Lyfting My Spirits

 

Amongst many wonderful things to say about New Orleans, the quality of conversation with the Lyft drivers is nearing the top of my list. Within 5 seconds of entering the car, there is a friendly and often hilarious rapport—especially with the women drivers—that makes me feel like I just reunited with an old friend. I don’t take Lyft a lot, but in the places I have, I’ve never found the drivers to be as consistently fun and friendly as they are here in New Orleans. I find myself happier stepping out of the car than when I stepped in—also a goal I’ve always told my music class students.

 

Tonight the driver was playing the radio fairly loud and I said, “Well, it’s a good song, but I’m not too happy about the lyrics. Are they talking about me? ” Everyone in the car looked confused, so I explained, "They're singing ‘I’m old and gone.' ” Everyone laughed and said, “No they're not! They're singing,  ‘I’m holding on!!’ Well, the fact that I heard it wrong kind of proved my point. And then I checked my hearing aids and they had gone down to zero, so I felt a little bit better.

 

I am noticing I’m referencing my age a lot. With my 75^th birthday in one month and three days, I seem to steer conversations —or comments during teaching— to legacy and the things I hope will continue. I suppose it’s natural, but maybe not the best idea. Especially when I’m at the top of my game mentally with my writing, can teach six hours a day five days straight with strong energy and am in pretty good shape after my 8-mile daily walks in England and 40-mile bike rides in the Dolomites. Yesterday, I taught some vigorous Steppin’ body percussion and today some equally aerobic Lindy Hop steps. So why obsess about numbers? 

 

I think I’ll follow Clint Eastwood’s advice. When asked what kept him so actively engaged in his 90’s, he replied, “I just don’t let the old man in.”

Good idea! And so this young man turns to sleep and eagerly awaits day six of the Jazz Course.

 

And if I need a boost to my spirits, why, Lyft awaits me! 

The Thorn and the Rose

Now into Day Four of my  Jazz Course in New Orleans, sunny, hot and not a drop of rain in sight. Every day with the 17 students a step in the cool, refreshing water of bliss. A lovely group of people, not a single one rubbing against the grain of group cohesion and the unusual situation that two are brothers, two are mother and daughter, two are husband and wife and four all finished Level III with me recently. The teaching is effortlessly doing its work of broadening the smiles the students enter class with. It feels like we’re  bringing the Ancestors into the room as the music they created that sustained them lives on in the present and will be passed to the children into the future. It certainly is bringing the people into the room into deep communion with their own musical selves in company with each other, forging friendships that often keep echoing for a long time into the future. 

All of it made yet more rich by living this beauty in the place where so much of it was forged (New Orleans!) and in company with three of my jazz bandmates who are sharing the transmission with me so that I might some day pass the baton to them. I love being with them, I love the way they're teaching, I love the way they're aware of the other students and jumping in without being asked to offer help or affirmation. And at night, the four of us often meet the students out on the town to hear some great jazz in the dozens of clubs available. After a meal at some great restaurants!

 

But there is a canker in the rose. In a soul-stirring correspondence with a new friend in Korea, she recently wrote to me: 

 

You wrote that my life seemed to be filled with “exciting, lovely, and disturbing things all at once.” I smiled when I read that, because it felt so true.And perhaps most lives are like that — full of such things all at once. Maybe the difference lies in which part lasts longer, which part we give more weight to, and how we choose to receive it.

 

This morning, I wrote this back to her:

 

Like you, my life is also exciting, lovely and disturbing all at once. Without going into details, I have a relationship with someone that we’ve been cultivating for some eight years now that has been profound and meaningful to us both. For (to me) completely inexplicable and confusing reasons, there is suddenly a change in tone from his end and despite a long conversation trying to get below the surface of what's going on, it feels like he is refusing to own his part in the dynamic and the tension continues. I find it sad, confusing and disturbing, a heavy shadow amidst the joy. So as you say, my job is to decide how much weight to give to it and choose how to receive it. At the moment, not doing well with that! 

 

But on we go, about to dance some Lindy Hop and play a Count Basie Big Band tune. Despite my hopes, all gathered in my new book, music alone never solves all. But just maybe I can dance out my disturbance and release it to the winds. Or to use the title metaphor, choose to hold the stem away from the thorn and keep smelling the rose. Wish me luck!

  

Manufacturing Joy

And so we began last night, an instant community of 22 teachers doing the work of manufacturing joy in the Jazz Factory. In our outlet, there is no assembly line doing repetitive tasks for mere efficiency and material profit grown from narrowing our full human promise. Instead there is the “Second Line” following our dancing feet to the infectious music in free-form exultation. There is no “one-size-fits-all” mass-produced garments to cloak the physical body, but instead the clothes tailored just right for our particular spiritual bodies. Each game, each song, each dance and piece of music is made to clothe our soul, to accent the curves, bring out the particular colors that make us look and feel good, warm us in times of cool weather and cool us when it’s hot. The currency at the check-out counter is the smile not faked for the camera, but radiating in each cell of the body. When the whistle blows to signal a break or the end of the day, it’s a saxophone riff, swingin’, soulful and each time different. Time in our factory is not a slow-dripping faucet to be endured, but the refreshing pool of water in which we wholly immerse ourselves, a return to the womb of comfort and belonging where al boundaries momentarily dissolve. 

