Bird Wisdom.

Sitting on a park bench today, I had the wisdom to turn off my Audible story and pay attention to the surroundings. 

 

Okay, I just lied. I actually finished my story about mayhem and murder and other delights of the human species and didn’t have another recorded story in the pipeline. But still it was a good idea to just sit for a bit and observe.

 

First I noticed a tapping sound in the branches above me and lo and behold, it was a small woodpecker searching for its lunch in full woodpecker style. Then there were all the small chickadees (I think—I’m no birder) flitting around from tree to tree and then down to the ground pecking away to find their lunch. I say lunch, but as far as I can tell, most birds spend the entire day foraging for food. 

 

So in those ten minutes or so of watching and listening, I came away with four words of wisdom from these fellow creatures that is as good advice as any that I might read in a book. 

 

“Find food. Sing. Fly.”

 

That about sums it up. 

  

The Stories They Tell

Five days ago, we took the live Norfolk pine from our deck into the house and strung it with lights. Two days later, we added the stringed beads, the gold and silver balls and the delicate baubles from our childhood packed in a small green box. Last night, we completed the tree decoration with the ornaments collected in 45 years of sharing life together. It was a progressive decoration project and a fun way to do it.

 

So now the tree is complete, adorned with the carefully-collected decorations that like wrinkles on the face (but a bit more attractive) tell a story of our life. Amazing that the thin glass ornaments that hung over 70 years ago on my Christmas tree in Roselle, New Jersey, are still intact (minus one Silent Night ornament my wife dropped and broke several years ago). Then there are the first ornaments we bought as a married couple, for 75 cents at Cost Plus. Out from the box came baby’s first Christmas, gift ornaments from old neighbors Peggy and Richard long gone from this world, a few from school parents expressing appreciation, a couple our older kids gave us as stocking stuffers. As we take each one out of the box, we pause and remember the stories they tell. 

 

To celebrate the completion of the decoration project, we treated ourselves to a viewing of Christmas in Connecticut  with Barbara Stanwyck. Easy to scoff at the old-fashioned men-women roles, but in truth, they were nuanced and shaded and the characters had a depth distinct from their modern Hollywood versions. Always a sucker for the old black-and-white films, the opening music, the credits that almost always include “costumes by Edith Head,” I could feel myself almost longing for those innocent, more unified times. 

Of course, they were anything but simple and certainly not unified when it came to racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny and beyond. But the combination of the films and music that defined American culture, the ethos that It’s a Wonderful Life when the greedy capitalist bastards like Potter are defeated by the good-hearted neighbors, the sense of working together and uniting against common enemies (the above film during World War II) feels so much more appealing than our current deep divisions, the clown-cars careening us towards oblivion, the superficial and musically dubious pop culture, the explosion of super-hero and violent films dominating the few movie theaters left standing.

 

Meanwhile, our tree lights up the room and stands as the testimony of the wonderful life we have lived. It evokes the presence of all those now gone whose prints are on these ornaments. It brings beauty into the home and revives the perpetual promise of the elusive peace the carols sing out. For a few weeks a year, there is a special magic in the air and don’t we all need it. Then the boxes will be re-packed and brought down to the basement, the tree returned to the deck, the colored lights sparkling throughout the city dismantled and we’ll be back to business as usual. 

 

But for now, the tree glistens, a living testimony and memorable gathering of our collective stories as we prepare to turn the page to the next chapter. 

 

35 Years

 

Monday night was our annual Men’s Group dinner out. Except that we had it “in” instead. We have enjoyed the decades of getting out into the world to different restaurants every December and the last eight or so at Zazie’s Restaurant on Cole Street, always on Tuesday when they offer a no-corkage fee. But the combination of the still-rising extravagant bill for food that is not wholly fabulous for this vegetarian and a noise level increasingly difficult to navigate, I suggested a new idea: a potluck at one of our houses. It was enthusiastically received and offered an extra perk as the member who hosted it recently split up with his partner and was feeling lonely in his large empty house. So we filled it with our good cheer and saved hundreds of dollars at the same time. With better food, I might add—these men are all good cooks!

 

“The good cheer” was not as cheerful as it might be, as now about to begin our 36^th year together, our check-ins almost always include the “organ-recital” of our declining physical bodies. I’m the youngest at 73 and the oldest member is 84 and for all practical purposes, not an active member of the group, living now in a home in Marin County in his 8^th year of Parkinsons. (Needless to say, he didn’t attend the dinner.) Another (82) was getting a new stint in his heart, I reported on my wisdom tooth extraction and Vestibular Hypo-function situation, another is having knee issues and so it goes. 

