Monday, March 18, 2024

Pay Attention

A friend recently took me to the Museum of Modern Art and invited me to try a new approach to viewing paintings. The idea was simple, but turned out to be profound. As the best simple ideas often are. The whole thing was based on two words and one simple act that human beings have rarely down throughout the ages, but now is virtually an extinct species in our biosphere of constant distraction: “Pay attention.”

 

The instructions were to stand in front of a painting for ten minutes and discover what you notice. Ten minutes of undivided attention. No peeking at your phone or other paintings or other people. Just you and the painting alone together in your ten-minute universe. Don’t read the little museum blurb until the end.  

 

My friend chose the painting. A figurative work by Elmer Bischoff titled Orange Sweater, with its subject reading a book in the library. (Again, I didn’t know this until the end.) So I set to work noticing what I could. I divided the painting into 4 vertical quadrants and tried to identify objects in each quadrant— some distant mountains, the green leaves of a plant, a person, a desk, a book, two other background people, the walls, the windows and so on. Then I noticed the blend of earthy colors, lots of greys and browns, the curious splotch of red in the subject’s hair and then the textures of the brush strokes. I found myself wondering why the artist brushed vertically here and horizontally there and how he chose the colors and how we decided when each area of the painting felt finished. 

 

After a while, I stepped back one step at a time until I was some twenty feet back and noticed that the desk was more of a wrap-around counter. The painting had a different feeling looking at it all at once from a distance. Then I got close again and put on my glasses and noticed yet more details— like a series of thin x’s that could have been made with a razor blade. Was this the canvas cracking or an intentional choice? 

 


My friend announced the ten minutes were up and it didn’t feel too soon, but I could have spent another five minutes without feeling restless. He then took me to another part of the museum with more abstract works and set me in front of a large canvas that mostly was a wash of again, greys, blues, browns and other earthy tones, but this time without a single representational figure or recognizable object. The painting divided itself into four vertical quadrants set apart from three thin streaks of white going from top to bottom. This painting was to be more of a challenge.

 

But I repeated my strategies of taking it one quadrant at a time, viewing it from different distances and different angles. I observed it with one eye shut and then the other and then squinting. After staring intensely for a while, I sometimes got the impression that the colors were swirling a bit, not unlike fog. Sometimes there seemed to be a little pulsing or vibrating. I hung in there, but I confess it was not connecting either to my mind or heart or sensual pleasure. 

 

Afterwards, I found out that the painting, titled Scarface and painted by David Diao, was an attempt to go further than the Abstract Expressionist movement and painted using sponges and squeegees. The three vertical lines were actual the wood behind the canvas used to stretch is showing through in the front. 



My friend then showed me the two paintings he had looked at and we sat and shared our experiences. Though neither painting I looked at genuinely moved me or enticed me to bid for them at an auction, the simple experience of spending ten minutes with each was a radical awakening to the fact that I never do this in museums. Nor do most people. We walk through noticing this one or that one and maybe occasionally linger a bit longer at some. But mostly a trip to the museum is like passing a roomful of people at a party and greeting them with a short hello or at most, a few minutes of small talk, without ever sitting down to have a genuine in-depth conversation. Very similar to the way we skirt by all the background music in our life without really listening.

 

So my takeaway was to remind myself to do this more often. To sit in the park and look at a tree for ten minutes. To listen to a piece of music with no distractions, like I used to when I was younger, lying down between two speakers. To pick three paintings next time I go to a museum and do my own five or ten minute immersion in them. 

 

To simply pay attention. 

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Cellular Memory

It is now common knowledge that all traumatic experience is lodged in the cellular memory. Even perhaps the unresolved traumas of our ancestors passed down through our DNA. This means that we’re vulnerable to a present experience in the here and now triggering that memory and flooding us with those same feelings from long ago. The most obvious example is a way a car backfiring can unleash a PTSD veteran’s memory of gunshots. From this extreme all the way down to a stern rebuke in a classroom taking us back to a moment when a mean teacher shamed us in front of the class. 

