Mandatory Fun

It’s no secret that I’m big on organized, mandatory fun and my daughter Talia is cut out of the same cloth. In general, our family is dedicated to ritual gatherings, with our long history of annual events we’ve done for decades—Thanksgiving with my sister’s family, neighborhood Christmas caroling, snow trip with three other families, New Years Walk with particular friends and family, the Spring Calistoga trip with the snow trip people, the annual family gathering at Lake Michigan.  Recently we’ve added the post-Christmas Palms Springs trip with the grandkids and the European bike trips with 6 to 8 friends. Each has its own subset of particular rituals— hikes, games, cooking and such. It could feel like a list of things to check off that overshadows the spontaneity of just hanging out together, but in fact, it helps focus the ways each particular group likes to hang out together. Especially these days when “hanging out together” often means everyone just sitting in the same room looking at their phones. 

 

Michigan with the kids and grandkids is awash with such rituals and I knew that this year, because of my one-time strange schedule with the Orff Course, I’d have very little time to fulfill them all. 3 ½ days to be exact, in contrast to the usual 10 days or even two weeks. But in that short time, we managed to: 

 

Swim in Lake Michigan, play frisbee in the lake, walk to the Outlet and skip stones, look for Petoskey stones on the beach, hike to the Baldy dune, play cornhole, paddleball, Rummy 500, Rummikube, Taboo, Five Crowns and Miniature Golf, go to the Cherry Bowl Drive-in Movie (Spiderman— feel free to skip it). 

 

We didn’t have time to go into town to the Cool Spot for ice cream, walk to the  Frankfort lighthouse, rent bikes and ride on the rails-to-trails path, rent a motorboat on Crystal Lake, visit Mystery Hill, do a jigsaw puzzle, sing songs around a bonfire on the beach, have a Dance Party, go to a dinner out at the Cabbage Shed, walk up Sugarbowl dune (they did it without me, I did it without them today), canoe, kayak, play the card games King’s corner and Trash, throw a football or play wiffle ball or  kickball on the beach, go to the Arcadia Marsh walk, watch a movie on TV with popcorn, go out for breakfast at Watervale Resort.

 

Did it matter that list of things we didn’t do was so much longer than the things we did? Not really. It’s all about the quality of the time spent and that was sheer delight for me. And I believe for everyone, even my almost 15-year-old grand-daughter whose attention, by all her peers’ standards, should be elsewhere than hiking in nature, playing games and hanging out with adults in their 40’s and 70’s. More on that in the next post. 

 

Meanwhile, both grandkids and daughters left today—and yes, it felt too soon—while I have two more weeks here. My list is to swim every day (if I can deal with this swimmer’s ear syndrome that is hard to bear), bike, hike, walk and probably get going on my next book, already in its second draft and awaiting completion. Driving my daughter to the airport, I finished listening to Ann Patchett’s pitch-perfect book Whistler, shopped on the way home and now have a lazy Sunday afternoon ahead with light drizzle outside. While so many friends still teaching school are arriving tomorrow to begin their school year at the obscenely early date of August 10^th (and a week earlier for many!), I’m happy to be here. 

The Barefoot Connection

In a heartfelt note one of the teachers in China wrote to me, she said:

 

"While we were fully immersed in games and laughing freely, you watched us with a soft, gentle smile, clearly savoring every moment of our joy. It felt just like a loving elder quietly observing children play carefree and happily, a pure and tender scene that touched me deeply the whole time.

 

I absolutely adore how relaxed and unbound you look teaching barefoot! This laid-back, unreserved vibe inspires me so much. I secretly hope that I can also teach my own workshops barefoot someday, just like you, and bring that same sense of ease to all my participants."

 

It was my teacher Avon who called this work “The Barefoot Connection.” He said teaching—and dancing—with shoes on was like playing piano with gloves. You miss the direct contact and connection through all the nerve-endings in the feet. If you’ve ever had a foot massage, you understand there is both deep science behind how the foot affects the whole body— and thus, the whole spirit. So yes, let’s take off our shoes!

 

Which I still do in my workshops, without a second thought about it. Now in my summer paradise on Lake Michigan, I feel again the grand pleasure and deep connection of walking barefoot in the sand, at the water’s edge, in the grass, on the dirt path that leads to the back lake. There is a great complexity to living a wholly fulfilled and soulful life, but sometimes it’s as simple as just walking barefoot on this great, green earth. 

