Saturday was a bittersweet reunion with so many old-timers from The San Francisco School Community. The occasion was a Memorial Service for one of ours who died too young at 81, with his playful childlike spirit intact and a body/face that looked like he was 50. Eli Noyes was not only the father of a lovely student I taught, but illustrated my Teach Like It’s Music book and my colleague James Harding’s From Wibbleton to Wobbleton.  I knew he was a Renaissance man of many talents but had no idea how many until this gathering. Film-maker, Claymation innovator, illustrator, oboe player, accordion player, jazz piano student, weaver, potter— the list went on and there were testimonies from so many how he approached each with such creative gusto and playful exploratory spirit. It was a lovely service and while looking through my poems folder mentioned in the last post, I noticed I had written my hopes for my own Memorial Service someday. Hopefully some far distant day. 

 

Here it is. 

INSTRUCTIONS FOR MY FUNERAL

To start with, the music.

 

Lots of it and don’t hold back.

 

• Ockeghem’s Requiem, for starters. I know it's obscure, but there's a story there.

• Some Bach somewhere—organ or piano. Maybe play my 8th grade record of Prelude and Fugue. If someone can find a turntable.

• Some Georgia-Sea Island style or spirituals group singing with a soulful leader. 

But keep Jesus out of it. You can say Spirit instead.

• Somewhere there has to be some Bulgarian bagpipe. And then people will say, 

“So THAT’S what it’s supposed to sound like!”

• Of course, some jazz. Get someone to sing “Haunted Heart” with a jazz trio. Maybe “Tenderly” and the crowd singing along on “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

• If people are going to beat their breasts, might us well put it to a beat and get some body music going!

• Balinese gamelan optional. Samba or New Orleans style for the recessional. 

 

As for the people, of course, friends, family and neighbors and invite all the kids and teachers I’ve taught. 

Make everyone check their cell phones at the door.

Encourage some copious weeping freely vented. No embarrassment. Let it rip. 

No polite veneers or turn to your neighbor with a friendly handshake and forced smile.

No crap about going to a better place to rest. Show some rage at the brutal hand of death.

The acceptance of its loving embrace can come later.

 

And of course, humor. 

Laugh, cry, they're kissin' cousins. Let ‘em both loose!! 

Fall into each other’s arms. Hug freely and sincerely. 

 

Eat well. Dance. Flirt. 

Talk to me. Tell stories. All of them. 

(Well, maybe not all. Discretion will still have its place when I’m gone.)

 

Let it go on to the wee hours of the morning.

Don’t schedule other appointments, unless it’s the last night for the Misfits/ Some Like It Hot double feature at the Castro Theater. 

 

In which case, by all means go and eat popcorn on my behalf.

 

These some first thoughts. I’ll get back to you with the details.

 

Or not.

 

—Dec. 5, 2010 

The Return of the Part-Time Poet

This morning I awoke out of dreams telling me I needed to find a 4^th-grade child’s poem written in 2019. Miraculously, I did! In an old blogpost!

 

But first I began the search in a folder titled “Songs, Raps, Poems.” Couldn’t find it there, but it felt good to see the titles of all these poems I’ve written over the years. It has been quite a while since I’ve written a new one and that’s a shame. So to remind my part-time poet self to re-awaken and share what I’ve yet to share in any coherent published form for the .001 % of people who would ever buy a poetry book, here's a few old ones that came up.

 

ELECTRONIC BUDDHISM

 

i-Pod plugged into the laptop

 

while I sit in meditation,

 

both of us re-charging for the day.

 

Message to Buddha:

 

“Do not disconnect.” Ø 

 

 

WHY HUMANS HAVE TO WORK SO HARD

The squirrel romps, 

the jay squawks, 

the pines drip sap.

Each freely expresses its own nature,

 

While we poor mortals

sit and strain for seven days and nights,

To get a mere fleeting glimpse of 

Who we are.

 

(Mt. Baldy Zen Center)

 

 

DOUBLE HAIKU

 

Spring snow in Finland

Blustery winds in Scotland

Plum blossoms in Spain.

 

Grey skies in Beijing

Balmy breezes in Brazil

Home to ‘Frisco fog.

