Mayday

It’s the first day of May, with its multiple meanings and each worthy of attention. For example: 

 

International Workers Day 

A public holiday in over 90 countries honoring labor movements and workers' rights. Nations worldwide, including places like Cuba, Kenya, China, Mexico, and North Korea, take the first day of May to fight for better working conditions, celebrate, and advocate for workers. In the U.S., it originated from the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago, where workers peacefully assembled to strike for an 8-hour workday. On May 3^rd at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant, two demonstrators had been killed and many injured. The next day, demonstrators rallied at Haymarket Square, where an unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at policemen trying to disperse the meeting, killing seven police and four demonstrators.  

Police were in the pockets of big money, as always and the next day,  as reported in the Illinois Labor Historical Society,  “labor leaders were rounded up, houses were entered without search warrants and union newspapers were closed down. Eventually eight men, representing a cross section of the labor movement were selected to be tried. The two-month-long trial ranks as one of the most notorious in American history. The Chicago Tribune even offered to pay money to the jury if it found the eight men guilty. On August 20, 1886, the jury reported its verdict of guilty with the death penalty by hanging for seven of the Haymarket Eight, and 15 years of hard labor for the eighth. 

 

The 8-hour workday eventually became law and between 1880 and 1900, there were over 37,000 strikes by organized labor for better working conditions and more equitable salaries. There was significant movement to curtail the power of Robber Barons. Well, two steps forward and ten steps back. The Robber Barons are back with unchecked power and are all the poorer—literally, culturally and politically—for it. As before, the people are rising up and organizing against it and so today is (theoretically) a General Strike in the U.S.. I’m in Canada at the moment, but I’ll check out the news later. At any rate, May 1^st as International Worker’s Day is as relevant as ever, if not more so. Organize!

 

Mayday

This the happier celebration, of Spring, new life and dancing around maypoles. As noted online: “One of the oldest and most famous is the festival of Beltane, which was enjoyed by the Celts of the British Isles. This festival honored the return of life and fertility to the world, and was thought to divide the year in half, between the dark (winter) and the light (summer, which for the Celts started on May 1). Beltane typically featured bonfires, other fire displays, and field frolicking.”

 

My personal association is from the village of Anif in Austria, just outside of Salzburg. Called Maibaum and celebrated throughout Bavaria, both in Austria and Germany, it involves raising an enormous, stripped pole in the village center, hoisted up inch-by-inch by the town firemen using nothing but ropes and other poles. 10 minutes of grunting and pulling and pushing, then take a break for some beer. Meanwhile, the brass band is playing and food is plentiful as the onlookers gather. Three hours—and lots of beer— later, the pole is upright, with its hanging rings where pretzels and sausages are dangled. Spring will not officially come until someone clambers up the smooth, slippery pole some 30 feet high to reach the food and throw it down. Many try and fail and invariably, it’s a teenage boy who claims the prize. I’ve witnessed many extraordinary cultural celebrations in Bali, Ghana, India, Japan and beyond, but this European celebration was both as exotic and life-celebrating as any I’ve witnessed. 

 

Mayday!

Mayday has another meaning as the highest-level international radio distress signal used by aircraft and maritime vessels to indicate grave and imminent danger, such as engine failure, fire, or immediate life-threatening situations. Turns out it has nothing to do with the actual first day of May, but is derived from the French phrase "m'aider" (help me). At any rate, “grave and imminent danger” is indeed the new normal and it is long past time to push the ejection button for the pilot in the White House. Preferably without the parachute. 

So there you have it. May 1^st is quite a day! Take your pick— Spring, workers, or emergency distress. As for songs, you can choose between the English folk song, One Morning in May, Hoagy Carmichael’s One Morning in May or Smokey Robinson’s My Girl. 

 

Happy May!

 

Walking the Imagination

 Between being fully immersed in the classes at my new 3-week school, commuting some two hours round-trip and in the evening, being a charming  guest for my friends Yana and Dave (who are so generously hosting me at their house), not much time for Blogpost reflection. But today, I have some time in-between classes, so following the last post, worth sharing another side of commuting. 

 

My new routine begins with a short walk to a bus stop, a 10-minute bus ride, transfer to the subway and a 15-minute ride and then a choice of walking 20 plus minutes to the school or taking another bus. Having enjoyed the opportunity to walk between 3 and 8 miles a day in my “retired” life, it’s a good opportunity to walk. But not just for the fresh air and exercise. 