The Case of the Missing Case

I’ve joined many who complain about the lack of resilience in the younger generation. Yet here I confess that in my eldership, I’m noticing my own issues of losing patience too quickly.

 

With the bigger issues, like the disappointment of human indecency, greed, ignorance and such, I’m actually a little more patient. But when something goes missing that I can’t find, watch out! There’s a storm a-brewin’!

 

This morning, I couldn’t find the case for my glasses. I looked in every logical nook and cranny of this summer cottage, under the bed, under piles on tables and it simply had mysteriously disappeared. I calmly asked for some compassionate family member to help me, which they did for two minutes, to no avail. I stuck to the best search policy of remembering when I last had them and where they would logically be. (There’s a Mullah Nasruddin story of someone looking for his keys out in his front yard. When someone asked him when he last had them, he said, “I dropped them somewhere around the front door.” “Then why are you looking over here?” “Because the light is better!”)

 

And speaking of light, I turned on my phone flashlight and looked down into the corner springs of the fold-up bed and sure enough, there it was! But by then I had worked myself into such a tizzy and made myself so miserable that there was still work to do to regain equilibrium. I also felt that after swimming yesterday, in spite of wearing earplugs, my head felt plugged up and it was even harder than usual to hear what anyone was saying, even with my hearing aids. So the frustrations were multiplying and in that state, as we do, I kept piling more on. “How to deal with my typically-phone-addicted 15-year-old granddaughter so that five minutes of conversation doesn’t feel like a gift from the heavens, but just the norm it should be?” “Why is my wife asking me to clean the stove after someone else’s cooking five minutes after I woke up?” “Why isn’t the orange-man dead yet?” You get the idea. 

 

Today was the day to do the annual ritual hike to the Baldy Dune and I actual considered not going, not wanting to bring the others down with my grouchiness. But they encouraged me to come and I wisely conceded.

 

On the walk up to the dune, my youngest daughter confided to me struggles she and fellow staff members were having with the admin at school and on the beach walk back, my oldest daughter shared similar struggles with a couple of fellow staff members in her work. Both brought up systemic issues with the way we now avoid real conversation and out-source conflict to committees in disturbingly ineffective and inefficient ways. Issues worthy of some reflection in this Blog, but not now. More importantly, I loved that they both trusted me to listen and empathize and I was happy to do both. It also, along with the 4-mile walk, was a good way to walk out of my Pity Party and feel a little bit more restored to self. 

 

So now the afternoon awaits with a bike ride or back-lake swim, Miniature Golf with the grandkids, sushi dinner back home, the Cool Spot Ice Cream in town and a trip to the Cherry Bowl Drive In to see Spiderman. With only 3 ½ days with my daughters and grandkids before they have to go back, all our annual rituals feel condensed. But still fun and now that I’ve solved The Case of the Missing Case, I hope to thoroughly enjoy them. 

 

PS Skipped the bike ride and swim, but took the grandkids to Mini-Golf. Before getting in the car, looked for my sunglasses which I had on the Baldy Hike and they were nowhere to be seen. Still missing. Then a great game of golf— we all have improved a lot and Zadie got a hole-in-one, shopping, home to ger ready for the evening—and then my phone was missing. Zadie had it in the store to look at the photo of the wine I was supposed to buy, but swore that she gave it back to me. I looked in the car. Nothing. Had Kerala call it and when I went to the car again, heard the ring. Again, nothing in sight in front or back seats but when I opened the trunk, there it was! It had fallen out of my front pocket while reaching far into the trunk for the Spindrift water. 

 

Some gods of lost items are having a super-fun day watching my suffer. Good for them! But can we stop now please? 

Retirement

I had this radical thought arriving at the northern Michigan summer place—maybe I should retire from being my own publicity agent. Stop telling people to check out my movie or books or podcast or blog or CD and just embrace the truths that: 

 

1)   No one really cares that much.

2)   I should stop identifying my work with my worth.

3)   I should enjoy the moments with people and not ruin them by telling them about any or all of the above. 

4)   I might even consider not posting my travels, courses, new books, etc. on Facebook. Gasp!

 

I often amend the Ghana proverb of “A good soup needs no advertising” with another partial truth: “But people who would like it need to know where and when its being served.” That’s my justification. 

