Techno Therapy

Why do I continue to be so optimistic about the human experiment in the face of every reason to the contrary? Of course, the endless wars and emotional/sexual/ physical abuse and drug/alcohol addiction and a political game that has the worst pieces on the board ascending to power and money, money, money always running the show. But the thing that’s on my mind at the moment is the relentless fantasy that machines will save us, our refusal to understand that technology does not solve the issues of the human soul and in fact, often further shuts down our humanitarian promise. 

 

What does it take to understand that each new step forward in technology is often a step backward in a healthy humanity? We “save labor” so our bodies don’t have to work so hard and then have to compensate with trips to the gym. We look for connection on our devices but end up feeling more disconnected and lonelier than ever and have to compensate with trips to the therapist, who has us talking about our mother instead of saying, “Shut your damn phone off and go out and hug a tree!” We choose Smartboards and AI to enter our classrooms and create less smart children incapable of accessing their NI (natural intelligence). In short, we create new problems and then try to solve them with further technologies or machine-like thinking, all of which take more time and cost more money. 

 

Just as we now have summer camps to de-program our kids from electronic addiction, I’m imagining we’ll have techno-therapists whose sole job is to help us cope with a world run by machines. (I also imagine that AI therapy will rise and we’ll be sitting in room talking to robots.). If you know of someone already practicing techno-therapy, give me his/her/ their phone number/ e-mail/ Facebook messenger account because I’m in need. 

 

While loving much about Portland and Seattle, I was so happy to come back to my beloved San Francisco— until I remembered that we have been invaded by a foreign entity colonizing our streets like Russian tanks. I can’t walk/ bike ride/ drive one block without seeing one and then another and then four more and I don’t know how to cope with it. 

 

Imagine that there’s a person in your life who you haven’t been able to forgive for some hurt they did to you, someone you’d walk to the other side of the street to avoid if you saw them coming. (Thankfully, I can only think of one person out of the thousands I know in that category.) Now imagine that every time you go out, there they are and that they’ve cloned themselves so 900 of them are wandering around your once cherished neighborhood. Can you picture how you might feel your life has been ruined? After my initial “Home to San Francisco!” happiness, it’s back to “FUCK!!! I had forgotten! Get the hell out of my face!!!!”

 

In case you haven’t guessed, I’m talking about Waymo. As they began to multiply, I gave the finger to each one I passed. Of course, the driver isn't bothered because THERE IS NO DRIVER!! But maybe the passengers might wonder what my issue is and begin to think twice before ordering the next. NOT! OF course, they won’t. But it was a way for me to vent my anger at this next sign that the move to replace human beings is gaining ground. 

 

Then I thought, “This is ridiculous. The Waymo makers and supporters don’t care and I’m the one who’s losing.” So I briefly tried blessing someone I knew in need every time I saw one and that really did help for a while. But now I’m back to the finger therapy. 

I am so deeply sad and outraged that they’re in my neighborhood and throughout the city I’m trying hard to still love. I know everyone will just tell me, “Get over it. They’re here to stay. Don’t let it bother you.” But I don’t want to accept it. Back to the St. Francis/ Angela Davis dichotomy: One says “Accept that which you cannot change,” the other says, “Change that which you cannot accept.” 

 

        HELP!!!!

 

 

Walking in the Rain

The Seattle Saga continued on Wednesday to a most wonderful guest teaching to two 5^th grade classes at the Bush School. Julianna Cantarelli Vita, a most wonderful human being and Orff teacher from Brazil, had done a project on my Jazz, Joy & Justice book with these kids choosing a chapter and reporting on it. So here was a chance for them to interview the author (me) and their questions and comments were so intelligent and thought-provoking. It really was one of the first times I got to talk to kids directly about these stories (also at Havergal College, a school in Toronto) and how I wish I could do it more. And how I wonder why more of the Orff teachers I’ve trained don’t invite me! (Hint, hint). After some time to chat, I taught a Ghana xylophone piece to one group and a jazz roots piece to the other and that was equally delightful, the “joy” part of the social justice equation. 

 

I met Julianna for dinner that night and she brought me laminated photos with little notes of thanks from the kids and I laughed out loud at the one from Nora, who thanked me and wrote “P.S. I asked the good question.” (See center of photo below). Yet another affirmation that kids, like all of us, yearn to be seen, heard and remembered. Whoever I teach, my hope is to do exactly that and to give them the opportunities to do things that help me remember them. Like the girl who played the bass bars so well on Boom Chick a Boom, another who made up a great new riff in the piece, the boy who had a killer feel on the ride cymbal. Whether it was yesterday’s class or the reunion with the students I taught 40 years ago and still could tell them stories about their memorable moments, it seems like an intricate piece of what I’m meant to do here on this planet.

From the school, it was an afternoon at the Nordic Museum celebrating Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland, all places I’ve worked in and toured and thoroughly enjoyed. I have at least one lasting friendship in each of the five, with particularly strong connections with Iceland and Finland. These cultures got off to a questionable start with Vikings raiding and marauding their merry way around Northern Europe, but now are distinct for their impressive common values: a commitment to social justice, an abiding respect for nature, an intellectual curiosity, and an openness to new ideas. And the museum reflected all that as it celebrated both people and practices. 

