Sweet Honey

 

I like asking directions of live humans before resorting to electronic solutions, but sometimes the technologies manage to combine our human instinct to help each other with reaching the right people. Though I didn’t ask every single person I know in San Francisco, the ones I tend to talk to at least once a week couldn’t help me with my passport dilemma since they hadn’t renewed theirs recently. So for the first time, I put the question out to “hive mind” on Facebook and within a few hours, had some 25 helpful responses, all letting me know that when they renewed, their old passport came back to them in a separate mailing. I got both the needed relief that this would work out, the little dopamine rush of hearing from people I knew (since my Facebook friends are in fact, almost all actual friends and colleagues I know) and yet another affirmation that we are here to be of service. 

 

Like the pleasure the strangers I ask for directions (mostly) feel in being useful and sharing their knowledge to help someone out, we indeed are wired to help. I do an activity in my workshops with 22 instruments in a circle, 11 people seated at them and playing, 11 more in-between each player studying what they’re playing. After playing the piece a few minutes, everyone switches. Those who had observed move to the instrument to their right to play, those who played moved to the right to observe the next instrument in the circle. In this way, by the end, everyone gets to play each of the parts in the piece. 

 

Not only is this musically powerful, experiencing the same piece from 11 different perspectives, but there is a hidden humanitarian message in this structure. Even though all have been prepared in their body and voice to learn each part and studying the next instrument likewise prepares them to play it correctly, still people arrive at the instrument and sometimes struggle with getting the pattern. Invariably, the person who had just played notices and turns back to help them, even though it means they’re losing some observation time.

 

At the end of the activity, I ask: “Who helped somebody?” “Who received help?” Lots of hands go up. And then I ask, “Why did you help them?” The best answer came from a 10-year-old-girl in a guest class I taught: “So we all could enjoy to the maximum the pleasure of music played well.” Yeah!

 

Often people note that if the music doesn’t sound good, nobody is happy, so that’s a big motivation to help. Many just say, “Well, of course I’m going to help someone who’s having a little trouble if I know how to help them.” And so on. Affirmation all around that our first instinct is indeed to help. 

 

Then I ask, “Let’s imagine I was grading you on this activity. As we all know, the game of grading mostly works by someone who gets the answer right being rewarded with a letter or number and someone who is struggling being punished with a lower letter or number. So in this game, when you see your classmate struggling, you should feel happy because that will help your grade. And you’d be a little crazy to help them, because hey, you have to watch out for number one and you want to be number one. So the whole dynamic would change. None of you would also play as well because there’d be stress and anxiety about whether you will play each part correctly, which brings you down to the brain stem where fear and survival live and you can’t access the higher emotional and intellectual skills needed to actually play music well, with a relaxed feeling and joy in the mix."

 

So we should look carefully at the structures and systems we create that promote division, stress, fear, anxiety, that shut down our innate instinct to help each other out. And for what? A report card that no one will ever ask to see again in your entire adult life, that no one will read at your funeral. And replace them with the structures and systems that promote connection, community, comradery, joy and justice. 

 

The hive mind’s generous response to my little dilemma brought such sweet honey into my day. All who responded could easily follow their impulses to help. But what if there was a law akin to the one made in Georgia, the one that set it up so black voters would have to stand in long lines in the hot sun and you could be arrested for bringing them a bottle of water. (I am not making this up! The depths of depravity heartless monsters risen to positions of power is beyond human comprehension.) What if you could get in trouble for answering my passport question? How many would do it now?

 

Luckily, we’re not there yet, but just a reminder to be vigilant about all the systems that reward us for becoming the worst versions of ourselves and punish us for being the best. Meanwhile, think about this little hive mind story to remember that we are essentially good people who are happy and eager to help. And that we all benefit from the good music and sweet honey.

 

And if you work for the Passport Office, I’m especially counting on you to remember that!

  

A Crack in the Bones

 

… Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

 

-       Maggie Smith (not the Dame)

 

Any reader of this Blog may notice that I’m a bit like the realtor walking us through the world with attention to the “good bones” and stories of fixer-uppers that went on to be beautiful and loving homes. This is not slick selling so I can turn a profit. I actually believe down to my bones that the world is at least half beautiful and maybe even more so. But at the moment my meticulously crafted and hard-won optimism is wearing down. The solid bones of my own faith in ultimate goodness is cracking, bending under the osteoporosic weight of the news, both personal and collective.

