Smiling for No Reason

I’m noticing something a bit unusual these days. Walking to this school where I’m teaching, walking in the halls, teaching the classes, I’m finding myself smiling for no reason. It’s an inward physical sensation, not an outward “smile for the camera” show, but the sense that if every cell in the body could smile, well, they are. 

Seems like we spend just about every minute of every day trying to reach some equilibrium of diverse energies inside us. If homeostasis is the biological term that describes “the self-regulating process by which biological systems maintain internal stability while adjusting to changing external conditions,” this feels like a “spiritual homeostasis.” Instead of “ensuring essential conditions—such as body temperature, pH, and nutrient levels—stay within a narrow healthy range, preventing death or disease”, these conditions of love, passion and sense of living inside your destiny prevent death to the spirit and take us from dis-ease to ease. Describing it doesn’t do it justice and certainly doesn’t bring us any closer to experiencing it.  Nothing your small ego can dream up can guarantee its presence.  It just “is.” 

 

What we can do is notice it when we are graced by its appearance. Feel grateful for its blessing while mildly astonished that it has chosen to visit us. Wonder a bit if we’re worthy but not care about that answer. Here it is and might as well feel it wholly and savor it and keep the space open for its bubbly effervescence. Goodness knows it’s a short-term visitor and there are much darker psychic territories we may be required to visit as our mind and body diminish, our country and culture collapses, our opportunities to keep doing that which we love dry up or disappear. So apologies if I strut it about a bit in this Blog, knowing others may be suffering and not the least bit happy to read about my happiness. But as I said, my job is to notice its presence and feel the full measure of its blessing. 

 

And of course, my life choices have something to do with it. I’ve loved children my whole life and still feel the uplift of their playful spirit and innocent delight. I’ve loved music my whole life and still feel the benevolence of its energies bringing the body and soul into balance. I’ve loved teaching my whole life and never take for granted the rare condition of feeling that inner smile radiate out to the children as they wrestle with the notes that bring their own happiness into focus. I’ve organized my life around these three loves and the World has responded with great generosity. 

 

Of course, it hasn’t all been polka dots and moonbeams and all the struggles, disappointments, failures, betrayals and doubts that are the payments due in any human incarnation have been by my side as well. Which perhaps makes it all the more sweet when I feel that smile come out like the sun emerging after the storm. 

And now here come the 5^th graders to receive its warmth and light.

  

The Real Deal

The fun-fest continues, as the kids I’m teaching here in Toronto and I romp through the forest of notes on the xylophones and dance joyfully around the campfire. As so many try to squeeze teaching into a paint-by-number method or bend it to fit inside some ill-thought-out dogma or outsource it altogether to machines, those who know what the real deal is engage with children in ways that make them smarter, kinder and happier. The statistics reveal depressed and dispirited students beaten down by toxic practices in the name of “education,” but my own experience is that kids are ready to be wholly themselves on their way to better versions of themselves, led to deeper understandings, more controlled expression in diverse media, more profound connections with their own community of psychic energies and those of people around them. How can we reach them in these ways?

 

It's simple. Replace fear with fun, insult with welcome, blind faith with cultivated thought, ugliness with beauty. The only antidote to a child or adult who is shut down because they understandably are trying to protect some tender part of themselves from the brutal attacks of others, is to bring them into a safe and protected and loving circle, where fun is at the forefront and they are not only allowed but invited to discover the beautiful expressive parts of themselves, in company with adults who affirm, welcome, bless and love them. That’s where real healing begins. That’s where the real deal starts.

 

Saying “yes!” to this requires the insight and courage to say “no!” to scripted lessons made by “experts” who know exactly nothing about what that child in front of you right here, right now, needs. And believe me, it ain’t a script. Say “no” to the mindless testing and the cute videos and the AI catastrophe. Be clear that kids don’t need a curriculum or an i-Pad or a sure-fire kid-tested lesson. They need a relationship with an adult prepared to see them and know them and invite them to discover more about themselves that they even knew before. Relationship, not systems. A relationship that by definition is unpredictable, messy, somewhat uncontrollable and not a problem to be fixed, but a dance to be practiced. That’s where the challenge and the joy equally lie. No 26-step system exists that will solve your classroom challenges any more than it will solve your marriage. 

