Cook the Meal!

Every class, every workshop, is an opportunity to clarify vision, to craft yet more meticulous how to unleash the miraculous, to speak more eloquently about what’s at the center and what’s mere dross. Feeling on fire here at the Mini-Conference, both modeling and speaking what lies behind this work. Reminding teachers that details are important, but not without the narrative that sustains them and brings Soul into the room.   I’m noticing on Facebook many teachers asking about which curriculum they should follow and spending hours both choosing and then figuring out how to implement it all. I’m finding myself more and more impatient with this short-sighted, box-like, mechanical thinking, so I answered one of the inquiries like this:   Curriculum can be useful as a place to hang your hat and coat. This goes on this hook and that generally goes on that. But the long lists of skills and knowledge to check off, in my experience, is not how the human mind works and certainly not how the artistic imagination flowers.    In the back of my Play, Sing & Dance book, I offer a sample curriculum from 1st through 8th grade via the Orff Approach, which mostly centers on melodic harmonic development in the Orff Ensemble that tries to follow the child's developmental stages and proceeds from one understanding to the next that builds from it. As simple as 1st—do pentatonic in the key of C, la and re modes in 2nd, transposition to F and G (with accompanying modes) in 3rd and introduction of recorder, diatonic modes in 4th, more in 5th and intro. to functional harmony. Middle school cycles through the whole progression again with a historical/ stylistic focus—"World music" in 6th, the art of composition (mostly European classical music) in 7th, the art of improvisation (Jazz) in 8th.    That's it. Simple enough to help focus choice of materials and at the same time, create a wider cultural base. Nothing to be proved or micro-manage or over-assess, simply a way to get to the real deal—which is inspired music-making and dance, acute alertness to the students' gifts and challenges and response to them, imaginative flowering by constantly asking "How else can we do this?" In short, an ARTISTIC approach to the teaching of an art form rather than the business model of spreadsheets and check-lists and proof of profit. My suggestion is to spend less time worrying about creating the fantasy "perfect curriculum" (who cares? not the kids!) and more time sharing music you love that fits your particular group of kids (not meaning their favorite pop songs, but their ability to express themselves in ways they themselves couldn't previously imagine).    Think about it like this. A curriculum can be a useful recipe but means nothing until you get in the kitchen and cook the meal with the ingredients you have at hand and to your taste. Then you have to learn how to serve it graciously to your family (your students) and see how they like it. If they don’t at first, don’t give up and go back to Burger King. Adjust as needed and help them develop a taste for it.    In short, when people come to your house for dinner, no one wants to sit down with printed out recipes in front of them. The children don’t care about the curriculum nor should they. The way you artfully lead them from one understanding to the next is all the curriculum you need—and the meal needs to be tasty. Get in the kitchen and start cooking!

Showing Up

Out on my little patio, Room 8 of the Hidden Valley Inn,  looking out at the swimming pool and beyond that, the distant hills. This morning, finished my last class in my two-week run in the sacred space of my old music room, playing music with kids on some of the original six Orff instruments that a parent donated 52 years ago. Instruments that still sound good five decades later while the school garage is filled with computers obsolete after two years.  

Said goodbye again—to that special room in a special school with special people and drove the two and a half hours down to the next sacred space—Hidden Valley Music Seminars. I first came here in 1987, 39 years ago, and shared the teaching with my forever mentor, Avon Gillespie, and others, at the first local Orff Chapter’s Mini-conference Retreat. That began the tradition of gathering here every two years and here we are again, for what I think is our 20^th retreat. I’ve missed some of the more recent Mini-Conferences because of schedule conflicts but have been to at least sixteen of them.

Each one a world unto itself, with more memorable people and music made than I can name. And yet I can name so many of them and so many moments which qualified as sacred. An intensity of emotion and laughter and deep presence and artistic imagination beyond any boundaries that is rare to find in a human lifetime. And yet, time and again, there it was. 

Each one unrepeatable and thus made more notable, remarkable and unforgettable. I’m tempted to list them and evoke their ancestral presence and it would mean a lot to anyone who had been there. But indeed, you just had to be there. 