 

By resisting my phone, resisting listening to my Audible book, resisting listening to music in earbuds (never have really done that), my mind is free to roam alongside the legs. Since I’m walking to a day of teaching, it naturally turns to my classes and powerfully so. I find the mind is more alert, focused and engaged in the act of walking than merely sitting. 

 

Years back, I wrote: “All things are created thrice. First, in the act of dreaming—living the class ahead of time in one’s imagination. Secondly, in the act of doing and all the adjusting and responding and following the energy of the class when deciding the next step. Finally, in the act of reflecting— what worked well, what needs further fine-tuning, what the logical next step is.”

 

And so, dreaming the class while walking has borne some fresh, ripe and delicious fruit. I have so much material to fall back on, but it’s still my responsibility and my pleasure to constantly re-imagine it to keep it alive and vibrant and forever now. Yesterday, I made up a new counter-melody to a Green Sally Up arrangement I made 43 years ago and it’s swingin’! Today I made up entirely new verses to another song/arrangement I did some 18 years ago. Walking gives me time to keep it circulating in both my mind and my voice (singing out loud—no one is around on the sidewalk!). By the time I arrive at school, I had three verses and in the five minutes at school before the kids came in, I already changed them. Including making up a whole new one in the middle of the class itself. That dreaming also included how to begin, how to teach it in an engaging way. 

 

Did the kids feel how fresh and live the class was because of those acts of dreaming? You bet your life! This was not “turn to page 25 and let’s read the same paragraph I’ve read with kids for 45 years and asked the same questions.” 

 

I think a quality that seems to have accompanied me my whole life is an intolerance for sameness, my incapacity to just mouth the words and go through mindless routine. Some part of me demands a vibrant presence fully mindful of the energy in the air around me and the energies circulating inside of me. Always asking, “How else can we do this? What else can we do? What’s needed now? What am I feeling that needs to be expressed?”

 

And that’s what made this extraordinary gifts of Orff Schulwerk and Jazz so perfect for the way I’m put together. What keeps it all so fresh 51 years after I first began teaching. And to bring it full-circle, it’s the act of physically walking the imagination and mentally imagining the walking that I’m finding so energizing and meaningful. 

 

And now the next class is at the door.

Subways, Buses and Bicycles

 

Back in my college days, I worked for three months at a school in Manhattan. The first six weeks I lived with a girlfriend at her parents’ house in Brooklyn and took the subway. The last six weeks I was at home in New Jersey with my parents and took the bus into Port Authority. In both cases, I remember feeling how grim the commutes were, everything grey and dirty and all the fellow commuters looking so depressed and downtrodden. I hoped that this would not be my fate in whatever future career unfolded. 

 

And happily, it wasn’t! San Francisco was sunnier and with fresher air and the 20-minute drive to and from work went alongside a lot of green-space and was rarely clogged with traffic. (And between our family and carpooling with others, our carbon footprint was relatively small.)

 

Yet here I am back in Toronto riding the subway every day the next few weeks. Back in Tokyo with granddaughter Zadie, we also rode it every day. In both cases and others (guest teaching in Hong Kong or London or other urban areas), I’ve found myself somewhat enjoying the commute. Just something about being a part of the moving throng that keeps the human world afloat day in and day out. Of course, everyone is phone-huddled instead of people-watching and reading books with interesting covers and that’s too bad, but still there’s something slightly electric about being swept along in the current. And very satisfying to figure out the routes. 

Of course, none of this compares to one of the most memorable six-weeks of my life when I first taught the Special Course at the Orff Institut in Salzburg. I lived in Anif, an outlying village and commuted every day on bicycle. Through the village greeting the lions as I rode past the zoom, through Hellbrun Park with the Sound of Music gazebo and a view of the distant mountains, down tree-lined Hellbrun Allee where Julie Andrews skipped so happily, to arrive 20 minutes later at this historic Orff center to do precisely the work I was born for with people from some 10 different countries eager to learn. All of this in the rain, in the snow, on sunny warm days, on blustery cold days. Following the Swedish advice of no bad weather, just bad clothes, I had boots and rain-pants and gloves and wool hats as well as lighter wear and it all was part of the adventure. Sometimes I walked the 40-minute trek, occasionally took the 10-minute bus ride— but mostly it was every day on my one-gear solid bike with its big basket and the freedom to keep riding after the days classes— to the Old Town or the surrounding fields or the burbling stream. Every day for six weeks.