 

Welcome to the opening session of The Jazz Course in New Orleans, 2026

 

Not a Good Time

There are times when it is wise to not reflect too deeply. Not take your emotional temperature and wonder why you you’re not having a happy Pepsi moment. Not reflect on whether you belong to the group of people you’ve been thrown together with. Not write a reflection on a Blog that should carry something of interest to others. 

 

I think when you wake-up at 3:30 am in Venice and go to sleep at the equivalent of 3:30 am the next day in New Orleans after traveling for 24 hours might be such a time. 

Somehow I’ve soldiered through the day, reuniting with my fellow jazz band folks and my New Orleans Jazz Course host, in spite of being given a moldy room in a funky dorm that made me feel ill within ten minutes and then insisting on a new room that wouldn’t be ready for another 45 minutes of so. And then the key not working and the too-cold air-conditioning not possible to shut off or make warmer. (This was all last night.)

Still, I managed to sleep somewhat, then this morning, get a desperate laundry going, walk to a market with the lads to go shopping, check out the teaching space, set it up and go over a few tunes, look for an open restaurant at 3:30 in the afternoon, check out my still-wet laundry in the dryer  and now an hour free before teaching my first session from 7:00 pm – 10:00pm. 

 

It's Father’s Day and not a good time to reflect on the gifts I received from my father, 19 years now gone from the planet. Not a good time to reflect on my own immeasurable joy in being a father (and grandfather) from day one to today, not admit my failings or celebrate the surprise of doing some things right. Not a good time to discuss the needed move from toxic male parenting to men truly learning how to nurture and care. Nor is it a good time to acknowledge the Summer Solstice, happening to fall on the same day.

 

So this is all I can manage at the moment. I still hope to call my oldest daughter who gave me a sweet little message and requested a talk for the occasion. (I spoke with my other daughter yesterday). 

 

So Happy Father’s Day and Happy Solstice to all! 

 

And now I need to check on the laundry.

  

The Blue Hat on the Security Belt

My ritual goodbye to a place I’ve just traveled to, while waiting for the third leg of my flight from Venice to New Orleans. So thanks to England for the public footpaths and beans for breakfast and flapjacks and a language I could mostly speak and learning how to enjoy mist, drizzle and rain while walking and the long, literary history from children’s books to adult ones that shaped my imaginative life

 

And goodbye to Italy, the ever-present pizzas and Tyrolean town names in Italian and German and the majesty of the Dolomites and the myriad bike paths through woods, fields, alongside rivers and highways. And the remarkable variety of memorable places I’ve been to in my traveling life—Venice, Verona, Florence, Rome, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Cinqueterra, Assissi, Bologna, Puglia, Sicily and now, the Dolomites. 

 

And hello to Newark Airport, some 20 minutes from my childhood home and the familiar New York skyline and Budweiser beer plant and American English and paying in dollars and some sense of returning home, even though it is frayed with the ambivalence of our worst overshadowing our best. Gifted a first-class seat for this last flight to New Orleans after awakening at 3:30 am in Venice. The miracle and privilege of flying and after a long, long, long line for connecting passengers and three more lines to show passports in Brussels, wondering if my patience for plane travel is waning. But after an exit row seat in Brussels with two-good movies and a good book and some needed sleep and this last first-class leg, maybe I’ll keep on flying and assuage my carbon footprint guilt with some 50 years of mostly being a vegetarian. 

 

Ready to put my teacher hat on again and that includes the literal blue cap that my colleague James publicly gifted me with two years ago in the NOLA Jazz Course. It would  have been lost on the Security belt without me noticing if some kind woman hadn’t alerted me that it had fallen off. Affirming my belief that angels are everywhere.

Again, Juneteenth

On this day, exactly one year ago, I posted this on Facebook.

 

“And so a farewell toast to Europe with my favorite Austrian beer. Six memorable weeks in the Dordognes, Paris, London, Oxford, the Cotswolds, Vienna, Salzburg, Linz and now the Munich Airport. A grand pleasure to meet old friends and make new ones, to bike, hike and wander and also to teach, to feel touched by the exquisite aesthetics of these European cities, the beautiful countryside, the uplift of art and architecture and cultivated cuisine, the kindness of strangers and shared concern with just about everyone I met about the unravelling of the world and the shared commitment to help stitch it back together. 

