The Unbroken World

I, like most everyone on all sides of the political/ cultural spectrum, spend a lot of time thinking about, writing about, talking about, what’s wrong with this world. But it’s a good exercise for us all to pause and spend a little time thinking about what’s right. What works and is mostly dependable. 

 

For example, yesterday I woke up in a hotel room where the water in the sink ran, the water in the shower was hot, the lights came on and off as needed and the wi-fi allowed me to write an e-mail or check the weather. I got dressed in clothes that were neither ragged nor torn and the perfect warmth for the outside temperature. 

 

I walked to a breakfast place that offered the food I needed and a cup of coffee to help with jet lag. They wouldn’t take my cash money, but my credit card worked just fine. I walked to the school where I was to teach with help from my phone’s GPS and when there was a moment or two of confusion (my fault), I asked actual people on the street for help with directions and they happily gave it to me. 

 

The people I expected to greet me at the school showed up and greeted me at the school. The 20 people who has signed up for the workshop all arrived. The instruments I needed were all in place and the Bluetooth connection to the sound system worked when I needed it. Everyone joyfully participated in the class as I expected they would and when I spoke strongly and clearly about difficult subjects like racism, misogyny and unchecked capitalism, no one shouted me down or beat me up or called the police to come cart me away. There was a sink in the bathroom with a stuck faucet that kept water running, but with a little manipulation with a fork, two of us managed to kind of fix it for the moment. 

 

My friend who was sick yesterday and couldn’t join me for that workshop was better today and was able to come to the afternoon workshop. People bought almost all the books I had brought from home and when they didn’t have the cash for them, were able to pay me through Paypal. 

 

Going out to dinner with my friend and her husband, the Oyster card got me both on the bus going and into the London Underground returning home. We were first in line at the pick-up-a-tray-and-choose-your- dinner at Govinda Indian restaurant and felt lucky when we sat down to ate and the line suddenly was up to twenty-people-long. Thinking about dessert after dinner and me mentioning ice cream, my friends’ phone found the perfect gelato place a mere three blocks away and the hazelnut/chocolate scoop on the sugar cone was even better than I hoped for.

 

After a fond farewell and subway ride to Ealing-Broadway Station, I passed a place where I thought I might be able to buy the train ticket to Stansted Airport the next day. Indeed, I could and the helpful man gave me the train timetable (which this morning proved to be 100% reliable) and the ticket (which worked this morning). 

Walking back from the tube stop to the hotel, it started to rain and the umbrella I brought opened up without a problem and kept me dry for the 10-minute walk. The key to my hotel room worked, the bed was still there awaiting me and with the help of my eyeglasses, I was able to read my David Copperfield before dropping off to a well-earned sleep. 

 

Noticing how many people in the Dickens book were so unnecessarily cruel to 10-year-old David, I gave thanks that walking the streets of London, nobody had scowled at me, yelled at me, bumped into me, threatened me, robbed me, beaten me up, pointed a gun at me. Nobody all day screamed at me when they found out I was American (thought they might have had every reason to do so!). On the contrary, the people I asked for help, the baristas, the wait staff, the hotel clerks, the folks in the elevator with me and certainly the beautiful souls in the workshop who so deeply appreciated the joyful world we created together, were without exception friendly, smiling and affable. 

 

In short, the world was wholly functioning, pleasant, delightful— and everything worked. Imagine that!

PS What worked in your world today?

Coin in the Slot

Lunching with the students yesterday, people shared funny stories about getting into trouble when they were kids at school. I told how my 2^nd grade teacher, Miss Tomsu, threatened to tape my mouth shut for the rest of the afternoon if I didn’t stop talking. I didn’t and she did. 

 

I don’t believe it caused me any trauma that required therapy. Instead, it pointed to my future and eventual acceptance of this lifelong truth: “I can’t shut up!” Well, of course, I can. I’ve attended some ten Zen retreats where you are not allowed to talk for seven days straight. I start each workshop teaching for an hour without saying a single word. I spend a fair amount of time in Solitude and I don’t talk out loud to myself. In short, I’m not a compulsive talker. 

