grandson. There were some genuine moments of laughter, helped by good wine and cognac and at the end, I suggested people share a favorite Holiday memory and there were some sweet and poignant stories. 

 

So things have changed since we began all those years back sharing the trials and tribulations of what it means to be a man. We reflected on how we have been wounded by the Patriarchy, how we have refused some of it and been caught by some of it. Alongside the human tragedy and comedy of our work, our marriages, our successes, our failures, our anxieties, our pleasures. Nine straight middle-class white men gathering every two weeks to try to share a bit deeper than the sports talk at the bar. We started in 1990 with ten of us, in the next decade, three dropped out and one committed suicide, around 2002 two “new” men joined and just last year, another man who we all had known joined. 

 

And so we go on. We have failed miserably to dismantle toxic masculinity in the world but have made sincere efforts to heal some of it in ourselves. The sheer longevity is reason enough for celebration and just to sit in a room with other men with the expectation that we will talk about things and in ways our gender is not trained in is a victory of sorts. We are painfully aware of the losses that lie ahead and make jokes about who will be the last man standing, but meanwhile, here we are, still upright and breathing. 

 

On to year 36!

Wedding Night

In the numerous multi-cultural festivities of December—Buddha’s Enlightenment Day (Dec. 8^th), Virgin of Guadalupe (Dec. 12^th), Santa Lucia Day (Dec. 13^th), Winter Solstice (Dec. 21^st), Christmas (Dec. 25^th), Hanukkah (moveable), Kwanzaa (Dec. 26^th), there is one most Americans don’t know about and it is today, December 17^th, the night that the Persian/Turkish Medieval poet Rumi died and united with his Beloved. He called his death his “Wedding Night” and that is still how it is referred to today. The Sufi sect of Islam, whose “whirling dervish meditative dance” was inspired by Rumi pay particular attention to this Holiday. 

 

Thanks to English translations by Robert Bly, John Moyne and especially Coleman Barks, Rumi’s poetry has become somewhat known to seekers worldwide. If you’re looking for a gift for your literate friends this Holiday Season, may I recommend Coleman Barks The Essential Rumi? Meanwhile, two short poems (from over a thousand quatrains) to introduce him to folks who might not know his work. (Enjoy the contradiction that Rumi suggests you buy your friend a musical instrument instead!)

 

            NO. 89

        Today like every other day we wake up empty

       and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study

        and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument instead. 

      

      Let the beauty we love be what we do.

      There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

 

 

 

     NO. 1504

   Do not sit with a sad friend.

   When you go to a garden,

   Do you look at thorns or flowers?

   Spend more time with roses and jasmine. 

Practice the Ending First

In a recent class with 7^th graders, I began teaching a piece by teaching the ending first.  I shared this strategy with them as a way to move into more familiar territory when learning a piece. An interesting contrast to mastering the first part and then moving into the unknown. The latter a  more common practice, to be sure, but the other is an interesting variation. 

 

And then thinking the way I do, I wondered if this strategy could be applied to living a life. “Moving into the unknown” pretty much describes how we live our life and makes sense, as the future is not there written out like a piece of music as something we can learn first. But there are qualities of the end parts of life that are accessible at all ages and it got me thinking that it could be a good idea to pay attention to them when you’re younger to prepare yourself for the fuller version of them when you’re older. 

 

What are the gifts of the last stage of life? We know all too well the maddening challenges of the ever-diminishing and decreasing physical body, the difficulties of reduced sight, hearing, muscular strength, endurance, libido. The mirror reminds us of our once familiar faces now sagging, wrinkling, growing moles or unwanted hairs. But what if all of this is not just the work of a mean-spirited Creator who gets his/her kicks watching us suffer? Might they all be signs of a greater and more positive purpose?

 

James Hillman’s book The Force of Character and Helen Luke’s book Old Age both suggest that there is indeed. The decline of the physical body makes room for the enlargement of the Soul. It suggests strongly that we stop paying attention to the superficial—how do we look? How can we show off our muscles or alluring shape? Who can we impress?— and begin to attend to deeper and more important values. Our diminished hearing shields us from all the unnecessary small talk, our diminished outer sight re-focuses us to our inner visions. 

 

I can personally testify, as can so many in my peer group, that in our 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and beyond, we can become more patient, more forgiving, more understanding and yes, even more wise as we have lived long enough to know that “this, too, shall pass” when life and life’s events seem intolerable. We can become more forthright and say what needs to be said without worrying if it will make us unpopular. As Hillman puts it:

 

“…life intends aging just as it intends growth in youth. As we unfold into speaking, standing, walking, discriminating, and mastering, so we may infold into the involution of aging. “

 

Helen Luke invokes King Lear in her thoughts about aging:

 

“As we grow old, our body weakens, our powers fail, our sight dims, our hearing fades, our power to move around is taken from us. In one way or another we are imprisoned and the moment of choice then comes to us. Will we fight this confining process or will we go to meet it in the spirit of King Lear—embrace it with love, with eagerness even?”

