Gravitas

Gravitas. Ah, there’s a word worthy of our attention. Defined primarily as “seriousness and importance of manner, causing feelings of respect and trust in others,” gravitas is a quality that is hard-earned. The relation to “gravity” means your authority is given a certain weight that inspires others to take you more seriously. “Gravity” in turn is closely aligned with “grave,” both as “seriously important” and the “resting home of the dead.” The moment death enters the picture, our “have a nice day” default takes a sharp turn and demands a pause from business as usual. “Grave” in turn aligns with “grief,” the emotional response proper to reminders of our mortality and loss. Not only the physical loss of loved ones, but loss in all its myriad faces— lost love, lost youth, loss of a place one holds dear, a job, a quality of being once cherished that has gone into hiding. When one looks loss and mortality straight in the eye without flinching, gravitas appears. 

 

Our once exuberant sunny nation, where we love the superficial happiness of cotton candy, the cute cat videos, the Club Med getaways, the technicolor musicals where people are singing and dancing on the streets, is now entering a new phase. We are coming to understand how the whole infrastructure of life as entertainment is built on a privileged class (middle to upper) of white-skinned people (mostly “Christian” straight men) assuming the world is built for their pleasure, in ways so invisible that they’re incapable of seeing who pays for it all. The system depends on people of color, women, poor people, people of different religions and sexual persuasions, co-existing in a world not built for them, but depending on their labor, their compliance, their vote, their cultural uplift. And once again, if there’s any hidden lesson in the madness of the unfathomable horrors perpetuated by people the American public voted in to take democracy down, it is to show us that the privilege of powerful rich men leads to the Epstein files, the doctrines of white supremacy and patriarchy leads to murdering white people in Minnesota who question it. 

 

Lest I be misunderstood, let me say this as clearly as I can. The awakening into the needed gravitas in our national character is for the white folks. Black people and people of color in our country have known this forever and in fact, it is their gravitas, that blend of deep grief and yet still joy, that touches us all listening to the Blues or Count Basie or John Coltrane, inspires us watching the extraordinary energy and determination in all athletic endeavors, rings out a voice rich in tone in the speeches of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson, Fannie Lou Hamer, Jasmine Crockett and countless others as they speak truth from the depth of the belly. 

 

Slowly I see signs everywhere of gravitas side-by-side with the funny signs, frogs, ukeleles at the No Kings Rallies. Humor is not excluded from genuine gravitas (think of Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie and Trevor Noah), but has a different weight when it is so aligned. It is a needed shift in our national character, one so present in countries that have directly suffered wars and invasions and gives a different feel to those cultures and their people. It shows up in music in the Irish laments, the Spanish flamenco, the Portuguese Fado, the Bulgarian women singing, the Greek Rembetika music, Korean string Gugak music and hundreds more styles worldwide that allow grief, lament and sorrow to be voiced. 

 

All this was inspired by a small section in a novel I’m listening to by Indian author Kiran Desai, the Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. Here is the passage:

 

To be a citizen of a troubled nation gave a person gravitas. To be holding out against a cruel new world gave a person gravitas. To be wounded, yet fighting on against the barbarians, gave one gravitas. To be exiled, abandoned by the one you love (or the nation you once loved) gave one gravitas. Whether it happened in a personal relationship between couples or under a dictatorship run on fear, these things changed you.

 

How well that describes where we are. Struggling through each day in a troubled nation, a cruel, barbaric, purposely fearful new world and feeling exiled from the country we thought we knew. Those willing to look it in the face are gifted with this growing gravitas and it’s not easy, but it makes us more true, more authentic, more trustworthy. Descending to the depths of grief allows us to ascend higher in the firmament of joy. We’ve lived in the middle neutral zone shopping at the mall for too long and our time has come. 

Our time has come.  

The Ten Commandments

 

In June of 2024, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry signed HB 71, a new law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in all public K-12 and college classrooms by early 2025. Thus, the Christian Nationalist Movement continues to violate the Constitution, in this case, the 1^st Amendment promise of separation of Church and State. 

