Waiting for the Train

Just before my trip, I was deep into writing my new book, The Humanitarian Musician: How Musical Harmony Can Lead to Social Harmony. It’s premise is both simple and profoundly radical. I suggest that music properly taught, properly learned, properly heard, properly understood, properly played, can humanize the savage beast running rampant in society. Since we’ve had music ever since we became upright bi-pedal homo sapiens, clearly it hasn’t solved any of our chronic toxic ideas and practices. So I spend much of the book trying to explain that word “properly,” drawing from a lifetime teaching music to children, playing music, listening to music, writing about music. 

I do believe it can radically transform society as we know it and indeed lead us to a more harmonious state of living together on the planet. Still, it’s a pretty grandiose claim. Perhaps by the end of the book, I’ll be content with a lower bar. 

 

For example, today we took the train from Oxford to our next stop, Moreton-in Marsh. When we arrived at the station, we missed the train by five minutes, so had a 55-minute wait ahead. And there in the middle of the small station was a piano! I went straight to it and played Gershwin’s A Foggy Day (in London town) and then Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag. At the end of that, some 25 people gathered around started applauding. An older man went right up to me and said, “You’ve just made us all so happy!” 

 

“My pleasure,” I answered and off I went again. The piano was old and funky, but no one cared. More ragtime, some Bach, jazz standards, some Latin pieces, some blues, La Paloma. One listener told me that that last piece had been her mother’s favorite. Another elderly woman came up to me and said, “This has been the most wonderful time I’ve ever had waiting for a train!” Then a young guy asked if I knew some Ellington and we played a duet of Take the A Train (I know, technically written by Billy Strayhorn, but given the circumstance, no matter). Because time passes differently when you’re playing or listening to music, I was shocked when my wife said I needed to stop to take our train. So I did and ran across the tracks and got in just in time.

 

And so. Music is not going to solve any of the multiple world crisis’s we’re suffering from. But it can bring some pleasure and happiness and fond memories and gleeful participation to a random group of strangers who just happen to be waiting for some 45 minutes in a train station.

 

And maybe that’s enough. 

 

Doorways, Pathways and Steps

If were in charge of my own Memorial Service, I’d have a lot of options to try to get the point of my life across in various displays. My books would be laid out, magazines with articles, clips from The Secret Song movie, TEDx  talk, SF Jazz Family concerts playing on some screens, music from the 26 SF School recordings, my Boom Chick a Boom CD, little stations with Headphones playing my Podcast, a computer where you can scroll down to one of these Blog posts and other paraphernalia. I’m sure anyone else in charge would think of these same things. (Though would probably wisely not choose them all!)

 

But no one would probably think of a display of photos I’ve taken over the years. It’s one way to get behind the eyes and mind of a person and see what they saw and consider why they thought it was important to capture that image. I make no pretense to an artistic photographer’s eye that will win any contest, but I do genuinely love certain types of images I take the trouble to notice and record. I lean particularly into pathways, doorways and steps.Why?

 

All three appear to me as invitations. What’s just around the corner of that curved pathway? What’s behind that intriguing door? What awaits me at the top of those steps?That’s what defines the way I plan and carry out my Orff classes, the way I improvise on piano, the way I like to wander aimlessly in a foreign city or town or village. All is possibility, all is a beckoning finger suggesting something marvelous unseen where I’m standing but soon to be revealed when I turn the corner, open the door or ascend the steps. 

If we are here to be seen and known and celebrated for our particular way of seeing this world, of being in this world, it feels like these photos are an important part of it. Here’s a sampling from the last three weeks.

 

                                                    DOORWAYS

                                                                PATHWAYS 

                                                                     STEPS 

Perpetual Summer

June 1^st doesn’t mean the same thing that is used to. For 45 years as a teacher and 17 as a student, it always signaled the closing chords of a long academic-year symphony and the promise of release into summer’s freedom. Now that my whole life is a perpetual summer, it’s simply another day. And gloriously and gratefully so. 

 

This time last year, I was biking through Slovenia. Now, with the recent France trip already feeling like a distant memory, I’m in the small village of Iffley outside of Oxford. Yesterday, another tour through this unique University town, walking the crowded streets past C.S. Lewis’s house with its Aslan the lion door knocker, past a few processions of gowned graduating students, a peek into the extraordinary Natural History Museum packed wall-to-wall with displays of dinosaur bones, writing implements, textiles, musical instruments and more. All the evidence of the importance of culture—art, literature, crafts, music, science— in the human experiment and the irrefutable fact that we all—every person from every time in every culture— share the same propensity to make things both useful and beautiful. 

