My first of two days free in Athens began with a delightful meeting with Katerina, an Orff colleague I had met over the years, mostly in Salzburg. She gifted me with a book by Polyxena Matey, a woman who studied in the Munich Guntherschule where Orff taught back in the 1930’s. They developed a lifelong friendship and upon returning to Athens in 1938, she established her own school both for children and training teachers in Orff Schulwerk. It’s the very school where I taught these last two days, soon to celebrate it’s 90th anniversary!
The current economy, bad traffic and parking, along with diminishing interest in gifting children with the arts as fundamental to their education, seem to be taking their toll and enrollment is suffering. Likewise, young teachers eager to train themselves in this life-changing, soul-stirring approach are harder to find as everyone prefers to stay home and find some cool lessons online. But nevertheless, we persist.
Katerina gifted me with a little book Polyxena Matey wrote when she was 90 (!) and we sat on the hotel 11th floor veranda looking out at the Parthenon and lamented about the decline in authenticity and integrity in the modern world. Some of it the usual elder complaints about the younger generation that has been our dubious privilege since time immemorial, but much of it is genuine concern about the way machine-thinking has gained such monstrous power as machines now literally our doing our thinking. Back in 1992, Ms. Matey was already warning us about this:
“This technological civilization, with its astonishing achievements, has enslaved us. We orient our lives primarily toward what can be measured, calculated, and judged as useful.”
Indeed. Here she echoes thinkers from time immemorial hoping to remind us as to what’s truly important. Here is Victor Hugo in his epic Les Miserables.
“You are always eager to make everything useful, yet here is a useless plot. It would be much better to have salads here than bouquets.”
…the bishop replied, “You are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as the useful.” He added after a moment’s pause. “Perhaps more so.”
Ms. Matey independently arrives at the exact same conclusion:
“We should offer our children an education that cultivates in the developing human being a sensitivity to Beauty. Beauty, which may not appear ‘useful,’ yet is an essential nourishment for the human soul.”
So Katerina and I talked about the danger of our diminished capacity to think for ourselves, to live with passion, to savor genuine beauty, all concerns every teacher in every place I talk to is noticing about the next generation. Rather than mere old-people whining, the purpose was to notice and then work yet harder to keep these lights burning in those who will follow. And my happy report is that they respond! When we give them, be they children, college students or adults, what they genuinely need and richly deserve, they happily step forth into their enlarged humanity. At least that has been my experience.
After I parted from Katerina, I went on my own little odyssey in search of beauty and found it ascending to the top of Mount Lycabettus. There I was gifted with a sweeping 360o view of Athens, including looking out at the Acropolis and the Pireaus Sea beyond it. The sun had come out, the temperature was perfect and the cats were out enjoying it all alongside the people.
Back at the hotel, I treated myself to a Greek salad dinner back at the penthouse restaurant, now with the Parthenon lit up. I then met with another person interested in translating some of my books into Greek. A lovely person and another profound conversation, more pleasure than business. We agreed to start with my Humanitarian Musician book and include some quotes from Polyxena Matey and also her song that we sang at the closing of yesterday’s workshop.
Here is a photo of me in the workshop with the photo of Polyxena Matey on top of the piano. Two spirits sharing the same vision.