 

So a word to my fellow Orff teachers. Orff Schulwerk began with an intuition blossomed into a vision. It invited—and invites— us to develop our own artistry, feed our own passion for our art and for teaching our art, bring the music wholly into our own body and voice and gesture and facial expression and communicate directly to the children from vibration to vibration. It asks us to become friendly with our own spontaneity, our own responsiveness, our own attention to what’s going on in this moment right before our eyes and ears and with that quirky little person called a child. That’s where the art and science of teaching meet and that’s where the children can begin to feel safe and nurtured and held in the arms of something that is not only about mastery, but is about community feeling, is about beauty, is about the unequalled joy of creation. 

 

I’m concerned that the success of Orff Schulwerk in American schools is coming at a price. We’re starting to march to the school board’s drummer, use all the ugly-non-poetic words trying to prove that we taught something worthwhile, submitting our lesson plans to people who don’t understand them, teaching with the required Smartboard or formula of blah-blah-blah lesson objectives told to children who don’t care to hear it—they just want to play. Orff began as a radical antidote to all of that. Instead of trying to fit in with the bean-counters program, we need to show them how to grow the garden. 

 

If I had any advice for today’s and future Orff teachers, I’d say “Stay on the edge.” And walk your administrator there to show him or her the view. When we are teaching the way Orff and his descendants proposed, there’s not a single new education-du-jour approach that we’re not already doing—and often much better. Trust that. Art does not thrive in the bland safe middle of normal, the brightly lit shopping mall or sterile classroom with linoleum floors. It seeks out the edge, be it explosive and passionate or tender and intimate. Think the Bible, Shakespeare, Opera. Think Mozart’s Requiem, John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit, a Gospel church, a dulcimer on an Appalachian front porch, the shimmering sounds of the gamelan on a moonlit verandah in Bali. That’s where we should take the children.

 

And on my way to today’s class, that’s exactly where I intend to go. 

Whatever Happened to "My Bad!"?

 

I really try not to use this venue to vent and make readers suffer through my whiny complaints, no matter how justified they may be. But sometimes you just gotta make it public. Feel free to drop out here, but if you persevere, I’ll do my best to take it out of the personal and frame it in a way that you can relate to it. I hope we all might leave committed to paying more attention to what feels like a growing cultural problem. Here’s the story: 

 

A few weeks ago, I wrote to the organizers of Flower Piano in San Francisco to suggest my jazz band could play at that event again, as we had two years ago. I was a bit shocked to get a letter back suggesting I should never play there again because last time I went five minutes over. The amount of shame and guilt I felt for that, even though people thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the show and it seemed like the next group could go five minutes over if as well— heck, we’re out making music on a sunny day in the park. What’s the hurry? But I get that it must have felt disrespectful and was willing to accept my blacklist consequence (which for another reason, they backed off from and I think I will be playing there again). 

 

Why am I telling this story? Because I was asked to be accountable for my transgression and pay some kind of price, from heartfelt apology to giving up that venue. And yet. Everywhere around me are incompetent people not doing their jobs or competent people having a bad day and from what I can tell, there’s no consequence or accountability whatsoever. For example, the printing of my new book. 

The printing company I’ve used for the ten Pentatonic Press books I published did great work. Not a single complaint. But last year, they were bought up by another company and the transition has NOT been smooth. In fact, an absolute nightmare. In preparing my new book for them, they promised one printing date, then postponed it. The first date was reasonable and perfect for some opportunities to sell them, so it was a great disappointment when they failed to honor their original “gentleman’s agreement.” 

 

So I asked for a special printing of 50 books that could be sold at two occasions perfect for selling— a local Conference I was presenting in and the Canadian National Conference in Halifax. They did print the books— but then forgot to mail them! So now I had 50 books that missed their opportunity to be sold. I had one more opportunity to sell them at a workshop in Toronto and they mailed 25 of the above to Halifax!! Then had to re-send from Halifax to Toronto and miraculously, the books arrived one day before that workshop. (And they charged me for the extra shipping).

 

Now I had other deadlines coming up, so just checked in to see if the 750 books I originally ordered would be ready by the end of the week as they promised. Here's what my contact there wrote to me:

 

Doug, 

 

I think this job is the disaster of all disasters! Apparently, this job has been sitting in “proof out” since early April when Jamison left and the new person took over, so it isn't even printed yet.  It was completely overlooked. Since the original estimated ship date was today 5/11, and you want this delivered to the warehouse before you leave for Europe, I have asked this to be escalated to a manager for expedited printing.

 

Are you feeling me here? Do any of these people feel accountable to me? Offer me profuse apologies, discounts on the printing, some kind of well-deserved compensation for their mistakes which I suffer from. Is anybody acknowledging “My bad! Sorry!” I think you can guess the answer. 