 

But be that as it may, maybe it’s not a bad idea to remind the children that these Biblical pronouncements should be understood and obeyed and that anyone violating them is deserving of punishment. If I were teaching a class in Louisiana today, I would say, “Children, let’s take a look at how our President is doing.” I think we all could come up with pretty good examples of his violation of the first five—his pathological narcissism and worship of the Almighty Dollar, Trump Tower and his portrait displayed everywhere he can, bad language, playing golf on Sundays and would his mother really approve of his behavior or feel dishonored by it? But the second five are indisputable. Killing (through his hitmen and soldiers), adultery (Stormy Daniels, for one), stealing (read the stories of those doing business with him who have been stiffed),  bearing fault witness (every lie he tells on Twitter) and coveting (see the Epstein files—underage girls, we might add). In short, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty and guilty, with evidence to back it all up.  So should he be punished?

 

Well, God says yes. Since we’re adopting the Bible as the true word of God and no questions asked, let’s take a look at Leviticus. In 26/ 11- 34, God makes clear in no uncertain terms the consequences of failing to obey His Commandments:

 

“If you will not hearken to me and will not do all these commandments, if you spurn my statutes and if your soul abhors my ordinances… I will do this to you: I will appoint over you sudden terror, consumption and fever that wastes the eyes and cause life to pine away. …I will set my face against you and you shall be smitten before your enemies; those who hate you shall rule over you…I will break the pride of your power…Then if you walk contrary to me and will not hearken to me, I will bring more plagues upon you, sevenfold as many as your sins and I myself will smite you…”

 

God goes on threatening our President’s cattle and fruit trees and it gets worse. Apparently, he’ll have to eat the flesh of his sons and eat the flesh of his daughters (Verse 29). It’s not a pretty sight. 

 

Speaking of breaking covenants, God makes a vow here. My question: What’s taking him so long? Can we get on with it? (And just for the record, I’m okay with skipping Verse 29. But I’m all for the rest.)

 

"Well, kids, hope you learned something today. Tomorrow's lesson will focus on Governor Landry. Don't forget to read your Bible!"

My Generation

 

People try to put us d-down (talkin' 'bout my generation)
Just because we g-g-get around (talkin' 'bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (talkin' 'bout my generation)
I hope I die before I get old (talkin' 'bout my generation) 

-       The Who 

-        

I’m sure I thought this song was cool when I was in college, but I, for one, am quite glad I didn’t die before I got old. Not only am I enjoying my life more than ever, but I’m so inspired by my generation who made it through all these long years. And when I say “my generation,” I’m talking about those rebels from the 60’s who envisioned a new world. In numbers, we were probably a numerical minority, but we got a lot of press and deservedly so. Of course, we were naïve and self-obsessed and indulgent in our instant pleasures, but hey, considering our frontal lobes were still developing, we did pretty well in dreaming a world of more care and kindness and fairness and fun. 

 

And here we still are. In fact, almost everywhere I go. At the SF Jazz Center, at the City Arts and Lectures Series, at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute classes, at the No Kings Rallies. We pass each other in the park walking or biking or skating, meet at the pickleball court, gather in book groups or sketching classes or community choirs or line-dancing classes. We’re still getting around, maybe a bit slower than when we listened to the Who, but with more attention and hard-won elegance. We’re great cooks and gardeners, intrepid travelers and hiking companions (perhaps without the backpack these days), avid readers and if we’re women (based on my observation), chances are high that we’re drawing, sketching, painting, knitting, quilting, weaving or engaged in some form of visual art. And whereas once we simply shouted our outrage at “the Establishment,” now we’re doing the detailed work of working at the food bank, writing postcards, volunteering at the senior center or the school. 

 

Today I went to a marvelous day of Singing Workshops sponsored by the SF Bach Choir and got to choose between singing Old Time Music, Gospel, Bulgarian songs, Medieval Music, Circle Singing, Broadway, Jazz and more. Hard to choose! At the end, we all gathered in the sanctuary of the church that sponsored it and sang some new protest songs that came from Minnesota. 

 

I was happy and proud to note that most of the folks were grey-haired, my peeps still showing up, and at the same time, wished there were more young people. The other week, I saw many youth out on the street protesting some unfairness in the SF Unified School System and how I loved seeing them there! How I would love to see more at the SF Jazz Center and the Lectures and most definitely, the No Kings Rallies. And dare I hope, I think they’re beginning to look up from their phones and show up. 