 

MY SISTER TURNS SIXTY AND I FEED THE CAT

 

I keep the cat’s food in a large, purple tin.

Inside a red cup to scoop it out.

 

Each day, I put a cupful in his bowl

And he eats. 

Each day, the dry pellets in the tin

sink down

cup by cup 

toward the shiny bottom,

until one day, 

                                                                                                they’re gone. 

 

And so do our years descend in measured cups,

feeding some small creature who purrs with contentment

and rubs against our leg

in gratitude and affection. 

Bad News/ Good News

Out of the 30 political e-mails and texts I get daily, the ones I delete the fastest start with “Bad news!” or “We’re begging!!” Who needs it? We are built for hope and things are bad enough without having to be always reminded of it. At the same time, the only road to good news is through the dubious neighborhoods of bad news, through the stormy weather of anger and outrage, through the long hard look at the mirror of truth even if we don’t like what we see there. 

 

As a writer, I need to consider which route to take when I invite the reader to travel with me. And now, about to launch my first Podcast, I’m painfully aware that I have a short minute to see if I can entice the listener to keep listening and probably the bad news approach is not the best route to take. Here is a first draft of one possible opening episode, which I think I won’t use. You see I do get to the good news, but perhaps the listener will never arrive, having gotten out of the cab (well, Uber or Lyft, to be more contemporary) after the first paragraph. At any rate, having written it, why not include it here? (And yes, I will alert you as to when the first Podcast is actually launched and how to access it in case you’re interested. Hopefully by November 1^st!). 

 

Hello. I am Doug Goodkin and you’re listening to the ABC of Education. 

Today’s episode: “Between Education and Catastrophe.” Here I introduce the theme of this Podcast and why I chose it. 

 

The title comes from a quote by H.G. Wells: “We are in a race between education and catastrophe.” Think about that for a moment. When was the last time you had a serious conversation about education? That you read a book about it or listened to a podcast or bought an education magazine? Every day for some 12 to 15 years, parents drop their kids off at school, but how much do they think about what really goes on there? In our national discourse, everybody’s talking about the economy or technology or the latest diet plan or this crisis or that one, but how much do we hear about schools? In the recent Vice-President debate, the subject did come up briefly and the brilliant suggestion from one of the candidates was that we get “stronger locks on the doors.” I just filled out a survey about what issues I’m concerned about and out of 15 different choices—healthcare, immigration reform, creating jobs, etc.—no surprise, schools and education were nowhere to be seen on the list. 

 

If we don’t talk about it, don’t think about it, just keep going on with business as usual without considering how that business is actually doing, then catastrophe wins the race. And there are plenty of signs that it is. Our new unspoken national motto seems to be “my ignorance is as good as your education.” Here in the United States we are graduating people from universities who literally don’t know who won the Civil War. People who can’t distinguish a fact from a fantasy and don’t care which is which. People who are eating a daily diet of misinformation and disinformation, who are fed purposely manufactured lies by people in power and can’t see through them. People who will rarely read a book or go to a jazz or classical music concert or visit a museum in their adult life. People who are addicted to a steady stream of trivial nonsense on their phones and will rarely take a walk in the woods without them. And these people are empowered to vote. At a crucial time when we need more intelligence and more caring and more culture, books are being banned and teacher’s jobs are on the line if they tell the truth to students.

 

Everywhere I go, I see signs on the school walls like “Practice Mutual Respect. Be kind. Work hard. Work well with others. Knowledge is power.” And yet look at where we are. According to polls, it looks like close to 50% of the population is ready to vote for a President who is the exact antithesis of everything schools have said they stand for. There are signs everywhere that our schools are failing miserably, not just with low test scores, but with their mission of cultivating thinking, caring, responsible citizens. 

 

That’s the bad news. But there’s plenty of good news as well. School can be a place where children feel welcomed and valued and cared for, where they are trained to think critically and given a firm foundation in reading, writing and arithmetic, where they are introduced to music and dance and drama and poetry and visual arts, not merely as consumers, but as makers of art. This is not mere conjecture. I know such schools can be because they already are. They make a difference in both the present and future life of their students and those students go on to make a difference in the world as we wish it might be. Again, this is not mere dreaming. I have testimonies from over a thousand kids I’ve taught at school that contributed enormously to who they are and who they become. They give me great hope and remind me that if education is to surpass catastrophe in the marathon race, we better start talking about it and thinking about it and acting on it. And so here we are. Again, my name is Doug Goodkin and welcome to this podcast, The ABC’s of Education!