 

Would I prefer that to the subway commute? Of course! But both feel like part of the grand adventure of coming to and fro to the place where the work must get done. And no need to say the obvious— despite having to awaken at 3:30 am San Francisco time this morning, I had unusually long classes—one hour each—with the 2^nd graders, 3^rd graders and kindergarten kids at the school where I’ll be guest-teaching for three weeks and every minute a delight! Still, hoping for an early bedtime tonight! Maybe I’ll dream of subways, buses and bicycles.

 

  

B23-882

Dear Mom,

 

It’s your 105^th Heavenly Birthday and just want you to know you are not forgotten. I wrote to the kids to take a moment to remember you and just talked to Ginny, so rest assured that you’re still living forever in the hearts of your children and grandchildren.

 

I’m at the airport about to fly to Toronto, the first foreign city I ever went to with you, Dad and Ginny a lifetime ago in 1962. I remember going to some Botanical Gardens and particularly remember a visit to the Casa Loma. We were in a car following Don McNabb, one of Dad’s work associates, and you told me to memorize the license plate number in case we lost them. For some mysterious reason, 64 years later, I still remember it—B23-882. 

 

The report here on Planet Earth is absolute chaos in the government and what I hope is the last gasp of small-minded and hard-hearted people to de-humanize us, through deportation, insult, prison, compliance-on-demand, machines taking over (AI and Waymo) and more. The cards are all out on the table and it’s no longer an option to refuse the game. There is no more neutral. 

And so there is a swelling counterforce to re-humanize our wounded souls and broken communities. Fresh from an Orff gathering in the Carmel Valley, that’s exactly what happened in the three short days we were together, uplifted and re-connected through the powerful force of West African music, song, games and dance. 

Meanwhile, amidst the exultation of these past two weeks of teaching in my old music room at The San Francisco School, teaching again in the sacred space of the Dance Studio in Hidden Valley, gathering again in the theater where my teacher Avon flung open the doors on Easter morning (in 1987) while we all sang his Alleluia and the light streamed in, the mundane world has put on its Trickster robe to test my resolve to keep going. All First-World minor earthquakes and that I need to remember just might be relieving the pressure that helps avert a major earthquake. But consider:

 

• Books: It started last Wednesday when the promised books I had specially printed to meet a deadline did not arrive. 25 copies of my 11^th book, The Humanitarian Musician were supposed to come to my home so I could bring them to sell at the above Mini-conference. 25 more were supposed to be mailed to Halifax for another Orff gathering, the Canadian Orff Conference, where the people know my work and my colleagues James, Christa and Annette were teaching and could give them a little plug. With the tsunami of challenges I’m facing with my little Pentatonic Press (an entry in itself), it would have felt wonderful to start with 50 books sold before the larger printing was finished. 

 

But both the woman in charge and the printing company itself were new and while the books got printed, they somehow “forgot” to send them! Aargh! Plan B was to see if they could overnight-express one book to the Mini-conference. The book will sell for $20, the cost of overnight express would have been $122! 

 

So on to Plan C. Mail 25 books to me so at least I’ll have them in San Francisco and then 25 to Toronto to sell at a workshop I’m giving in 5 days. This morning, I double-checked with the printing person to make sure that was happening as we discussed and she said that by mistake, the Canada books got sent to Halifax!! (Of course, after the Conference). So they were going to re-mail them from Halifax to Toronto. Will they arrive in time? Anyone’s guess. 

 

Money: After the Mini-Conference, I received a sweet thank-you card with a check inside. Just the way I like to be paid. Driving home, stopped at a Versetel to deposit it and I noticed on the receipt that it said “$20” deposit. 1/100^th of the actual amount. What? Called the bank this morning to straighten it out and the voice mail said, “Because of certain problems in the government, we cannot take your phone call. “Huh? Then my online banking noted that something was off and said it should be resolved—on May 6^th, two weeks from now. 

