Our 30th President

On the way to high school in my junior year, I drove past a billboard every day that read: “Calvin Coolidge was our 30^th President.” Huh? I couldn’t figure out what it was about until someone finally enlightened me. Apparently, they were testing to see the impact of billboards— or of that particular placing of a billboard— and would call people up who lived in the area and ask, “Who was our 30^thPresident?” Would never work today with people cheating on their phones, but back then, it was a logical experiment.

 

Of course, no one every called me up and asked me. Sometimes I imagined some mugger assaulting me and me pleading for mercy and my assailant making me a deal. “If you answer my question, I’ll let you go. Who was our 30^th President?” But it never happened and so I just let that factoid lie dormant in the dark recesses of my neural connections for the next 60 years, never once thinking about it again. 

 

Until today. 

 

Continuing my father’s legacy, I was working on my daily Crostic puzzle and clue number T was: The 30^th President. Bam! I didn’t even need to count the 8 spaces. I knew it. Instantly.

 

So a shout-out to those billboard makers. I had to wait six decades, but thanks to you, when the moment came, I was prepared. 

 

PS For you readers, I suggest putting up that fact up on a sign in your office or home or workplace or on a neighborhood bulletin board. One never knows when someone will need it.

Don Juan's Advice

After seven weeks without teaching, it’s time to re-start that slightly rusty engine as I return to my school while my forever colleague is away for a week. That must be why I had a dream about teaching Middle Schoolers, who came into the class and sat apart in two groups and one of them said, “You think you’re going to teach us and bring us together? We hate each other!”

 

I calmly replied, “Did you ever hear of the teachings of Don Juan?”

 

“Yeah!” shouted one of the guys. “He was that cool womanizer who could seduce any woman he wanted! Lord Byron wrote an epic poem about him and Mozart told his story in Don Giovanni! You’re going to share his secrets with us? Cool!!”

 

(Remember, this was a dream. Of course, no American middle schooler on earth would know about Lord Byron and Mozart, never mind Don Juan himself!)

 

“No!” I replied, “Not that Don Juan. This one was a Mexican Yaqui Indian sorcerer and Carlos Castaneda, the author of the book, apprenticed with him to become a shaman.”

 

“Oh yeah! I heard about that! He was going on all these mind-altering trips using peyote and mushrooms and stuff. Did you bring some for us?”

 

“Sorry to disappoint you, but the teaching I’m referring to has nothing to do with drugs or sex. “

 

“Damn!” a few shouted in unison. “We thought this was gonna be fun!”

 

“Well, it will be, but first you have to understood what I felt was one of the most important lessons Don Juan taught. By the way, it later turned out the author made most of this up and it actually never happened and it’s not clear if he ever meet a Yaqui Indian sorcerer. I felt a little ripped off when I heard that years after the book was published. But none of that diminished the power of that sentence I read.”

 

By now, all the kids were on the edge of their chair in anticipation. (Remember, this was a dream. In real life, they’d probably be slumped and murmuring “Whatever.”)

 

“Here it is,” I pressed on. “You can make yourself happy or miserable—the work is the same.”  So you can choose to keep hating each other, thinking that your group is cool and the other are all losers, or you can consider that you all have something valuable to give to the group and each of you has a shining jewel hidden inside of you that can bring light into the room. The amount of energy you spend either dismissing or accepting other people is the same, but the result is quite different. One brings misery, the other happiness. So choose wisely.

 

And keeping in mind once more that this is a dream, all the kids came together into a circle and we started music class. 

Leaving the Camera Behind

 

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.

He went flying down the river in his boat

with his video camera to his eye, making

a moving picture of the moving river

upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly

toward the end of his vacation. He showed

his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,

preserving it forever: the river, the trees,

the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat

behind which he stood with his camera

preserving his vacation even as he was having it

so that after he had had it he would still

have it. It would be there. With a flick

of a switch, there it would be. But he

would not be in it. He would never be in it.

                                                            Wendell Berry: The Vacation

 

When I went to Europe for the first time with the Antioch College Choir, I was a card-carrying hippy in my last year of college (1973). I followed the mantra “Be here now” and dismissed the old-fashioned notion of bringing a camera on the trip. I did record those travels faithfully in my journal, which is actually a much more meaningful way to document experience. But years later, I sorely regretted not having a single photo of the trip. Luckily, a fellow student took some photos and posted them on a Website, so I there are maybe five photos with me in them that help me say with certainty: “This happened. And I was there.”