 

But I do have a lot to say. And if someone dares put the coin in the slot by asking me a question, I often warn them that they better buckle up. One short question, a 30-minute answer. 

 

Which is what happened yesterday at the workshop when I mentioned the folk song Liza Jane and someone said, “Isn’t that a racist song that we should cross off our list? “ Click went the seat belt and off I sped down the highway, pointing out each important landmark along the way. It wasn’t a distraction from the workshop theme of Jazz and in fact, led to the important points I wanted to make anyway about the necessary blending of Jazz, Joy & Justice when teaching this subject. But I just had to smile when I got off the soap box and asked, “Any other questions?

 

Then back to the music, that perfect blend of reflection and doing, the music alchemically transforming any of the heavy air particles released when discussing the horrors of racism and toxic narratives like white supremacy. We instantly moved from needed grief to equally needed joy. By singing what needs to be sung, dancing what needs to be danced, playing what needs to be played, it felt equally right and necessary to speak what needs to be spoken.

 

Without a single person suggesting that the group tape my mouth shut. 

Doing What I Can

This morning I walked into the Little Ealing Primary School in London to teach my Humanitarian Musician workshop. The first thing I saw was a sign that read: 

 

Give racism the red card.

 

That was a promising start. Not the kind of sign any school would post a mere 25 years ago and certainly not 50 or 100 years ago. And still many schools today would not even dream of such a sentiment, never mind have the courage to post it. But I took it as a sign that despite all evidence to the contrary, we are actually evolving and finally refusing to keep the crazy game going and finally officially penalize the players who keep violating that simple rule. 

 

Off we went with the games and songs and dances and activities that welcome whoever is in the room to join the fun without a single thought as to whether their race, class, gender, sexual preference, nationality, age, health, learning style, dietary preference, clothing choices, etc. etc. etc. qualifies them to participate. Why would it? I mean, really. Just take a short time out from all the thinking as usual, rationalizations, justifications, histories, dismiss everything you have been told for just a moment and consider. Who cares? 

All these diverse markers of our multiple identities are either inherited (not our fault), taught (with freedom to accept or reject), or purposefully cultivated by our own choice (fine, but moving targets that can and often, should, change). As sang and clapped with partners and made up dance moves and copied others’ dance moves, all of the above was the furthest from everyone’s mind. As they should  have been. 

 

After four such activities, each one highlighting another aspect of a cultivated empathy for and embracing of the grand diversity we represent, each accenting  the indisputable common ground that connects us all, all reflected in small groups and discussed three things:

1)   What did we do?

2)   How did we do it?

3)   Why did we do it?

 

After they shared back, I gave this little talk. 

 

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I think one thing that folks on all sides of political, religious and cultural spectrums can agree on is that things are not going so well. And yet we keep doing the same things that got us there to begin with. Might it be time to consider doing something different? In the small parts of our life, we understand that if the route we usually take is obstructed with traffic or construction, we should simply take an alternate route. If we try to fix something not working on the computer one way without results, we should try something else. If the milk we hoped to use for our cereal is past the expiration date and soured, we should not use it and get a new carton. 

 

But with things in the larger scheme of human development are clearly broken—the current two-party system in politics, the environmental impact of certain machines, the disastrous effect of children raised by addictive devices, we are clearly certifiably insane as we keep doing the same things and expecting different results. 

 

Would might actually turn things around? I suggest three things: 

 

1.    Treat ourselves differently. Not just self-care, but soul care, attending to our particular purpose on the planet, learning to both love ourselves and talk sternly and honestly to ourselves when we veer off course.

