Xephyr and Zephyr

Back in another lifetime, I helped start an adult Orff performing group called Xephyr. We decided that the way we taught and helped kids create, improvise and compose was too good to just be limited to kids and decided to treat ourselves as teacher/artists to the same processes. The first meeting was a freewheeling one-hour long improvisation involving body percussion, vocal percussion, improvised singing and movement, getting sound of any objects in the room. We six Orff teachers listened, responded, responded to the responses and finally the experiment came to its own conclusion. We then sat down and talked about which parts were interesting and might be developed further. And then we did. Eventually creating collective multi-media compositions that formed into our first public show. 

 

Why "Xephyr"? Because our first meeting in 1992 took place in the Zephyr Café. We liked the image of the West wind blowing a fresh breeze both into the Orff world and the performance world and into our own creative lives. We took it one step further by changing the first letter, with the X doubling as a unique spelling and a reference to the xylophone.

 

We met every Thursday night for some fourteen years.  And also continued to perform, both in rented spaces in San Francisco and at Orff gatherings in Carmel Valley, Dallas, St. Paul, Seattle, Phoenix, Long Beach and Salzburg, Austria. Our last show was in Salzburg in 2006 (the first had been in 1995, a second in 2000) and then we formally disbanded. 

 

Why am I thinking about this now? Because Spring has come with a vengeance to San Francisco. Our four seasons are simple—Summer/ fog, Fall/ sun, Winter/ rain, Spring/ wind. And windy it was today, around 23 mph to be exact. Not pleasant for walking and terrible for bike riding. Especially heading west. 

In the old Greek myths, Boreas is the North Wind, icy and wild and tearing up trees and piling up waves. Notus is the South Wind, so heavy with moisture that water drips from his tangled beard and he spreads a leaden fog over land and sea. Eurus is the East Wind and is considered unimportant and non-descript. But Zephyr, the West Wind, is the gentlest of them of all, sweeping the sky clear of clouds and making all of nature smile. *

 

Maybe in Greece, but not in San Francisco!

 

·       These descriptions from D-Aulaiers’ Book of Greek Myths.  

Elders and Youth

Michael Meade, that wise elder constantly looking at which story we’re living out both personally and culturally, had this to say in his recent Podcast (#380):

 

Traditional tales from many cultures show how youth and elders are opposite sides of a psychic pairing in which each is necessary to understand the other. Despite cultural gaps between them, youth and elders are secretly connected, and each holds an essential piece of the human inheritance. The eternal youth in each soul carries the original dream of our life, while the old sage in each heart has the wisdom needed to find and follow paths of meaning and purpose.

Beautiful. An important insight as to why I feel compelled to still teach young people, both personally energized by their exuberant spirit and their ability to care and giving something in return as I throw out the breadcrumbs that lead them to “paths of meaning and purpose.” After this week of taking care of business— money, dentist, doctors and such—I’ll return next week to a local school helping them prepare for their Spring Concert. I can live an okay life without the constant presence of children, but truth be told, it feels like some colors are missing from my palette when I do. 

 

Meade goes on later to hit another bullseye in the target explaining what feels important to me and why:

 

In traditional cultures, elders do not simply exercise power and authority, but rather are expected to remember the essential values and the enduring truths that people keep forgetting. Genuine elders lead by remembering further back than others as well as by seeing more clearly ahead. They serve as seers who can see behind and beyond the politics of the day and perceive ways to bring people together and plant seeds for a meaningful future. In traditional cultures, elders were considered to be a valuable resource without whose guidance whole societies could lose their way.

 

Boom! That was so clearly my role in The San Francisco School, standing up for the character of the school that I didn’t create, but lived out and enlarged and articulated for over four decades. Values the new admin folks who took over the last 15 years didn’t clearly understand and the school community (though not the veteran teachers) was on the cusp of forgetting. I paid a high price for my self-appointed role of “Keeper of Community,” suspended twice and put on probation for a year for the audacity to speak out. But once I more clearly understand that these were not personal or political issues (though that leaked in, as they do), but matters of principle that I was defending, I could wear those suspensions as badges of honor. 

 

“Remembering further back than others” particularly struck a bell as time and again, I both remembered and told the stories of “how it used to be.” Always acknowledging that it wasn’t naively “the good ole days,” that in many ways that I could both count and name, the school continued to evolve and get better. But without that clear sense of the essential unwritten values, ideals and ethics that lay behind each decision, things could run aground. 