I Love San Francisco!

For thirty years, I’ve met once every two weeks with 8 or 9 other men in what is simply known as our Men’s Group. Every Wednesday night, from 7:30- 9:30, we met at a member’s house and discussed what it was like to be a contemporary human being housed in a man’s body. After check-in, there was usually a topic, ranging from fathers, mothers, children, work, religion, art, food, what have you— though a few repeats, we basically never ran out of topics.

 

Come Covid, the in-person meeting switched to Zoom and once people were tentatively socially gathering again a couple of years later, we decided we should meet in person, but outside. A combination of needing daylight hours and the honest assessment that we aging guys mostly in our 70’s were starting to nod out at night meant switching the Wednesday night meeting to Friday morning, from 10 to 12. This had the added perk of getting to explore different neighborhoods and parks in San Francisco and sometimes walking while we talked. And so we’ve continued. 

 

But today was quite different, as our host member decided to walk us down Market Street to look at some of the classic old buildings in our city’s illustrious history. In our new outdoor format, mostly the place we are is simply a backdrop to our talking about our topic, but now, the place was the topic itself. Starting at 8^th and Market, we took a look at the detailed work of the old theaters like the Orpheum, the Golden Gate Theater, the Warfield. We stopped at the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals Building and got to go inside (impressive!). On we went past the Phelan Building and the Flood Building and the new Hastings Law Building, each one reminding us of the former times when utility and aesthetics were joined as one. So much attention to detail, to architectural elegance and grace. 

 

For those not familiar with San Francisco, Market St. is not the most pleasant place to walk. Everywhere the signs of the contemporary dispossessed, along with a bit of a ghost town feeling as so many downtown offices were vacated during Covid, never to return to their former hustle and bustle. The Blue Angels hadn’t come out yet, but the jackhammers were at full throttle, all part of a plan to try to revive and beautify Market Street. Not quite the European promenade I would hope for, but some effort to make it more attractive, friendly to walkers and interesting to tourists. 

 

With my eyes tuned to architecture, I notice other buildings that I’ve usually just passed by and now have renewed interest in visiting them, finding out more about their history, finding little treasures hidden in their hallways. It’s astounding how long one can live in a place like this and know so little about its nooks and crannies, its hidden and untold stories. I’ve done Stairway Walks of San Francisco, visited the 50 Must-See sights, wandered alone through just about every neighborhood and park, but the Building Tour awaits me. 

 

In case I haven’t mentioned it lately, I love San Francisco!

I Hate San Francisco!

They’re back. While real bombers are flying overhead bringing death and destruction in the Middle East and Ukraine, we have the Blue Angels putting on their show for our amusement. We’re supposed to be impressed by their tight navigation skills and sure, there is a level of artistry there. But the price is too high. Four days of non-stop sonic assault that not only makes it impossible to have a leisurely stroll out in the city and talk with a friend but rattles the walls and windows of your home almost wherever you live in San Francisco.

I shudder for veterans with PTSD whose terrors are triggered, for families with babies napping and confused elders, for dogs darting under couches and birds wholly disoriented. I don’t have a dog or baby or elder in my home and thankfully, am not afflicted with PTSD, but out walking in the park, I feel almost as if a mild case is now percolating. The sound is overwhelming, the surprise of where it will come from next disturbing and my beautiful city made ugly with this horrendous soundscape is intolerable. I’m wondering if I can make the city pay for three nights of a hotel far enough away that I don’t have to put up with this. 

 

Meanwhile, back in Covid times, I was walking in the park and stopped to listen to a little jazz band with drums, bass, quiet electric guitar and trumpet in front of the Arboretum. Here they were playing such great music that soothed and comforted all who stopped to listen and lo and behold, a Park Ranger says they must cease and desist because they don’t have a permit to make music in the park. It might disturb the passerbyes. Are you following me here? One hour of great jazz in a public place is against the law, but countless hours spread over four days of deafening thunderous noise (can we sue for hearing loss?), why, according to the SF Board of Supervisors, that’s perfectly fine. Why? Follow the money, my friend. 