The depth of that forever presence expanded geometrically when we moved our summer course here in 2012. So alongside the 20 Spring retreats are the 13 other miraculous happenings over two-weeks time instead of just three days. But the sacred cares nothing for clocks. Those three-day retreats—really just a little Friday night, all day and night Saturday and then Sunday morning— are more than enough time to blow the top of your head off. (Emily Dickinson famously said, “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”)

That indeed can happen in solitude with black ink on paper, but perhaps yet more powerfully with the thundering vibrations of drums, xylophones and the human voice in dancing circles with 50 to 100 fellow human beings. The elders are getting concerned that the young teachers aren’t showing up to these events as we used to (and still do!), thinking they can get what they need online. Nope! It ain’t even close! The screen is too flat, the vibrations too distant, the absence of touch and smell and taste mean there’s no place for Soul to enter. You just gotta show up and we’ll take care of the rest. 

So here we go, bringing the ancestral presence of the Ghanaian legacy to a little sacred place nestled in the Carmel Valley. For those who show up, we’ll open with the song Miawoezon and its welcoming text sung by our guest Ghanaian teacher Vodzi: “Thank you for the trouble you took to be here. You are most welcome.”

Re-Retired

My two weeks coming to a close at The San Francisco School and I have to say my energy remains high. I often wonder if I could have made it to 50 years of teaching here and the answer seems to be yes. Of course, two weeks is different from all year and I have to remind myself that subbing requires no report cards, staff meetings, yard duties, defending the school’s culture and character when it seems to be endangered. All factors that indeed led to my decision to “retire.”

 

But in terms of the energy flow between me and the kids I’ve just taught, the full range between three-years-old and 8^th grade, I feel just fine. Nice to wake up planning the next nuance of the next class and look forward to seeing some of the same kids again.

 

And I’m far from done! Tomorrow after my last school class of 5^th graders, I head down to our summer Orff training spot in Carmel Valley to teach at an Orff Mini-conference, back on Sunday, off on Monday to fly to Toronto and then three more weeks of teaching at a different school. So it will be a five-week marathon before I exhale and feel the sensation of retiring again and doing real retirement things like walking in the Yorkshire Dales and biking in the Dolomites, some four weeks without a class plan in sight! 

One of the grand pleasures of being a music teacher free from required material and paint-by-number curriculum is the freedom to teach what you love and choose what you do each day based on what you feel. What song do I need at this moment? What song do the kids need? Does the culture need? 45 minutes from now, I’ll lead a Singing Tim with K-3^rd graders and am thinking about doing a song I’ve never taught at the school—What a Wonderful World. Alongside playing the Louis Armstrong version. That’s what I’m feeling now. 

This.

Sometimes something appears that captures everything you care about. Everything condensed into one powerful expression that needs no elaboration. Just this. It can be a song, a poem, a painting, a piece of music. It might be a sunset or floating in the lake or a gathering of all the people you love. In my case, it might be a music class that I want to wrap up with a bow and show to the world: “Here it is. Every single thing that is important.” Like the chorus rehearsal I just observed this morning with my brilliant colleague, Sofia Lopez-Ibor. Everything we would hope for a child, for a human being— intelligence, responsiveness, connection, joy, beauty, laughter, imagination—manifest in three short activities/ songs.    I think it’s important that each of us notice these things when we are graced with their presence. Share them as we will, though in full knowledge that my “this” that sets my heart soaring and soul singing and goosebumps rising may leave you cold. And yours may miss me in the same way. But still we notice them and speak them out loud, both to confirm the North Star of our moral, aesthetic, intellectual life and to let others know this is who we are and this is where we stand.    So alongside Sofia’s class was a video link she sent me that is a capital THIS!!! When I responded with “OMG!” she wrote back, “I know you very well, Goodkin!” Indeed, she does and I her, as we both follow the same North Star that makes these four minutes the essential expression of everything we care about.    Here's how I wrote about it on Facebook and at the bottom is the link to the video:  This. Nothing makes me happier or more hopeful. It is a reminder of everything worthy that we are encouraged to forget. Amongst these needed truths:    1)   To rise to power does not mean abandoning your humanity.   2)   No one is so important that they shouldn’t take time to sing with and tell stories to children.    3)   No one is so proud that they shouldn’t ask for help getting up from the floor.    4)   We had intelligence, heart and morality at the top for 8 years. Then a horrific second act with a welcome intermission and back again worse than ever, all of us squirming in our seats waiting for the curtain to close.    5)   Obama’s companion in joyful connection with young children is the leading actor in the 3rdact to come that promises a happier ending.    PS  I propose that instead of these absurd pseudo-debates during election years that all candidates have to publicly sing songs with and read stories to preschool children. Then let the kids decide who’s worthy.    PSS The video was tagged as “hilarious.” I object. It is not “cute entertainment,” but a profound Gospel-worthy reminder, “Unless ye become as little children…” Not childish, an adult throwing tantrums, but childlike—filled with a beautiful innocence, sense of wonder and natural compassion.   https://youtu.be/ahaX3y5lzg4?si=tmdMqbQGjzNWyVNI

Homecoming

The first thing I do each morning, as per agreement with my wife, is to empty the dish drainer before the rest of the day starts. And so a few years back, I wrote a poem about it.