 

Tomorrow it’s off to Ghana and a different kind of uplift from extraordinary music, dance and song and the exuberant welcomes the Orff Afrique students always feel. On this Juneteenth day, the Civil War is raging again back home, but I’m here to report that healing forces are everywhere. A toast to what has been and to what will come.”

 

And here I am again on the exact same day one year later, bidding farewell to a marvelous four weeks in London, the Yorkshire Dales, the Dolomites, now on the way to my Jazz Course in New Orleans and “a different kind of uplift from extraordinary music, dance and song.” The Civil War still raging as before, if not more so, and the healing forces still at work trying to contain and ultimately oust the traitors to democracy, intelligence and just plain human decency. Amidst all the beauty that walked and rode with me through each day here in Europe, that lurking shadow is never far away. 

 

So on this Juneteenth day commemorating the day when Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas at the end of the American Civil War in 1865 (over 160 years ago!), let’s re-commit to actually ending the Civil War. To emancipate our enslavement to injustice, immorality, ignorance, greed and hatred. To walk together on this great, green earth in awe of its natural beauty and our own natural beauty, toasting to friends with an end-of-a-delicious-meal limoncello gifted by a smiling waiter.

Limoncello Toast

And so we come to the end. Our last day of biking, 45 miles in relentless hot sun with 30 seconds of relief in a cool, cool tunnel. Alongside the river, next to the freeway, up into the hills, gravel paths through the woods, beauty before us, beauty behind us, beauty all around us. Back to the same hotel in Toblauch where we started the ride and a final group meal at the same restaurant we had eaten at with a salad bar and of course, 25 different kinds of pizza. A ritual appreciation of each person’s unique contribution to the group venture, recalling some fun and memorable moments—law-abiding Heide ignoring a pedestrian red light, watching the Spurs-Knicks highlights with Gerri and Dennis, Pam dancing with a waiter while I played jazz piano, Terry, Karen and I discovering those three little villages with astounding murals. Then came the phones-out photo-sharing options and a final limoncello toast to what has mostly been a lovely 10 days together.

 

Early this morning, Terry got up to take a train to meet two friends for four more days in this area, Heide took a train to return to her home in Germany, the rest of us have a final day of hanging out, strolling about until the 4 o’clock bus takes us to the airport hotel and we go to the airport the next morning. Karen to San Francisco, Pam to Michigan, Gerri and Dennis to their daughter’s house in Brooklyn, me to New Orleans to begin teaching my Jazz Course. 

At dinner, we also talked about possible places for a next-year’s bike trip, from Albania to New Zealand to Portugal-Spain, so even with two of us about to turn 80 this year and the youngest at 72, we’re still hoping for more of the same. But always looking at “how can we make this even better?,” the group agreed on two things and I have one more of my own.

 

1)   This was the most rigorous ride with three days of 40, 45 and 50 mile rides. Good for the marathon body, but most agreed that distances should be shorter. Especially so we can relax about getting to the hotel by dinner and take some more leisurely time along the way to visit little sites or stop to take photos and identify—and smell—the flowers.

 

2)   Related to that, we agreed without much thought or discussion to not feel rushed in the morning. Our bags always had to be down to the desk by 9:00 am, but we often didn’t leave until 9:30 or 10:00. On the last day, we left at 9:00 and the quality of the early morning air and the sun not yet blazing hot made me think, “Why not leave earlier each day? 7:30 or 8:00, so we can enjoy that morning freshness and relax about the time. Save our “leisure time” for an afternoon at the hotel after we arrive." Most agreed that would have been a good idea.

 

3)   My suggestion, which I would need agreement with beforehand, is to consciously put the damn phones away more. One of our group is seriously addicted and hardly ever had a moment (except riding) when his head was not down looking at the phone and it infected the whole group, I believe. So at least some phoneless meals and again, more thought to asking people for directions rather than depend on Google maps. 

 

Thanks to my wife for beginning this way of being in the world. She gave herself a retirement gift in the Spring of 2017 with her first trip down the Danube to Vienna, then again in 2018 with a Bavarian excursion. I joined her in 2019 in Sweden, the pandemic closed it all down for two years and in 2022, I joined again for a most memorable trip to Puglia, Italy. 2023 I was busy and she went to the Netherlands, 2024 was Slovenia, 2025 was the Dordognes in France and this, my 5^th, was, of course, the Dolomites. Karen is the only one of the group has done all eight, but Terry, Gerri, Dennis and I, alongside other friends who have done three or four, make up the groups that have ranged from four to eight people. I’ve loved traveling throughout Europe (indeed the world) following the opportunities for teaching Orff workshops, but these rides bring me into territory I never would have explored. And gratefully so. 

 

So the day before us, a walk planned to the hut where Gustav Mahler composed and one last day surrounded by these marvelous mountains. I raise my limoncello drink to toast to it all.