 

My wise choice to micro-dose on the catastrophe surrounding so as not to be overwhelmed doesn’t mean I don’t feel the storm outside my windows bearing down on my cozy, but fragile house. I don’t want to know the details, but I still have to come to grips with the questions. What the hell ever happened to the Epstein files? Are we still at war with Iran? Is that guy still in the White House (of course he is) and why? Did I really read something about Congress passing bills so only some people (their people) can vote? What country am I living in again?

 

Then in the minutiae of daily life, every simplest thing is magnified to a dysfunctional way of doing business. An hour passed around to voice mails and five different people just to pay my UPS bill. The calamity of trying to keep my Pentatonic Press afloat and needing to join a group that didn’t recognize my password, let me make a new one and then said that didn’t work either and to check back in three business days. An unprecedented number of people not responding to my e-mails that asked for a simple response. Then yesterday my wife got her new passport without her old passport returned. I was a few days behind her in renewing mine but counted 100% on getting my not-yet-expired passport back because it had my needed Visa for my China trip in July. (And in the past, they always mailed back the previous passport.) Can I make a simple phone call to sort this out? Of course not. I need to set aside three hours minimum to wade through voice mails and probably still not talk to a live human being. There’s not enough Valium in the house to get me through this. 

 

Whining posts are the least satisfying to read— unless you get some schadenfreudian pleasure in the misfortune of others or can say to me with some satisfaction “Join the club, buddy! You’re not the only one wading through shit up to your neck.” They’re not the most satisfying to write either, but one hopes for some release of pressure simply from venting. And some challenge that if you’re going to complain, at least try to be mildly poetic about it. 

 

Meanwhile, it’s the 5^th day of a rare San Francisco heat wave. (Should I add global warming to the list of things to be depressed about?) Yesterday I rode my bike to the ocean and dipped my feet in the still artic temperatures. I also realized that when I tried to play along with some recordings, I’ve been playing many of the movements in Bach’s Suites and Partitas too slow. I fell down time and again trying to match the lightning speeds of András Schiff, Richard Goode and Glenn Gould, but actually came a little bit closer. My little ways of decorating the shithole house we’re all living in. 

 

May the bones prove sturdy and the demolition crew sent packing. Have a nice day!

 

Tasty Soup

 

                         A tasty soup attracts people to itself.

 

This is an Ewe (Ghana/ Togo) proverb that suggests that good things require no advertisement— the delicious taste speaks for itself. I understand the sentiment— at the end of the day, when something is wholly authentic, tasty, nutritious, people will naturally be attracted to it. It’s a good metaphor that accounts for the line outside of the croissant place on Arguello Blvd.— they’re on to something uniquely delicious and the word spreads that this is the place to buy croissants. 

 

But at the beginning of the matter, people have to know where or when the soup (or croissant) is being served if they are to taste it. If the food is not good, no amount of slick advertising will make the restaurant popular. But a little is absolutely needed to get people there in the first place. And sometimes you might even need a little extra enticement to convince people who don’t think they like soup to try it. 

 

So it is with art. The first job of the artist is to create something authentic without intention to be rich and famous. But every artist whose name we know, be it author, musician, painter or dare I suggest, artistic educator, had to deal with the marketplace to get the work out there. The act of conception and growing the baby inside of oneself happens away from the glare of the lights and the trumpets, but once the work is born, it needs a way to get out into the world. If one is lucky, a promoter, publisher, agent, art gallery owner, will take notice and partner to draw attention to the work. But even then, it is the artist that has to attract their attention.

 

I’ve had modest success attracting people to my workshops, courses, books, podcast, movie, performances, CD’s, but in all cases, I’m the one doing most of the trumpet playing and my lips are getting sore! It’s a fulltime job and exhausting. With two milestones this year— 50 years of offering Saturday workshops at the SF School and my 75^th birthday— I'm thinking of honoring the occasions with a special workshop, a concert with my Pentatonics group and possibly a party/poetry reading. Yet how much better this would feel if someone else— my wife or kids, my colleagues James and Sofia, a group of the people who have attended many of those workshops in the last 50 years— conceived of and organized this all for me. (Hint, hint!) It’s a little weird to self-promote my tasty soup and makes me wonder if it really is as tasty as I think.

 

But after sending out an announcement about my new book, the date-to-be-arranged workshop, updates on other books, the podcast, summer courses, etc., to the 300 plus people on my workshop mailing list, I received a few comments. Lovely little reminders about the soups we shared in the past and how the recipes I offered continued to be served on other tables. A few samples:

 

Thank you for keeping me on your list and alerting me to all the good things that are happening in ORFF. I have been retired now 11 years, but in addition to that, unfortunately at age 88, I no longer participate in mobile activities as my body has its limited capacity. Still walking, but slowly. I enjoy imagining I could take any of your classes. I am still active in music.  Still playing my violin and Nyckelharpa for Scandinavian music and I’m very active in the jazz South Bay jazz Society. I do drum circle with seniors and have used many of your ideas. Good luck in what you do and thank you for all your influences. 