 

Homecoming

 

Each night they spend in exile.

 

Each morning I return them to their home.

 

Lift the pots from the dish drainer and put them on the shelf.

     Carry the spoons to their drawer, 

            the bowls to join their nested siblings,

                    tuck the knives in their slots. 

 

 

Each day I teach, it’s the same.

      Carrying the children on the wings of song

              back to where they belong.

The Two Adventures

Michael Meade, that wise old storyteller and spokesperson for the Soul, wrote these words in a recent Blog: 

 

“… the deep psyche has a better design than the ego’s plan, the family’s requirements, or the culture’s map. 

 

That sentence already stopped me in my tracks. My parents were generous in granting me the freedom to follow my own calling, but it clearly was different from what they and my aunts and uncles and eventually cousins chose to do and think. Those iconic books of my late teens—Walden, Catcher in the Rye, Catch 22, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, How Children Fail, The Wisdom of Security, for starters, made it clear that the path I was seeking was not to be found on my mainstream culture’s map. The ego’s plan took more time to put in its proper place and is described by Meade as “the first adventure that involves the pursuit of happiness and the recognition that comes from outer accomplishments.”An apt description of my life from young adult to past middle age.

 

But that’s not the end of the story. If we’re alert and luck to live long enough “the second adventure of life involves the fulfillment of the inner longings and hidden destiny of the soul…it aims at a path that leads beyond the concerns of the daily world, yet it is of great importance for the continuance of that world… It involves stepping off the common pathways and going off the map that others have given us. The second adventure leads to the pursuit of wisdom, the kind of transcendent knowledge that enlivens individual life, nourishes genuine community, and helps re-create culture.”

 

The half-century plus of going off the map into the less-traveled roads of three authentic practices—Orff, Zen and Jazz—has certainly enlivened my individual life and sought to do the same for others. All three have blossomed in the fertile soil of community and sought to create and enrich community wherever I may be. And all three have something to offer a re-envisioning of a healing, healthful, joyful and sustainable culture. All have required some small measure of sacrifice, exile and difficulty of constantly swimming upstream, but the rewards have been far greater than the challenges. And continue to be.

 

After another gratifying day at school, going from the fresh, joyful, confidence of the 3-year-olds to more-cautious-to-take-risks 8^th graders, but willing to follow my strategies to unleash their jazz improvisational selves (and with great results in a mere 15 minutes!), I’m feeling how the two adventures of my life are joined at the hip. The willful accomplishments of my younger years always fertilized communities and enriched many children’s and teacher’s (but realistically, not necessarily all!) lives and did their best to create a culture with depth and heart. Especially teaching back in my old music room, side-by-side at Singing Time again with Sofia, I don’t feel a clear before or after or massive wood door dividing the two adventures. It’s all one glorious yellow brick road with the promise of Oz in each step of the way. 

Off I go again tomorrow, happily skipping down the road with the children opening our hearts, nourishing our brains and bolstering our courage. A grand adventure indeed!

 

Instructions for My Funeral

In 36 years of meeting once every two weeks, each meeting with a particular theme, the Men’s Group I’m in has covered a lot of territory. In one meeting back in 2010, we all wrote “Instructions for our Funeral.” Yesterday, we took to the stage of the Memorial Service for our eldest, Bernie Weiner, to read his poem. (See Feb. 15 post Little Man Clapping for more about Bernie). Returning home, I searched for my poem from that meeting and actually found it. Here it is, with an addendum I added yesterday:

 

To start with, the music.

 

Lots of it and don’t hold back. Some suggestions:

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

As for the people, 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

 

ADDENDUM: 2026

• If anyone arrives in a Waymo, do not let them in.

 

• If someone reads a eulogy created by Chatgpt, interrupt them immediately and 

    firmly, but gently, escort them off of the stage and out onto the street.