 

Same deal with the building of the ugly phallus proclaiming itself above the skyline in the form of Sales Force Tower. How quickly did that project get passed and did the voters have a say? Compare it to a friend in his 80’s who made a wise choice to build an extension of his home in his backyard for his wife and him to pass their old age while their son and his family move into the new house. The amount of bureaucracy, paperwork, petitioning to multiple offices, permission from every neighbor in a 10-block radius, the various sign-offs from this department or that has drawn the whole process out to four or five years. A little extra house that will impact exactly no one else. Follow the procedure, say the city officials. Unless you’re Sales Force. Again, then all you have to do is follow the money.

 

Then of course, my pet peeve of reproducing-like-rabbits-Waymo-driverless cars that have ruined my pleasure in walking around the neighborhood. Seems benign compared to the above, but San Francisco, that hot-bed of human creativity in the form of on-the-edge jazz, world music, modern dance, experimental theater, modern art, people’s circuses, poetry reading, Zen practice, this city that has celebrated the human spirit and pushed out the edges of creative expression, is now known as the home of AI. Every driverless car is a reminder to me of our mad rush to replace humans and diminish humanity, not to mention further stick it to cab drivers and now, even Uber and Lyft drivers. Follow the money. 

Every bit of it reversable. Replace the Blue Angels show with a Hot Air Balloon Show or glider festival. Put limits on building heights and pay attention to architecture no matter how much money you have. Get these damn Waymos off the streets or at least limit them. Easy. 

 

San Francisco, I’ve been loyal to you for the 50 years I’ve lived here and kept defending you even when others have denigrated you. But now you’re trying my patience. I hate you at the moment because I love you so much and know you’re better than that. I’d love to take a walk in the park and talk to you about it, but we couldn’t hear each other with the Blue Angels screaming overhead. 

Busy

Most everyone I know has lived and still lives very busy lives. You would think that as my peer group transitioned into retirement that this would change. You would be wrong. 

 

Everyone seems to be as busy as ever, but in a different way. Whereas our previous work life could be summarized as a solid red line spanning from Monday to Friday and a short blue line denoting Saturday and Sunday, now our calendars look like a constellation of scattered colored dots. Mine, for example, in the past few weeks is a potpourri of doctor and dentist appointments, gathering with college alums, SF School alum teachers, the Men’s Group, online Zooms with folks in Brazil, Austria and Virginia to arrange various work opportunities, two different Zoom Board meetings, guest classes at three different local schools, playing piano at two Senior Homes and yet more. A call to arrange a lunch with a friend involves scrolling through our separate calendars for some five minutes before we can find a time we’re both free.

 

We are made for activity, we are made to work, we are made for social gathering and whereas our previous work lives guaranteed some version of all three without the need to arrange them all, it’s up to us in our retired lives to fill in the calendar ourselves. A work schedule feels like a symphony or suite, an ongoing piece of music with a theme announced on Monday that develops and heads towards the climax of Friday and there is a great satisfaction in that. The retired live is often like listening to a lot of short 3-minute songs in many different styles. Each song is pleasurable, but this kind of listening often lacks the continuity and the sense of a thread running through all the days that brings meaning and purpose. 

 

My particular retired life bounces back and forth between the two as I continue to teach 5-10 day courses or work on a book that has that larger design. And then have periods in-between with that colored-dot, short-song format. That’s where I am at the moment, with some of those dots the work needed to arrange more long-form work—negotiate dates, money, visas, flights for courses months ahead. Not as fun as actually teaching those courses, but it must be done. 

 

And so my busy day begins.

A Matter of Character

Today I saw a Facebook clip of Kamala Harris talking to a young person in distress. Her genuine concern, her constant eye contact, her authentic empathy without a trace of demeaning pity, her clarity that she is there for this person, her reminder of the person’s own inner strength and resources— really, this could be a training video for how to sincerely (no acting here) be there 150% for our fellow humans in need. Which means all of our fellow humans. 