 

The same holds true for schools that take six weeks to pay me, with me having to constantly remind them. If I’m one day late paying my VISA bill, I get slapped with a late charge, but it doesn’t seem to go in the other direction. Perhaps this has always been so, but am I wrong in feeling that it seems to be happening more and more, with less and less accountability and apology? If this were a two-way venue, you could all chime in, but meanwhile, I’ll just imagine your answer. “I think you’re right! I am noticing that!”

 Having named it, let's change it! Please? 

The New Ten Commandments

I have a folder on my computer called “Talks/ Interviews/ Articles” and often (like yesterday), while looking for one thing, another catches my eye. Usually something I have forgotten I wrote. So here’s what I found yesterday, my new Ten Commandments that I wrote in 2024. (Perhaps I should title them “Ten Suggestions” or “ Ten Things to Consider.”) “Commandments” is so—well, Old Testament.  Note that one is in bold to celebrate today’s holiday. Note also that the Psycho-in-Chief has broken every single one of the old Ten Commandments and likewise, fails miserably with my revised list. 

 

1.    Thou shalt respect and embrace all gods as the sacred parts of yourself and others.

2.    Thou shalt make images in an attempt to express that which is beyond imagination.

3.    Knowing that any name is too small for the ineffable, thou shalt relax about using it playfully or angrily. 

4.    Treat every day as a Sabbath Day, leaving moments of rest and feeling the sacred in each day of the week. 

5.   Honor your father and mother and thank them for doing the best they could, while refusing to carry on any of their hurtful and harmful ideas and practices.

6.    Thou shalt not kill and thou shalt oppose the NRA’s shameless production and selling of murderous assault weapons and all calls to war. 

7.    Thou shalt not commit adultery and if you do, thou shalt not pay off lovers with non-disclosure agreements and face the consequences of your action. 

8.    Thou shalt not steal, especially in the forms of corporate capitalism and Wall Street unchecked greed. 

9.    Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor and hold accountable any President who has told 20,000 documented lies without consequence.

10.                  Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, husband, house, yard, car or vacations and learn to be content with your lot and deal with your FOMO. 

Wanuskewin

… was the title of the concert by the Amadeus Choir of Great Toronto that I attended last night. It is a Cree word that translates to “seeking peace of mind”and its message is timely.  I think we can all agree that our soul indeed yearns for a respite from the ongoing catastrophe. But it is not to be had with drugs, distraction or denial.  It is a path through chaos demanding our greatest reserve of courage and determination and needing others by our side. Its voice is not simply conversation or news analysis, but is best expressed through the arts— dancing, poetry, painting and yes, choral singing. 

This was a groundbreaking concert that brought together three indigenous composers from the Cree people in present-day British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba. Most of the compositions had to do with the natural elements of earth, water, wind and fire. As one of the composers, Sherryl Sewepagaham described it, her piece is not about the wind, but came from sitting with the wind and feeling its voice speak through her. It renewed her determination for her voice to be the voice of the voices no one hears anymore or listens to. 

 

Chris Dirksen followed the Homage to Wind with her own seven-part piece about Water, featuring her cello alongside violin, piano, flute, French horn, drum set and the 100 voice choir.

 

Another composer, Andrew Balfour, suggested to the audience that we were not listening to a concert, but participating in a sound ceremony. I like that! It’s a good two words to describe what I aim for in my Orff classes and workshops. We were there not to be entertained and simply applaud, but to bear witness to what’s going down and what’s rising up. He wrote an exquisite piece about trees, as well as adapted a Johannes Ockeghem canon and Purcell piece. 

 

It felt like a historic event to have these three representing their ancestry and their contemporary music, which clearly fuses their Western upbringing with indigenous elements. And that’s all anyone would want to do and deserves to do. Be granted the right to define themselves instead of having others define them. Andrew shared that he had been stolen from his family to be “re-educated” at a church-run and sanctioned Indian Residential School (IRS)— at 6 months old. This was a common practice in the 20^th century, a purposeful program of cultural genocide that continued until the last IRS was closed—in 1996! As described in a government Website about the subject:

 

 ” While the treatment of children varied across the different IRSs, they frequently experienced harsh and denigrating conditions In addition to physical, emotional and sexual abuse and neglect, children were stripped of their identities, made to feel ashamed of themselves and their culture, and denied the use of their language, beliefs, and ways of being.”