 

Before entering a formal tour of the Bodleian Library, friend Margie and tour guide extraordinaire gave us the fascinating background, from Henry the 8^th to Thomas Bowdler and beyond, all information the formal tour guide gave in her own theatrical style. This extraordinary library, of which we saw just a few rooms, houses over 13 million books. The books range from ancient Greek and Sanskrit texts to yesterday’s best-sellers and include books written on cheese and ketchup packages, magazines and journals, e-books and more. No books are ever taken out and can only be read in the library by those who have a card, either because they’re Oxford graduates or shown that they have a particular research project. There’s an agreement that every book/ magazine/ journal published in the U.K. is guaranteed a spot in the library and once a week, a truck pulls up with some 1,000 new publications. Extraordinary! Since my book Play, Sing & Dance is published by a Schott in London, there’s a chance my book is included. (Margie and Paul have to look it up to see if that’s true or not.)

 

From there, we went to a small exhibit about the history of British Radio, looked at an original manuscript by Bach, browsed a bookstore and walked to Margie and Paul’s house for a delicious soup dinner and non-stop convivial conversation. 

 

And so ended this part of our three-week travels. Karen and I have a full day of leisure today, a true Sunday of rest and tomorrow we travel to the Cotswolds to hike around a different part of this beautiful country. Next Saturday, I’m back in my traveling music teacher mode giving a workshop in London while Karen flies home. For me, more London time, then Austria, then Ghana. I’m happy to settle into a routine back home in San Francisco, but travel stretches out time so that a single day can feel like a month. These past three weeks have felt like a mini-lifetime and remarkable to think I have five more weeks like this ahead. And then a whole different six or seven weeks in San Francisco, Memphis, Carmel Valley, Michigan and three places in China. 

 

I’m just about to finish reading Graham Greene’s delightful book Travels with My Aunt and just read this passage talking about a settled, domestic life and travel:

“You lie awake at night thinking how every day you are getting a little closer to death. It will stand there as close as the bedroom wall. But if you travel as I do, you won’t be edging day-to-day across to any last wall. The wall will find you on its own accord without your help and every day you truly live will seem to you a kind of victory.”

 

Such travel can happen also at home, both in your imagination and the things you do, but there is no question that traveling as we are has certainly pushed those bedroom walls far away, opened the windows to the morning birds singing in a lush green garden inviting me to partake of life like the schoolchild I once was leaping into the waiting arms of summer. 

The Oxford Report

My next Podcast to record is “K Is for Knowledge” and no better place to do that than here in Oxford, England. In a time in my confused country where the pursuit of knowledge is being threatened on all fronts, dismissed and eroded by purposeful misinformation, disinformation, faith-based belief, banned books and pride in ignorance, it is so refreshing to walk these ancient streets where students have assiduously studied for over 1,000 years (!).  Oxford University was founded in 1096 and each young student walking through its hallowed halls feels the presence of all those ancestors by their side, part of an illustrious continuum held steady through the British penchant for ceremony and tradition. 

 

Our first day, we just wandered the streets alone to get a feel for the place, beginning with a 40 minute walk on the towpath adjoining the canal where rowing races where in progress. (I thought it was skulling, but that’s when each person in the boat has two oars. In rowing, each has one, alternating sides with the people in front and behind.). So alongside the intellectual traditions are the physical ones and we stumbled onto actual races. Unlike the usual race where all start together and try to beat the others to the finish line, here they are spaced out in a line and the task is to bump the boat ahead of you, who then goes off to the side and leaves the race. There are 8 people rowing and one “cox” shouting at them to keep their rhythm together. (See the movie Boys in the Boat for a sense of this). Oxford is composed of some 38 different colleges and each has a team to represent them. It was beautiful to watch and exciting to hear the crowd cheering them on. 

The canal path ended at the town, a bustling scene with both students and tourists and stores and restaurants amidst the old stone college buildings. I passed a sign that said “Musical Instrument Museum: Free Admission” and approached the door with great excitement. Alas, it was closed while they were moving the collection to a new place. It’s a unique museum because the intent is that all the instruments are available to be played, both for a short time in the museum or for 6 months taking one out on loan. I later found out that had it been open, I could have played on Handel’s harpsichord and Haydn’s piano!! Well, that was the big fish that got away! A good reason to return to Oxford again someday!

