High and Low

 

“Do we REALLY have to ‘go high’ when they go low?” Stephen Colbert asked the originator of the phrase, First Lady Michelle Obama.

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“I totally understand going high when somebody goes low,” he told her, “but the bar is so low that staying at your own altitude still means higher. Do I actually have to go up here or can I just be normal? Do I have to be a saint? Because down here, I’m pissed off!”

 

She responded, “For me, going high is not losing the urgency or the passion or the rage, especially when you are justified in it. Going high means finding the purpose in your rage. Rage without reason, without a plan, without direction, is just more rage. And we’ve been living in a lot of rage.”

 

Mrs. Obama said she feels there’s no choice but to “go high” — “because the opposite is unsustainable. If going low worked,” she added, “we’d do it. It might be a quick fix, but it doesn’t fix anything over the long term. I’m trying to push us to think about solutions that will actually unite us and get us focused on the real problem. That’s what I mean when I say ‘go high.’” 

 

Obama concluded. “So yes, go high. America, please, go high.”

 

Every day teaching kids, I’m reaching for the mountaintop. Every day writing and reflecting through writing, I’m searching for purpose inside my rage. Every day playing music, I’m hoping to release the beauty hidden inside all the ugliness. 

 

Today, I had the grand pleasure of visiting my old school in company with 16 alums about to graduate high school and their parents. After a lovely lunch and catch-up chatter, we invited the kids into the music room where we had set up the xylophones they used to play. It took me two minutes to teach them a blues melody (Milt Jackson’s Blues Legacy) and each also got a chance to solo. No one hesitated and all played something musically coherent and swingin’. Then the parents came in, I chose three soloists and we performed. All were mightily impressed. 

 

I then taught them a new four-phrase melody (Mo Betta Blues) in front of the parents which they learned in 40 seconds. This time instead of solos, each had a duet musical conversation with a partner in the G-pentatonic scale with me supporting them on the piano. Again, eloquent dialogues with great listening and responding and the parents again suitably impressed. Then the kids sat across from the parents and each in turn spoke about something they learned at The San Francisco School that helped frame their high school years and that they hope to take with them into the future. Some mentioned the fearlessness and confidence they just displayed in their spontaneous solos in these musical examples and others mentioned kindness and empathy. A perfect opening for me to shamelessly hold up my new book, The Humanitarian Musician, and credit the school for being the culture that allowed these ideals to grow and flourish. And given the kids’ testimonies, they clearly worked. 

 

Then came the obligatory group photo and without asking permission or introducing it, I just started playing Side By Side and the kids spontaneously put their arms around each other and started singing. Yeah!

 

So there it was— the high mountain we all have climbed and all of us so happily admiring the view. Our refusal to go low and follow the dregs of society down into their hellholes. Our antidote to mindless rage and our determination to keep walking upward with purpose and perseverance.

 

I think Michelle Obama would be proud.  

The City by the Bay—and Breakers

 

It turns out I get through my day just fine without my morning Zen meditation that I’ve been doing for some 50 years. Without my zafu pillow and incense and getting out of the house early in Toronto, I just didn’t do it for three weeks. I did shop and cook a little and played my host’s piano, but without the higher satisfaction of the ingredients and kitchen I’m used to and the better sound of my piano. I walked a bit around their neighborhood, but most of my exercise was folded into my commute to the school and none of it through a place as gorgeous as Golden Gate Park. 

 

So it was indeed satisfying to be back in my old home in my home city. Sat zazen, ate at my own breakfast table, went out to help out in a neighborhood clean-up that my wife organizes every couple of months. I love picking up trash with the metal grabbers, enjoy the brief connection with the neighbors in our opening circle, feel the satisfaction of doing something physically useful and re-unite with some 10 square blocks around my house. 

 

On to my favorite food store, Trader Joe’s, finding some of my old favorite foods, lunch on the deck in 70-degree sunshine and knocking off one of my Crostic puzzles. Then off walking to another neighborhood store for the things Trader Joe’s doesn’t have— Chinese eggplant and fresh carrots, Adelle’s sausages, Vietnamese Spring Roll wrappers, quality tamari sauce. Head over to Golden Gate Park and start the roundabout return home, past families throwing footballs in fields, folks biking and walking and jogging, the drummers pounding away on Hippy Hill, the kids on the Carousel in Children’s Playground, stop to play a little cornhole game with myself, run into an old school parent and catch up on his kids, both now out of college and involved with music. 