 

But maybe I’ll just try seeing what it’s like without me shining the spotlight on it all. Just go down to the beach and read and play cornhole and swim without telling the world about it. Even though I just did! 

The Horn of Plenty

One old Greek myth speaks of a young Zeus being suckled by a nourishing goddess in the form of a goat. Zeus was endowed with unusual strength and accidentally broke off one of the goat’s horns. which then had the divine power to provide unending nourishment. Known as the “horn of plenty” or cornucopia, it is overflowing with produce, flowers and nuts constantly replenished. 

 

It's a good image for my time here at Hidden Valley Music Seminar. Every single day without exception offering abundant nourishment in the form of soul-healing music and dance and the general sense of good fellowship everywhere you turn. Naturally, I feel especially bonded with my 33 students, every day seeing another delightful facet of their character and uplifted by their presence. Not to mention the consistently ideal weather, the Shangri-la quality of Carmel Valley, the little surprise pleasures. For example, today:

 

• A morning session teaching a Sonny Rollins blues and a Duke Ellington/ Juan Tizol jazz standard (Perdido) sharing the essentials of jazz theory in 90 minutes that allowed the 33 person big-band to play the hell out of both pieces. They marveled that jazz could be played on Orff instruments, in company with the folks that play drumset, bass, piano, trumpet, trombone, flutes, violin. And with two great vocalists. It was swingin’!!!

 

• The next session was reviewing the powerful Bulgarian woman’s song, then playing the powerful 15/ 16 dance piece. Then suggesting that one of the Chinese students create a choreography with fans for a lovely Chinese song played on the Orff instruments. She did and it was marvelous. 

 

• Later in the day, we put all four pieces together in 45 minutes to prepare for performance tonight. (In 30 minutes!)

 

• Meanwhile, I got to enjoy my daily swim in the pool. And play cornhole by myself —made a new record of sinking 10 out of 13 beanbags in the hole!

 

• Then at dinner, an ex- San Francisco School student who ended up coming to an Orff course I taught in Brazil a couple of years ago showed up to visit the Brazilian friends she met on that trip! She’ll stay for the performance tonight and also reunite with her other SF School teachers, James and Sofia. 

 

• A woman who was pregnant in Level III last year, came back with her baby, two people who just took the New Orleans Jazz Course came to visit to see the show, and various students have their partners coming to see the show, along with babies and kids! 

 

Could it get any better than this? Unending gratitude for this horn of plenty that keeps offering unending sensual delights and nourishment.

A Little Nervous

One of our opening songs a lifetime (8 days) ago at our annual Orff Schulwerk course is by my colleague James. The text:

 

“I am happy to be here. 

Very glad that you are near. 

A little nervous.

Glad to be here!”

 

Brilliant! It captures the very real sense we have facing the unknown. “What will happen here? How will I measure up? Will people like me? Can I meet my teacher’s expectations? My own?” So we wholly acknowledge and accept the “a little nervous” part of ourselves and then just plunge in. 

 

Too much stress and anxiety is toxic to our emotional, mental and physical systems, but a little bit helps keeps us alert and determined to meet whatever comes our way head-on, with resilience and hard-earned confidence. 

 

So it was with my Level III students there past few days, on the edge of their Practicum Teaching which is the closest thing an Orff Certification Course has to a final exam. As they were preparing for their 20 minutes of teaching with a partner, I advised them to be just nervous enough to prepare and practice their lesson, but not so much that they need to call their therapist. When I reminded them to just show up with the full measure of their character as a teacher and a person, to “just be themselves,” I also acknowledged that telling someone to “just be themselves” is one of the tallest orders we can give. But really, what choice do we have? I told them I have absolute confidence in their ability to not only be the teacher they are in the core of their being, but also to relax and have fun with it. The nerves may tingle leading up to the lesson, but the moment it begins, let it all go and step fully and firmly on the stage as if you owned it. Because you will. 

 

And they did. Magnificently so. 15 different lessons and not a single one that wasn’t brilliant in its planning, execution and result. The lessons took the full day and by lunchtime, it was clear to any outsider who had already taught. You could feel the exhale in their whole body and face, the hard-earned moment of release and relax that said, “There! I did it! And it was marvelous!” The other half, by contrast, had just a touch of hunch in their shoulders and inward gaze, still preparing for their moment. 