 

We continued to wander about, browsed in a bookstore bigger than the former Borders in the U.S. used to be and ended up having our first Fish and Chips dinner with lager and lime beer. A sure sign that we had wholly arrived in England! Figured out how to take the bus back to our charming house in the tranquil village of Iffley, a welcome contrast to our Motel One in London.

 

The next day, back into town to meet our Australian friends Margie and Paul. I’ve known Margie through the Orff world since 1994 and her husband Paul went to Medical School at Oxford back in the late 1960’s. With his privilege as an alum, we got into the secret chambers of the colleges, peeked into dorm rooms and dining rooms and chapels and student bars (drinking age is 18 in England). We walked the exquisite gardens where students can sit amongst so much beauty to study, socialize or just watch the flowers grow. Paul regaled us with stories of how study was organized in short 8-week blocks with private tutorials available most every day, the friendly competition between Oxford and Cambridge (much like Harvard and Yale) and more. Margie pointed out spots where certain scenes from the TV Series’ Inspector Morse, Lewis and Endeavor were filmed (we’re a big fan of all three and now are anxious to revisit some of them!). We popped into a bar where illustrious celebrities had stopped. 

 

After attending an Evensong Service with an impressive choir made up of students who were not necessarily music majors, we ate at a unique and charming Japanese restaurant. Back home on the bus and so ended Day 2.

 

But we’re not done yet! Paul led most of that tour and today, it’s Margie’s turn, alongside an official tour that Paul booked. Perfect weather and I sit in the garden serenaded by mourning doves and eating a bowl of granola with my favorite Califia Oatmilk miraculously available here! 

 

I’ve often poo-pooed the British pomp and circumstance, the special gowns and caps and protocols, but not only is this a universal tendency in humans everywhere, I realized I helped create my own version in The San Francisco School. Instead of bowing before the Queen and drinking tea and processing with the scepter of learning, it was The Cookie Jar contest (carried on faithfully by my daughter!), the Samba Contest, the end-of-year Hug Line and such. Same function with a different taste and style. 

 

Also shared is my deep commitment to Knowledge, though as my Podcast will show, an expanded definition that values book knowledge but aims for a more expansive definition. Check out my podcast if you’re interested— titled The ABC’s of Education  and available on Spotify. My tiny whisper of protest against the massive tidal wave of celebrating ignorance. And if you hear mourning doves in the background, now you know why. 

 

 

 

British Wisdom

Had a lovely breakfast this morning with Australian friends Margie and Paul, the very ones who arranged a lovely little house for us to stay in just outside of Oxford. Amidst coffee and pastries and map-reading at Paddington Station, they handed us the key and will give us a proper Oxford tour in a day or so. Meanwhile, we boarded the train after breakfast and I couldn’t help but be impressed by the ongoing words of wisdom both written and spoken. For example:

 

Mind the gap between the train and the platform.

 

Brilliant! The platform is where we stand awaiting to be transported to the place of our dreams, the valley of love and delight that is our birthright. The train is the vehicle that takes us there. (And yes, we have to pay.) The gap is the space between where we are and where we hope to be and we would do well indeed to “mind that gap,” to pay attention to it, to step deliberately and mindfully so we don’t stumble onto the tracks. Good reminder!

 

The second one is equally appealing: 

 

See it. Say it. Sorted. 

If you see something that doesn’t seem right, we want to hear from you. When you see it, say it and we’ll sort it.

 

So I’m thinking that every British policeman and public official that I encounter, I should let them know that in my country something indeed doesn’t seem right. Since we don’t seem to be able to handle it, would they be so kind as to sort it out for us? Please?

 

More on the day in Oxford to come. 

The Browsing Way

Let’s be honest here. Do you, like me, deep down in your heart, think that the ways you think, the ways you feel things, the ways you do things, are the right way and everyone else is just wrong?! You may say out loud “Different strokes for different folks” but still think that your strokes (hmm- dubious verb here!) are the best. I think that’s just human nature. 

 

So yesterday I celebrated my particular mode of travel and today I lived it again and it is just enough to say that it suits my particular character. But that judging part of me is feeling, “Come on, people. Get on board the Doug train!”