 

This on my mind at the last day of Flower Piano. By now, I hope you have a picture in your mind of some 12 pianos spread out around the Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park and people pretty much crowded around each one listening to someone play. I imagine many travel around to at least half, if not all of the 12 pianos and hear some 30 to 40 people playing. (The ones that don’t have a scheduled show at any moment are open to the public and people take turns, usually playing one to three pieces.) 

 

Everything about this is wonderful. On the weekend, the crowds seem to have tripled and there were literally thousands of people milling about, cold fog be damned, listening to the music. The last band I heard was a great swing band and looking around me, some people were dancing, some sitting on blankets with food, some standing before strolling on. Again, except for a little sunshine, it couldn’t be better. 

 

Are you picturing a “but…” coming? Good guess! And here it is.

 

At any one piano, it seems like over half the crowd has their phones up videoing the player. Now imagine having listened to some 30 or 40 people playing three or more pieces each and you have 100 videos captured on your phone. So my two questions are this:

 

1)   When is anyone going to ever watch these again? How much time do you have? If you decide to delete some, you still have to watch some of each and how long will that take? And how many will you keep and why and again, when are you ever going to listen to them again? And why would you, when you can probably hear the same piece played much better by someone on Youtube? If your friend was playing, okay, I get it, but that certainly couldn’t have been the case as I looked around at all the phones in the air.

 

2)   Theoretically, you can still listen attentively with your hand up in the air with the phone in it. But I suspect, like Wendell Berry’s vacationer, that some part of you feels like you don’t have to listen that hard because, hey, you can always watch it later. I suspect it steals a bit of your motivation and ability to be wholly present, to “be here now” and really savor the sounds floating up into the redwoods, cushioned by all the surrounding greenery and enjoyed in company with a hundred living begins gathered up in the music’s arms. 

 

As noted in the next entry, one of those videos opened up a wonderful conversation, but I’m sure that’s the exception rather than the rule. 

 

And so the Aesopian moral, of which I need reminders as much as anyone. Some kind of documentation, be it a photo or video, is natural to our species that lives in the moment and reflects on it, sometimes all at once. But not all documentation is created equal—a journal entry, a poem, a piece of art, a song, even a dance, to preserve an occasion uses so much more of us than a machine can ever grant. By creating something artful inspired by the moment, you are re-creating the beauty and memorability of the moment. And some things are best remembered in the neural folds of our own memory, to be shared over dinners with the friends who were there or told around campfires. 

 

None of this cancels the sincere wonderfulness of this 10-day event. But it is food for thought. To be chewed over on a picnic blanket on the grass listening to a hot swing band. 

Public Education

I was 60 years old before I finally relented and called myself a musician. Someone who could play well enough that listeners would be drawn into the new experience of time that music gifts to us, to be lifted into that world where everything makes sense and brings some sense of remembered beauty and comfort to our perpetually troubled souls. I’m no virtuoso roaming the keyboard like Steph Curry on a fast break, but somehow I’m able to dig into the center of a note or a chord or a melody and follow it to the next needed note, whether improvising or reading a score. And when playing with others, good enough to notice the calls and responses and participate in the conversation. 

 

Another point in my favor is the range of the music I like to play— a wide variety of jazz standards spanning some five decades, jazz tunes ranging from Ragtime to New Orleans style to swing to bebop to cool to bossa nova and a touch of Latin jazz, notable classical pieces from Bach to Debussy and even some old chestnut folk songs from spirituals to Appalachian old-time music to cowboy songs and beyond. And most of it memorized so I don’t have to thumb through books or i-Pads and much of it including improvisation to keep it fresh and in the moment.

 

On top of that, my teacher self is omnipresent and allows me to be both relaxed in my comfort zone and to connect with the audience with my Music Jeopardy questions or charming stories about the music or composer, education side-by-side with letting the music speak for itself. The 45 years of doing this daily with the kids I taught, the 18 years with the elders at The Jewish Home have far surpassed the 10,000 hours needed to master any craft and teaching/ performing (or performing/ teaching) is indeed a craft that benefits from such practice. When I play like I have the last few days and feel the audience respond, it brings me satisfaction that indeed I have made some progress and all those hours not only paid off from the pleasure I felt in the practicing, but in allowing me to connect with others and bring a few drops of happiness to a thirsty world. 

