All Here Together

Among a thousand things that impress me every time I go to Ghana, the co-presence of all ages in all places— especially in the dancing ring— always moves me. It is such a contrast to our structures of kids in schools, adults in workplaces, elders in Homes for the Aged. And then within each echelon, further divisions— preschool/ elementary/ middle/ high school/ college, etc. Even in our alternative life practices, no kids are at the Zen retreats or Orff workshops or jazz clubs. Few white-haired people are boogying in the dance clubs and often far too many at the opera or author interview. 

 

So it was especially sweet yesterday when I helped organize a panel of "Orff elders” at our local Chapter Workshop to commemorate it’s 50^th year. Mostly folks my age (and younger!) who used to come regularly to the workshops or were Past-Presidents on the Board but had now retired from active teaching. Without needing new material or lesson plans for Monday’s class, many naturally stopped coming to the workshops and it turns out we really missed each other. So not only was it a grand pleasure for some 12 out of 25 invited to come to the workshop just to see each other again, but also so fun to actually play, sing & dance as we used to and with the same spirit and skills. Sure, we didn’t leap up off of the floor as spryly as we used to, but impressive that we could at least still sit on the floor!

 

In the 20-minute panel that was scheduled for the day, the old-timers introduced themselves and where they had worked. There were many young teachers there who worked at some of the same schools and now they had a face to connect with the person who had their school buy the Orff instruments they’re using or in one case, write a school song that the kids still sang. They saw and heard from the people who had helped build the chapter, each one often contributing the next new tradition or procedure or suggestion. They heard their testimony about how meaningful it was to their lives to not only find the joys and pleasures of the Orff approach to music, but to find the people who became either still-connected lifelong companions or held fondly in their hearts in their absences. At one point, I said directly to the younger folks, “Imagine you up here in 20 years. I hope you’ll have the same kind of passion and long-term dedication and fun that we did!” 

 

And it was equally fine for the elders to meet the next generation and feel that their work was being carried forward. Sometimes the baton was passed directly to their successors when they left their school, but often they had to imagine it so and sometimes didn’t know whether the race was still being run or not. So again, a special pleasure and treasure to know that here we all were together, runners in the same relay race, all of us dancing to the finish line in the contest between “education and catastrophe” and not only helping education to win, but joyfully and artfully so, with great songs, dances and instrumental music-making. 

 

And thus, it goes on. 

 

 

The Kayak and the Cruise Ship

Every summer in our place on Lake Michigan, there’s a moment when the lake is calm enough that we push the canoe down to the water. It’s always a pleasure to paddle through the still waters, dock on a beach further down, swim and canoe back. Sometimes we go through the outlet to the back lake where the current is yet calmer and once there, a few moments where we set down the paddles and just drift. 40 years ago (!), on my 33^rd birthday, I wrote this haiku: 

 

My oar at rest

Drifting, drifting

Suddenly, the other shore!

 

My nod to the idea that we should trust in the beneficence of the universe, just savor each moment and know that the world will bring us to the place just right. 

 

But my experience is that to achieve anything that draws us nearer to our life’s purpose and destiny, we need to set our sights on a destination and paddle like crazy to get there, often up stream or with the wind in our faces. At least I do. And as confessed earlier, often with the hope that some big ship is going to come in and reward me for my efforts, pick me up, take me on board and sail off into the sunset of fame and fortune. 

 

Last September, I got to ride a kayak on the back lake and liked that even better than the canoe. More bi-lateral arm movement and snug in that low seat, yet closer to the water. So why this ambition for the ocean liner? The kayak is the more connected conversation between man (in my case) and nature. The pleasure of propelling myself at the speed I choose through my own efforts, steering precisely where I need to go and yes, remembering to just drift and equally savor that feeling— of course, this is the far better choice and why should I ever complain that my “ship” is a kayak? 