 

So while Canada seems like paradise compared to its southern neighbor, it too, has a lot to answer for. Its national anthem was first just in English and then later there was a French version translated thus:

 

O Canada!
Land of our ancestors
Glorious deeds circle your brow
For your arm knows how to wield the sword
Your arm knows how to carry the cross;
Your history is an epic
Of brilliant deeds
And your valour steeped in faith
Will protect our homes and our rights.

 

Hmm. I think to First Nations people, the arms wielding the sword killed their people and culture and all the time carrying the cross representing Jesus' message of "brotherly love." That's pretty far from an “epic of brilliant deeds” and hardly protected the “home and rights” of the diverse indigenous populations. Apparently, to attempt some political correctness, there are translations now in Cree, Inuktitu, Ojibwe and Mi’kmaq, but I can’t imagine any of these people’s singing the words above in any language.

 

By contrast, last night’s event was an authentic step towards healing and reconciliation and I found it moving, musically and otherwise. Andrew was particular eloquent when he talked with us and reminded us that the choir were not functioning as allies, but as genuine brothers and sisters. 

 

It reminded me of a passage from To Kill a Mockingbird, when as a child, Scout’s older brother Gem is trying to classify people into different groups and Scout finally says: 

 

 “I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.”

And Gem replies: 

 

"That’s what I thought, too, when I was your age. If there’s just one kind of folks, why can’t they get along with each other? If they’re all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other?"

 

Why indeed. Well, that’s a matter for another post. But meanwhile, last night, we were all just folks mutually bearing witness to truth and beauty and I believe that helped give us all a moment when we felt peace of mind. 

 

Karmic Connections

It’s a Saturday morning and after catching up on business matters, I’m ready to take off footloose and fancy free to wander about Toronto. I’ll have some four hours before a dinner date with a friend, followed by a concert she’s singing in. Where should I go?

 

Truth be told, Toronto has never effortlessly lifted my heart the way that places like Vancouver, Barcelona, Salzburg, London, Paris, Venice, Bangkok, Kyoto, Rio de Janeiro and more do. No enticing rivers or beaches or hills or  parks or charming neighborhoods or thriving arts scene that enchant and delight me. Yet somehow I have a karmic connection that’s significant. Let me count the ways:

 

1.    Toronto is the first foreign city I ever visited, on a family trip back in 1962 (I think). It was the kick-off to a lifetime of visiting some 65 countries and hundreds of towns and cities. 

 

2.    On that trip, I had my first experience of puppy love. I seem to remember as a rising 7^th grader holding hands with a neighbor of my Dad’s friend, a girl named Lizzie. (I think it was a one-day romance).

 

3.    1962 was the year Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman brought Orff-Schulwerk to North America, an event that obviously wholly defined my life. If indeed it was the same year I first came here, I might have passed them in the street!

 

4.    Toronto is the place I came to year after year to teach whatever course suited my fancy (thank you Catherine West!). Between 2000 and 2019, I taught many Jazz Courses, World Music Courses, Music and Poetry/ Rhymes Courses and Pedagogy Courses. Alongside San Francisco, Salzburg and Madrid, this is the place where I have taught more often than any other place.

 

5.    I was teaching my Musica Poetica Course here in Toronto when I got the news that my Dad had died. We sang a song for him that day and I discovered that it doesn’t work when all try to sing and cry at the same time. 

 

And there’s more. Many people who came year after year to my various courses who became fun acquaintances and some lifelong friends. I co-taught at the Toronto Conference in 2006 with two beloved colleagues, Sofia Lopez-Ibor and Rick Layton. And now I can add teaching side-by-side with my good friend and colleague Kofi Gbolonyo at the Havergal School to the list. I listened to Oscar Peterson’s album We Get Requests in high school and passed by the line for his Memorial Service one time I visited. I listened to Glenn Gould’s recording of the Goldberg Variations and Joni Mitchell’s songs in college. All three of these musicians—representing jazz, classical and folk/rock— are connected to Toronto.

 

So despite my doubts about the delights of this fair city, it is deeply embedded in my own karmic unfolding and that is worth noting. Now that I have, it’s out into the day. 

 

Toronto Days

 

We all have our own strategies to slow Time’s swift foot, to blunt the lion’s claw of mortality. Mine is to lead multiple existences, each one a miniature life in itself that creates its own micro-rhythms and goes through the cycle of freshness and repetition that doesn’t continue long enough to get stale. Now at the end of my second of three weeks in Toronto, enmeshed in the daily rhythms that bring a groove to the day and help me feel aligned with my purpose and meaning. 

