Lay Your Comfort Down

In Hong Kong airport after a 9-hour flight from Sydney, at the end of a 5-hour layover with another 90-minute flight to Taipei, arriving at 12:30 in the morning. Holding up okay, but think this trip is suggesting that my Superman days are waning and I might lean a bit more to Clark Kent. Still though a pleasant enough time in my movie-theater-in-the-sky, alongside my ritual Crostics puzzle and a few chapters of Great Expectations.

 

The last day of this most marvelous Jazz Course was true to form. Discovered this old body can still teach my version of the Lindy Hop and the group did a swingin’ version of Jumpin’ at the Woodside with half playing and half dancing. From there to a hot Latin tune Soul Sauce. The afternoon began with another break-out group assignment, five groups creating interpretations of Langston Hughes poems with body percussion, movement, acapella vocals, Orff Ensemble and band instruments. Stellar, stirring work and again, so impressed by the group’s effortless cooperative spirit. A quick review for the video cameras of the 35 pieces/ activities/ games we learned, a closing circle with people’s “takeaways,” and our final soulful game, Little Johnny Brown, where each in turn goes to the middle and using a scarf, “lays their comfort down.” Comfort short for “comforter”, as in Linus’ security blanket no longer needed because the singing and dancing circle is our mutual security, the place where all can safely go beyond their comfort zone. Indeed, that was one of the most surprising and revealing takeaways of the whole course. 

 

Naturally, I had to post something on Facebook, which feels worth repeating here.

 These people. Every day, every hour, every minute of the 5-day Jazz Course in Sydney, Australia, affirming that jazz touches universal strings, unleashes unbridled joy, holds deep sorrows in a container of beauty. And that people like these most lovely human beings willing to open their minds, hearts and bodies, jump into the center of the dancing circle, take daring risks on instruments they never played and hold each up through encouragement and support, are precisely the kind of people the world needs. And yet more beautiful that the kids they teach have them. There is nothing in this world that is perfect, but each day of the five came pretty damn close. On to Taiwan!