 

A lot of activity as trucks unload rows and rows of portable toilets. Tomorrow is the annual “Bay to Breakers,” a 7.6 mile race that began in 1912 in an attempt to boost the city’s morale after the 1906 earthquake. It is now the longest running consecutive unchanging race in the world. In 1986, it broke the Guinness World Record at 110,000 participants. (Since surpassed by a race in Sydney). Its name comes from starting at the Bay by the Ferry Building and ending at the ocean (the Breakers) at the end of Golden Gate Park. My wife ran in it in 1978 and never again. My daughter Talia, who has run some 25 marathons, did it several times, but most of those times, in her own words, she didn’t “run it” but “drank it.”

 

Because though some people take it seriously as a race, most people see it as a big party and wear outrageous costumes or run naked or connect themselves with ropes and such. According to Wikipedia, city officials and race sponsors officially banned floats, alcohol and nudity. Bay Area residents protested that that would change the character of a race that has been a national treasure for most of the last century. Don’t know what the final decision was and I’m not going to watch it tomorrow to find out— there’s a gathering of SF School alums now graduating from high school that I want to go to. They were in 6^th grade when I retired and I’ve kept in touch with some of them—gone to one’s dance concert, met another at the Jewish Home and such. 

 

Happy to be home, happy the race is still going on, happy that I’m not running in it—never have and never will! (But I did walk 6.5 miles today).  

It's Only Money

One of my favorite “way back then” tales I tell about starting my adult life in San Francisco has to do with money. Back in 1974, I was volunteering at a hippy free school doing some music classes. I went twice a week to work with three high-school students and taking the bus round trip. At one point, I got up the nerve to ask if I could get reimbursed for the bus fare. In this consensus-based community way of making decisions (no administrator), they had to hold a meeting to consider my request. At the end, they gave me the good news—they would pay the Muni bus fare. At the time, it cost 25 cents per ride, so my reimbursement, which required a proposal, a meeting and a discussion was—$1 per week!

 

At the time, I was living with my sister and brother-in-law in a lovely apartment on Downey Street in the Upper Haight, with two bedrooms, living room, kitchen and a gorgeous view of Golden Gate Park extending all the way to the ocean. The rent? $125 a month split three ways. I was teaching piano lessons once a week and accompanying my sister’s modern dance class twice a week, both for $3.00 per hour. I also was on food stamps and we ate macrobiotically, meaning mostly brown rice and vegetables. Occasionally, I treated myself to Uncle Gaylord’s ice cream cones. $.20 each. When I went back East to visit my family, I hitchhiked across the country. Different times. 

 

When I stumbled into a job at The San Francisco School that didn’t exist before someone donated Orff instruments and the school decided they needed to hire someone who knew what to do with them (longer story here), I remember going into the office of the administrator and her asking me what salary I proposed. It was May, they hired me for September and hadn’t accounted for it yet in their budget. My answer? “Whatever you want. I’m sure it will be more than I’ve ever earned before.” And at $4,000 a year, it was!

 

After my wife had taught there for four years (she was the first art teacher) and I for three, we decided to take a leave of absence and travel around the world for a year. And we did. Our budget? $6,000 for the two of us! For a year! And we did it. When we returned to school and had kids, our salaries were increasing year by year, but so were expenses— rents, food, gas, etc. For the next five to ten years, there were times when we ran out of money before the month ended and had to get an advance on our next month’s salaries. Since they were 9-month salaries back then, you could collect Unemployment over the summer.

 

All of this taught me some lifelong sense of frugality that has never left me. While I have no choice but pay the bill for $4000 (my first year’s salary!) our recent leak in the roof cost to get fixed, I still balk against going to restaurants that charge way too much for food I can cook as well at home. I’m always looking for “deals” when it comes to air travel or gas prices, will go the extra mile to go the store that has oatmilk for $4.99 instead of $6.99. 

 

At the same time, now that I’m more comfortable financially, I need to remember that “you can’t take it with you” and am opening up to just relaxing a bit more with the mantra “It’s only money.” I’ve been waiting for five more students to sign up for my Jazz Course to bring my Pentatonics Jazz Band and finally decided, “Hell with that! I love being with these guys, the course will benefit, they’re excited about coming back to New Orleans and I can take it off my salary.” I’ve long wanted my grandkids to come to Ghana with me for the Orff-Afrique Course and now am determined that they will next summer. A good chance to use all those miles I’ve been hoarding to pay their plane flights. And speaking of Ghana, I got the idea with my friend Kofi that I can take on the project of fundraising to build a basketball court for his Nunya Academy School. And then thought maybe I’d just pay for it myself. Why not?

 

Even in this new mindset of more casual generosity, that lifelong frugal voice still sits on my shoulder. I’m having a hard time deciding to get the $350 ticket to go see Jacob Collier this Fall. Anyone want to treat me? :-) Come on, it’s only money!

