Out of the Closets

For my 60^th birthday (end of my fifth cycle of twelve), I rented a church to throw myself a party. Besides beings a lovely space, it was where my daughters gave their piano recitals and where a performing Orff group I helped start named Xephyr often performed. I hired the school cook to cater it and invited four Orff teachers I had trained to play jazz for the occasion, the group that became Doug Goodkin & the Pentatonics. I also set aside a time to read some of my own poetry that I had never shared in public. 

 

It was after that party that I dared speak the four words I had never felt wholly confident to announce in public: “I am a musician.” There was a lot in my biography to back that up. Started taking organ lessons at 6 years old, added piano at 8, quit both formally at 13, but continued to play Bach on the organ and Beethoven on the piano on my own. I took enough music classes in college to minor in Music, began my first forays into ragtime and jazz piano, sang in the Renaissance Choir that toured Europe. In my first decade in San Francisco, I rented a piano for my apartment, took some lessons with jazz pianist Art Lande, taught some jazz piano at The Community Music Center, spent six summers at Cazadero music Camp where I learned a bit of gamelan, samba, Ghanaian drumming and more. I got a job teaching music at The SF School and taught myself enough guitar, banjo, recorder, xylophones to keep up with the kids. While continuing to work on jazz piano on my own at home. And playing Irish tinwhistle with my brother-in-law Jim. I also took a year’s trip around the world that included an intensive study of the maddalam drum with Kalamandalam Narayana in the state of Kerala, India.

 

The next decade or so included learning Body Music with Keith Terry, Philippine kulintang music with Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo, joining Balinese gamelan Sekar Jaya, studying Bulgarian bagpipe with Hector Bezanis, Middle Eastern drumming with Mary Ellen Donald. I performed once or twice a year with some Cazadero friends at the Community Music Center, a combination of standard jazz and my own compositions. I also performed with the above-mentioned group Xephyr, combining singing, Orff instruments, movement and drama in our original collective compositions. All the while continuing to play piano at home. And making music every day with the kids at school. 

 

In the last twenty years or so, I performed with the SF School kids and my colleagues James and Sofia in some five different World music Festivals featuring master musicians from North and South India, Tibet, Kirghizstan, China, Korea, Burkina Faso, Venezuela and more. I studied Ghanaian xylophone (gyil) with SK Kakraba and Ghanaian Ewe drumming and dance with Kofi Gbolonyo. I began performing with the above-mentioned Pentatonics group, including recording a CD at the prestigious Fantasy Records. I played piano once a week at the Jewish Home for the Aged and set myself a project of memorizing some 300 Jazz Standards. Everywhere I travel, I consciously seek out a jam session in a local club and have sat in in places like Bangkok, Shanghai, Ourense (Spain), Hobart (Tasmania), Christchurch (New Zealand), Salzburg, Toronto and more. In my retirement, the piano in my home sings out daily with Bach, Chopin, Mozart, Debussy, Ravel and more joining the jazz improvisations. 

 

Combined with collecting some 1,000 records (stored in my basement) and another 1800 CD’s, all of which I’ve actually listened to, I’d say that’s a lot of music. Why would I ever hesitate to call myself a musician?

 

It was reading Howard Gardner’s book on Multiple Intelligences that made me realize that one way to recognize your preferred intelligence is to note what goes on in your head when you’re not consciously thinking. While the visual artist may be imagining shapes and colors, the mathematician noting patterns and formulas, the poet filled with artful phrases that seem to arrive on their own, the musician has songs and notes and rhythms constantly circulating. Bobby McFerrin was a parent at The SF School and I sometimes sat next to him at parent meetings, noticing how he seemed to be constantly singing inside and physically reacting accordingly. When he wrote the song, “I’m My Own Walkman,” he was simply sharing his experience.

That’s when I realized I’m not a musician. I think in words more than notes, suggesting that the linguistic intelligence is at the forefront. And indeed, as my ten books, numerous articles, 50 years of journals, 12 years of this blog can testify, I’ve certainly paid my dues in this field. Of course, none of this means that my musicianship is a lie, but it does explain why I’ve been reluctant to wholly claim it.

 

Meanwhile, before reading my poems at that 60^th birthday, I prefaced it by saying, “I’m not a poet, but I have written some poems over the years” before sharing it. At the end of the party, one person came up to me and said, “You lied to us.” Baffled, I asked him to explain. “You said you weren’t a poet.” Boom! That was the first time anyone had suggested I had something to offer in these poems I kept in the metaphorical closet. Twelve years later, I still haven’t claimed myself as a poet. I can say with some confidence I’m an essayist, certainly not a novelist, but perhaps a part-time poet? I certainly have thought about collecting my work ranging from haiku to parodies to rhymed verse to free verse and publishing them in some form or another. That would take a bold confidence that has not yet quite arrived. But saying this all out loud is a first step.

 

And so to come out of these two closets, I hereby announce:

 

I am a musician.

 

I am a poet.

 

(Well, sort of.)