 

May it be so! Meanwhile, my update of the Who song:

People tried to put us d-down (talkin' 'bout my generation)
But here we are, still gettin’ ‘round (talkin' 'bout my generation)
We warm things up when they feel c-c-cold (talkin' 'bout my generation)
Glad we didn’t die before we got old (talkin' 'bout my generation) 

The Change Is Now

          

           Be the change you want to see in the world.— Gandhi

 

Gandhi’s simple, but powerful advice, well describes the way I planned and lived every music class I’ve taught in my life, be it with kids or adults. I wasn’t ticking off lists, but trusting my intuition as to what felt right, what seemed to bring happiness and joy and connection. Testimonies abound to affirm that indeed these classes were—and are— something notably different than business as usual, in ways that echo on in people’s lives. Of course, my own included. 

 

This past week I’ve noticed that life in San Francisco is indeed the change I want to see in the world. Of course, the 70-degree weather and flowering magnolias and budding cherry trees and blooming daffodils helped. As mentioned in the “Small Gestures” post, people are out and about on the streets and mostly not hunkered down into their devices. I’ve spent much time in Golden Gate Park as I often do, but now with new eyes after going to our friend Marta’s book-release reading at Green Apple bookstore. Seeing it all with fresh appreciation of its many remarkable trees, its gardens and groves, its ponds and lakes, its each with their own character, the remarkable variety of active sports available—lawn bowling, bocci ball, pétanque, cornhole, ping-pong, frisbee golf, real golf, archery, horseshoes, handball, racquetball, baseball, basketball, volleyball, pickleball, tennis, rollerskating, skateboarding, fly-fishing, not to mention the playgrounds, the art studio, the Lindy Hop Dancing, the pianos, the Senior Center, the Art Museum and Academy of Science. In short, innumerable ways to awaken the senses, exercise the muscles, feed the imagination, nurture intelligence, all of it three-dimensional with textures and smells and sounds and most of it in company and communion with fellow human beings, people in all shades and sizes and ages and not a single one excluded. 

 

Yesterday, I led singing at the Sequoia’s Senior Living and accompanied a resident who came forward and surprised us all with her artistic rendering of My Funny Valentine and this afternoon, a regular at my Friday Jewish Home music sessions requested Amazing Grace in C and brought the room to pin-drop silence with her soulful singing. In the next few days, I’ll bike to a church to attend a free singing event featuring Gospel, Old-time music, Broadway tunes, jazz singing, Balkan singing, Body Music and more, go to a house concert honoring a singer/songwriter, shop at the Farmer’s Market. All of this is par for the course for my life in San Francisco, but it struck me today in a different way. 

 

Because outside of this bubble, a war has begun, Gestapo ICE agents continue to tear families apart and hurt and terrorize for no justifiable reason whatsoever, spineless politicians keep feeding the monster with their compliance with no consequences. When I asked to sing some songs for my nephew’s children’s class in Portland next week, the first response was I had to submit to a 10-day-to-process background check. (I refused and they relented). But if I have to do so out of some fantasy of protecting the children, shouldn’t the President have to submit to a thorough background check to see if he’s safe to assume power? Every day, people who have chosen to care are feeling their hearts trampled, their sanity threatened, their outrage fueled, their sorrow deepened and we’re all crouched down in a defensive posture wondering “What’s next?” Not an easy time to understand that the change we long for is already here with us. 

 

But that’s what I felt today. I—no one—can’t dismiss the horror, but on a level, the life I long for us all to enjoy is already happening right here where I am. We don’t have to wonder about how much better it could be or how to make it better— it’s happening right here, right now, side-by-side with the needed efforts to topple the monsters of indifference and greed and hatred. If you’re wondering what that life could be like, come walk with me in San Francisco.

 

Of course, we are far from immune. Our unsolvable homeless crisis, our garbaged streets, our relentless AI billboards and armies of Waymos roaming the streets are most definitely not the change I want to see in the world. But the parks I walk in, the people I know, the things we do, are indeed precisely what we all could be enjoying, all available for you to try and test right here, right now.

 

When I was a college freshman at Antioch College back in 1969, there was a cool class titled “The Future Is Now.” None of us had any idea what that meant, but we just thought it sounded profound and enigmatic. But now I get it. The future we could have is indeed happening already, right here, right now. And of course, not just in San Francisco. Wherever people are gathered and committed to leading happy, caring, connected lives. Let’s go. 