 

But it also works the other way. The way the smell of a freshly-baked pie brings us back to the warmth and comfort of Grandma’s kitchen. Or a song on the radio evokes our first kiss. The mere feel of an old blanket brings us the same feeling of security we felt as a 5-year old. 

 

So it was a great pleasure when an SF School alum I taught for 11 years came to my Jazz Workshop yesterday, now as an adult Special Education teacher. The smile on his face as he reunited with the Orff instruments he used to play all those years, played familiar clapping plays with the fellow participants, sang the songs he used to sing with his same old teacher leading the class, was a grand pleasure for me to witness. And for him to experience as all the happy memories flooded in. He spontaneously testified before the class that he was a kid (and is an adult) “on the spectrum” and that much of school, even our lovely supportive school, caused him stress and anxiety. But that music class was his safe place, his happy place, where he felt at ease, competent, comfortable and joyful. 


A reminder to all us teachers that providing safe and happy classes for all kids gets deeps into their cellular memories and will echo down the years their whole lives. May it be so!

Thursday, March 14, 2024

The Concert That Could Have Been

Some time back, I went to a SF Jazz Festival concert celebrating the drummer Roy Hayne’s 80th birthday. He had invited an all-star band that included Chick Corea on piano, Christian McBride on bass, Gary Burton on vibes, Josh Redman on saxophone, Nicholas Payton on trumpet and other guests. If you closed your eyes and listened to his drumming, you would have found it hard to believe that these sounds and that energy was coming from an 80-year old man! In jazz terms, he was killin’ it!!!

 

He began performing in the 40’s with the likes of Lester Young and Charlie Parker, in the 50’s with Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk and Sarah Vaughan, in the 60’s with Stan Getz and Gary Burton, the 70’s with Chick Corea and Pat Metheny and yet more, making his last recording in 2011—and  still performing past then! An extraordinary career, to say the least.

 

At that concert, Gary Burton spoke briefly before one of the pieces, telling how Roy had invited him to play, but Gary had at first declined because it was too difficult for his schedule. Roy persisted and Gary finally said, “Okay, here’s the deal. I’ll come out to play for your 80th birthday if you promise to play for mine.” Gary was 62 years old. The audience did some quick math and laughed.


Yesterday was Roy Hayne’s birthday. He turned 99. That concert I went to that feels almost yesterday was 19 years ago! 

 

Last year, Gary Burton turned 80. Had Gary performed for the occasion, Roy would have kept his promise!!!! (Alas, due to health problems, Gary retired at a young 74 years old.)


So happy birthday, Roy Haynes! And everyone reading this, please mark the occasion by finding some Youtube clip of this American hero playing! And then stop complaining about getting old!

 

M.A.W.A.: Part 2

More from the art of creative insult. 

 

1. "He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others."

- Samuel Johnson 

 

2. "He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up."

- Paul Keating

 

3. "In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily."

- Charles, Count Talleyrand

 

4. "He loves nature in spite of what it did to him."

- Forrest Tucker 

 

5. "Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?"

- Mark Twain 

 

6. "His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."

- Mae West

 

7. "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."

- Oscar Wilde


8.  "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... For support rather than illumination."

- Andrew Lang (1844-1912)


9. "He has Van Gogh's ear for music."

- Billy Wilder

 

10. "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."

- Groucho Marx.

 

11. "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."

- Winston Churchill

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

M.A.W.A.: Part 1

 Amidst many distressing facts about our one-step-forward, ten-steps-back modern times, the loss of intelligent discourse is high on my list. And that includes creative and witty insults. Compare today’s name-calling to yesteryear’s and you make a good case against the evolution of our species. 

 

Conflict we will always have. People who just don’t click, who are jealous or envious of others, who shake their head with disbelief that someone with apparently mediocre talent and intelligence has risen as far as he or she has, are always going to make occasional disparaging comments about their fellow human beings. So if that is to be so, you might was well be clever and witty. 

 

Yes, friends, it’s time to Make America Witty Again! And here is the evidence before the court to convince you (stolen outright from someone’s Facebook post). Enjoy!