 

On the other side of Red/Blue divide are those reprehensible Repugnitans (not all— a few finally drawing the line) who are using the devastating hurricanes to spread further misinformation and yet more insane conspiracy theories ("the Democrats learned how to control the weather and purposefully targeted areas with Republican voters"). The same folks who used AI to make a fake photo of Donald Trump, the man who has proven time and time again that there is not an empathetic cell in his body, wading through the flooded waters to help someone. Using the suffering of others to further their campaign of misinformation to dupe the folks who let themselves get fooled. 

 

I just find it extraordinary to believe that according to the so-called polls, some 50% of American voters vow to choose narcissism over empathy, cruelty and spite over caring and compassion, babbling at over listening to. I’m so weary of all the explanations, all the rationales, all the excuses that try to justify an otherwise normal human being making such a choice. A dog or 3-year old kid would sniff out in a nano-second the difference between a caring Kamala and tantrum-throwing Trump. 

 

“Every time history repeats itself, the price goes up.” There’s so much at stake here politically, culturally, ecologically, economically, but at the root of it all, we are simply voting to elect the character that we want to represent our own morality and ethics. Even when (not if) Kamala wins, close to half of our country will still be sharing this world with us and though I rarely meet them face-to-face (that I’m aware of), still I am astonished that they exist and will most likely continue to believe the lies they have been fed and are feeding themselves. As a teacher, as a citizen, as a human being, this hurts my heart. 

I keep believing in our best selves and here is an enormous population trying to prove me wrong. 

 

I’m looking for the words that strike deeper than my personal whining complaint and rant, however justified. They are not coming. 

 

Perhaps it comes down to this. People, stop the chatter in your head. Use your nose like your trusted dog, trust your intuition, like your 3-year old child. And vote accordingly. 

Lazarusphoria

 The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a brilliant book. Author John Koenig takes it upon himself to create words for nuanced experiences and feelings we all can relate to but have never been captured in language. Or rather haven’t captured in the English language. Schadenfreude, for example, well describes in German something we all probably have been guilty of— feeling pleasure in someone else’s misfortunes. Saudade in Portuguese describes a melancholy yearning, a longing that is at once bitter and sweet.  Ubuntu is an African Bantu word that means “I am because we are,” a word wholly unknown and mostly unintelligible to the American fantasy of the independent solitary self beholden to no one. You get the idea.

 

Koenig describes other feelings unnamed in English (or perhaps any language) by combining two known words and making a new one. For example, slipfast describes the longing to disappear into a crowd and become invisible, so you can take in the world without having to take part in it. From “slip” —to fly away in secret and “fast”- fortified against attack. Sonder is the awareness that everyone has a story, borrowed from the French “sonder”—to plumb the depths.

 

So today I would like to add my own word, though it describes an unexpected joy rather than an obscure sorrow: Lazarusphoria— the surprise elation one feels when we discover that someone we care about that we thought had passed away is actually still alive! This happened to me yesterday when an old childhood friend who I had lost touch with for decades resurfaced around 2000 and then seemed to disappear again, unreachable through e-mail or my little Facebook messages. Given our age and knowing he had had some heart trouble, I could only assume he had passed on. And there he was in a Facebook post yesterday, photo and all! Back to the land of the living!

 

I left a little message asking him to contact me and if he does, I’ll tell the longer story another time. As my first black friend who walked me across the tracks of my own town, I think it’s an interesting one. But you have a busy day ahead and so do I, so for now, just want to share my Lazarusphoria that Bill “Lump” Blackshear is alive and well!

PS Maybe can't assume everyone knows the Lazarus story. Check out the Gospel of John in the New Testament. Or Wikipedia. 

The Forgiveness of Sin

George Orwell and Reagan’s re-election notwithstanding, 1984 was a remarkable year for me. In my various contemporary workshops, I keep referencing various things that happened that year that felt of great importance at the moment and prophetic of things to come. Amongst them:

 

• My first National Music Conference presentation—NAJE (then National Association of Jazz Educators) in Columbus, Ohio and the sharing of the first black American children’s game I arranged for Orff instruments, Green Sally Up.

 

• First time working with Keith Terry and his Body Music, including performing in a show titled Crowd Control that he put together for 30 dancers, musicians and circus people. 