 

Of course, I can justify it all philosophically and I do think the points are worth considering. I see how even good friends are more and more heads-down into their phones, addicted to abstract forms of getting oriented and discovering things to do while traveling, becoming obsessed with planning every detail and leaving little space for serendipity to enter. It’s like the difference between algorhythms suggesting books for you to order online and then ordering them and browsing in a bookstore and trusting that something will call out to you from the shelves. The difference between 10 people heads-down pouring over the phone’s Google maps and 1 person popping into a shop and asking someone directions. Inch by inch, we are seduced into machine life and give up a little piece of human connection. So yes, I do have a bone to pick at the end of the day. 

 

But rather than convert you, let me entice you with the story of my day. Beginning with getting the hotel clerk help us figure out what buses to take to get to Paddington Station, tracing different routes on our paper map and finally handwriting directions on a scrap piece of paper. Though we had the bus routes, we didn’t know precisely where the bus stops were, so that required some observations of various buses passing by and watching where they stopped. And we did. Then asked the bus driver to double-check that we were boarding the right bus. More human interaction. It worked and though we’ve enjoyed figuring out the London Metro system, it felt yet better to be above ground on the upper deck threading our way through the city streets. 

 

Then at Paddington Station to buy our train tickets to Oxford tomorrow. We could have done it online, but I refused. Then there were all the machines for self-service ticket-buying. Nope. Passed them by and went to human beings behind counters who answered a few questions and sold us our tickets. Another point for humanity!

 

A friend had suggested ("a friend suggested"—another point for human connection) we check out a neighborhood called Little Venice and looking at our map, noticed it was nearby the station. So off we went wandering without the Google-map GPS, found it and had a delightful stroll down the canal. Never knew about this part of London! Halfway through, we spotted a restaurant on the water’s edge and we were hungry, so looked at their menu without consulting any Yelp reviews on our phone and it was lovely, affordable and delicious!

We continued feeling our way through a couple of neighborhoods before arriving at Hyde Park and unlike yesterday’s rain, the weather was pitch-perfect and the sun was out as we explored down one pathway and then another. Back on the Metro, dinner at a Chinese place literally across the street from the hotel, seven miles of walking exercise (okay, I confess, at the end, I looked at my phone for the mileage) and hearts full from the “browsing way” of enjoying a city. Just the way I love to travel.

 

But hey, that’s just me.

  

The Needle and the Thread

When traveling, I feel somewhat compelled to follow the tourists and see the requisite sights— the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower, Buckingham Palace, what have you. But my favorite days are the ones in which I simply wander, walk through random neighborhoods absorbing the sounds, sights, smells, tastes. I don’t look on my phone to find the best restaurants nor figure out which bus to take. I peek into cafes that I pass by when I feel hungry, ask directions of strangers when I need some orientation, pop into a bookstore to browse or peek into a church. I love figuring out a city’s underground Metro system, be it in Tokyo, Paris or London. Of course, I always am drawn to parks and am quite content to sit on a bench and write in my journal or just watch the passing parade. 

 

Yesterday was such a day, an overcast drizzly one that found us walking alongside the Thames, watching pelicans and swans in St. James Park, popping into a lunch place that had the most delicious grain salads and the friendliest waitstaff. We sidestepped the throngs around Parliament and Westminster Abbey, threading through some charming side streets, took a peek at Buckingham Palace remembering some scenes from The Crown. Joy of all joys, I passed an organ on the way to the Underground that was available for the public to play! This was my first instrument (I started to study it at 6-years-old) and though I haven’t played it forever, sat down and played Bach’s Prelude No. 1 doubling the bass notes on pedal and then a 12-bar blues with the pedal as a walking bass. Heaven! Exactly the kind of serendipitous travel that you can’t plan for! 

 

Our one concrete plan was to go to a Textile Museum that my wife Karen had looked up and that was another unexpected surprise. It was a revealing look at how textiles have not only brought beauty, affirmed cultural identity, helped us survive in various climates, but how the needle and thread gave us the ropes, reins, bands and gut strings that are necessary to ships, ploughs, carts, musical instruments. How the Jacquard loom led directly to the computer. How weaving patterns inspired QR codes. Truly fascinating! When I get home, hope to look into a book they had for sale titled: The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World  by Virginia Postrel. 

 

Today another day ahead with no clear plan except a vague idea of finding The Golden Eagle Pub where I stumbled into my first job playing piano in a bar for a few days back in 1973. I did look it up, it’s still there and now the puzzle of how to get there, with preference for a double-decker bus. Some hopes they’ll let me play a tune for old-times sake, but we’ll see. And at 8am, there’s sun out the window. Better hurry!