Playing the Exzilaphone

 

In the American mythological mythscape in which I was raised, I should be envious of people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and the like. I should be in awe of the President of the United States and the power he wields. For reasons I can’t wholly define but for which I am eternally grateful, I refused that story. Rather than envy the rich and powerful, I feel nothing but pity for them. They and their ilk have big holes in their souls that no amount of money or power will ever fill. Because they’ve chosen the wrong food, they have hungers that will never be satiated no matter how much they eat. Not one of them will ever, ever, get a card like I got today after three weeks sharing my childlike self with children from 5 to 11-years-old. 

 

As promised in the last post, here are some of the testimonies from the kids. Since the handwritten quality is central to their message, I include a photo of one of the four pages. My two favorites? 

 

• I loved playing and learning to play the exzilaphone with you!

 

Most creative spelling ever!

 

• Thank you much! It was things! Not just the music, it was all the moments!

 

Still thinking about “It was things!” But loved that last sentence—not just the music, but all the moments! The music turned out to sound pretty great, but looming even larger was how we learned and the feeling in the room. All the moments. These kids got it! 

Miracle on Rosewell Avenue

It was another one of those miracles that will never make the big time, but in my mind, is much more important than oil lasting longer than usual, an image appearing on a cloak or water turned to wine. I’m talking about working with 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th grade kids at Havergal school for six classes each over three weeks and then performing this morning with seven different groups on a stage with the instruments re-arranged to fit and different than they were used to. With 30 minutes to figure out with the seven groups who goes where and which bars to take off and on and to make sure they have the right mallets. Then of course, the kid who was absent shows up and wonders where to go or who her partner can be. And the other kid who was always in class was now absent. And where the heck is the Bb bar for that soprano xylophone? And where can we put each of the two pianos and the one marimba and the drum set and the Ghana xylophones? Had to figure it all out on the spot with some 120 kids. And the audience starting to enter. Oh, and with seven groups plus transitions, the concert was supposed to be 30 minutes long. Counting transitions and taking those pesky bars off and on. Like I said, a miracle.

 

But we did it! The kids did a great job just attending to the cues from my piano and adjusting in the moment as the music required. Two beginning jazz pieces for 3^rdand 4^th grade, an elemental Orff arrangement of an English rhyme for 3rd, a Ghana xylophone piece for 4^th, and three jazz blues with 5^th— one major, two minor, each in a different key. (Oh, how I longed for the chromatic Orff xylophones I had at The San Francisco School! And publicly announced my vision that Havergal buy some for the future. Maybe watching the kids taking them off and on with all the clatter they made while I was talking might have started that dream in motion!)

 

At the end, they gifted me with a lovely card the kids had made and though I still have two more classes to teach to 2^nd grade and kindergarten (a coda to the grand finale), I had a short post-concert break (after, of course, moving all the instruments back to the music rooms with the kids helping— no road crew for the Orff teacher!), so I sat down to read the little thanks the kids had written. The tears came more than once. 

Of course, not an ounce of motivation for doing this work is to make sure I’m properly thanked, but still we all want to know if our work made some sort of impact and the “if you see something/ hear something/ do something, say something” Golden Rule is inextricably woven into the fabric of any artistic pursuit. Like applause at the end of a jazz solo (and I got some when I played at the jam session at the Rex Jazz Club the other night!), it lets you know that you connected with someone and that indeed is both satisfying and a further motivation to keep going. 

 

What did the kids say? Stay tuned for the next post.  

Smiling for No Reason

I’m noticing something a bit unusual these days. Walking to this school where I’m teaching, walking in the halls, teaching the classes, I’m finding myself smiling for no reason. It’s an inward physical sensation, not an outward “smile for the camera” show, but the sense that if every cell in the body could smile, well, they are. 

Seems like we spend just about every minute of every day trying to reach some equilibrium of diverse energies inside us. If homeostasis is the biological term that describes “the self-regulating process by which biological systems maintain internal stability while adjusting to changing external conditions,” this feels like a “spiritual homeostasis.” Instead of “ensuring essential conditions—such as body temperature, pH, and nutrient levels—stay within a narrow healthy range, preventing death or disease”, these conditions of love, passion and sense of living inside your destiny prevent death to the spirit and take us from dis-ease to ease. Describing it doesn’t do it justice and certainly doesn’t bring us any closer to experiencing it.  Nothing your small ego can dream up can guarantee its presence.  It just “is.” 

 

What we can do is notice it when we are graced by its appearance. Feel grateful for its blessing while mildly astonished that it has chosen to visit us. Wonder a bit if we’re worthy but not care about that answer. Here it is and might as well feel it wholly and savor it and keep the space open for its bubbly effervescence. Goodness knows it’s a short-term visitor and there are much darker psychic territories we may be required to visit as our mind and body diminish, our country and culture collapses, our opportunities to keep doing that which we love dry up or disappear. So apologies if I strut it about a bit in this Blog, knowing others may be suffering and not the least bit happy to read about my happiness. But as I said, my job is to notice its presence and feel the full measure of its blessing. 