 

Truth be told, I’ve never been on a cruise ship and I imagine I would enjoy it up to a point for a week or so. But as a lifestyle choice, the ostentatious enormous vessel with its pre-programmed entertainment and excessive food and 45 minutes to run off the ship and hit the tourist spots in town buying up all the pointless souvenirs is not the ship I want to sail on into the future. So kayak it is and someday this ambitious fellow will learn to be wholly content with what the world offers. 

Dancing in the Streets

Still thinking about Martha Graham’s advice to “keep the channel open.” Here’s what sailed in last night as an antidote to my own sliver of despair threatening to grow. No expectations that this will actually make an impact, go viral and get people dancing in the streets. But hey, who knows? And so I posted it on Facebook and re-post it here and urge you to share it with your community. If nothing else, perhaps it speaks to that sense of private aloneness we all feel at times like this and reminds us that we are far from alone.

Friends, take a moment with me here and please read this whole post. 

 

When the worst happened in November of 2016, like everyone I knew, I was devastated. Stunned, in shock, shaken to my core that everything I believed in and stood for and felt was evolving was thrown to the ground in the country of my birth and my life. In the way that we do, I carried that oppressive weight on my shoulders as if it were only my burden to bear, my sorrow to shoulder. Even as I knew that wasn’t true, it felt abstract that others shared the feeling and there we all were feeling so alone, walking around in a daze as if it was just us who felt shattered and ravaged and helpless and hopeless. 

 

That all changed when I took to the streets in the Women’s March in January of 2017. There we were!! All together! The ones who actually cared about Democracy and justice and inclusion and kindness. We marched together and sang together and carried our creative homemade signs and I could feel our spirit and hope and people-power rise up. Of course, there was still much horror to endure in the four years that followed, but that kick-start of togetherness helped see us through it, all the way to the sweet victory in November 2020. 

 

Now here we are again and though I’ve done reasonably well holding the hounds of hopelessness at bay, still I sift through the 40 text messages and 50 e-mails each day swinging me between hope—SURGING! — and despair—PACKING IT UP.  Like so many of us, the polls are using me as a punching bag and it’s exhausting, dispiriting and for the first time, I’m beginning to feel the fear leaking in. 

 

And so I beseech us all to consider this idea— LET’S TAKE TO THE STREETS!! Massive turnouts in every major city (and yes, rural towns) in the U.S.— heck, the WORLD, gathering the weekend before Election Day not to re-act, but to pro-act. HERE WE ARE! There’s more of us than the polls will ever admit and we are here to stand for everything that is true and beautiful and just. A giant collective roar before the vote that will energize us all and let the world know in no uncertain terms that we will defeat a babbling psychopath through the sheer force of our love and determination and through the still-living ideal of a fair election in a country re-dedicated to Democracy. 

 

You March Organizers, come out of the woodwork—time is running out! Or why wait for someone to organize it? Let’s all just pick a time and a place and inundate our Social Media in the places we live and tell everyone who resonates with the idea of gathering collectively before the election to refuse our solitary fears and turn the tide with our physical presence and get the energy moving. In nothing else, to remind each other we are not alone and we will see this through together. 

 

Please share with EVERYONE you know and though it seems impossible that this little Facebook piece could ever go viral, let’s try the impossible. And then we can tell our grandchildren about it. Who’s in?

Back in My Lane

After my evening of scorching self-doubt, I remembered where my home properly is. I may never be anything but the most amateur of musicians, authors, speakers, but when it comes to teaching, there is never a sliver of doubt. Put me in a class with 3^rd graders sitting on a rug singing Halloween songs, a circle of Orff teachers anytime, anywhere, a group of wheelchair-bound elders gathered around the piano, and I am in my proper lane, en route on the highway to Heaven. Somehow the constant changing lanes and taking side routes seems a necessary part of the journey, but there is just one lane where I wholly belong and that is called “teacher.”