There are new people steering the ship since I left and they seem to be somewhat righting the course and that is a great pleasure to witness. Meanwhile, I have gone on to other voyages and am independently continuing that work “to bring people together and plant seeds for a meaningful future.” 

 

Without having to go to a single staff meeting. Yeah! 

Plain Talk

I stumbled on a file card where I had scribbled advice for my Level III students after their Practicum Teach. Part of graduating from our summer Orff Certification Course involves teaching a 15-minute lesson drawing from a piece in one of  Volumes of Music For Children that Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman wrote. I said “advice” above and it could be, but in reality it was a summary of how they actually taught that was so clearly effective. I can give them this list before they teach, but it wouldn’t mean the same as modeling the list in my own teaching with them, naming what seems to make each activity both pleasurable and effective and then letting them loose to teach in their own voice, their own style. The quality of the teaching showed that they got the memo and this summary list was both an affirmation and a reminder.

 

What I like about it is its simplicity, the way it plainly says what it means without spilling into the fancy educational jargon (“the zone of proximal development and scaffolding theory”). I’ve often thought about publishing a small book with these kind of simple suggestions that actually can change your teaching forever— and for the better. Though aimed at Orff Schulwerk music and movement teachers, these suggestions apply to all of teaching. 

 

Here's the list:

·      Have fun. 

·      Teach in your character.

·      Teach from your culture.

·      Begin in the body and voice.

·      Keep the engine running.

·      Leave space for the student’s creative response— you give a ping, they give a pong and the game is on!

·      Have fun.

·      Adapt, change, modify, add, subtract what’s on the page.

·      Make yourself memorable. Make the class memorable. Make the students’ participation memorable. 

·      Have fun. 

 

Conditions for Change

Amidst the photos of breakfast and cute cat videos, sometimes something profound sneaks into Facebook. Like this:

 

What inspires people to change?

 

1.    When they hurt enough that they have to. 

2.     When they see enough that they are inspired to. 

3.   When they learn enough and they want to. 

4.   And when they receive enough and are able to.

 

Yes, yes and again, yes. Life takes care of number one, but education is in charge of the next three. 

 

2.    The teacher is the model for an authentic life—or at least an embodiment of their particular subject that inspires and motivates. I’m thinking of my daughter’s 7^th grade science teacher who had a peculiar passion for the dung beetle and infected his students with his enthusiasm. 

 

Likewise the extraordinary authors, artists, athletes, warriors for social justice who we see whose very accomplishment sends us back to the practice room with renewed vigor and determination. 

 

3.    The teacher is the model, but also the messenger offering the information and knowledge needed to give the students what they need to know to effect change, both in themselves and the world at large. As I say to the young readers of my Jazz, Joy & Justice book, “Now that you know these stories that have been ignored or purposefully hidden, what will you do with this information?”

 

4.    When the teacher looks for the hidden talents and particular genius of each child taught, they offer a strength and courage far beyond mere information. They offer a kind of blessing that helps the students understand that they are worthy and capable and powerful enough to meet the challenges of change. 

 

And then back to number one. All the ways all of us have fallen short, have failed to meet our promise, have given in to brainwashing, addiction, distraction, fitting in at the price of our authentic self, accepted other’s abuse, accepted our own self-abuse— all of these are potential steps to our own renewal when we finally hit rock-bottom and decide “Enough!” No other place to go then up the golden staircase and yes, it’s hard, but nothing’s harder then living in perpetual hurt. 

 

Change in ourselves and change in the greater world are both intimately connected and deeply needed. And so we would do well to consider the above, to reflect on what inspires change and begin to walk towards our better selves. 

 

Thanks to the person who posted this. 

Honoring the Departed

It has been a particularly brutal few months, with some eight people I knew fairly well going on to the Other World. Seems I hear about someone who died or who is seriously ill most every week. Makes sense as the price one pays for longevity— the people you know disappearing like an ongoing game of musical chairs and never knowing who’s next. 

 

I’ve been fortunate to have a life relatively sheltered from death. I believe the first person I knew who left was my grandmother when I was perhaps 8 years old and then my grandfather when I was 12. I never went to a funeral or memorial service until I was 28 or so, when a preschooler I taught had a tragic accident in a hot tub. There were a few big losses like my beloved Orff teacher Avon dying at a too-young 51, me 39 at the time. A suicide from one of my Men’s Group members when I turned 50. Then my parents and my wife’s parents and so on. You know the list. 