 

• Created Step Back Baby, a multi-media jazz performance piece combining body percussion, partner clapping play, dance, drama and Orff instrument arrangement. (Later published in my Now’s the Time book and recorded on my Boom Chick-a Boom CD). 

 

• The first multi-media event based on Intery Mintery that later became an all-school annual ritual and title of one of my books. 

 

• Completed Level II Orff Certification Level Training with Avon Gillespie and joined the local Orff chapter (NCAOSA) Board. 

• Presented at my first AOSA National Orff Conference in Las Vegas. 

 

• Learned some Ugandan Amadinda xylophone music, studied Philippine Kulintang and went to my first Balinese gamelan rehearsal with Sekar Jaya. 

 

• Produced and recorded my second San Francisco School cassette tapes of the children’s music arranged for Orff instruments titled Play, Sing & Dance, which later became the title of one of my books. 

 

In short, in that one remarkable year, all the wheels were fully set in motion for my later contributions to Orff Schulwerk through Body music, Jazz, World music, Nursery Rhymes, Ritual and Ceremony, book publishing and Conference/ Orff Chapter presentations. 

 

Does the reader care? I suspect not, inasmuch as no one asked to see my resume. But perhaps a little interesting the way that creative energies sometimes gather together in a particular time and place and things happen that feel they are moved along by unseen hands and simply have to be if one’s destiny is to be fulfilled. 1984 was clearly such a year and later, 1990 certainly was (my first teaching at the Orff Institute in an international gathering) and a few more after that.

 

But why this title? Because 1984 was also the time my second daughter Talia was born. An event that I imagined I felt as the most notable and important of all. And yet this morning, as I took out my old journals to confirm some of the happenings above, I was dismayed to see that there was no entry on November 26th when she was born. There is an entry for November 9^th at the Las Vegas Conference and the next entry is January 1^st, 1985. No mention of Talia until the last line of that entry: “At 11:30 at night, Talia fussing in the crib, Karen asleep under the covers, I offer blessings to all beings and may the forces of good ride into the New Year with us.”

 

In the next entry (Feb. 9^th), I briefly mention “taking a long walk in the Park with Talia.”And finally, later in that entry I write: “A word about Talia, 2 months old plus and coming into her own. Not enough time to absorb the full sense of having two children, but truly enjoying her now as she steps up her responses.…”

 

I was shocked to discover how little I had written about what I considered a hugely important event in my life and for the first time in a long time, felt a genuine sense of shame. I always thought of myself as someone who longed to have children and loved them beyond measure from day one on and here I was just blabbering on about this workshop or that, my doubts as to my musicianship, enjoying a walk in the Park, etc. For some brief moments, I was not the person I thought I was, the one who has been obsessed his whole life with writing my life as I lived it and in so doing, highlighting what I cared for, what I aspired to, what I loved. Where were my children?

 

And then it hit me. My wife and started journals for both kids, not only to document all the little milestones—holding the head up, rolling over, sitting up, first food, etc.— but also to speak and re-speak how much we loved them, what hopes we had for them, what future joys we looked forward to. That’s where is all was. Which somewhat excused me from writing about it in my personal journal. 

 

And so my apparent sin was wholly forgiven. Both daughters have their journals at their houses, but next time I visit, I will get them out and read what I had expected to find and hadn’t. And don’t worry—I won’t share it here! Bad enough that you had to sit through my resume and old journal entries.

 

But always looking for some universals that all can relate to. So the Cliff Note’s summary:

 

• Creative energies often gather in short bursts at special times and in special places. 

• Still doing Step Back Baby, Intery Mintery, Amanda/Kulintang/Gamelan, Body Music at my workshops 40 years later! And they hold up. 

• Writing one’s life as it unspools is not only to document and remember, but to speak more and more clearly what it is one lives for.

• Speaking directly to my kids in their journals felt like a better choice than just writing about the joys and privilege of fatherhood in my own. 

• The forgiveness of sin is perpetual. 

13

Once we commit ourselves to a life of perpetual unrest, keep the flame of curiosity lit, keep wondering “why?” or “how did this happen?” or “what if?”, then things get interesting. There are side benefits like staving off dementia by constantly making new neural connections and having something more interesting to contribute at the dinner conversation than the latest ap you found. But the greatest pleasure is the pleasure itself of a lifelong habit of inquiry. Asking the question that leads to the next question. 