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Dear Doug

What a delight to hear from you. Reading through the many offerings made me smile and remember so many sweet moments at the workshops and teaching in the Orff style. As you and I once discussed at a workshop awhile back, it is a wonderful grandparenting skill to have with my young grandchildren, now that I'm retired. We have a ritual of undertaking a music parade using the unpitched percussion instruments I keep tucked away in their guest room closet for when I visit. We do it when Mama is away. She is not a big fan of a lot of noise so it is especially delightful to rev up the volume and tempo when I'm in charge. A bit of safe and joyful mischief. 

 

Thanks for keeping me informed about all you continue to do! Needed work!

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Hi Doug,

 

it is a pleasure to read up on all these wonderful news! Congratulations are in order, for sure, inspiring!

 

Though I exclusively teach adults, I draw from your teachings daily - the fun, the experimentation, the freedom of the pentatonics without “fish and bananas”, the embodiment, the listening, the rich history of jazz… it has all left a big mark on me. 

 

Also a dear memory for me is playing for your Mother and her cohorts at the retirement home. Sadly, they don’t do this sort of thing here in Nashville. I tried to put something together for a non-profit here, but Jazz and the Great American Song Book isn’t a thing here. They do sing-alongs mostly, of country tunes. (I live in Nashville since the pandemic).

 

All this just to say: congratulations and thank you for the continued inspiration. 

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Hey Doug!

 

It’s good to see and hear about all the good work YOU continue to do!  I’ve been so excited to see our newest Palo Alto team member, Jose, going to the workshops and even signing up for SF level 1.  He’s a great musician, open mind and heart—hoping he gets hooked like I did and takes all three levels!

 

I’m retiring this June and moving to Colorado to be nearer to some of our grandchildren. I am packing up all my best books (Now is the Time and Intery Mintery, Jame’s Wibbleton to Wobbleton, Sofia’s Blue is the Sea etc) and volunteering to do some Orff stuff at my grandkids elementary school where their dad is the vice principal and my ticket in the door! :) 

 

I want to acknowledge and thank you again for your mentoring and sharing your wisdom, talent and love of music over the many years.  Taking all those workshops at The San Francisco School and the levels courses with you, James (and Rick) and Sofia (and Paul) remains a highlight! I made wonderful memories and friends I will have for life as a result. 

 

So there you have it. As I suspected, the soup was tasty and the meal memorable for some. So back to the kitchen to make the next one and let’s see who I can entice to the table.

 

Rewind, Pause, Fast Forward

Still stuck on the cassette tape/ VHS video metaphors and then I promise I’ll move on to something else. But fresh from my visit with my grandkids, these thoughts struck. 

 

If I had a choice, I would press “pause” for 10-year-old (almost 11) Malik. Such a perfect age. The physical skills to present a worthy challenge in basketball and hike 6 or 7 miles, the intellectual skills to read to each other and discuss, the independence to make himself a bacon-egg-sandwich each morning and wash the pan and load his dish in the dishwasher, the knowledge to help me use the washing machine, the sweetness to still hug and cuddle a bit (though not quite as exuberantly affectionately as a few years younger). Again, given a choice, I would most definitely press pause and keep enjoying him at this age for many years to come. 

 

For 14-year-old Zadie, I would press “fast-forward three or four years, hopefully to a time when the one-word conversations might expand to full sentences and even paragraphs, the disappearance into her room might change to staying in her seat long after dinner’s eaten to keep talking or play a game or two, the independence to drive herself to friends’ house or athletic events, the maturity to cook a few dinners for the family and/or clean up without being asked. While still the childlike quality to dance around the house singing her favorite song. All of the above (except driving) show themselves in short snippets of “coming attractions” but you can’t depend on any of them. So yes to “fast forward.”

As for me, I would press “pause.” In the moment, still fit enough to walk 8 and more miles, bike 20 and more miles, sit zazen in half-lotus and healthy enough, with even my little complaints like the off-and-on dizziness of the last two years are mysteriously (and blessedly) gone. My teaching is at the top of my game, piano playing mostly steadily improving, writing holding steady with occasional flashes of eloquence and my lifelong “can’t do” attitude about solving mechanical or household physical problems softening to “I can figure this out”—and then I do! No one I can think of that I would cross the street if I saw them coming the other way, ongoing connections with friends, family and colleagues. So yes to “pause.” Though I would like to cheat and re-set the counter to 55 instead of 75 without erasing the last twenty years.