Hello to England

Peter Rabbit, Peter Pan, Mary Poppins, Alice in Wonderland. Winnie the Pooh, The Wind in the Willows, The Secret Garden, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Merlin, King Arthur, Robin Hood, St. George and the Dragon, the whole of Mother Goose. I may have grown up in New Jersey, but I roamed through England in my imagination long before I ever stepped foot on its soil. 

 

So having arrived in London, I begin again my ritual invocation of the ways I was prepared to love this place. Whereas art and music were quite present in my coming to France version, literature takes top spot here. 

 

From the childhood authors came the considerable adult literature. Charles Dickens at the pinnacle, in great company with Wilkie Collins, Thomas Hardy, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes an enormous part of my vision of London and surroundings), Anthony Trollope, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, J.R.R. Tolkien, Graham Greene, the flowering of women authors—Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Virginia Wolff, D.H. Lawrence, Agatha Christie. Oh yeah, and what was the other fellow’s name? Ah, William Shakespeare! And also Chaucer!

 

Then the poets. William Blake, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Browning, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Gerard Manley Hopkins, T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas and of course, Shakespeare again. I’ve memorized poems by many of the above and they have proven good company indeed. 

 

When it comes to music, all that comes to mind is Ralph Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten, neither of who’s music I particularly know well or love. Ah, but now am remembering Henry Purcell, William Byrd, Thomas Tallis from earlier times. A quick cheat on Google reminds me of Frederick Delius, Gustav Holst and Edward Elgar who have written some things I’ve enjoyed. Then of course, there’s George Frederick Handel, German by birth, but went to London at the age of 27 and died there 47 years later as a British citizen. So I guess he counts! 

 

As for jazz, two jazz pianists come to mind—Marian McPartland and George Shearing. Not much. But then there’s the “British invasion” in the world of rock that informed so much of my adolescence. The Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark Five, Chad and Jeremy, Peter and Gordon, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Manfred Mann, The Kinks, the Hollies, the Animals, Herman’s Hermits, the Moody Blues, the Yardbirds, Petula Clark, Tom Jones, Donovan, Led Zeppelin, the Who. And what was the name of that other band? Oh yeah, the Beatles. 

And yes, there is a second wave in the late 70's and beyond—Pink Floyd, the Police, Elton John, Queen, Duran Duran, David Bowie, Sting, Boy George, The Spice Girls and more. But I pretty much stopped listening to current rock and pop after 1973 or so, so personally have no connection to any of them (though I do love Elton John's Love Song from 1970).

 

And the influence of the arts continued in the explosion of recent TV Series that has filled so much of my life, especially since the pandemic. Starting with Downton Abbey, the Crown and Foyle’s War and then into all the detective/ murder mysteries—Broadchurch, Shetland, Endeavor, Inspector Morse, Unforgotten, Vera, Grantchester, the Mayflower Murders, Scott and Bailey and on and on. 

 

So in the world of art and imagination, England was everywhere in my life. Happily so. But then there was that other British Invasion, the extraordinary havoc and genocide and slavery that reached into just about every corner of the world— Australia, India, Hong Kong, China, much of Africa, the Caribbean, Canada and the U.S.. Yes, France had its hand in it all—much of West Africa, Vietnam, Haiti, Louisiana, French Canada and beyond and Spain dominated just about all of South America (except for the Portuguese in Brazil), Central America, Mexico, Cuba and beyond. But the reach of the British Empire was simply extraordinary, even more so that it all came from this tiny island in Europe.

 

So it is. Every country has its particular mix of light and shadow and coming from the U.S.A., who am I to judge? Here we all are, trying to clean up the mess our ancestors made while also uplifted by all those other ancestors who shed light on our compassionate and life-loving selves. 

 

So two days ahead to roam around this ancient city, a spot of sun out the window inviting us to do so after a breakfast hopefully better than the eggs and beans traditional fare!

 

 

 

Farewell to France

In a couple of hours, we’ll be on the Eurostar headed to London, so a good time to bid a hearty “Merci beaucoup” and fond farewell to a most invigorating and restorative two weeks in France. Goodbye to morning croissants, lunchtime baguettes, evening ice cream desserts, to biking through pristine and green-lush countryside on back roads, to wandering the streets of Paris, to charming towns and vibrant cities, to museums, churches, cobblestone streets and red-awning cafés, to friendly people and the bike group comradery, to art, culture, beauty, to Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité! I haven’t spent nearly as much time here as I have in Spain, Italy, Austria, but am wholly motivated to return again. 