 

Then my payment for the two weeks teaching at school appeared in my bank statement. $290 for 60 hours of teaching. Around $5 per hour. My colleague James is looking into it. “Rumble, rumble,” goes the little earthquakes,

 

• Flight: Got home from the Orff retreat yesterday around 4:00, managed to get a haircut, unpack, do laundry, re-pack and wake up at 5:30 am to get to my 8:30 am flight to Toronto. Ordered a Lyft, went out to wait for it and while waiting, realized I left my backpack in the house. With minor things in it like—MY COMPUTER! Having left my keys on my desk, had to wake up my wife to retrieve the backpack.

Arrived at the airport and showed them my Passport, the one that expires this November. But because I got a new Passport, I didn’t realize that the two holes punched in the old one rendered it invalid. I called my wife to see if she could drive it to the airport in time, but she was sleeping and didn’t answer her phone.

 

So… I was lucky to have the check-in person re-book for more or less the same flight at 11:45, got on BART back to San Francisco, wife still not answering the phone, so on the bus to my house, wife not answering the door (she was jogging) so had to get in a secret way, she came home and drove me back to BART to return to the airport. Rumble, rumble, rumble.

 

Got to the airport with time to spare, no one in line, so up to the check-in person to get the new boarding pass, but besides the passport fiasco, my previous check-in had my name backwards and she had to call someone to try to fix it. While we were waiting, got to chatting and she told me that the flight I would have been on was cancelled and pointed behind me and suddenly, there were 40 people in line from the cancelled flight!! My first stroke of good fortune, as I was able to get on!

 

That’s the story, Mom, surely wither boring or baffling to you, as you’ve long been in that Other World where I imagine there is no money, no schedules, no lines, no machines, no horrendous ex-humans (because they’re all burning in Hell). But hopefully, you’re mildly entertained by the stories.

 

As for the news, I’m still playing piano at the Jewish Home, your five grandkids are all good people doing well and your 6 great-grandchildren and 3 step-great grandchildren show promise in carrying on the legacy of loving human beings. I hope you and Dad are pleased by that legacy, as I imagine you would be.

 

And I remain, your forever-loving son— with a weird talent for remembering unimportant numbers.

 

- Doug

Cook the Meal!

Every class, every workshop, is an opportunity to clarify vision, to craft yet more meticulous how to unleash the miraculous, to speak more eloquently about what’s at the center and what’s mere dross. Feeling on fire here at the Mini-Conference, both modeling and speaking what lies behind this work. Reminding teachers that details are important, but not without the narrative that sustains them and brings Soul into the room.   I’m noticing on Facebook many teachers asking about which curriculum they should follow and spending hours both choosing and then figuring out how to implement it all. I’m finding myself more and more impatient with this short-sighted, box-like, mechanical thinking, so I answered one of the inquiries like this:   Curriculum can be useful as a place to hang your hat and coat. This goes on this hook and that generally goes on that. But the long lists of skills and knowledge to check off, in my experience, is not how the human mind works and certainly not how the artistic imagination flowers.    In the back of my Play, Sing & Dance book, I offer a sample curriculum from 1st through 8th grade via the Orff Approach, which mostly centers on melodic harmonic development in the Orff Ensemble that tries to follow the child's developmental stages and proceeds from one understanding to the next that builds from it. As simple as 1st—do pentatonic in the key of C, la and re modes in 2nd, transposition to F and G (with accompanying modes) in 3rd and introduction of recorder, diatonic modes in 4th, more in 5th and intro. to functional harmony. Middle school cycles through the whole progression again with a historical/ stylistic focus—"World music" in 6th, the art of composition (mostly European classical music) in 7th, the art of improvisation (Jazz) in 8th.    That's it. Simple enough to help focus choice of materials and at the same time, create a wider cultural base. Nothing to be proved or micro-manage or over-assess, simply a way to get to the real deal—which is inspired music-making and dance, acute alertness to the students' gifts and challenges and response to them, imaginative flowering by constantly asking "How else can we do this?" In short, an ARTISTIC approach to the teaching of an art form rather than the business model of spreadsheets and check-lists and proof of profit. My suggestion is to spend less time worrying about creating the fantasy "perfect curriculum" (who cares? not the kids!) and more time sharing music you love that fits your particular group of kids (not meaning their favorite pop songs, but their ability to express themselves in ways they themselves couldn't previously imagine).    Think about it like this. A curriculum can be a useful recipe but means nothing until you get in the kitchen and cook the meal with the ingredients you have at hand and to your taste. Then you have to learn how to serve it graciously to your family (your students) and see how they like it. If they don’t at first, don’t give up and go back to Burger King. Adjust as needed and help them develop a taste for it.    In short, when people come to your house for dinner, no one wants to sit down with printed out recipes in front of them. The children don’t care about the curriculum nor should they. The way you artfully lead them from one understanding to the next is all the curriculum you need—and the meal needs to be tasty. Get in the kitchen and start cooking!