 

2.    Treat each other differently. There’s not a single authentic quality of soul care that doesn’t leak over to care for others. “Remove all the things that keep us apart” says the song and the “red card” sign agrees with that. Nobody, neither victim nor perpetrator, is uplifted by hating. 

 

3.    Raise children differently. We can’t control how people feel about themselves, how they treat children or how they raise children, but in the latter, we can make the most effect by using the 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, 8 months a year, 15 to 20 years that most children are in school to “be the change we want to see in the world.” Teachers have the power, but do they always use it? That’s what we’re here for.

 

 

Back in San Francisco, I missed the No Kings Rally. Instead, here I was in London, where I taught for six hours, came back to the hotel to prepare notes, went out to dinner with 5 of the lovely 18 participants and at 11:00 pm at night, part of my body still floating somewhere in the jet-lag time-change, tried to set these thoughts down. Not as articulately as I like, but it’s the best I can do given the above. My way to protest against by building something for. 

 

Now time for sleep. 

A Warm Cup of Solitude

After braving 17-hour flights to Singapore, the 9 hours to London felt like a luxury. Despite being in Peasant Class in a cramped seat that leaned back 2 inches, I managed to sleep for at least four of those hours and saw two passable movies in-between. Immigration was painless— short line to a machine that scans the passport and takes a photo and you’re in. No more stamps in the passport as memorabilia, but also no interviews with edgy immigration officers. (My worst nightmare story which bears telling someday here—and I probably did back when it happened— was in this very airport, Heathrow.) My bag was kindly awaiting me at baggage claim, out through the Nothing to Declare exit and there was my host (ess), an Orff colleague I’ve known casually over the past thirty years or so. 

 

On to the tube, the familiar Elizabeth Line which my wife and I traversed often last year in our London visit, out the station on to the London streets greeted by—well, Starbucks and Subway. The world as Everywhere, USA. But there was a double-decker bus, a few local shops and glorious sunshiney (not Sherlock-Holmes-foggy) weather. We walked to the hotel, our go-to Premium Inn which was our home these last two trips my wife and I took to the U.K.. 

 

A short horizontal sleep and then the personal grand pleasure I take in unpacking in a hotel room— hanging up the shirts, plugging in the chargers, lining up my books and crostic and cards and drinking in the welcome Solitude like an old familiar friend or soothing hot beverage— and not caring if I mix metaphors. Odd that sometimes I can feel more home in a foreign hotel room than my own home in San Francisco, but so it is and no need to question why. Just savor it. And I do. 

 

Soon out to dinner, a little bit more planning for tomorrow’s Orff workshop and hopes that the sleep-gods will help me through the new time-zone night. If not, I have David Copperfield to keep my company and at 900 plus pages, I should be set. Even though many parts are far from soothing. How I wish to jump into the pages and throttle Mr. Murdstone, shake him out of his patriarchal man-explaining privilege, shame his sister Jane for helping him and then shake Clara and tell her to wake up and assert herself!! 

 

But first, off to find this restaurant which appropriately, is right around the corner in Dickens Square. 

 

 

Wondering and Wandering

Here I am at SF Airport. I have scaled the Mt. Everest of my lists of “must-do” before leaving for Europe. Got my Covid shot, flu shot, updated Website for summer Orff course, VOTED!, found my British ETA, found my E-sim app, figured out which of my books to take and how, checked I have records of the six upcoming flights to London, Izmir, Istanbul, Athens, Washington DC, San Francisco, did laundry, packed — and remembered the plug adaptors, hearing aids/ phone/computer and related cords and chargers, new Crostic book, journal, recorders. And—oh, yeah— passport. 

