Bohemian Hippy from Ohio

You often never know how your life affects others. But sometimes they tell you. In response to a Facebook post of mine, a former student wrote the testimony below. I only worked with her a few years in the mid-80’s and what I mostly remember is encouraging her to play saxophone on a Latin jazz piece I taught called Listen Here. She did and it’s recorded for posterity on a cassette tape of the same title. We didn’t keep in touch after she left, though I believe I saw her again briefly in 2006 at the 40^thAnniversary of the school party. Compared to other students I taught for a longer time and kept in touch with, it’s a bit surprising to read about the impact of our brief path-crossing. But of course, it’s exactly the kind of thing that makes any teacher feel that the long hours, low pay and lack of recognition from our confused culture was more than worth the effort. And note that her testimony is as much about the power of music as it is about us. Thank you, Marea Master, for your words and your work and your life and your beautiful Soul. (For the record, I'm from New Jersey, but she remembered that I went to Antioch College in Ohio.)

The biggest disruption in my life was when I left The San Francisco School and entered the public school system in seventh grade. I missed you most of all Doug. It wasn't long before I could no longer hear the music inside of me. It was muffled from all of the chaos in my life. 

 

I don’t know if it is by some coincidence, however, just yesterday I was thinking long and hard about my life, and where I am today. My thoughts were all about the music inside of me, the healing vibration of my human connectedness. I was thinking about how I am so incredibly blessed to have come back to myself. Those beginning years of my life, playing music with you, saved me. I’m no trained musician by any stretch of the imagination, I don’t have an instrument that I’ve mastered, but I understand the healing vibration of music. I learned it’s language from you. That’s why I have a profound connection to humanity. my music, is translated through my work as a social worker. 

 

Doug, you change the world by giving the gift of music to children. when I close my eyes, my pulse is a djembe drum the isn’t restricted by matter. It is this energy that flows right into every living thing around me. I hear the marimba playing when I smile. I see the colors of every Thelonious Monk note when I love. In my work, I get to love on people that the world has marginalized, who have found themselves broken because the music inside of them has been tuned out by the chaos. To me, they just need a little help transposing the notes of the chaos. I get to let them know, that I see them, that I hear them and that they are beautiful music notes in this bitter sweet symphony of life. The profound and incredible symphony of humanity is beyond any words that I have. 

 

If only every child was able to have a San Francisco School education. I have never had the access of what it would take for my children and grandchildren to have the actual experience of the San Francisco school and I see the impacts in so many ways. However, they get pieces of it when I give them the very best parts of me. I don’t think I’d be able to hear the symphony at all had it not been for my dear music teacher. 

 

The world that I imagine, is a world where all children, no matter where they are or what circumstances they have been born into, will have a San Francisco School to go to. Can you truly imagine what the world could be like if that were to happen? I see the endless potential we have because I hear the symphony. And so, I will continue to live reimagining the world I hope for children. I love you Doug, profoundly and without limitation. My life is just one of countless others that you have touched. There is magic in your soul. You are the greatest bohemian hippie from Ohio who has spread love hitchhiking around the world sharing his music with everyone he touches that I have ever known.