 

Problem Solving

Back in my old college days, fresh from reading Alan Watts and looking into Zen Buddhism, I wrote: “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” How wise I thought I was!

 

But now it seems to me that life and all its daily demands is indeed an unending series of problems to be solved. And that’s what keeps it interesting. 

 

For example, the series of roadblocks that recently all appeared at once in my Pentatonic Press business. At first maddening and had me discouraged and throwing pity parties and complaining to the universe, but once I calmed down, it has simply become a complex problem to solve and miraculously, I seem to be making progress. Life’s obstacles can beat us down, suggest we give up, feed that little voice constantly telling us we’re unworthy or undeserving or not smart enough. Or they can renew our determination to persevere, to claim our intelligence, to let the world know that we care about this enough that we’ll follow every detour to arrive at our destination. Problems are the guardians at the gate that measure how much we care and when we face them with our full intelligence, resolve, grit and strength of character, things start to move.

 

My SF School colleague Laura Burges kept a quote on the walls of her 3^rd grade classroom for some 30 years—“In effort, there is joy.” So when we make the effort to solve problems, there can be great pleasure in the undertaking and give a satisfying shape and design to the day. 

Some problems feel overwhelming— the current dismantling of American democracy, for example— so good to start where you are. What dinner can I make from the food currently in the refrigerator? How to get Susie to soccer practice and Jamal to his piano lesson when both are almost the same time? Who should I invite to my party and who would feel left out if I didn’t? You know the list.

 

But it gets larger. Whether through therapy, reflective solitude, heart-to-hearts with dear friends, how to clear away the problematic obstacles that seem to get in the way of my happiness and sense of well-being? How to practice piano consciously so I’m not just playing notes, but discovering what needs work, isolating it and improving? Even Zen practice presented a problem. In the Rinzai tradition my teacher represented, solving the unanswerable question called the koan is the centerpiece of meditation. 

 

I start each day with my 3 morning Solitaire games and then an afternoon Crostic puzzle— problem-solving as a way to keep the wheels of the mind oiled and smoothly running. I read and watch mysteries for the satisfaction of problems presented—mostly murder— and then problems solved—“He done it!” I write this Blog almost daily with the problem of deciding what’s on my mind that’s worthy of attention. 

 

What problems are you working on today? 

Howl Revisited

Does anyone read Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl anymore? It made quite an impact when Ginsberg first read it at the Six Gallery reading in San Francisco in the year 1955. He was one of many poets reading that night, that included Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Michael McClure and Philip Lamantia, with Kenneth Rexroth as the Master of Ceremonies. Ginsberg’s reading came like a thunderclap that cleared the sky and spoke the unspeakable. As described by McClure: 

 

"Ginsberg read on to the end of the poem, which left us standing in wonder, or cheering and wondering, but knowing at the deepest level that a barrier had been broken, that a human voice and body had been hurled against the harsh wall of America...." 

 

The next year, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, himself a fine poet and owner of City Lights bookstore and the publishing house City Lights Books, published Ginsberg’s poem and the next year, they were all taken to trial in 1957 for disseminating “obscene literature,” but the judge finally ruled that the poem was not obscene. In many ways, it indeed tore a hole in the wall of the prim and proper 50’s mainstream culture, helping to launch the Beat movement, initiate live poetry readings throughout the country, partner with jazz in its counter-culture ways, bring homosexuality out of the closet and give poetry permission to speak in different rhythms and with more daring. 

 

The poem was partly inspired by a vision Ginsberg had looking out a n apartment window in San Francisco and seeing the façade of the Sir Francisco Drake hotel wrapped in fog as the monstrous face of a child-eating demon from the Old Testament (Leviticus) named Moloch. In Part 2 of the original poem, he intones (excerpts): 

 

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their 

  Skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?…

Moloch! Moloch! Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the

crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch the vastsStone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!

Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose

blood is running money!…

 

On he goes for some 11 more stanzas. 

 

In 1997, I was leading some meetings in my school about the creeping advent of computers in schools and tired of all the rational talk and rationalizing excuses, I followed Ginsberg’s idea of letting my outrage out and giving free voice to my anger about how we were choosing to let the machines “eat up the children’s brains and imagination.” Ah, little did I know what was to come. Now Moloch has fully arrived in its most monstrous form with the demon of AI stomping through schools like Godzilla while we calmly say, “Well, it does some cool things.” Instead of updating it yet again, I’ll present my version from almost 30 years ago. My little slingshot against the Goliath. I suggest reading it out loud with passion and rhythmic energy to get the full effect. Heck, read it out loud at the next school board meeting! You have my full permission.