 

Today was the aforementioned singing with kids at a school where my neighbor goes. I slung my guitar on my back and walked through the park to get there and that was the beginning of the delight. I walked in the room and though I’ve sung with this class maybe three or four times a year for the past three years, still I recognize many of them and they remember me. With some prompting, they can come up with some of the songs we have sung and they did. 

 

As a music teacher, I owe it to all my students, young, old and middle, to be the best musician I can be. To reflect as deeply as possible about pedagogy and the practice of the teaching craft. To speak as eloquently as I can on behalf of the children, the teachers, our profession, our passion. It’s good to remember that this is the purpose of all my stumbling efforts and triumphant success in each of those fields is wholly beyond the point. For me, at least. Those who were born to play basketball like Steph Curry or Caitlin Clark, cello like Yo Yo Ma or piano like Yuja Wang —you get the idea— have their lanes clearly demarcated and they are welcome to them. My destiny may look like a small lane on a country road compared to theirs, but both get you to heaven. No comparison necessary. 

Blessed Unrest

“A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?”

 - Robert Browning”

“Your boundaries are your quest.”   – Rumi

 

“I yam what I yam.”  - Popeye

 

Recently I listened to a recording of my piano playing, to a draft of my first Podcast and read something I had written and my overall impression, to put it bluntly, was, “I suck!” The act of creation requires an unbounded confidence that you have something to say and the notion that you have the needed skill and talent to say it and say it well. Suddenly, all of that crashed to the floor. 

What are the criteria that measure success? That fuel one's determination to keep trying? 

 

1)   Enough of a response from World that you are up to the job, measured in comments from people and numbers of people attending, invitations for further work.

 

2)   An inner sense that you did well, that you would like to be an audience member in your own concert, a listener to your own Podcast, a reader of your own book.

 

As for the first, the numbers have always been small and intimate, 2,000 copies of each book selling out after five years, 9 people at my bookstore reading, 30 people at my self-produced concert, a small (but steady—thank you!) blog readership. My ship that comes in is almost always a one-person kayak or canoe rather than an ocean liner. Nevertheless, I persist. 

 

But the second hit me over the head yesterday and in my crisis of faith, I briefly wondered “Why bother?” It is discouraging to keep reaching so much further than my grasp, like turning the page in the Chopin Etude and being hit with pages of 32^nd notes that my fingers can’t handle. Rumi’s reminder brings some comfort, that hitting the wall of your own limitations is a test to see how serious you are in your quest. Like being willing to start the long uphill battle with Chopin’s notes one phrase at a time in slow motion and emerging more successfully some 25 hours later. 

 

And then there’s Popeye. Knowing there are tens of thousands of musicians, speakers, writers who can do it better and who needs you anyway? Just lower the bar and be content with what you have. 

 

I think what I most need to hear today is Martha Graham, who somehow captures a bit of “all of the above” and a bit more. After writing this, I’ll try again with the Podcast, which after all is new territory and my issue with not finding my proper tone speaking into a phone to an imaginary audience rather than a live one in a workshop is something that perhaps I can improve. I don’t love that Chopin piece enough to put in the hours, but why not be content playing that Erik Satie piece and feeling the full measure of its beauty? And didn’t I just publish some old poems that I liked reading? 

 

Here's Martha (boldface mine):

 

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

 

Saturday was a bittersweet reunion with so many old-timers from The San Francisco School Community. The occasion was a Memorial Service for one of ours who died too young at 81, with his playful childlike spirit intact and a body/face that looked like he was 50. Eli Noyes was not only the father of a lovely student I taught, but illustrated my Teach Like It’s Music book and my colleague James Harding’s From Wibbleton to Wobbleton.  I knew he was a Renaissance man of many talents but had no idea how many until this gathering. Film-maker, Claymation innovator, illustrator, oboe player, accordion player, jazz piano student, weaver, potter— the list went on and there were testimonies from so many how he approached each with such creative gusto and playful exploratory spirit. It was a lovely service and while looking through my poems folder mentioned in the last post, I noticed I had written my hopes for my own Memorial Service someday. Hopefully some far distant day. 

