I’m no biologist, but I have this image of what constitutes
a healthy pond of water. I imagine it being fed by a mountain spring at one end
with an outlet feeding into the waters further down the mountain on its way to
the ocean. That movement insures a constant cleansing and refreshing, the flow
of a healthy organism. If the spring were to be cut off, no new waters could
enter and the pond would eventually drain itself and disappear. If there were
no outlet, it would back up and overflow. If both ends were closed, it would
begin to stagnate. And as any Biology 101 class will tell you, stagnant water
becomes a breeding ground for mosquitoes and various bacteria and parasites
dangerous to our health.
I’ve just returned from two most glorious days in the Carmel
Valley with some 80 beautiful souls gathering to partake of the theme of Jazz
and Orff Schulwerk: Roots and Branches. A more harmonious, spirit-lifting,
soul-stirring time would be hard to imagine. As a Conference host and teacher,
I opened on Friday night with the old children’s song:
“Old Man Mosie, sick in the head, called for the doctor
and the doctor said.
‘ Please step forward, turn around, do the Hokey-Pokey
and get out of town!’”
I congratulated everyone on having the good sense to listen
to their inner doctor and get out of town to refresh themselves. I invited them
to step forward out of their known comfort zone, turn around to see the things
that we miss when we habitually look in one direction only, get up and
dance—after all, the Hokey Pokey is really what it’s all about!
I believe that the ensuing two days was indeed just what the
doctor ordered and what magnificent doctors there were! My fellow teachers
Linda Tillery, Marty Wehner, Derique McGee, Sofia Lopez-Ibor, Connie Doolan,
Jackie Rago (and informally, my Ghanaian xylophone teacher S.K. Kakraba Lobi, pictured above)
each brought the gifts from their little corner of creation to the enthusiastic
participants with the full force of their life’s work and delivered it with
passion, clarity and dedication to passing on the good news.
The Saturday night Untalent Show was as remarkable a
testament to the depth and breadth of human possibility as one could ever hope
to see, opening with my Pentatonics Jazz Band (Joshi Marshall, Sam Heminger,
Micah McClain, Marty Wehner, Connie Doolan, myself and guest artist Zack
Pitt-Smith) and closing with me playing solo piano with lights off and everyone
lying down on the floor. In-between were some 40 to 50 performers astounding us
with their virtuosity, surprising us with their quirky creativity, tickling our
funny bone with their humor and touching our heart with their sincerity.
Sunday morning we completed the workshop offerings and that
gathered in the barn theater for the closing. After a short Ghana xylophone
piece adapted for Orff instruments, an 80-person band playing the catchy tune Sway
and a Hambone jam, we offered the well-deserved thanks to all who had made this
possible—my fellow conference chairs Jeannie McKenzie and Bee Tee, Hidden Valley director Peter Meckel, the cooks and many more— and then I said some final words.
Here is where I invoked the image of the living pond and the
way our time together had gotten the waters swirling and churning. Look up
stagnant in the dictionary and you see descriptions like this: “Not moving or
flowing. Foul or stale from standing. Showing little or no sign of activity or
advancement; not developing or progressing; inactive; lacking vitality,
sluggish or dull.” You could feel in every minute of the weekend how our
vitality had been strengthened and renewed, our progress jump-started, our
stuck parts unglued and moving again. We had swum together in the refreshing
waters of the living pond, cleansed ourselves in its healing waters, splashed
around together going nowhere in full delight in the play of it all. A present
filled with the presence of the past has a different weight and texture to it,
with more vibrant and cleansing water in its pond and I believe we all felt
that.
But as if that weren’t enough, there was something else that
had happened there. Those mountain springs were the voice of the ancestors, the
griefs and exultations, triumphs and failures of the past feeding into the pond
of our present moment. By singing their songs and dancing their dances and
playing their music, we had brought the ancestors into the room to witness it
and encourage us. Because all of this joyful music came from the depths of
human depravity, ignorance, hatred and greed in the form of the slave trade, we
were helping to heal the hurts by telling the stories of those who have come
before, from Avon Gillespie to Dizzy Gillespie, from Bessie Smith to Bessie
Jones, from Linda Tillery’s Uncle Tom to Tom Jobim.
And then here we all were as teachers, dedicating our lives to
the future by meeting the children we teach in the present. I showed a picture
of my granddaughter Zadie and thanked everyone for doing the work to help clear
her future path as a mixed-race person. And, of course, to help create the future all children
deserve. Our living pond, fed from the past, was heading toward the outlet of
the future, flowing to the ocean were we will all meet again, past, present and
future dissolved in its vast waters.
The room was quiet in only the way that rooms get quiet when
an image takes hold and gives language to our deepest hopes and possibilities.
The springs of the past feeding into the refreshing waters of the present
leading to a more loving and needed future. That image put the experience of a
bunch of folks having a romping good time together into a higher perspective,
granted a dignity and importance to the work far beyond “party!”
Then from the words and the image back to jumping back into
the pond as Linda led us to a sung and danced finale that made Mardi Gras seem
like a dull church service. My deepest gratitude to all who made this possible.
Louis said it all: “It’s a wonderful world.”