 

The day begins early, as the 6:00 am light filters into the guest room where I stay. Foregoing my morning meditation, I gather my things, enjoy a solitary Alpen breakfast with my hosts still sleeping and I’m out the door around 7:30 am, something unheard of in my San Francisco retired life.  Early morning air is both brisk and many days sprinkling or raining, more gray skies than sun. 

 

A short walk up to Yonge Street on Clarke, tap my Presto card in a machine at the bus stop and usually, a blue bus arrives within a minute or two. Off we go on Yonge Street, one of the longest (if not the longest) street in the whole world, with its chains of strip-smallish stores with signs in Arabic, Korean, Farsi and more. (Toronto remains one of the world's most international cities.) 

10 minutes to Finch Subway Station, where multiple blue buses gather on one side and red buses on the other. Out the door, past the man outside the station sleeping in his sleeping bag, head for the stairs with the throng at a rapid pace and wondering what everyone’s hurry is. Past the musician in his poncho playing panpipes or quena flute with his pre-recorded back-up band (never saw anyone give him money), past the folks lined up for morning coffee at Tim Hortons (yes, I’m in Canada), through the turnstile with another swipe of my Presto card and down the stairs where a train is always waiting to go. 

Six stops to Lawrence Ave., all predictably on their phones, no animated (or any) conversations, up to the street and the first week, took the 20 minutes walk down busy Lawrence Avenue before arriving at the school.

 

But the other day, discovered a parallel street one block to the South that is quiet and pleasing with its brick houses and front lawns, the kind of American aesthetic of mid-size houses, not two alike and the “Leave It to Beaver” mythology of families living their dreams in comfort with friendly neighbors, flowering daffodils and tulips in the yard, magnolia trees blooming, folks out walking their dogs. As I approach the school, there’s a path with trees leafing themselves into Spring and a softball field to my left, where early morning enthusiasts are out and about playing a game. The realist in me knows that houses were always peopled—and still are— with the full human drama of spousal abuse, child neglect, gay people in the closets and black people kept out of the neighborhood. But the dreamer still enjoys walking these comfortable streets and imagining people living fulfilling lives, showing up at PTA meetings, lending yard tools to each other, hosting back yard barbecues and such and some of that is as true as the others. And these days, there are people of all colors and persuasions living in some of these neighborhoods. 

 

On to the school, hello to the person who checks me in, spirited greetings to the many students I pass whose names I don’t know but am starting to recognize their faces. And off for yet another day of delight, making music, playing games, dancing, watching all those who begin “I can’t” slowly realize “I can!”, feel the group chaos of melodies not quite mastered yet and rhythms not quite in sync finally hit their groove before the hour is up and isn’t that satisfying! When you are engaged together in a worthy project, actually know (or learn) how to listen to each other, understand the deep benefits of group cohesion and let go of your “look at me!” nonsense— well, it gives a shape and meaning to the day which we all should be so lucky to experience. 

 

Mid-day is lunch with Kofi and a conversation that is dependably stimulating and thought-provoking and also the rare opportunity for us to work together with a couple of classes. Never a moment’s planning beyond “Who should go first?” and the organic, spontaneous sense of how to support and enhance each other’s work. And yesterday, our mutual astonishment that a 2^nd grader played to perfection a challenging Ghanaian bell rhythm, by herself, with the drums and with the song. And Kofi said today a 1^st grader did the same! We both were shaking our heads and reminding ourselves, “Never underestimate what kids can do.”

 

Around 2:30, it’s the reverse commute and as mentioned in a previous post, it feels good to have my exercise (usually 4 miles a day) folded into my work schedule. On the way in, planning and re-planning the days classes while on the move, on the way back, either reflecting on it or indulging in my Audible book. “Home” to log in the days classes, check my e-mail, re-connect with my hosts and either cook or help cook some pretty great dinners. 

 

So there it is, my new life, with a free weekend coming up where I’ll visit a few other folks I know here and grab some solitude time wandering about in a new neighborhood in the city. Then four more days and back home next Friday to begin my next new life— some 10 days back home before the next adventure beckons.

 

Amidst all this, I’m not oblivious to the constant assault of the cheaters and bullies and hypocrites— even micro-dosing on the news still penetrates the protective sheath of love, truth and beauty. But I simply can’t let them win and so keep my eye on the prize— the glitter in these students’ eyes when they discover both what they themselves can do and how good they all can sound together in a group. And so it goes on…