 

And you? What is your list of pause, rewind, fast forward?

  

Yes to the Replay Button

 

I love how you can say something with such conviction that it’s right— like yesterday’s assertion that “there is no replay button”— and then turn around and say, “Well, actually, there is.” Not in our lived life, but in our creations that last beyond our mere mortality.

 

Last night was the Academy Awards and my favorite part is always the memorials to those who have passed on. They are gone, yet there they are on the screen, forever younger and forever still with us. As we mourn the passing of Rob Reiner, Diane Keaton, Robert Redford, Robert Duvall and more, there they still are, larger than life and longer than life, on the big screen. Same with Chick Corea, Jack De Johnette, Hermeto Pascual, Bob Weir and more— play their CD’s and there they are. And so on with the poets, novelists, composers, artists. Art as a pathway to some form of immortality. 

 

Likewise, the photos of family and friends now gone that hang on our walls as a way to keep them forever with us. Also continuing to tell stories about them to others who knew them or ever some who didn’t. 

 

Alongside these blogposts, my books, The Secret Song film, the Podcast and perhaps someday, some published versions of my poems, are 26 recordings of music I made with children at The San Francisco School (one of the best kept secrets in the Orff world). After recording them at the school, James, Sofia and I would go to Duncan Street Studio to have John Blakely mix and edit them and order them and get them out into their final form as a cassette tape (14 of them) and later, a CD (12 of them). He had these photos on his wall that he never took down, so year after year, I re-visited them like old friends. And then one year (2010, to be exact), I wrote this poem, in the style of Billy Collins. 

 

IMMORTALITY

 

I am back in Duncan Street Studio

Where I have come once a year since 1987.

If I tell you that today’s date is May 26, 2010,

I’m sure you can do the math. 

 

A large computer sits where the reel-to-reel equipment once was,

but the postcards and album covers on the wall are the same. 

 

John the engineer is now 65 years old

And I am no spring chicken myself. 

But John Lennon, standing with his arms crossed, sunglasses on

and a New York City T-shirt that doesn’t need washing, hasn’t aged a bit. 

 

Neither has Smokey Robinson and his Miracles, looking out in the distance with  rosy smiles, confident in their beckoning future. 

 

Picasso is his familiar old self, with bread-dough fingers splayed across the table.

 

And speaking of fingers, Sammy Davis Jr. is stretching his out to the audience in 

ten different ways and shows no signs of getting tired.

 

I’m pleased to see that the woman revealing her ample breasts on the cover of Stag Party Special is still as voluptuous as ever.

 

It all makes me think that I should put my photo on the CD cover in hopes that someone will put it on the wall of some basement recording studio,

where some future music teacher will come back year after year and 

notice how he is aging

 

And I am not. 

 

 

No Replay Button

In my growing collection of inspired posts on social media by eloquent people who I’ve never heard of, one by LaTosha Brown really caught my attention. Here is one of many inspired paragraphs:

 

There is no stillness anywhere in the universe. Which means there is no going back. Not because we don’t want to. But because IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. The place we were doesn’t exist anymore as somewhere we can return to. Even trying to recreate what was once requires us doing something new to get there. The universe genuinely does not have a reverse gear. Our galaxy never crosses the same point again in our universe. Ever. 

 

This scientific response to the toxic MAGA fantasy is part of the point. But there’s also a general human truth here that we all have to face. One place it shows itself most clearly is in the raising of children. If you have one, you know exactly what she means when she says “The universe doesn’t have a reverse gear. There is no replay button.” If you don’t have children, you were one yourself, so you can look at this from that angle.

 

So after five days with my grandchildren, ages 14 and 10, I feel this incontrovertible truth yet again. Having just spent a week in Tokyo with Zadie, the elder, I was prepared for the American teenage playbook. One-word answers to questions, hibernating in her room, picking and choosing when to make an appearance and be at least mildly sociable. Luckily, there are still breakthroughs of her innocent, sweet, exuberant and childlike self— like her jumping up from our Rummy 500 game, phone in hand playing some music and her singing and dancing along without a twinge of self-consciousness. Yeah!

 

Meanwhile, Malik at 10 years old is just below the border of the upcoming revolution in the body, heart and mind known as puberty. We connect effortlessly with basketball (both playing and watching), card games, reading to each other and more. Yesterday, I bought him a bike (he had one that was stolen a few months ago) and we had fun biking around the neighborhood. 