Then there were the reports of sadness from the relationship break-up, the daily visits with a 102-year-old neighbor who wants to die but can’t, the darkness of the season, the darkness of the political landscape (a topic we expressly forbid for the evening) and so on. 

 

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. There were the reports of visiting grandchildren, the progress on an addition to a house that will serve as a “retirement home” as one of the kids will take over the main house, the upcoming visit to Germany to visit a daughter and grandson. There were some genuine moments of laughter, helped by good wine and cognac and at the end, I suggested people share a favorite Holiday memory and there were some sweet and poignant stories. 

 

So things have changed since we began all those years back sharing the trials and tribulations of what it means to be a man. We reflected on how we have been wounded by the Patriarchy, how we have refused some of it and been caught by some of it. Alongside the human tragedy and comedy of our work, our marriages, our successes, our failures, our anxieties, our pleasures. Nine straight middle-class white men gathering every two weeks to try to share a bit deeper than the sports talk at the bar. We started in 1990 with ten of us, in the next decade, three dropped out and one committed suicide, around 2002 two “new” men joined and just last year, another man who we all had known joined. 

 

And so we go on. We have failed miserably to dismantle toxic masculinity in the world but have made sincere efforts to heal some of it in ourselves. The sheer longevity is reason enough for celebration and just to sit in a room with other men with the expectation that we will talk about things and in ways our gender is not trained in is a victory of sorts. We are painfully aware of the losses that lie ahead and make jokes about who will be the last man standing, but meanwhile, here we are, still upright and breathing. 

 

On to year 36!

Wedding Night

In the numerous multi-cultural festivities of December—Buddha’s Enlightenment Day (Dec. 8^th), Virgin of Guadalupe (Dec. 12^th), Santa Lucia Day (Dec. 13^th), Winter Solstice (Dec. 21^st), Christmas (Dec. 25^th), Hanukkah (moveable), Kwanzaa (Dec. 26^th), there is one most Americans don’t know about and it is today, December 17^th, the night that the Persian/Turkish Medieval poet Rumi died and united with his Beloved. He called his death his “Wedding Night” and that is still how it is referred to today. The Sufi sect of Islam, whose “whirling dervish meditative dance” was inspired by Rumi pay particular attention to this Holiday. 

 

Thanks to English translations by Robert Bly, John Moyne and especially Coleman Barks, Rumi’s poetry has become somewhat known to seekers worldwide. If you’re looking for a gift for your literate friends this Holiday Season, may I recommend Coleman Barks The Essential Rumi? Meanwhile, two short poems (from over a thousand quatrains) to introduce him to folks who might not know his work. (Enjoy the contradiction that Rumi suggests you buy your friend a musical instrument instead!)

 

            NO. 89

        Today like every other day we wake up empty

       and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study

        and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument instead. 

      

      Let the beauty we love be what we do.

      There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

 

 

 

     NO. 1504

   Do not sit with a sad friend.

   When you go to a garden,

   Do you look at thorns or flowers?

   Spend more time with roses and jasmine. 

Practice the Ending First

In a recent class with 7^th graders, I began teaching a piece by teaching the ending first.  I shared this strategy with them as a way to move into more familiar territory when learning a piece. An interesting contrast to mastering the first part and then moving into the unknown. The latter a  more common practice, to be sure, but the other is an interesting variation. 

 

And then thinking the way I do, I wondered if this strategy could be applied to living a life. “Moving into the unknown” pretty much describes how we live our life and makes sense, as the future is not there written out like a piece of music as something we can learn first. But there are qualities of the end parts of life that are accessible at all ages and it got me thinking that it could be a good idea to pay attention to them when you’re younger to prepare yourself for the fuller version of them when you’re older. 

 

What are the gifts of the last stage of life? We know all too well the maddening challenges of the ever-diminishing and decreasing physical body, the difficulties of reduced sight, hearing, muscular strength, endurance, libido. The mirror reminds us of our once familiar faces now sagging, wrinkling, growing moles or unwanted hairs. But what if all of this is not just the work of a mean-spirited Creator who gets his/her kicks watching us suffer? Might they all be signs of a greater and more positive purpose?