 

And of course, my life choices have something to do with it. I’ve loved children my whole life and still feel the uplift of their playful spirit and innocent delight. I’ve loved music my whole life and still feel the benevolence of its energies bringing the body and soul into balance. I’ve loved teaching my whole life and never take for granted the rare condition of feeling that inner smile radiate out to the children as they wrestle with the notes that bring their own happiness into focus. I’ve organized my life around these three loves and the World has responded with great generosity. 

 

Of course, it hasn’t all been polka dots and moonbeams and all the struggles, disappointments, failures, betrayals and doubts that are the payments due in any human incarnation have been by my side as well. Which perhaps makes it all the more sweet when I feel that smile come out like the sun emerging after the storm. 

And now here come the 5^th graders to receive its warmth and light.

  

The Real Deal

The fun-fest continues, as the kids I’m teaching here in Toronto and I romp through the forest of notes on the xylophones and dance joyfully around the campfire. As so many try to squeeze teaching into a paint-by-number method or bend it to fit inside some ill-thought-out dogma or outsource it altogether to machines, those who know what the real deal is engage with children in ways that make them smarter, kinder and happier. The statistics reveal depressed and dispirited students beaten down by toxic practices in the name of “education,” but my own experience is that kids are ready to be wholly themselves on their way to better versions of themselves, led to deeper understandings, more controlled expression in diverse media, more profound connections with their own community of psychic energies and those of people around them. How can we reach them in these ways?

 

It's simple. Replace fear with fun, insult with welcome, blind faith with cultivated thought, ugliness with beauty. The only antidote to a child or adult who is shut down because they understandably are trying to protect some tender part of themselves from the brutal attacks of others, is to bring them into a safe and protected and loving circle, where fun is at the forefront and they are not only allowed but invited to discover the beautiful expressive parts of themselves, in company with adults who affirm, welcome, bless and love them. That’s where real healing begins. That’s where the real deal starts.

 

Saying “yes!” to this requires the insight and courage to say “no!” to scripted lessons made by “experts” who know exactly nothing about what that child in front of you right here, right now, needs. And believe me, it ain’t a script. Say “no” to the mindless testing and the cute videos and the AI catastrophe. Be clear that kids don’t need a curriculum or an i-Pad or a sure-fire kid-tested lesson. They need a relationship with an adult prepared to see them and know them and invite them to discover more about themselves that they even knew before. Relationship, not systems. A relationship that by definition is unpredictable, messy, somewhat uncontrollable and not a problem to be fixed, but a dance to be practiced. That’s where the challenge and the joy equally lie. No 26-step system exists that will solve your classroom challenges any more than it will solve your marriage. 

 

So a word to my fellow Orff teachers. Orff Schulwerk began with an intuition blossomed into a vision. It invited—and invites— us to develop our own artistry, feed our own passion for our art and for teaching our art, bring the music wholly into our own body and voice and gesture and facial expression and communicate directly to the children from vibration to vibration. It asks us to become friendly with our own spontaneity, our own responsiveness, our own attention to what’s going on in this moment right before our eyes and ears and with that quirky little person called a child. That’s where the art and science of teaching meet and that’s where the children can begin to feel safe and nurtured and held in the arms of something that is not only about mastery, but is about community feeling, is about beauty, is about the unequalled joy of creation. 

 

I’m concerned that the success of Orff Schulwerk in American schools is coming at a price. We’re starting to march to the school board’s drummer, use all the ugly-non-poetic words trying to prove that we taught something worthwhile, submitting our lesson plans to people who don’t understand them, teaching with the required Smartboard or formula of blah-blah-blah lesson objectives told to children who don’t care to hear it—they just want to play. Orff began as a radical antidote to all of that. Instead of trying to fit in with the bean-counters program, we need to show them how to grow the garden. 

 

If I had any advice for today’s and future Orff teachers, I’d say “Stay on the edge.” And walk your administrator there to show him or her the view. When we are teaching the way Orff and his descendants proposed, there’s not a single new education-du-jour approach that we’re not already doing—and often much better. Trust that. Art does not thrive in the bland safe middle of normal, the brightly lit shopping mall or sterile classroom with linoleum floors. It seeks out the edge, be it explosive and passionate or tender and intimate. Think the Bible, Shakespeare, Opera. Think Mozart’s Requiem, John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit, a Gospel church, a dulcimer on an Appalachian front porch, the shimmering sounds of the gamelan on a moonlit verandah in Bali. That’s where we should take the children.

 

And on my way to today’s class, that’s exactly where I intend to go.