Showing Up

Out on my little patio, Room 8 of the Hidden Valley Inn,  looking out at the swimming pool and beyond that, the distant hills. This morning, finished my last class in my two-week run in the sacred space of my old music room, playing music with kids on some of the original six Orff instruments that a parent donated 52 years ago. Instruments that still sound good five decades later while the school garage is filled with computers obsolete after two years.  

Said goodbye again—to that special room in a special school with special people and drove the two and a half hours down to the next sacred space—Hidden Valley Music Seminars. I first came here in 1987, 39 years ago, and shared the teaching with my forever mentor, Avon Gillespie, and others, at the first local Orff Chapter’s Mini-conference Retreat. That began the tradition of gathering here every two years and here we are again, for what I think is our 20^th retreat. I’ve missed some of the more recent Mini-Conferences because of schedule conflicts but have been to at least sixteen of them.

Each one a world unto itself, with more memorable people and music made than I can name. And yet I can name so many of them and so many moments which qualified as sacred. An intensity of emotion and laughter and deep presence and artistic imagination beyond any boundaries that is rare to find in a human lifetime. And yet, time and again, there it was. 

Each one unrepeatable and thus made more notable, remarkable and unforgettable. I’m tempted to list them and evoke their ancestral presence and it would mean a lot to anyone who had been there. But indeed, you just had to be there. 

The depth of that forever presence expanded geometrically when we moved our summer course here in 2012. So alongside the 20 Spring retreats are the 13 other miraculous happenings over two-weeks time instead of just three days. But the sacred cares nothing for clocks. Those three-day retreats—really just a little Friday night, all day and night Saturday and then Sunday morning— are more than enough time to blow the top of your head off. (Emily Dickinson famously said, “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”)

That indeed can happen in solitude with black ink on paper, but perhaps yet more powerfully with the thundering vibrations of drums, xylophones and the human voice in dancing circles with 50 to 100 fellow human beings. The elders are getting concerned that the young teachers aren’t showing up to these events as we used to (and still do!), thinking they can get what they need online. Nope! It ain’t even close! The screen is too flat, the vibrations too distant, the absence of touch and smell and taste mean there’s no place for Soul to enter. You just gotta show up and we’ll take care of the rest. 

So here we go, bringing the ancestral presence of the Ghanaian legacy to a little sacred place nestled in the Carmel Valley. For those who show up, we’ll open with the song Miawoezon and its welcoming text sung by our guest Ghanaian teacher Vodzi: “Thank you for the trouble you took to be here. You are most welcome.”

Re-Retired

My two weeks coming to a close at The San Francisco School and I have to say my energy remains high. I often wonder if I could have made it to 50 years of teaching here and the answer seems to be yes. Of course, two weeks is different from all year and I have to remind myself that subbing requires no report cards, staff meetings, yard duties, defending the school’s culture and character when it seems to be endangered. All factors that indeed led to my decision to “retire.”

 

But in terms of the energy flow between me and the kids I’ve just taught, the full range between three-years-old and 8^th grade, I feel just fine. Nice to wake up planning the next nuance of the next class and look forward to seeing some of the same kids again.

 

And I’m far from done! Tomorrow after my last school class of 5^th graders, I head down to our summer Orff training spot in Carmel Valley to teach at an Orff Mini-conference, back on Sunday, off on Monday to fly to Toronto and then three more weeks of teaching at a different school. So it will be a five-week marathon before I exhale and feel the sensation of retiring again and doing real retirement things like walking in the Yorkshire Dales and biking in the Dolomites, some four weeks without a class plan in sight! 

One of the grand pleasures of being a music teacher free from required material and paint-by-number curriculum is the freedom to teach what you love and choose what you do each day based on what you feel. What song do I need at this moment? What song do the kids need? Does the culture need? 45 minutes from now, I’ll lead a Singing Tim with K-3^rd graders and am thinking about doing a song I’ve never taught at the school—What a Wonderful World. Alongside playing the Louis Armstrong version. That’s what I’m feeling now.