 

As much as I complain about the march of too-much technology, there is much to be said for the streamlining of necessary and/or useful accessories. Not too long ago, I was packing cassette tapes for my classes, later CD’s, DVD’s, piles of printed notes, a camera, sometimes a video-camera. Though I still prefer to bring my computer, all of the above— their functions of playing music, showing videos and Powerpoints, e-mailing notes, projecting scores, communicating with hosts and folks back home, documenting parts of workshops with photos and/or videos— can be fully functional on my tiny phone. And then with my fairly lightweight and portable computer, I can continue to write books/ articles/ letters wherever I am. Which frees up a LOT of space in my suitcase, sometimes filled with the books so few buy these days, preferring the electronic Kindle or Audible version. 

 

When it comes to packing for and preparing workshops, you won’t find me waxing nostalgic about the good old days. I remember reading Langston Hugh’s book about his travels in Mongolia and Kazakhstan and other places rarely visited by Westerners— in the 1930’s! Titled “I Wonder as I Wander,” he describes his adventures going to places where virtually no one spoke a word of English and Google translator wasn’t even imagined by the most far-out science fiction writer. More amazing, he brought with him:

 

• A typewriter and all the accessories— paper, extra ribbon, etc.

• A record player. (!!)

• A trunkful of records!

• Many books. 

• Clothes for cold places. 

Etc.

 

And this was long before anyone had the capacity to dream of suitcases with wheels! I imagine it was all done with porters, but still the idea of carting around records, a record player, a typewriter is unfathomable. And I suspect Langston would be a little bit sour-grapes about being born at the wrong time if he could see how we do it now.

 

And yet, maybe not. The adventures such travel invited were so far beyond “I texted my host to meet me at Starbucks and we watched some Youtube videos about cats” that perhaps he would be quite happy he traveled when and how he did. 

 

At any rate, I’m delighted to get back on the wheel of work, six courses in six cities in three countries, each place a tourist’s dream destination and the added perk of re-connecting with friends in each of the places. I hope there will still be some time to wander a bit in my limited time off and likewise, time to immerse myself in wonder, be it in the music class or the streets outside. 

 

So a fond farewell to a most interesting past seven weeks in San Francisco and about to board my flight to London to begin the three weeks ahead. May all connections be made, may every single Americanwith functioning brain cells and an open heart vote (the rest, feel free to stay home), may joy prevail in the classes and convivial conversation join with good food in the post-workshop dinners. It’s a wonderful—and wanderful— life. 

Andrew and Harriet

Here’s a surprising confession. Andrew Jackson was once my hero. I think it was sometime around 4^th grade when I read a little biography about him and decided “He’s my man!” So much so that I asked my father, an amateur painter, to paint his portrait (the one currently on the $20 bill) and hung it in my bedroom. His was the first face I saw in the morning and the last face in the evening. 

 

Luckily, I’m not running for office, so this skeleton in my closet—well, on my wall— won’t do me much harm. If confronted, I would make it clear that I didn’t inhale. And that’s pretty much true. Since none of my teachers nor my parents ever took me aside and let me know the truth about the vicious slave-holder who sent the Cherokees in Florida on a devastating forced relocation that became known as the “Trail of Tears,” I was wholly innocent of his heartless brutality. He permitted (and encouraged) Southern postmasters to censor anti-slavery material, claiming all abolitionists were monsters and a threat to national security. He appointed Roger B. Taney to the Supreme Court, who subsequently ruled in the Dred Scott Case that Black Americans were the legal property of white slave-masters and therefore had no rights as citizens. In short, Andrew Jackson was part of the ”good ole boys” club that were anything but. He would be pleased to hang out with his descendants today refusing the evolution of justice and spirit. Despite the promise that Harriet Tubman would replace his image, my childhood painting haunts me every time I pull out a $20 bill. 

 

But even a broken clock is right twice a day and ironically, he was called “the people’s president” because he was in favor of abolishing the Electoral College. He also was concerned about capitalist monopolies, re-charted the Second Bank of the United State because it backed “advancement of the few at the expense of the many.” And most ironic of all, he founded the Democratic Party!!! (Remember that Lincoln was a Republican— those parties were quite different in the 19^th century than they were in the 20^th.)

