The Swan

It seems clear. Part of my calling as a music teacher, as an educator, as a human being, is to find the words that give meaning, shape, direction, affirmation, challenge, blessing to any given situation. And since the situation that most frequently offers me that platform is the Orff workshop, I often look for an opening image that I can sing back to at the end that elevates the venture just a bit beyond, “Let’s have fun and get some professional development credits at the same time!”

This year at my talk I told a folktale called The Tiger’s Whisker and the image of the woman cooking rice with meat sauce (tofu for vegetarians) each day and bringing it one step closer to the tiger to gain his trust and affection resonated throughout the course for me. The year before it was the Yeats’ poem that ends with finding the glimmering girl that called our name and picking the silver apples of the moon and golden apples of the sun.

So today as I watched three swans in the water by the Elberta Farmer’s Market, I remembered the Rilke poem about the swan (this translation by Robert Bly):

This clumsy living that moves lumbering
as if in ropes through what is not done,
reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks.

And to die, which is the letting go
of the ground we stand on and cling to every day,
is like the swan, when he nervously lets himself down
into the water, which receives him gaily
and which flows joyfully under
and after him, wave after wave,
while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm,
is pleased to be carried, each moment more fully grown,
more like a king, further and further on.

 

Now there is a resonating image. A lovely way to welcome people to our SF International Orff Course, as so many people testify how their first Orff workshop was like finding a long-lost family member. Or in this case, clumsily lumbering along on a land that didn’t wholly support or understand them and then gliding into the welcoming waters of this Course, the place they were meant to inhabit, the home where they feel wholly dignified and beautiful, admired by all us awkward land dwellers as we watch them move with such grace. 

 

The detail of “nervously lets himself down into the water” well describes that edge of anxiety as people begin this course. “What if the water won’t hold me? What if I still flop about clumsily? Am I really worthy of my innate royal status, effortlessly carried along in company with other kings and queens?” And yes, it takes some nerve and gumption and deep-seated confidence to take the first step and some courage to begin swimming. 

 

Perhaps next year, a different story or image will be needed, but I will keep this one in reserve. As might we all as we consider that the swan so beautiful in one place is so clumsy in another. A reminder for us all to find and test the water we were meant to inhabit.