 

James Hillman’s book The Force of Character and Helen Luke’s book Old Age both suggest that there is indeed. The decline of the physical body makes room for the enlargement of the Soul. It suggests strongly that we stop paying attention to the superficial—how do we look? How can we show off our muscles or alluring shape? Who can we impress?— and begin to attend to deeper and more important values. Our diminished hearing shields us from all the unnecessary small talk, our diminished outer sight re-focuses us to our inner visions. 

 

I can personally testify, as can so many in my peer group, that in our 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and beyond, we can become more patient, more forgiving, more understanding and yes, even more wise as we have lived long enough to know that “this, too, shall pass” when life and life’s events seem intolerable. We can become more forthright and say what needs to be said without worrying if it will make us unpopular. As Hillman puts it:

 

“…life intends aging just as it intends growth in youth. As we unfold into speaking, standing, walking, discriminating, and mastering, so we may infold into the involution of aging. “

 

Helen Luke invokes King Lear in her thoughts about aging:

 

“As we grow old, our body weakens, our powers fail, our sight dims, our hearing fades, our power to move around is taken from us. In one way or another we are imprisoned and the moment of choice then comes to us. Will we fight this confining process or will we go to meet it in the spirit of King Lear—embrace it with love, with eagerness even?”

 

What is needed to develop the strength and courage and character to meet our inevitable decline, to face our mortality? Ms. Luke talks about the term “growing old” in its most positive sense. If we make the conscious decision to grow into our aging, we have the possibility of coming into the final flowering and meaning of our lives. If we resist it, are dragged into it by the lion’s paw of time protesting, crying out, making appointments with the plastic surgeon, we will simply become “olders,” not “elders.” True eldership doesn’t come for free just with the passage of time but must be consciously earned. 

 

So returning to the original premise of practicing the end first, I would suggest contemplating one’s mortality at every stage of life, not out of fear or cynicism, but as a way to strengthen our ability to separate the truly important from the trivial, to savor each gift of life and express appropriate gratitude, to forgive others and ourselves so that when we arrive at the time of life when we can begin to let go of outer achievement and impressing people, we are prepared. Practice the ending now so those last notes can truly ring out!

  

Red Sneakers

Often in workshops after an activity that evokes improvisation (like “The Secret Song”), I make the comment that you could have people of different ages, musical backgrounds, cultural backgrounds and they could all be successful, putting everything they know into the improvisation. And it all could sound good. The fresh ideas of a 5-year-old romping around five notes on a xylophone might be as musically interesting as the piano major in the University's solo. To really drive the point home, I mention a group of musicians who I consider at the peak of musical technique, sophistication and understanding as folks who would get something out of the workshop. Though the list is long, I tend to mention people like Bobby McFerrin, Yo Yo Ma, Wynton Marsalis, Yuja Wang and Zakir Hussein. 

 

And now Zakir Hussein has left us, at the too-young age (my age!) of 73 years old. He passed away yesterday from a heart attack and the tributes are pouring in from all corners of Facebook, the modern age’s Obituary Column. Out come the photos and the stories and the icons of sadness and rightfully so. Here’s my own two cents (again, paraphrasing JD Salinger’s image):

 

Raise high the roof beam, carpenters. A great man has passed out of this world, leaving a legacy of extraordinary musicianship coupled with deep humanity and we are all the poorer for his absence. 

 

Born in Mumbai, India, he was the eldest son of Alla Rakha, a highly accomplished and esteemed tabla player of Indian classical music. Sometime in the 1970’s, I had the good fortune to hear father and son in a concert and their virtuosity in a highly complex musical genre was breathtaking, to say the least. Zakir could have easily established himself following his father’s footsteps as one of India’s greatest tabla players. 

 

But early on, he was curious about other musical genres and cultures and ready and willing to experiment with the tabla and other percussion instruments in a wide variety of musical styles. In 1973, he played on albums by rock musician George Harrison and jazz musician John Handy. In 1975, he was part of John McLaughlin’s jazz/ Indian fusion group Shakti and in the next 5-10 years, recorded with Van Morrison and Earth, Wind & Fire. He joined Mickey Hart (drummer for The Grateful Dead ) in the Planet Drum project and continued to collaborate with jazz musicians like Pharoah Sanders, Chris Potter, Josh Redman and more. I attended his concert with Josh Redman at SF Jazz Center and it was one of the highlights of my concert-going life. 