 

What is needed to develop the strength and courage and character to meet our inevitable decline, to face our mortality? Ms. Luke talks about the term “growing old” in its most positive sense. If we make the conscious decision to grow into our aging, we have the possibility of coming into the final flowering and meaning of our lives. If we resist it, are dragged into it by the lion’s paw of time protesting, crying out, making appointments with the plastic surgeon, we will simply become “olders,” not “elders.” True eldership doesn’t come for free just with the passage of time but must be consciously earned. 

 

So returning to the original premise of practicing the end first, I would suggest contemplating one’s mortality at every stage of life, not out of fear or cynicism, but as a way to strengthen our ability to separate the truly important from the trivial, to savor each gift of life and express appropriate gratitude, to forgive others and ourselves so that when we arrive at the time of life when we can begin to let go of outer achievement and impressing people, we are prepared. Practice the ending now so those last notes can truly ring out!

  

Red Sneakers

Often in workshops after an activity that evokes improvisation (like “The Secret Song”), I make the comment that you could have people of different ages, musical backgrounds, cultural backgrounds and they could all be successful, putting everything they know into the improvisation. And it all could sound good. The fresh ideas of a 5-year-old romping around five notes on a xylophone might be as musically interesting as the piano major in the University's solo. To really drive the point home, I mention a group of musicians who I consider at the peak of musical technique, sophistication and understanding as folks who would get something out of the workshop. Though the list is long, I tend to mention people like Bobby McFerrin, Yo Yo Ma, Wynton Marsalis, Yuja Wang and Zakir Hussein. 

 

And now Zakir Hussein has left us, at the too-young age (my age!) of 73 years old. He passed away yesterday from a heart attack and the tributes are pouring in from all corners of Facebook, the modern age’s Obituary Column. Out come the photos and the stories and the icons of sadness and rightfully so. Here’s my own two cents (again, paraphrasing JD Salinger’s image):

 

Raise high the roof beam, carpenters. A great man has passed out of this world, leaving a legacy of extraordinary musicianship coupled with deep humanity and we are all the poorer for his absence. 

 

Born in Mumbai, India, he was the eldest son of Alla Rakha, a highly accomplished and esteemed tabla player of Indian classical music. Sometime in the 1970’s, I had the good fortune to hear father and son in a concert and their virtuosity in a highly complex musical genre was breathtaking, to say the least. Zakir could have easily established himself following his father’s footsteps as one of India’s greatest tabla players. 

 

But early on, he was curious about other musical genres and cultures and ready and willing to experiment with the tabla and other percussion instruments in a wide variety of musical styles. In 1973, he played on albums by rock musician George Harrison and jazz musician John Handy. In 1975, he was part of John McLaughlin’s jazz/ Indian fusion group Shakti and in the next 5-10 years, recorded with Van Morrison and Earth, Wind & Fire. He joined Mickey Hart (drummer for The Grateful Dead ) in the Planet Drum project and continued to collaborate with jazz musicians like Pharoah Sanders, Chris Potter, Josh Redman and more. I attended his concert with Josh Redman at SF Jazz Center and it was one of the highlights of my concert-going life. 

 

Imagine my delight when I went to the wedding of a good friend and tabla player Jim Santi Owen and Zakir was there! He wore some bright red sneakers and the first thing I said to him in my starstruck ineloquence was “Nice sneakers!” At the end, he was standing alone in the hall as I was leaving and I said, “Thank you for making this broken world more beautiful with your music.” He nodded his head in acknowledgment and I added, “And I still like your sneakers!”

 

So that was my personal connection with this extraordinary musician and stellar human being, whose presence amongst us and still in his absence is a reminder to us all to work harder, express ourselves more fully, bring beauty into everything we do and still be kind enough to talk to strangers at weddings and cool enough to wear bright red sneakers. 

 

R.I.P., Zakir Hussein. 

 

"See You Later!"

So much is happening that life is outrunning my ability to write about it. Tempted to write a longer piece about how the kids in the music program where I have assisted have evolved so noticeably in the past three years, guided by the hard-working dedication of their teacher Yari, the feedback loop between well-chosen music that they now have the skills to play and thus, the motivation to keep working and hopefully, the effects of my guidance for both Yari and the students. It’s worth a reflection about the value of time and patience and every-firmer faith in the possibilities of each and every student, musically and otherwise. But for now, I’ll just share this surprising interaction. 

 

At the end of class, a 7^th grade girl spontaneously said to me, “You know, I think we could be good friends in another lifetime.” 

 

And my spontaneous answer; “I look forward to that. See you later!”