 

And so yesterday, there was a sizeable audience at each of the two pianos I played and in contrast to the Jewish Home, I noticed that many of the people under 45 or so didn’t recognize old jazz classics like Tea for Two, Bye Bye Blackbird, Embraceable You, Ain’t Misbehavin’ and certainly didn’t know the words to sing along. I tried to help them, feeding them the lines while I was playing and a few gave it a try. I also noticed they hadn’t seemed to hear of Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller or Jerome Kern. Most recognized Scott Joplin and many George Gershwin, but that was about it. The one thing I thought I could count on was them recognizing and singing along to Over the Rainbow—and they did. 

 

Today is the last day of Flower Piano and let’s see who knows Sunnnyside of the Street, I Got Rhythm, Autumn Leaves, Blue Moon, On the Street Where You Live, The Girl from Ipanema and such. Given the weather, perhaps my first tune should be Gershwin’s A Foggy Day. And I wonder how many know I Left My Heart in San Francisco? We shall see. And I’ll do my part to educate the public while having some fun. 

Merry Christmas?

I had the most surprising (aren’t they all?) dream last night. I was playing piano in an airport with a long line of over a hundred people and started playing Christmas Carols with all the people joining in singing—with magnificent 4-part harmony! Where did that come from?!!

 

The feeling tone was one of glorious uplift. I do love many of those songs and even though I am a Jewish by blood/ Unitarian by upbringing/ Buddhist by practice, I did celebrate Christmas both as a kid and an adult and grew to love that certain magic in the air that the songs and the season can evoke. Don’t love all the lyrics and truth be told, kind of wish that Jesus never would have been born, in the face of all the havoc done in his name. Of course, we miserably flawed humans probably would have found someone else and ended up blindly obeying the Gospel of Fred. But in spite of all the male-created power obsessions about Jesus as King of Kings and Lord of Lords who shall reign forever and ever (no term limits!), the music is great and balanced by some peace-loving images of little towns in Bethlehem and an innocent babe in a manger and angels with harps of gold. Not to mention the partridges in the pear tree. 

 

With those carols singing so tunefully in my dreams, I awoke happy and refreshed. When my wife came into the kitchen, I told her about the dream and then began to walk to another room to begin my day when I suddenly heard the seasonal song Sleigh Bells playing! What was that? Walked back to find the source and it was my damn phone! Apparently, Big Sister Siri eavesdropped on our conversation and thought she should play that song for me. WTF?!!!! Nothing to kill the Christmas Spirit faster than to realize how we are being listened to and manipulated by our machines. It is beyond creepy!

Can we just get back to landlines, letters and post offices, asking people for directions, asking each other for information or going to the library to look things up, writing checks or paying cash, calling taxis, listening to vinyl records and the radio, getting the news, weather report, movie listings from the morning paper? This is not naïve nostalgia. It’s remembering when we weren’t vulnerable to constant surveillance and algorhythms and addiction to devices that we all agreed to just so everything could be faster and more “convenient” at a price we never imagined having to pay. 

 

Bah humbug!!!

Feast of Friends and Family

 

In these hi-tech days where we even look up recipes online, I still use cookbooks when needed (mostly not needed as I remember how to cook some 20 different dishes). Even more old-fashioned and more personal, I sometimes look in our little file-card box of recipes. 

I looked for something there today and was struck by how many recipes are connected to people my wife and I have known. There’s a lot from family: Grandmother’s (Karen’s) Chow Chow, Grandma’s (mine) Honey Cake, Mom’s (Karen’s) Napa Cabbage Salad, Dad’s (mine) Chow Mein, Aunt Lil’s Spinach Salad, Aunt Norma’s Meringue, Cousin Roy’s pizza crust, sister-in-law Lori’s Southwest Baked Beans, daughters Kerala’s Mexican Skillet and Talia’s Granola. 

