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.”

What Would Mr. Rogers Do?

When the unthinkable becomes our everyday thought, when cruelty is applauded and kindness mocked, when a little sniffle of wrongdoing explodes into an epidemic of uncommon indecency, where can we turn for a little teaspoon of solace? Who will remind us that we are gifted with life so we can learn to love and laugh and light the way for each other? 

 

This poem by Emilie Lygren offers the spoonful of sugar that helps the healing medicine go down. With just a slight taste of bitterness that we have allowed ourselves to forget what really matters. Come take off your shoes and put your feet in the water where Mr. Rogers can wash them:

 

“Mr. Rogers, what would you say to us now?

I miss your soft voice and slow smile.

 

Somehow you would remind us of what it means to share a neighborhood—

How our breath travels farther than we think,

but so can our care. 

 

You would’ve made the puppets of tiny cloth masks,

Had them ask all the questions children need to ask like, 

‘Why?’ and ‘How Long?’ and “Can’t we…?’

Let Daniel Tiger feel sad and antsy, itchy under the ear

  straps.

 

You would have explained it all patiently and thruthfully:

   ‘ No, we don’t know how long.’

    ‘ Yes, it’s okay to feel afraid.’ 

    ‘ This is how we care for everyone right now.’

 

Maybe the adults would have listened, too.”

Flowers and Thorns

The calendar page has turned yet again and here I still am, scribbling on the sands of Time on this daily blog. Doesn’t matter much what I say, either to me or the reader. Simply a daily reminder that I’m here and this is what I notice, this is what I’m doing, this is what I’m feeling. All of it means nothing and everything at the same time. 

 

At this moment, the beach I’m walking on is strewn with stranded starfish, some 15 or 20 waiting to be returned to their element. So on my “to-do list” is figuring out how to pick each up and get it back into the water. Which sounds easy, but almost every one involves a discussion with someone who has misunderstood our conversations and blocked the way to the ocean. Conflicted understandings of hotel arrangements for the summer course, clarifications with book dealers, confused expectations with workshop hosts, unanswered e-mails, the maddening financial discussions with voice-mail-robots of mega-corporations— a veritable wall to be climbed over, walked around or knocked down. The simplest tasks made so much more complex than need be with QR codes and security codes and the 35 voice mail options and people more and more incapable of clear conversation and handshake agreements— the whole catastrophe and increasing absurdities of modern life. Not to mention the daily news of tsunami warnings that has us all on edge. Maybe I really should retire and choose to make my biggest challenge of the day reserving a pickleball court. 

 

But the quote on my March calendar insists that it’s up to me to choose flowers or thorns and yes, up to a point, I think that’s true. So after wisely beginning the day with this daily check-in, my little footprints in the sand, a deep breath and on I go to meet each of the little monsters one by one. 

 

Wish me luck!

Birthday Card

 

Today is my wife’s 76^th birthday. It’s also my beloved colleague James Harding’s birthday (62), former student who I taught in 1972 Julie “Ralf” Gottschalk’s birthday (66), Eddie Corwin, SF School alum student and son of the former cook (40) and three or four other folks I know personally. Can’t think of any other day of the year that has so many friends sharing the same birthday!

 

It's no secret that my wife Karen loves to walk out in the natural world. In the past two weeks, she, Talia and I snowshoed near Yosemite, then a group of 14 family and friends did our annual “New Year” walk in Marin (Talia included), then Karen and I and three other SF School alum teachers hiked down on the Peninsula and today, on her birthday, she, Talia and I went south again for a 7 mile walk with lush green hills, sweeping views, intimate California chapparal. 

Then back to Talia’s house for a little cake and ice cream and yes, I did write her a card and before giving it to her, read out loud this Mary Oliver poem: 

 

The Whistler

Mary Oliver

 

All of a sudden she began to whistle. By all of a sudden
I mean that for more than thirty years she had not
whistled. It was thrilling. At first I wondered, who was
in the house, what stranger? I was upstairs reading, and
she was downstairs. As from the throat of a wild and
cheerful bird, not caught but visiting, the sounds war-
bled and slid and doubled back and larked and soared.