 

Imagine my delight when I went to the wedding of a good friend and tabla player Jim Santi Owen and Zakir was there! He wore some bright red sneakers and the first thing I said to him in my starstruck ineloquence was “Nice sneakers!” At the end, he was standing alone in the hall as I was leaving and I said, “Thank you for making this broken world more beautiful with your music.” He nodded his head in acknowledgment and I added, “And I still like your sneakers!”

 

So that was my personal connection with this extraordinary musician and stellar human being, whose presence amongst us and still in his absence is a reminder to us all to work harder, express ourselves more fully, bring beauty into everything we do and still be kind enough to talk to strangers at weddings and cool enough to wear bright red sneakers. 

 

R.I.P., Zakir Hussein. 

 

"See You Later!"

So much is happening that life is outrunning my ability to write about it. Tempted to write a longer piece about how the kids in the music program where I have assisted have evolved so noticeably in the past three years, guided by the hard-working dedication of their teacher Yari, the feedback loop between well-chosen music that they now have the skills to play and thus, the motivation to keep working and hopefully, the effects of my guidance for both Yari and the students. It’s worth a reflection about the value of time and patience and every-firmer faith in the possibilities of each and every student, musically and otherwise. But for now, I’ll just share this surprising interaction. 

 

At the end of class, a 7^th grade girl spontaneously said to me, “You know, I think we could be good friends in another lifetime.” 

 

And my spontaneous answer; “I look forward to that. See you later!”

Music Marathon

 

                                    “Let the beauty we love be what we do.”

-       Rumi

Four hour-long classes with 7^th and 8^th graders at the Children’s Day School. Drive to the Jewish Home for the Aged and play piano for 1 ½ hours. Quick dinner at home and drive to The Sequoias Center for Senior Living to watch my film with some 60 residents and then discuss it after with a Q & A and a promise to come back next week to sing songs with them. 

 

The next day, play for an hour at SIP Tea Room, background Holiday Music while people enjoy tea and scones. Quick lunch and back for another hour. At the end of each, I invite 30  strangers to sing one of the songs together with me— and they do! Drop in on a neighborhood gathering and play some guitar with some five musicians. Back to the SIP Tea Room for another hour of music-making with Ms. Claus and lead some songs with the parents and kids dining there. 

 

In short, in the past two days, I've played music at five different venues with some 250 people of all ages (most of whom I didn’t know) for some seven hours of music-making one day and four the next. By all reckonings, I should have been exhausted. But I wasn't. In fact, wholly energized. 

 

That’s what music can do. It's the gift that keeps on giving. It’s an underground spring that cleanses and refreshes and brings life and vigor to all it touches. It’s a way to connect with people you've just met unlike any other. It’s the beauty I love. It’s what I do. Rumi affirms my good fortune, a movie title, my hope—“Happy. Thank You. More Please.”The World seems to agree, as opportunities keep pouring in and I says to every one. 

My upstairs neighbors gone and thus, evening curfew lifted, I can even play a bit of piano at 10:30 at night to properly close the day. And so I do. 

 

Speaking the Unspeakable

It’s that time of year. The winter rains have come, we’ve moved the Norfolk pine on the deck into the living room and astonishingly so in this digital age, paper Christmas cards are dropping through the mail slot. The boxes of decorations have come up from the basement, the Christmas CD’s and even LP’s are back within reach and yesterday, I sang the old songs with 8-year olds in a school and the day before with 88-year olds in a home for elders. 

 

I’ve put the finishing touches on my annual Holiday letter and soon to send it off with a tap of a key to some 60 friends around the world. Do I miss printing it out, making copies at Kinko’s, coloring the designs on the edges, signing each with a pen, hand-addressing, stuffing and stamping the envelopes, carrying them to the mailbox and sending them off with a little kiss on each envelope? Oddly enough, yes, I miss that. But not enough to revive it and the photos I can send my e-mail are larger, clearer, more numerous and more satisfying. 

 

I won’t duplicate the news here and if you’ve been even close to a faithful reader, you know it all anyway, such as it is. But here I’ll share the final paragraphs. I was convinced I’d have no heart for “the Season,” disgusted by the vile and reprehensible acts done in the name of that sweet little innocent babe in the manger. As they have been for a couple of thousand years and everyone who uses his name still failing to get his memo of peace and love and light and compassion and forgiveness. I didn’t think I’d have the stomach for the hypocrisy now amplified by the power of social media and such. 