 

When the last note of the last lesson rang out, there was the collective roar of the group exhale, with hugs and high fives all around. Then a brief de-brief as I named the general qualities of all the lessons that I noticed (I had also written specifics to each team on file cards, taking notes as they taught). I asked them to snap their fingers if they felt any of the strategies listed below and the air was alive with popping of the snaps. As follows:

 

• Enticing beginnings, connected middles satisfying ends

• Non-verbal teaching, flow, shape and design

• Play, sing and dance

• Personal stories woven into the lesson’s focus

• Imaginative ways to teach key concepts 

• Artistic graphic aids

• Use of story to engage attention and keep a thread through the lesson

• Smiles, relaxed manner, playful interaction

• Commenting on students’ responses (as in thumbs up)

• Fixing musical problems as they arose

• Opportunities for student teaching, solos and small group creations

• Clear and meticulous preparation

• Meeting the challenge of teaching in a second language

• Meeting all the challenges and enjoying the pleasures of team teaching

• Great final results achieved through hard work and fun

• Etc. 

 

In the hands of the unimaginative pedagogues rampaging through the educational world, all of the above would be turned into a rubric, a checklist that would require a mathematical percentage of checks to be “successful.”

I object strongly! Nothing could be further from my intention in naming these qualities above. They are not there to be the next “one size fits all” standard but exist simply as reminders of what made each of these lessons so engaging, so musical, so conceptually clear, so fun. 

 

Congratulations to all of my 33 Level III students!! The world of music education has just been raised to a higher level. May all your students be happy!

If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium

… is the name of a 1969 comedy film about a tour group in Europe. I think I saw it ages ago and recalling it now makes me curious about finding it. But why am I thinking of it? Because now, if it’s Saturday, it must be Tuesday. 

 

Because of a one-year schedule glitch, our course started Friday night, will end Tuesday night and our “weekend” was yesterday—Thursday. A good exercise in flexible thinking! We decided that the first day was “Do” (as in do-re-mi) and named the first five days accordingly. Doesn’t work quite as well on the second week, but simply naming it Day 6 works fine. We end with a half-day on the 10^th day and next year, all normal calendar order will be restored. 

 

So Wednesday afternoon was the equivalent of our normal Friday afternoon, which we ritually mark with a song composed by my Orff teacher, Mary Shamrock. It’s titled “Thank God It’s Friday” and includes the line “I’ve had enough of this Orffing for a while!” to send people into a welcome two-day weekend. 

 

My forever colleague James Harding revealed yet another face of his endlessly creative mind and at 5:00 am on Wednesday, composed this poem he had us recite before singing.In so doing, we were able to keep the original words to Mary’s song.

So we had Thursday off—laundry, ritual brunch, a walk on the beach and the annual evening Untalent (unprecedented, unbelievable, uninhibited, talent) Show, whose 30 acts never once failed to disappoint. Back to school after the one-day “weekend” and tomorrow are the Practicums where each of the 33 students (in groups of 2 or 3) teach to show what they have absorbed of dynamic, fun, effective pedagogical teaching in their three summers with us. If I think about it, it makes no sense to have this annual Tuesday ritual on a Saturday, but hey, I’m flexible. It’s simply Day 7 and well-timed. No matter how engaging or brilliant a teacher might be (I’m not claiming this for myself, but there is ample testimony from students!), the apex of the pedagogical mountain is to turn it over to the students—kids or adults— and let them create the music or do the teaching. 

 

As I said to them tonight as we set the final order, the hardest thing someone can ask you is to “just be yourself.” But that’s exactly what I’m hoping for, what I’m inviting them to do. To be just nervous enough that they work hard to prepare, but the moment the starter’s gun is fired—“On your mark! Get set! Teach!” to simply teach in the full splendor of their character. I told them that having seen that character in class, I’m bubbling over with anticipation to get to enjoy their unique voice and quirky and fun style. I suspect it will be a great way to start the month. 

 

And quite a month it has been! It began in New Orleans, traveled west to San Francisco, then further west to China, then back to San Francisco and down to Carmel Valley. Teaching two Jazz Courses, the equivalent of a Level 1 Orff Course, a Level III Orff Course. Some 185 teachers who hopefully will take their new insights and material and inspiration back to some five to ten thousand children who I will never meet, but hopefully, will be just a little bit happier because of this work. 

 

My only regret in this otherwise most marvelous month? I didn’t get to spend Tuesday in Belgium.