 

Finally I said, Is that you? Is that you whistling? Yes, she
said. I used to whistle, a long time ago. Now I see I can
still whistle. And cadence after cadence she strolled
through the house, whistling.

 

I know her so well, I think. I thought. Elbow and ankle-
Mood and desire. Anguish and frolic. Anger too.

And the devotions. And for all that, do we even begin
to know each other? Who is this I’ve been living with
for thirty years?

 

This clear, dark, lovely whistler?

 

Then read out loud my little note on my card, revealing my choice of this poem. Also it should be noted that we also learn new things about people when we discover that they can’t do. A few years back, it was revealed that Karen can’t whistle. Hence, the last line:

 

I chose this poem as an example of our capacity to surprise both ourselves and each other. While holding fast to the marvelous gifts and passions that define us, it’s good to keep the windows open to new possibilities. 

 

Just in the past two weeks, I discovered that you’re pretty good at the game of pool, both good and capable of enjoying jigsaw puzzles and that you’re a budding botanist who taught me about the Goldback slap, the leaf that makes an imprint on your pants because of spores. Surprises all! Like Mary Oliver, it makes me wonder “Who is this I’ve been living with for fifty-two years?!!!”

 

Next step—whistling!

 

Happy birthday!

 

PS After reading all this, Karen reminded me that she also doesn’t know how to snap her fingers. 

PSS Here's what the imprints look like: 

Birth Announcement

In a recent Facebook post, I announced the forthcoming printing of a new book like this:

 

Like someone announcing a pregnancy, I can’t resist sharing my new book on its way to the printer. Should be out by the end of March. A look at what my lifetime (50 years plus!) of teaching music might have to offer our long-overdue turn toward kindness and compassion. How nothing alone can get us there, but music and the humanistic teaching of music have much to offer. Stay tuned for further announcements!

 

The responses—some 250 of them after two days—felt like they deserved a thank you. And so I wrote (but haven’t yet posted) this: 

 

Immeasurable thanks to all who responded so positively to my book announcement. In the past couple of months, the distributor who gets my Pentatonic Press books online dropped me, my jazz, Joy & Justice publisher dropped me, the prices for printing, storage and shipping all skyrocketed, the ten book dealers who have always carried my books are whittled down to two, people seem to be reading less and less and if they are, electronic versions instead of print books. Not an auspicious time to publish a new book! 

 

In the midst of all this discouraging news, your encouragement is keeping me chugging uphill like “The Little Engine That Could” (do young kids still read that book?), chanting “I think I can, I think I can… “ I have at least four more books waiting in line (bringing it up to 15 books!) and your kind words are helping me to keep going. Thanks to you all for pushing me up the hill. 

 

When the book comes out, it indeed is parallel to a birth, as the little seed of an idea is fertilized and slowly grows into a recognizable shape and felt presence. And then the moment it comes fully out into the world and you behold it, as all parents mostly do, as the most beautiful baby ever born. One phrase of your work is done, but the rest is just beginning. Raising the child, feeding it, clothing it attractively, finding a school that will accept him or her with friends side-by-side and the sense of being welcomed and known. 

 

In short, the opposite of my recent experience with low sales, callous publishers, indifferent distributors, all of which feels like a rejection of my child, which in turn feels like a rejection of me. Like every author, I vacillate between feeling like what I have to say needs to be said and no one else can say it precisely in the way that I do and that readers will be affirmed, challenged and uplifted and then the polar opposite— maybe I’m not a very good writer, maybe what I think is important is not of interest to most people, maybe the world doesn’t need any of it after all. So when I get comments like the below on Facebook, it feeds that engine chugging up the hill:

 

“Wow! Just what’s needed!”

 

“I always enjoy reading and learn so much from your writing!”

 

“So very much needed at the perfect time!”

 

“Congrats! The world needs this now!”

 

“Thanks for keeping your thoughts and experiences coming to us all and nourishing us in your each and every book.”

 

And then some 15 others who commented, “Congratulations! Can’t wait to read it!”

 

And so I’ll keep huffing and puffing—“I think I can, I think I can…”