 

HOWL REVISITED (with apologies to Allen Ginsberg) 

                © 1997 Doug Goodkin

 

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by techno-madness, overfed calmly Gap-clothed, 

surfing through the electronic web at dawn looking for a hit

pseudo-hip youngsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of cyber-space,

who riches and bleary-eyed sat up staring into the cold blue light of flickering images contemplating Windham Hill stress-busting muzak

who bared their brains to pentium chips in Silicon Valley and saw fractalled angels staggering on color screen illuminated

who passed through universities with cold, uncommitted eyes ignoring Blake

who ate sushi in forced-air rooms and purgatoried their torsos in Nautilus work-outs

who talked continuously seventy hours on cellular phones of softwares and hypercards and hard drives and rams and megabytes

who were fried over endless circuits amid vomit of empty verse & mindless clutter of titillating porn

who prayed to icons & wandered lost in drunken hallucinations of Virtual Reality

whole intellects disengaged, who gave up metaphorical and metaphysical musing, gutted their guitars, gave Coltrane away in garage sales

what sphinx of silicon bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?

Moloch! Clean, dry ugliness! Children screaming inside numbed by 100,00 acts of television violence ! Moloch! Whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch! Whose eye is a thousand blind Windows TM Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out from a screen!

Visions! Omens! Miracles! Ecstasies! gone down the American river polluted with computer solvents!

Speed! Progress! Information! Togetherness! Accessibility! Power! the whole boatload of techno-bullshit hurtling us towards oblivion

While the children watch it all with wild eyes. 

Small Gestures

I’ve been speaking out against selling our souls to machines for most of my adult life and even in my liberal paradise of San Francisco, it’s a lost battle. Driverless cars clog the streets, AI billboards are everywhere, people here, like everywhere, are wandering about the streets in zombie-like trance staring at their phones. This long-held fantasy that machines will save our souls has been gathering strength for centuries, like a snowball rolling down hill, each moment larger and larger until the avalanche of consequences is upon us. 

 

And yet. On a rare hot San Francisco night, the streets in my neighborhood were abuzz with humans gathering and talking and laughing and eating and drinking. After a lovely meal in a Japanese restaurant with no music blaring or distracting screens on the walls, my wife and I walked the fifteen blocks on Irving Street toward our home, loving the energy in the air. We passed the Game Room, a place devoted solely to three-dimensional no-plugs games and it was filled to overflowing, each table with a different game and not a phone in sight. Heaven. 

 

Yesterday I walked in the park and passed a couple speaking Spanish and looking in their phone. I asked them (in Spanish) if they needed help finding something and when they told me, “The Japanese Tea Garden,” I said, “Follow me,” and walked with them. Found out they were from Galicia and I told them the cities I had visited there. Turns out that they were elementary school teachers and that opened up a whole other round of connection. My personal contribution to reminding us all that conversation with strangers is often more satisfying than Google maps. 

 

A minute after bidding them goodbye, a young woman passing said “Doug!” Didn’t recognize here immediately, but the moment she told me her name, I knew instantly who she was, even though it had been twenty years since I had taught her. Her brother, also my former student, was with her and didn’t we have a delightful chat about what they’re up to now and who they’ve kept in touch with from their classes and what their parents are up to. And yes, I pulled out my phone for a group selfie, but only after we had visited. 

 

Walking back through the park, people were walking, jogging, biking, rollerskating, playing volleyball, tossing frisbees, throwing balls to their dogs, gathered in circles on lawns, admiring the daffodils or buds on the cherry trees, all mostly eyes up with phones away. Life on a lovely Spring day as it’s meant to be lived. 

 

So yes, I will continue to rant and rave about the devils we’ve sold our soul to—probably in the next post! But the best antidote is to live well, to connect with each other, to smell flowers and hug trees, to choose to ask directions of passing strangers, to look up as we walk and nod to the people we meet, a small gesture that says: 

 

“Hey! I’m a human being and so are you and we pretty much share the same sorrows and joys and it’s a beautiful Spring day, so let’s make a little eye contact and let each other know, even for one passing instant.”