 

But continuing my promise to self to shut off the screens that thrive on the horrific and instead choosing the world of the lovely people I actually know, the solace of trees and lakes and birds and bugs, I can face it all with a calmer heart. Reading the books I choose to read, listening to the music I choose to both listen to and play, thinking the thoughts that bring wonder wrapped up in a ribbon and shooing away the ones that try to trap me into the “Bah! Humbug!” mode, it’s working. It helps. 

 

Here's the end to my annual letter and may you all find your own light in the gathering darkness. 

 

SPEAKING THE UNSPEAKABLE: As for that which I can’t bear to mention, I am shaken down to the depths of my heart’s core. After much time cycling between deep grief and red-hot anger, protective denial and shell-shocked repression, stunned disbelief and hopeless despair, after struggling to dig deeper than usual and reach higher than my grasp to face another four years of having to hear about and respond to the next unspeakable act of cruelty and get to know the name of the next despicable sub-human in the news, I have had some moments of clear conviction that if I cave in to it all, they win. And so I refuse it.

 

The best defense is a good offense and I am vowing to renew and strengthen and increase my lifelong conviction that every act of kindness, every outreach of compassion, every encounter with beauty, every moment we choose love, is all we have to work with and perhaps all we’ve ever had to work with. Like the wrestler Anteus who was thrown to the ground and rose up stronger from each contact with Mother Earth, I am determined to laugh louder, love deeper, grieve more fully, stand more firmly against injustice, speak more clearly and eloquently, play music more powerfully and tenderly, and savor every moment of this beautiful precious life as long as I have breath. May it be so for all of us. And may we do it together! Forever love to you and yours. – Doug

                                 

                                

 

VHF

Have you ever stopped to think that it’s a freakin’ miracle that we’re alive at all? Not only that life exists and the wonder of human birth continues, but that the thousands of things that could go wrong each day in our body mostly don’t? That struck me at the dentist’s office filling out “no” to the 90 plus ailments the registration sheet asked if I had experienced. I felt it again today going to a new department (for me) at Kaiser Hospital, where there are departments, offices and whole floors dedicated to all the things that can malfunction in a human body. Which it turns out is a lot!. 

 

Add to the above all the mental ailments with names, diagnosis, drug prescriptions, therapeutic interventions and the list expands geometrically. Like I said, why would we not get down on our knees each and every day that our minds and bodies are functioning anywhere close to the condition of “normal?” We should! But of course, we don’t and instead just complain and complain. 

 

My hospital visit was to see if I could finally get a name to that mysterious on again/off again issues with slight dizziness (after three big episodes last year). And I finally did! With a prescribed treatment! Hooray for that!! Once we name something, we have the possibility of managing, decreasing, healing its effect on us. Mine is Vestibular Hypo-Function and has something to do with weak signals from the ear to the brain related to balance and such. I know have simple little exercises to do some 15 minutes a day total that have to do with looking at two Post-Its posted on a door, tracking them with my eyes while both holding my head still and/or moving it. Not exactly a cardio-vascular workout, but the hope is to re-train and strengthen those brain signals. I’m ready to give it a go. 

 

Meanwhile, life goes on unmindful of how much I’m enjoying it or how healthy I am and at 1:11 on Dec. 11^th, I’m off to a local school to sing Holiday Songs with 3^rd grade. Looking forward to the fun “Variations on the Dreydl Song” and the choreographed version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” complete with laminated cards, the originals of which I used at The San Francisco School for just about each of my 45 years. A preschool teacher bought them at Vella Variety Store on San Bruno Ave. and they became a precious school icon that 12 luck 8^th graders each year got to hold in their hands as the kids sang the song. 

 

Off I go and believe me when I testify how grateful I am that I can walk to this school on my own two legs, carry a guitar on my back, play it with my fingers, sing songs with my voice, remember words with my brain, feel the happiness of being with kids in my heart. I don’t take any of it for granted. 

The Old College Town

 The last of my “identity” poems from a visit to my alma mater, Antioch College.

 

THE OLD COLLEGE TOWN

 

Walking the snow-white Sunday streets of the old college town,

These same streets I used to walk, dreaming of the world to come.

That floating world of possibility, of what might be,

now, hardened to the prose of what has been.