Viva la France!

Labor Omnia Vincit

For those whose Latin is rusty, that means “Work conquers all” and is certainly what guided —and continues to guide at 88-years old—the artist David Hockney. We stood in line for an hour to get into his massive show at the Fondation Louis Vuitton and perhaps odd to be in Paris to see a British-born artist who lived for many years in L.A. (but also London, Paris, York, Normandy) instead of going to the Louvre. 

 

But it was well-worth it. From charcoal sketches to watercolors to oil paintings to mixed media to i-Pad art to Opera sets, the man is prolific, if nothing else. If you didn’t like one style, there’s a good chance you would like another. While indisputably himself in style, like just about every good artist, he paid his dues studying assiduously the work of the Masters before him, from Medieval times to modern. He also is well-read, paying homage to authors from Blake to Whitman and beyond. 

 

Three quotes jumped out at me to add to my collection to get through these dark times. Or any times. 

 

The first was the “Work conquers all,” the feeling I had today waiting in line and coming up with a body percussion piece to accompany an old canon for my summer teaching ahead. When I am at work—be it planning a class, teaching a class, arranging a jazz tune, writing a poem, article or book — there is no space for the devils of distraction or the devils of despair to enter. The work becomes an active antidote to whatever poisons are in the air and is part of the collective strategy to diminish their power. Of course, I’m talking about “good” work— creative work, compassionate work, spiritual work. 

 

Another notable quote that he borrowed from some unnamed Chinese source: 

 

“You need three things for painting: the hand, the eye and the heart. Two won’t do.”

 

With a slight shift, you have exactly the sentiment of one of my chapters in my Teach Like It’s Music book expressed so refreshingly here: 

 

“You need three things for music: the hand, the eye and the heart. Two won’t do.”

 

I also add the head, but maybe more succinct with just three. I like that ending little phrase: "Two won't do."

 

I can personally attest that though my heart is always willing, my hand could use another 10,000 hours of practice and my hearing would have been better with a different childhood that locked in the synapses in Nature’s proper window. But nevertheless, I persist.

 

Finally, one that is oh-so-timely in these days of the neo-fascists shutting down any institution, funding, law, idea designed to help others. Every day another one that defies belief. In light of it all, we would all do well to remember this last little quote that David Hockney connected with a series of paintings celebrating the end of Winter in Normandy:

 

“Remember. They can’t cancel the Spring.”

 

Dinner awaits and tomorrow we bid farewell to France on the way to London. It has been a marvelous two weeks indeed. 

The Way It Is

The first time I walked the streets of Paris I was 22 years old. Traveling with my college chorus and singing 15^th century Masses in the great cathedrals. Like Notre Dame. In my free time, browsing in Shakespeare and Co. bookstore. Going to the Louvre, of course. Sitting on a bench in the Tuileries Gardens writing in my journal. Wandering the cobblestone streets enchanted by the red-awning outdoor cafes.

 

Yesterday, my wife and I walked that same territory. 9.4 miles of it, to be exact and 52 years later. There were close to a thousand people waiting in line to enter Notre Dame, but the line was constantly moving, so we got in it and entered the cathedral 15 minutes later. A Mass was in progress, but truth be told, the music we sang over a half-century ago was better. There was another line to enter Shakespeare & Company, some 20 people, but again, didn’t take long to enter that marvelous place. There was a poster for a reading from San Francisco author Rebecca Solnick and the murder mystery series by Cara Black, an SF School alum parent whose child we taught. No surprise that none of my 10 books were there, but I spoke to a clerk about carrying The ABC’s of Education and Jazz, Joy & Justice and she gave me the e-mail of the person to contact. 

 

On we walked along the Seine to the Louvre and decided not to enter, but just walk around the outside of that extraordinarily expansive building. Sat again in the Tuileries and I wrote in my journal. Wandered those cobblestone streets and arrived after 8 hours out in the world to my friends’ Michael and Pam’s apartment. Michael was the co-founder of gamelan Sekar Jaya, a group I once played in and Pam and I took the Orff Level trainings together way back when and stayed in touch all this time. Great food, convivial company and took the 8 Metro line back to the hotel, arrived at midnight. 