 

1. "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; 

Bring a friend, if you have one."

George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill. 

 

"Cannot possibly attend first night, I will attend the second...If there is one."

- Winston Churchill, in response. 

 

2. A member of Parliament to Disraeli: "Sir, you will either die on the gallows, or of some unspeakable disease."

 

· "That depends, Sir," said Disraeli, "whether I embrace your policies or your mistress." 

 

3. "He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr

 

4. "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure."

- Clarence Darrow

 

5. "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."

- William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway). 

 

6. “That not writing—that’s typing.”

- Trumann Capote (about Jack Keruoac)

 

7. "Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it."

- Moses Hadas

 

8. "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."

- Mark Twain

 

9. "He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.."

- Oscar Wilde 

 

10. "I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here."

- Stephen Bishop

 

11."He is a self-made man and worships his creator."

- John Bright

 

12. "I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."

- Irvin S. Cobb 

 

 

 


 

 

The Iron Ball

My favorite Zen koan goes something like this:

 

“You have a hot iron ball lodged in your throat which you can neither swallow nor spit out. What do you do?”

 

Such is the daily news. If you swallow it, your stomach is upset for the rest of the day. If you spit it out, you abdicate your responsibility to be informed enough to effect change. Meanwhile, it’s burning your throat. What to do?

 

Here’s what mythologist Michael Meade suggests:

 

Creativity is the only outcome of conflict that can satisfy the soul.   

 

The problem with trying to “keep up with the news” is not only that it is so consistently unbelievable, that just when I think Republicans can’t sink any lower, they do, but that the various groups working for the kind of change I’d like to see have so many venues available to them and the ease of constant bombardments. The usual pleas keep falling through my physical mail-slot, but now they also clog my e-mails and invade my texts. And when they think it’s a good idea to get my attention with headings like “HORRIBLE NEWS!” or “WE’RE ON OUR KNEES, BEGGING AND PLEADING!,” they’re actually pounding my delicate boat of hope down into the swamp of despair. The tone is debilitating and the number is exhausting. 

 

Getting the bulk of my news from Stephen Colbert helps and limiting the amount I’m willing to read helps as well. But though koans have no simplistic “right answers,” my solution to the hot iron ball is to become large enough that the pain gets smaller. To set myself inside a grander, more life-affirming story.

 

In his announcement of an upcoming online workshop titled “The Creative Middle Way” (for more info., see info@mosaicvoices.org), Michael Meade says:


Contemporary patterns of conflict and polarization can lead us to feel discouraged and defeated when it comes to meaningful change. Yet, transformation and healing are the secret aims of the tension inside the opposites and inside life itself. 
 
Rather than an impending end of life, the tension of opposites hints at a hidden third that can bring healing and renew the flow of life at a deeper level. The emergence of the third thing is a form of creation, a revelation of something timeless and ingenious trying to become conscious again.  
 
The creative middle way involves the power of becoming; becoming aware of new ways of being as well as coming to know ancient wisdom again. This inner medicine of the soul is found in the moving middle where a person can awaken more fully and life can truly transform.

 

I can testify that planning a class or workshop, teaching a class or workshop, improvising my way through jazz tunes, writing the next Blogpost, are all creative endeavors that indeed satisfy the soul. I’m pleased if the right candidate (ie, someone that actually believes in democracy and serves the common good) is elected, but it doesn’t feed the soul in profound ways. It’s a good small story, but it’s not the larger story we also need. 

 

We all are carrying our own iron balls in our throat, be they political or personal and often both. How do you manage yours? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday, March 11, 2024

One Letter

Sometimes it only takes one letter (or two) to move from darkness to light, from our worse selves to our better selves, from delusion to awakening. 

 

                                            Wealth         Health

                                            Celibate       Celebrate

                                            Belongings  Belonging

                                            Hype             Hope

                                            Selfish          Elfish

                                            Lose             Love

                                            Fiend           Friend

                                            Pleading      Pleasing

                                            Eliminate     Illuminate

                                            Toxic            Tonic

 

Send me some more and we’ll make a children’s book together.