 

But still I thrill to the song 

of the lone winter bird in the bare-branched oak.

take pleasure in the sound of my steps—

new shoes and a new weight atop them—

but a familiar ring to them, a song I still love.

 

No need to list all the body’s changes—we all know how that goes—

but in my hand, an unbroken thread that stretches back 33 years.

It seems that the soul is unchanging, fluttering at the sight of the cardinal’s red wings

against fresh snow, in the same way now 

as then.

 

In a difficult time, poised between ushering my daughters’ first steps into adult life

and my parents’ last,

I retrace the path of my  first steps out into the world.

Hug the old tree in the pine forest where I once walked so happily alone, 

bow to the dorm where I lived and loved,

walk the bricks where I danced at night,

and feel the sparkle return to my sad eyes ringed by loss,

ready to meet the world anew.

 

-       2006

The New School Grammar

Part 3 of “Identity poems.”

 

THE GRAMMAR OF SELF

 

The self is a forever conjugating verb

 

No fixed noun with three definitions in Webster’s 

 

but an ever-moving, ever-changing, active part of speech. 

 

 

The old photo scrapbook captures some fixed points on the line

 

but the mirror asks, “Really? Was that you?

 

That ten-year old who hadn’t had his heart broken yet?

 

That twenty-year old who never paid a mortgage?

 

Those newlyweds with shining eyes before 10,000 mornings waking up together?”

 

 

You see how that verb has traveled across your face and left its lines, 

 

has weighted your skin with the baggage of the years, 

 

has changed and weathered that forever conjugating verb called self. 

 

 

But adjectives and adverbs also hover about, float about the surface of personality, 

 

make their way into the astrological chart or job interview. 

 

Some get spoken at the retirement party:

 

“Kind, hard-working, fun-loving” and so on, casual clichés tossed into the ephemeral air.

 

But was that really you? 

 

 

The whole paragraph of self is dotted with prepositions, the myriad selves before or after, above or below, between or beyond, because of or in spite of, instead of or except for, next to or with, minus or plus. Now things get a bit more interesting.

 

But what of the noun?

No fixed boundary, confining and limiting, but a tiny sliver of promise, a hidden acorn carrying the whole blueprint, the driver of the whole show. 

It’s the part you can still recognize in those old photos, that gleam in the eye 

that sees it all and is constant amidst the changes. 

It connects the 2-year old 

with the 92-year old and announces to the world:

 

“This is the sentence that has never been written before and will never be written again. You can diagram it and analyze the grammar, but best to just read it and enjoy. Better to speak it out loud. Best to sing it. ”

 

You are the grammar lesson they don’t teach in school. 

Second Draft

 

Second poem in my “Who Am I?“ series:

 

Second Draft

 

If the story of my life was a school homework assignment, it would be handed back to me filled with the teacher’s red marks and comments like these:

 

“Here the story starts to sag. Pick up the action.”

 

“This is where the plot loses credibility. Did this actually happen?”

 

“This whole section should be cut out.”

 

“This character is completely uninteresting. Flesh him out.”

 

“Too much reliance on clichés. “

 

“Sloppy spelling and grammar. Attend to details!!”

 

“All in all, a promising start but it needs a lot of work. There is still time to revise, but hurry. The end of the semester is near.”

 

 

Who Am I?

 

Looking for a poem in a folder I keep, I started reading others and found four on the question of “Who Am I?” That three-word seeker’s question that gets things in a life moving in all sorts of directions, is never wholly answered and keeps things interesting. Better to consider a poem one at a time, so here I begin the first of the next four posts. Inquiries from a part-time poet. 

 

True Spouse

 

Who is this who awakens with me each morning 

 

and walks with me through each day?

 

 

There’s one who, like everyone else, 

 

wants to be like everyone else, 

 

wants to be liked by everyone else, 

 

wants to like everyone else. 

 

 

And then there’s the one that is my true spouse, 

 

who whispers to me the poems or songs 

 

it wants written, the life it wants lived, 

 

the one who nudges me to pay attention to things 

 

            I’d otherwise pass by. 

 

The one who stepped into the party, 

 

                        saw me and exclaimed, 

 

“That’s the one I’m going to marry. 

 

That’s the one I will spend the rest of my life with.”