 

Some three years before that first trip to Paris, Joni Mitchell released her song The Circle Game and sang exactly what I felt yesterday. The seasons going round and round in the endlessly cycling circle game. Me taking a moment to “look back from where I came” and marveling that I’m still here and can wholly recognize that fellow from oh so long ago. Below is a photo of that 22-year old (fourth singer from the left) and the 74-year old yesterday in the reflection of Shakespeare and Co., the one looking back at the other and both of them connected not just by walking the same streets so many years apart, but by a thread of vision that has never wavered. 

 

And so William Stafford’s marvelous poem comes to mind, speaking a truth I feel down in my bones.

 

The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.  
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don't ever let go of the thread. 

And I never have. 

 

Paris Awaits

A bit of culture shock coming to the big city of Paris after the charming country towns of the Dordognes. Instead of a river flowing outside our hotel window, it’s a stream of cars on the freeway. Instead of the ongoing song of the mourning doves, it’s ambulance sirens. Instead of empty alleys with inviting twists and turns, it’s busy streets filled with people rushing to and fro. Living in San Francisco for over half-a-century, I’m quite accustomed to city life, but suddenly I feel like the country mouse visiting his cousin. 

 

After the intensity of the railroad station, trying to find a public toilet and figure out where the Metro was and make our way through shoulder-to-shoulder crowds, we finally found our way to the hotel in the southeast corner of the city. After getting settled, we strolled down a tree-lined boulevard, got some peanuts and our first chocolate bar, took a short walk in a nearby park and found a perfect restaurant with a Thai chicken rice dish. The diversity of food choices one of the perks of city life, to be sure. 

 

With an evening still ahead, decided to treat ourselves to the first movie viewing on our trip and thought about all the films set in Paris. Negotiated my way through all the obstacles to get to see Midnight in Paris on Youtube and settled ourselves down to it, only to discover that the sound and image sync was way off. As if it had first been dubbed in French and then returned to English 10 beats later. Too disturbing, so opted for Netflix and The Da Vinci Code and dang if the premise of a purposefully hidden femininity in the original Christian origins didn’t ring true. Damn patriarchy! And all the Inquisition/ Witch-burning havoc it caused, still living on in the current Regime’s reversal of progress in women’s rights. Look at the painting of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper and tell me you sincerely think that the figure to Jesus’s left is really John and not Mary Magdalene. 

 

Meanwhile, a cloudy day awaits and invites us to stroll along the Seine and in the gardens and to peek in churches and walk up cobblestone steps and sit at sidewalk cafes. I have lists awaiting of books and films with the word Paris in the title, another list of the same set in Paris and then there’s four jazz songs I can think of without looking anything up—I Love Paris (Cole Porter), April in Paris (Vernon Duke), Afternoon in Paris (John Lewis), The Last Time I Saw Paris (Jerome Kern). Change April for May and all could be the title for the day ahead. 

 

A Cup of Coffee

Following through on yesterday’s post about Josephine Baker, I found her speech from the 1963 March on Washington. My admiration for her continues to rise. Here are the words that our current regime would have banned— too much truth, too much kindness, too much revelation about how things have worked in the now Divided State of America. While we still can, please read this out loud to your family at dinner, pass it on to your children’s teachers to have them share it with their students, take a pause in your business board meeting and have the CEO speak it out loud. Discuss why she couldn't order a cup of coffee. Really. 

 

 Friends and family…you know I have lived a long time and I have come a long way.  And you must know now that what I did, I did originally for myself.  Then later, as these things began happening to me, I wondered if they were happening to you, and then I knew they must be.  And I knew that you had no way to defend yourselves, as I had.

 

And as I continued to do the things I did, and to say the things I said, they began to beat me.  Not beat me, mind you, with a club—but you know, I have seen that done too—but they beat me with their pens, with their writings.  And friends, that is much worse.

 

When I was a child and they burned me out of my home, I was frightened and I ran away.    Eventually I ran far away.  It was to a place called France.  Many of you have been there, and many have not.  But I must tell you, ladies and gentlemen, in that country I never feared.  It was like a fairyland place.

And I need not tell you that wonderful things happened to me there.  Now I know that all you children don’t know who Josephine Baker is, but you ask Grandma and Grandpa and they will tell you.  You know what they will say.  “Why, she was a devil.”  And you know something…why, they are right.  I was too.  I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America too.