 

So in my little piece about Schoenberg, I stumbled into a fascinating fact that he was terrified of the number 13 his whole life. Which led me to: “Why do we think 13 is unlucky? And why especially Friday the 13^th?” What used to mean a trip to the library and descent to the reference stacks down in the basement—or if you were lucky, a quick trip to your own basement to unearth the family World Book Encyclopedias or Encyclopedia Brittanica— now is a key-stroke away from Google. Perhaps the very ease diminishes the satisfaction, but that’s our world and so be it.

 

If you care to scroll back to my post of July 21^st on the subject of the number 12 (and just noticed that 21 is 12 reversed!), you can see that 12 is indeed a sacred number. 13, then, throws its perfection out of whack and is consigned to its forever status as “unlucky.” But there’s a bit more.

 

As noted in that piece, there were 12 disciples of Jesus, but he made 13 and the day after they gathered for what became known as “The Last Supper,” he was crucified. Unlucky for him. And that day? Good Friday! Hence, Friday the 13^th as the most unlucky of all. The superstition began as a warning not to gather in groups of 13 at a dinner table (party hosts, take note), but grew larger than that. (In the story Sleeping Beauty, there are 13 Wise Woman but only 12 invited to the celebration of the King and Queen’s daughter. The disgruntled 13^th crashed the party and while all had conferred their particular blessing on the child, she made a spell that pronounced the babe would prick her finger on a spinning wheel at the age of 15 (13 would have made a better story!) and die. Since the 12^th Wise Woman had not yet conferred her blessing, she was able to soften it from “die” to “fall into a deep sleep.” At any rate, unlucky 13 strikes again. 

 

This Friday is not the 13^th so why is this a topic? Because in looking up a bit about Arnold Schoenberg, it turns out he had a mortal fear of the number 13. (Note that he was the creator of the 12-tone Composition). Even though he was born on September 13^th, an event we can assume he thought was lucky, he had a condition called “triskaidekaphobia” — literally, fear of the number 13.  His whole life, he feared that he would die during a year that was a multiple of 13. As Wiki describes: 

 

“This possibly began in 1908 with the composition of the thirteenth song of the song cycle after his wife had left him. He dreaded his sixty-fifth birthday (13 x 5) in 1939 so much that a friend asked the composer and astrologer Dane Rudhyar to prepare Schoenberg's horoscope. Rudhyar did this and told Schoenberg that the year was dangerous, but not fatal.

But in 1950, on his 76th birthday, an astrologer wrote Schoenberg a note warning him that the year was a critical one: 7 + 6 = 13. This stunned and depressed the composer, for up to that point he had only been wary of multiples of 13 and never considered adding the digits of his age. "

He died on Friday the 13^th(!) of July 1951, shortly before midnight. (Twilight Zone music here. Had he last just 15 more minutes until Saturday the 14^th, he might have lived at least until 89.). 

 

Incidentally, this was 15 days exactly before I was born. Any connection? Don’t think so, but I find it interesting. Isn’t curiosity wonderful? 

Infectious Unrest

“Our age seeks many things. What it has found, however, is above all: comfort. Comfort, with all its implications, intrudes even into the world of ideas and makes us far more content than we should ever be. We understand today better than ever how to make life pleasant. We solve problems to remove an unpleasantness. But, how do we solve them? And what presumption, even to think we have really solved them! Here we can see most distinctly what the prerequisite of comfort is: superficiality.”

 

If this was a live class and I was reading this quote, I’d offer $25 on the spot to anyone who could guess what year this was written and $50 to anyone who can guess who said it. Want to venture a guess? (Pause for thinking).

 

I think in both cases you’ll be surprised. The speaker is the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg and the year he wrote it was 1911. 1911!!! Long before the comfort of washing machines, supermarkets, cars, Cliff notes, soundbytes, never mind so much designed for your ease and comfort gathered in a small device that fits the palm of your hand. 