Raise High the Roof Beam

The news of friends passing from this world is becoming increasingly commonplace. No surprise for someone my age. As they come one after another, it feels, as is natural, that my response feels more and more casual. Like in this poem I once wrote about a neighbor:

PASS THE SALT

 

I was cutting carrots for the soup

 

when my wife said, “Richard died today.”

 

I replied, “Really? Can you pass me the salt?”

 

and astounded myself. 

 

It’s not that I’m cold and callous. 

 

Having known Richard casually,

 

my grief would only go so far. 

 

Still, though.

 

 

This is how it will be. Someday someone sitting at a kitchen table

 

will mention the news of my passing and someone else will reply,

 

“Really? Can you pass the salt?”

 

 

But some deaths hit harder than others. The news of my friend Wolfgang Stange’s passing stopped me in my tracks. He was 77 and I knew he was struggling with various health issues, but didn’t realize how serious they were. Wolfgang was from Berlin, but lived most of his adult life going back and forth between London where he mostly worked and Sri Lanka, where his partner George was from. George had just died last year at 90 plus years old and just a few weeks ago, I met a Sri Lankan friend of Wolfgang’s who told me that we would see Wolfgang in Sri Lanka in a few weeks. We took the requisite selfie and asked him to give Wolfgang a big hug for me. So again, quite a shock.

 

I first met Wolfgang in 1990 in my first time teaching at The Orff Institute in Salzburg. He shared an apartment with my wife and young kids for the two plus weeks we were there, cooking great curries and telling his wonderful stories. My kids went to some of this workshops at the Institut’s Summer Course and loved one in particular where Wolfgang decided the different levels of English-speaking was not equitable, so he should do the whole workshop in an invented babble language which the group named Chipro. For years, my kids would carry on conversations in Chipro. At a sharing night, he did a hilarious shtick telling in Chipro how to tie a sarong with Verena Maschat “translating.” Unforgettable. 

 

Wolfgang was not an Orff teacher, but one of the most brilliant teachers I knew as he worked with people of diverse abilities (or what we then called disabilities). He formed a theater/ dance group called Amici composed of people who were blind, deaf, in wheelchairs, had Down syndrome. Whoever showed up, Wolfgang found the way for them to express themselves artistically and the result was stunning. 

 

We met at various conferences around the world—Salzburg, Thailand, Japan, US Orff Conferences where we visited Graceland, Niagara Falls and other sites. I stayed at his home in London and his home in Sri Lanka. I almost connected with him last year in Thailand, but he was too unwell to leave where he was staying to meet me, so we had to be content with a Facetime call. 

 

Literally an hour or so before I heard the news of his passing, I had just re-read an old article I had written praising his kid’s demonstration workshop I attended at a the 1996 AOSA Conference in Memphis. Here is what I wrote:

 

In the corner of a large, impersonal room, with hotel staff moving chairs and noisy people in the halls, one teacher created a magic as palpable as a moonrise through tropical palm trees or the first light breaking into a redwood grove. It was perhaps a bit ironic that the most inspired “Orff” teaching I experienced in the conference was from a man not trained in the Schulwerk—Wolfgang Stange. Yet it also made sense that to get to the elemental and archetypal core of art, teaching and the art of teaching, one would be working, as Wolfgang did, with a group of students with mixed abilities— kids with Down’s syndrome, kids in wheelchairs, kids with hearing or visual impairments and more. The usual fallback of verbal explanation simply was not possible—one had to move to a non-verbal, intuitive level to communicate effectively. 

 

Wolfgang did so like a surfer riding a perpetually cresting wave, moving with the flow and keeping us breathless with anticipation as to when the ride would end. When one boy exclaimed, “I feel like stepping on somebody!” Wolfgang dropped to his knees without missing a beat and said, “Here. Step on my hands!” turning a tense moment into an exquisite dance as feet and hands moved through the space. When he draped masks over three children in chairs and they began moving, it felt as though we were witnessing the beginning of all art. The vast tower of flimsy justifications for why music is important in schools—raising SAT scores, building self-esteem, developing social skills, providing relaxation or entertainment or appreciation—crumbled at the first exquisite turn of the masked head. 

 

This is what I learned in that memorable workshop: There is no progress in art or religion—only the moment when the veil of Mystery is lifted aside. We can but prepare the space, stay alert and wait for the magic to appear. 

 

To paraphrase JD Salinger:

“Raise high the roof beam, carpenters. A giant of a man has just passed through.”

 

 RIP, Wolfgang. You will be forever missed.