But I must tell you, when I was young in Paris, strange things happened to me.  And these things had never happened to me before.  When I left St. Louis a long time ago, the conductor directed me to the last car.  And you all know what that means.

 

But when I ran away, yes, when I ran away to another country, I didn’t have to do that.  I could go into any restaurant I wanted to, and I could drink water anyplace I wanted to, and I didn’t have to go to a colored toilet either, and I have to tell you it was nice, and I got used to it, and I liked it, and I wasn’t afraid anymore that someone would shout at me and say, “Nigger, go to the end of the line.”  But you know, I rarely ever used that word.  You also know that it has been shouted at me many times.So over there, far away, I was happy, and because I was happy I had some success, and you know that too.

 

Then after a long time, I came to America to be in a great show for Mr. Ziegfeld, and you know Josephine was happy.  You know that.  Because I wanted to tell everyone in my country about myself.  I wanted to let everyone know that I made good, and you know too that that is only natural.

 

But on that great big beautiful ship, I had a bad experience.  A very important star was to sit with me for dinner, and at the last moment I discovered she didn’t want to eat with a colored woman.  I can tell you it was some blow. And I won’t bother to mention her name, because it is not important, and anyway, now she is dead.

 

And when I got to New York way back then, I had other blows—when they would not let me check into the good hotels because I was colored, or eat in certain restaurants.  And then I went to Atlanta, and it was a horror to me.  And I said to myself, My God, I am Josephine, and if they do this to me, what do they do to the other people in America?

You know, friends, that I do not lie to you when I tell you I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents.  And much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad.  And when I get mad, you know that I open my big mouth.  And then look out, ‘cause when Josephine opens her mouth, they hear it all over the world.

 

So I did open my mouth, and you know I did scream, and when I demanded what I was supposed to have and what I was entitled to, they still would not give it to me.

 

So then they thought they could smear me, and the best way to do that was to call me a communist.  And you know, too, what that meant.  Those were dreaded words in those days, and I want to tell you also that I was hounded by the government agencies in America, and there was never one ounce of proof that I was a communist.  But they were mad.  They were mad because I told the truth.  And the truth was that all I wanted was a cup of coffee.  But I wanted that cup of coffee where I wanted to drink it, and I had the money to pay for it, so why shouldn’t I have it where I wanted it?

 

Friends and brothers and sisters, that is how it went.  And when I screamed loud enough, they started to open that door just a little bit, and we all started to be able to squeeze through it.  Not just the colored people, but the others as well, the other minorities too, the Orientals, and the Mexicans, and the Indians, both those here in the United States and those from India.

 

Now I am not going to stand in front of all of you today and take credit for what is happening now.  I cannot do that.  But I want to take credit for telling you how to do the same thing, and when you scream, friends, I know you will be heard.  And you will be heard now.

 

But you young people must do one thing, and I know you have heard this story a thousand times from your mothers and fathers, like I did from my mama.  I didn’t take her advice.  But I accomplished the same in another fashion.  You must get an education.  You must go to school, and you must learn to protect yourself.  And you must learn to protect yourself with the pen, and not the gun.  Then you can answer them, and I can tell you—and I don’t want to sound corny—but friends, the pen really is mightier than the sword.

 

I am not a young woman now, friends.  My life is behind me.  There is not too much fire burning inside me.  And before it goes out, I want you to use what is left to light that fire in you.  So that you can carry on, and so that you can do those things that I have done.  Then, when my fires have burned out, and I go where we all go someday, I can be happy.

 

You know I have always taken the rocky path.  I never took the easy one, but as I get older, and as I knew I had the power and the strength, I took that rocky path, and I tried to smooth it out a little.  I wanted to make it easier for you.  I want you to have a chance at what I had.  But I do not want you to have to run away to get it.  And mothers and fathers, if it is too late for you, think of your children.  Make it safe here so they do not have to run away, for I want for you and your children what I had.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, my friends and family, I have just been handed a little note, as you probably say.  It is an invitation to visit the President of the United States in his home, the White House.

 

I am greatly honored.  But I must tell you that a colored woman—or, as you say it here in America, a black woman—is not going there. It is a woman.  It is Josephine Baker.

 

This is a great honor for me.  Someday I want you children out there to have that great honor too.  And we know that that time is not someday.  We know that that time is now.

 

I thank you, and may God bless you.  And may He continue to bless you long after I am gone.