 

This quote is from the introduction of Schoenberg’s book Theory of Harmony. It bears our attention that the composer whose place in Western music history was to dismantle the harmonic system and replace it with his 12-tone method of composition wrote a book about harmony. It becomes instantly clear that he knows his subject inside out and his decision to move into new ways of organizing sound came for a sound (double-meaning intended) understanding of everything that came before. It was born from a deeply-seated search, a perpetual dissatisfaction with how things had been done married to an appreciation for the beauties of the old ways. 

 

He goes on:

 

“Comfort as a philosophy of life! The least possible commotion, nothing shocking. Those who so love comfort will never seek where there is not something easy to find.…Only activity, movement is productive. Only action, movement produces what could truly be called education or culture. But comfort? Comfort avoids movement; it therefore does not take up the search.”

 

Over 100 years ago, he was concerned about a modern human concerned more with ease, comfort, pleasantness, surface understandings than the hard undertaking of questioning what is and striving for what might yet be. He goes on to make some profound statements about teaching that speak across the century to our contemporary confusions. 

 

“The teacher who does not exert himself, because he tells only ‘what he knows’ does not exert his pupils either. Action must start with the teacher himself; his unrest must infect the pupils. (boldface mine). Then they will search as he does.…It should be clear, then, that the teacher’s first task is to shake up the pupil thoroughly. “(boldface mine).

 

How we need to hear this! In these days, teachers are tiptoeing around their privileged students’ tiny traumas for fear of upsetting them with a challenging idea or incontrovertible truth that makes them uncomfortable. The students report to the parent who report to the admin who reprimands the teacher or fires him/her for “shaking up the pupil thoroughly.” But if we’re honest with ourselves, it’s clear that the best moments in the long humdrum of mild facts dutifully memorized were an occasional true and vibrant idea/ story/ poem/ piece of art or music that shook us down to our core and woke us up. Set us off down a path whose end we couldn’t see and whose purpose was only revealed in increments when it was clear we were willing to walk as long as it took. What the shaman Don Juan called “a path with heart.”

 

Wholly unattached from the toxic system of education as comfortable pleasantness, I’ll do my part to remind teachers in my workshops to keep feeding their own “infectious unrest” and to “shake their pupils up thoroughly.” That is after they sign the waiver that they can’t hold me accountable when they get fired. 

Razor Blades and Clothespins

Your English 101 class gives you an assignment to write a short story or essay based on a random title. Like “Razor Blades and Clothespins.” Go!

 

An easy assignment for me, as it happens to be the exact title of the subject I was going to write about in today’s post! But perhaps yours is more interesting?

 

Be that as it may, here’s mine:

 

A year or so ago, all local stores stopped selling the Trac 2 razor blades that I used with my little razor that allowed a new one to replace an old one without having to buy a whole new razor. More efficient and ecological and it worked. Until it disappeared. So I searched on ye ole Interweb and found some I could order, about 10 for $16. Worried that they too would disappear, I bought 20 of them. Each one lasts anywhere from 4 to 6 weeks, so they lasted a while—until I noticed they’re almost gone. Back to the Internet and there was a knock-off of Trac 2 razors that they claimed fit anything Trac 2 did. The cost? $16— for 100 of them!!!

 

They arrived today and they work! “In your face, planned obsolescence! I’m set for life!” But then did a little math. If each one last four weeks, it would be some 7 years before I ran out. If six weeks, a little over 11 years. Don’t like those numbers, as I’m determined to live past 84 years old. So “set for life” doesn’t ring well for me. 

My choices:

 

1)   Get another 100. That gives me until 95 years old.

2)   Let them run out and then grow a beard.

 

Later that day, my wife told me she discovered a whole box of clothespins in the basement. We love using them to close bags, so they qualify on my list of things that make me feel rich—clothes hangers, paper clips, rubber bands, (razors), pens and such. She used the same phrase— “a lifetime supply.”

 

For you younger folks, this is a little game the old ones sometimes like to play. Will this be my last car? My last jar of tabasco sauce tucked away in the refrigerator? My last passport? It’s not really that fun a game, but these kinds of things cross our mind. Maybe someone could make into a board game called “Mortality.” Put all these items on little cards and try not to have to give them away. 

 

So ends my essay on “Razor Blades and Clothespins.” How did yours go?