 

Some ten years ago, I decided to try to keep track of the people I knew personally who had passed on, partly for a little Day of the Dead project I devised for myself. I divided the list into family, friends, neighbors, people from the school where I worked for so long, people from the Orff world, old classmates from my high school and college. Between working at that school and teaching here, there and everywhere in the Orff world, I know a lot of people and these two lists were the longest of them all— some 65 from school and 55 from the Orff Community. Altogether, there are some 200 people on the list and every November, I read through it again and spend some time remembering them all. 

 

Does anybody else do this? Just curious. If indeed you believe the Ancestors are always with us and through our remembrance, we keep them at least somewhat alive, then it seems like a good idea. Just a thought to consider.

 

As you might guess, it’s not a list I’m happy to see grow, but of course, it will. Meanwhile, may we all take good care of ourselves as best we can. 

  

Happy Earth Day!

I’m looking forward to the day when some generation would look at this little “rap” I composed in 1984 and wonder, “What the heck was that about? Of course we take care of our precious little planet!”

 

Well, certainly not in my lifetime. But to help nudge us toward that imagined distant day, sing this with your kids today or your neighbors or the people at your workplace. 

 

No Time for Singing

The gap between what is and what could and should be yawned yet wider yesterday. My wife and I had dinner at some ex-neighbor’s house last night, a couple with two girls and in many ways—as they themselves put it— an earlier version of ourselves. We share the experience of two daughters, having lived on 2^nd Avenue (they moved just a 10-minute walk away), have a mutual love and passion for Golden Gate Park (she wrote a kid’s book about the ABC’s of Golden Gate Park and was instrumental in keeping the JFK road car-free), enjoying camping with the family and share a commitment to raise kids as appliance-free-as possible. This was the family that suggested the pandemic neighborhood sing I led and continue to do four years later every few months. 

Their children, now in 2^nd and 5^th grade, go to a lovely alternative public school and some two years ago, I suggested I come to do guest singing in their daughter’s classes. I did and after the 5^th grade class, I got this note from this student that I had never met before and only spent that 30 minutes singing with. 

Of course, that note is not about me, but translates to: “Thanks for giving me something that I needed that made me so happy.”

 

But the last time I was scheduled to sing, the 5^th grade teacher—herself very enthusiastic about my visits and supportive— said that she couldn’t take 30 minutes out of her day because the kids had state tests coming up. Last night, I again suggested to my friends that I could sing tomorrow on Earth Day and was told that again, there was testing and the teacher was stressed out to the maximum and in fact, there wasn’t 30 minutes to spare anytime between now and the end of school. 

 

There you have it. I’m reminded of the joke of the pious man who came every day to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem three times a day for 45 years to pray. When asked what he prayed about, he replied: “That all religions finally understand that they have different names for the same God, that children respect their parents, that parents create a loving home for their children, that we humans stop fouling our environmental nest, that we stop telling the stories that keep the “isms” alive, etc.” When asked how it felt to be praying for those same things over all those years, he was unequivocal:

 

“Like I’m talking to a fuckin’ wall!”

 

All these posts about the schools we could have and should have and for what? This is a progressive school in San Francisco! And the teacher feels under so much pressure she can’t give the kids a 30-minute respite to sing joyfully. (Which, by the way, would be a brilliant strategy to re-charge their system and help prepare them to take any test the state throws their way.) It’s extraordinary to think that the monster of “testing” is still loose in the land, that ferocious beast that has absolutely nothing to do with children learning what they need to know in the way they need to learn it and know it. This good teacher suffering from stress because of people in the state who live and work far away from her children and know nothing about who they are and what they need and care nothing about either— well, that’s not healthy. She will pass that stress on to the kids, who did nothing to deserve it and the stressed kids will bring their anxiety back into their homes and again, it’s a Lose-Lose-Lose situation that we keep doing—for what, exactly?

 

And in case you’re not up on the current research, read Gabor Mate’s The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture to look at the links between chronic stress and autoimmune diseases, depression, inflammation, cancer, diabetes, heart disease and yet more. But we don’t need medical research to tell us that stress debilitates us, leads us into a state of distress, feeds our anxiety, cripples our sense of self-worth and effective functioning. In short, the polar opposite of what singing together offers us.

 

No time to sing? Think again.