 

Yet all too soon, his voice will drop and he'll grow a mustache and friends will far outweigh grandparents in importance and that’s just the way of the world. My job is simply to enjoy who he is now knowing it will change, to accept and even look forward to some of the new ways to be together in those changes to come.

 

How often we wish we could stop time, but on it relentlessly marches! Press the pause button on a relationship when all was new and fresh and vibrating with love, all polka-dots and moonbeams. An age when our kids ran to the door screaming “Mommy’s home! Daddy’s home!” and jumping into our arms.  When they cuddle and cozied up to us and looked at us with such loving eyes, convinced we could do no wrong. On a time in our country when government served the people with life-affirming and life-protecting programs, when the arts were thriving in the culture, when schools were alive with experimental ideas and teachers trusted to follow their inspired intuition, where we waited in line outside the movie theater for the next artistic film that would rock our world. 

But the universe will not have it. There is no going back. So we have no choice but to follow the changes of constantly shifting and redefined relationships, be they between people, institutions or governments.  And to remember that alongside our wistful resistance is the pleasure of new doors opened. Like the moment when Malik finally grows tall enough to finally beat me in one-on-one basketball. That Zadie will mature to the point of understanding how much we have loved her in each and every phrase and independently seek to spend our precious remaining time together. And of course, my fervent hopes that a nation will awaken to benevolent future rather than a fantasized nostalgic past. 

 

And so we go on…  

On the Porch

One of many, many things I admire about my older daughter is her ritual of taking time each night to sit on the front porch. A beer in hand, a heat lamp on and wrapped in cozy blankets when it’s cold, a shady spot when it’s hot, this is her routine no matter what else is happening in her life. Of course, it’s an age-old tradition, especially for families whose house actually had front porches. Such a wonderful idea, either before or after dinner, to just take a moment and let the day settle, to decompress and just exhale into the approaching night. 

 

It's at once a strategy for solitude and sociability. If the neighbors walk by, why, of course, it’s proper to say hi and exchange a few words. Even occasionally invite them to join you. Just a simple way to just say, “Here we both are, alive at the end of another day and preparing ourselves to face—or revel in— another.” 

 

I didn’t have a front porch growing up in New Jersey, but I did have a front stoop and as a teen, spent many a twilight sitting on my steps with my cat Zorro purring on my lap. Neighbors did pass by and I greeted them. (Imagine that!! A teenager saying “Hi.!”) Of course, this was mostly a summer pastime and there was the extra bonus of fireflies lighting up the night. 

 

But I’ve never had a front porch in all my adult California homes. I did have back decks and when the weather permitted, we’d eat out there and occasionally just sit to greet the approaching night. But facing matters and it’s not as sociable with no one passing by on the sidewalk. 

So honoring my daughter’s tradition, here I am with my cold IPA beer, Malik indoors working on his 50-page novel about his cats and Zadie doing some inexplicable mathematical designs on her computer using words I barely comprehend (vertice?). After three days of non-stop rain, the sun came out in time for Malik’s morning soccer game and wasn’t that a pleasure? (The sun, that is. The game was okay, but after holding steady behind 2-1 for most of the game, the other team scored four goals in the last two minutes!). 

 

Malik quickly got over it, because I decided to pay for 60% of a new bike as an early birthday present. Portland always impressed me the way kids left their bikes out on their front lawns and Malik did so as well until someone stole it. (So much for the Portland paradise.) So he has been bikeless for some months and I decided it was the perfect time to get him one. And I did! When we got home, we rode together a bit around the neighborhood (me on Zadie’s bike). 

 

The sun is setting and I’m about to take them for a farewell dinner. Mom comes home tomorrow and I go back to San Francisco’s apparently perfect weather. So off tonight to the Kennedy School restaurant, a delightful place I actually stayed in once! It’s a converted elementary school, the hotel rooms are old classrooms with blackboards and cloak closets intact, the old cafeteria is a restaurant, the old auditorium is a movie theater. Delightful!

 

And to prove my point, a neighbor kid rode over on his bike to see if Malik is home and they’re off around the block on their own, like 10-year-olds should be able to be. No neighbors walking by, but I’m savoring my beer and the dying rays of the sun. It is such a simple thing to enjoy the gift of a human life and such a maddening thing when so many make it so difficult. And for what?

 

Maybe Congress should end each day on the front porch together, sitting with people they’ve been arguing with, enjoying a cold beer or soda water and chatting with the citizens passing by. Why not?

 

PS Just to be clear, there are many, many things I admire about my younger daughter as well. But she didn’t make it into this piece for one simple reason— she doesn’t have a front porch!