 

Here it is. 

INSTRUCTIONS FOR MY FUNERAL

To start with, the music.

 

Lots of it and don’t hold back.

 

• Ockeghem’s Requiem, for starters. I know it's obscure, but there's a story there.

• Some Bach somewhere—organ or piano. Maybe play my 8th grade record of Prelude and Fugue. If someone can find a turntable.

• Some Georgia-Sea Island style or spirituals group singing with a soulful leader. 

But keep Jesus out of it. You can say Spirit instead.

• Somewhere there has to be some Bulgarian bagpipe. And then people will say, 

“So THAT’S what it’s supposed to sound like!”

• Of course, some jazz. Get someone to sing “Haunted Heart” with a jazz trio. Maybe “Tenderly” and the crowd singing along on “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

• If people are going to beat their breasts, might us well put it to a beat and get some body music going!

• Balinese gamelan optional. Samba or New Orleans style for the recessional. 

 

As for the people, of course, friends, family and neighbors and invite all the kids and teachers I’ve taught. 

Make everyone check their cell phones at the door.

Encourage some copious weeping freely vented. No embarrassment. Let it rip. 

No polite veneers or turn to your neighbor with a friendly handshake and forced smile.

No crap about going to a better place to rest. Show some rage at the brutal hand of death.

The acceptance of its loving embrace can come later.

 

And of course, humor. 

Laugh, cry, they're kissin' cousins. Let ‘em both loose!! 

Fall into each other’s arms. Hug freely and sincerely. 

 

Eat well. Dance. Flirt. 

Talk to me. Tell stories. All of them. 

(Well, maybe not all. Discretion will still have its place when I’m gone.)

 

Let it go on to the wee hours of the morning.

Don’t schedule other appointments, unless it’s the last night for the Misfits/ Some Like It Hot double feature at the Castro Theater. 

 

In which case, by all means go and eat popcorn on my behalf.

 

These some first thoughts. I’ll get back to you with the details.

 

Or not.

 

—Dec. 5, 2010 

The Return of the Part-Time Poet

This morning I awoke out of dreams telling me I needed to find a 4^th-grade child’s poem written in 2019. Miraculously, I did! In an old blogpost!

 

But first I began the search in a folder titled “Songs, Raps, Poems.” Couldn’t find it there, but it felt good to see the titles of all these poems I’ve written over the years. It has been quite a while since I’ve written a new one and that’s a shame. So to remind my part-time poet self to re-awaken and share what I’ve yet to share in any coherent published form for the .001 % of people who would ever buy a poetry book, here's a few old ones that came up.

 

ELECTRONIC BUDDHISM

 

i-Pod plugged into the laptop

 

while I sit in meditation,

 

both of us re-charging for the day.

 

Message to Buddha:

 

“Do not disconnect.” Ø 

 

 

WHY HUMANS HAVE TO WORK SO HARD

The squirrel romps, 

the jay squawks, 

the pines drip sap.

Each freely expresses its own nature,

 

While we poor mortals

sit and strain for seven days and nights,

To get a mere fleeting glimpse of 

Who we are.

 

(Mt. Baldy Zen Center)

 

 

DOUBLE HAIKU

 

Spring snow in Finland

Blustery winds in Scotland

Plum blossoms in Spain.

 

Grey skies in Beijing

Balmy breezes in Brazil

Home to ‘Frisco fog.

 

MY SISTER TURNS SIXTY AND I FEED THE CAT

 

I keep the cat’s food in a large, purple tin.

Inside a red cup to scoop it out.

 

Each day, I put a cupful in his bowl

And he eats. 

Each day, the dry pellets in the tin

sink down

cup by cup 

toward the shiny bottom,

until one day, 

                                                                                                they’re gone. 

 

And so do our years descend in measured cups,

feeding some small creature who purrs with contentment

and rubs against our leg

in gratitude and affection.