 

Then friends: Patty’s Enchilada Casserole, Alma’s Cheese Straws, Ariel’s Fruit Salad, Beth’s Black-eyed Pea Salad, Sofia’s Gazpacho, Heidi’s Pudding, Stephanie’s Split-Pea Soup, Laura’s Carolina Apple Quiche, Mia’s Date-Nut Bars. There are a few recipes from people I don’t know or can’t remember— who is Mrs. Riddell and when did she share her Lemon Bars recipe with us? And yet another from John, an old roommate of a friend I probably met once or twice back in the early 80’s.

 

There they all are, friends and family both still with us and departed, all snuggled together in a little box promising a memorable and tasty meal. If it is true—and I hope it is—that those in the other world keep on living from our remembrance, can feel something when we think of them or tell stories about them or read their words or listen to their music or view their artwork, then I imagine they also somehow join us at the table when we cook their favorite recipe. And are happy that we are savoring the tastes and textures that they can’t anymore. 

 

It makes me think of orchestrating a potluck gathering—maybe around the Day of the Dead Celebration— when all bring something they learned how to cook from a friend or family member and as we taste each dish, each tells a few stories about that person. And maybe gather all the recipes together so all can continue to enjoy and pass down. 

 

It also makes me think of what my cooking legacy would be. I suspect it might be miso soup, immortalized in a scene in my Secret Song movie where I’m in the kitchen cooking it while talking about the pandemic. (Just in case you want to check it out!). 

 

Do you have such a collection of recipes? And what would yours be to add to the box? 

Down the Up Staircase

I’ve been playing every day informally at the fabulous Flower Piano in the Golden Gate Park Arboretum. Now in its 10^th year, this event has 12 or so high-quality pianos spread out around the Botanical Gardens with set shows each day at some of them. The rest of the time, the pianos are available for anyone to play, which I’ve been doing in a variety of settings— in a redwood grove, on the moon-viewing platform in the middle of a pond and in the intimate meadow by the Garden of Fragrance, where I officially performed today. 

 

Three music teachers who had taken my Jazz Course in New Orleans brought their 1^st graders, the SF School 8^th graders came, many alum parents and some alum students attended as well, including two with their own babies who I hadn’t seen in some 20 years! Alongside the crowds who are strolling about and peeking into one performance or another. It was a great crowd and great to play with three great fellow musicians— singer Rhonda Benin, trombonist Marty Wehner and bassist Sam Heminger. 

After two welcoming songs, we went through a short thumbnail history of jazz, starting with a Field Holler and Juba body percussion into Ragtime, the Blues, a 20’s New Orleans-style piece, a 30’s piece from the Great American Songbook, a 40’s Duke Ellington blues where we invited an 8^th grader to play with us on a xylophone, a Thelonious Monk composition from the 50’s and a Broadway tune from the 60’s with audience motions and singing. Along the way, I asked Jeopardy-style jazz history questions and rewarded kids who knew the answers with our band’s CD or my Jazz, Joy and Justice book. We started exactly on time and ended one minute early. Perfect!!

 

I noticed two things that are sign-posts of my new 4^th-Act psyche and am happy to welcome them both. 

 

1)   Usually at formal events like this, I’m obsessing with all the people who I think should have come but didn’t! Part of it is practical—wanting a large enough audience to pay for the rental space, part artistic—artists want the energy of a large-enough audience, and part of it my idea of a social contract—I’ve shown up at your things and you should show up at mine. 

But this time, I didn’t find myself thinking that way and just genuinely appreciated all who did come. Of course, it helped that there was no money at stake and that the two classes of kids filled the space and that there was a ready-made audience of folks who just come to Flower Piano. But more than that there was a feeling that I’m not looking to attract people’s attention so I can get more gigs in the future and feed an aspiring career as a jazz performer. (Actually, have never felt the latter, but still was open to it!) It felt great to just be present for whoever was present. 

 

2)   Parallel to that is the pressure to earn back money put out to publish books and record CD’s and thus, amidst the pleasure of gathering to hear and participate in the musical event is always the plug—“And don’t forget to buy…!!!!” And then the subsequent disappoint in low sales. So it felt great to just give some of the CD’s and books away as part of the Jazz Jeopardy prizes. 

 

In short, there’s the sense of going down the up staircase that I thought I needed to ascend to “make it” to the top, wherever and whatever that was. Much more relaxing just sauntering down to the ground level. 

 

(That said and done, I hope the Flower Piano organizers took note as to the quality of the performance and invite us back again!)