 

So why did I like him as a kid? First off, I was in 4^th grade reading a whitewashing little biography. Secondly, I was inspired by the “rags to riches” story and the sense of a life marked by destiny. I remember talking with my friends around that time about whether they felt like they were destined for greatness and they looked at me confused. I had assumed everyone felt that and came to learn that my sense of direction and meaning in my life, wholly dark to me at the time, but felt nonetheless, was not necessarily shared by all. 

 

Finally, as mentioned, I didn’t “inhale,” the smoke from Old Hickory never blackened my lungs and when I began to read of other kinds of destinies—from Thoreau and Whitman to Emily Dickinson and Harriet Tubman to Martin Luther King and Angela Davis and far beyond—I could keep the mythology intact without the cruelty. 

 

Meanwhile, it’s long overdue to keep Harriet Tubman in my wallet. If my Dad were still alive, I’d ask him to paint her image over that other. 

The Ferry and the Train

Many years back, I sat down at the kitchen table and began to write a rhymed verse version of the Medieval story, Sir Gawain and the Loathly Lady. An hour or so later, I had a three-page first-draft/ last-draft poem. It simply poured forth effortlessly, as if I was coming through me from some realm beyond. Not to inflate it too much, it shared the quality in that scene from the movie Amadeus where Mozart is dictating the Requiem to Salieri. When you are the chosen vehicle for music/ poetry/ painting and such, I imagine many have had these kinds of experiences. Not even close to all the time. Most of the work of creation is slow and ponderous and filled with cross-outs, with that important tool, the eraser, close at hand. But sometimes it just gushes forth effortlessly.

 

Again, not to claim too much divine inspiration for what might be a mediocre little work, the difference is in degree, not kind. Yesterday, my wife and I finally decided to take the new SMART train that runs from Larkspur to Windsor, just north of San Rafael. It’s free for seniors and promised a little adventure on a lovely sunny day. 

 

I was somewhat ambivalent about devoting a whole day to it, what with my Mt. Everest list I need to tick off before taking a trip in four days for four weeks of teaching abroad. And it began dubiously as my darling wife, determined to be unnecessarily uptight about schedules, ran up alone to the N-Judah bus stop with me having to hurriedly follow. She doesn’t do well with criticism and didn’t take kindly to me pointing out how unnecessary it was to be so anxious when the timing was clearly going to be fine. (Ordinarily, I don’t air these little tidbits of our marriage’s dirty laundry but need to explain one line in the poem to follow.) The good news is that she got over it quickly and we had a fine day together. 

 

We did board the N-Judah and arrived at the Ferry Terminal (with 20 minutes to spare, I might add), met a friend and boarded the Larkspur ferry to get to the train station. Sitting outside on the back deck, I opened my journal to try to write myself back into happiness and noticed the first long line just happened to rhyme. So I followed that lead and ten minutes later, had a little poem that I wrote without pause. Haven’t written any poems recently, so felt good to dive back in. Certainly not a masterpiece, but having given this back-story, I’m obliged to share it.

 

On the Larkspur Ferry

SF skyline receding in the wake,

The SMART train trip to Windsor,

I’m not sure if I should take.

 

Too much weight is bearing down

on my one tiny life.

Not helped a bit by uptight shit

from my forever wife.

 

Yet the sun does shine, the water’s blue,

the birds sing on the earth.

While I sit down to write in hopes

I can inspire my re-birth.

 

Cobbling words together,

in sweet rhythm and sweet rhyme,

Might help unlock, turn back the clock,

feel the full embrace of Time. 

 

All that I know, I should let go

step fully into Now.

Forget the what and ask not why, 

turn attention to the how.

 

The motor’s roar, the water’s wake,

the wind across my face.

Help spark anew, my overdue

faith in the human race. 

 

Pen still in hand, the ferry lands

I disavow my pain.

Disembark, walk boldly forth

to board the freedom train.