 

Driving back home, we passed the impressive Fremont Troll. It invoked some nostalgia for those earlier days with my young grandchildren, both of whom loved the story I never tired of telling, The Three Billy Goats Gruff. A good metaphor for the blustering Repugnatan trolls going after the people who simply want to cross a bridge to feed themselves without causing harm to anyone. But the clever people keep deferring the troll’s greedy unsatiable appetite for dominance and violence until he finally meets the goat big enough to show him who’s who and the troll’s true heart of cowardice is revealed as he runs into the hills, never to return. The 7 million who took to the streets at the No Kings rallies and the recent election victories are good signs that we are growing into the Big Billy Goat Gruff that can send the trolls packing. 

The next morning, Karen and I walked with umbrellas in the rain to head downtown, me heading for the MoPop Museum to see an exhibit titled: Never Turn Back: 400 Years of Black Music (the highlight a map drawn of Jazz in Harlem in 1932) and her to the Chihuly Glass Sculpture exhibit. While walking, we passed many native Seattlelites walking without umbrellas, raincoats or head-covering, as if they had a special arrangement with the rain that it would simply fall around them. Our host Laura had planned to go to her twice-weekly rowing/skulling meet-up, but the weather proved too harsh and she ended up finding us and picking us up. After our respective museum tours, we walked to her car to be taken to the airport. For the few hundred yards (still raining) to get there, I kept my umbrella closed. When I arrived at the car, I didn’t feel soaked through. After five days in this vibrant city, I had become an honorary Seattlelite!

Nouns and Verbs

I practice Zen meditation, but I’m not a Buddhist.

 

I vote Democratic, but I’m not a Democrat.

 

I resonate with the basic teachings of Jesus Christ, but I’m as far from today’s American incarnations of “Christians” as it’s possible to be. 

 

I teach via the Orff approach to music education, but even here I’m not tied down to the label of “Orff teacher.”

 

In short, I refuse to be identified with an “ism” or “ology,” bound by their dogma and discouraged to pursue independent thought or trust my own intuition and experience. That gives me a freedom that people bound to ideologies or religions or identities don’t have. If it works, if it brings happiness to me and others, if it makes sense, I’ll follow it until it doesn’t anymore. I don’t need a priest or political leader or expert to approve my decisions. I’ve learned to trust my inner voice of what feels right and when it sometimes leads me into edgy territory, I’m not ashamed to backtrack and go another way. 

 

When the verbs of human thought solidify to the nouns of human identity, things go bad. The rigidity of the entire edifice of my way/ your way, the true God/ the false God, the right way/ the wrong way, creates so much havoc and discord, both inside our own psyche and in our relations with others. 

 

In the old fairy tales, (Faithful John one example), some characters are frozen solid, the flowing water of their moving and changing selves stopped cold into the un-meltable ice of an immobile fixed self. They can neither move forward nor back and are forever stuck in the statue of one moment in their previous living self. 

 

Last night, the Democratic Party had a glorious and needed victory in several elections around the country. It’s a vital and necessary step towards restoring Democracy and yes, there are right and wrong ways to creating communities devoted to fairness, equity, justice, helping and healing practices, and Democracy over Fascism is a principle I stand by. But the ultimate healing does not come from Democrats roundly defeating Republicans, but from elected officials using their parties as ways to organize their values and thoughts while being open to other values and thoughts hashed out in sincere conversations. In short, anyone is Congress should not be pledging allegiance to their Party Line, but to their mutual concern to serve the people of their shared country and defend the Constitution. In a healthy system, votes on any particular issue should be mixed between the parties, based on solid information and independent thought. We are so far from that. 

 

Likewise, all religions should consider that they simply have different names for spiritual powers they equally recognize. That any written summaries of beliefs are human-created and fallible, and that first-hand experience of Spirit should be trusted over second-hand dogmas in the confusing and contradictory testaments of Bibles and Korans and Sutras. 

In short, we may temporarily identify with certain systems of thoughts and beliefs, but things are so much healthier if it’s a light affiliation subject to doubt, questioning, consideration of other ways and an unshakeable faith in our own experience not to be dictated by those people or belief systems that demand our blind obedience. Only then can all the petrified characters in the fairy tale be set free. 

 

Kafka said, “A book should be an ax to unthaw the frozen sea within us.” Let’s get to work unthawing the petrified nouns of our allegiances and start the verbs of conversation, thought and experience flowing again.

 

 

 

Sleeping in Seattle

We arrived Monday morning at my Orff friend Laura’s house in the beautiful Queen Anne neighborhood. Met her neighbor, who happens to be the brother of the former cook at our school and the uncle to three students we taught. Took a walk around this most enticing area in Seattle, with such aesthetically-crafted houses and great restaurants, bakeries and coffee shops. There was light rain and our host was non-plussed, not even bothering to cover her head while this wimpy guy opened his umbrella. 

 

From there, into the car to go see the locks and the salmon ladder. Interesting, but not a salmon to be seen— it seems we came too late in the season. So opted to go to the Nordic Museum, but alas, it was closed on Mondays. Undaunted, we drove on to Pioneer Square and there we took Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour, a delightful, off-beat walk and talk through the colorful history of Seattle’s beginnings in the late 1880’s. Quite a story, involving a big fire, potholes in the street where people drowned, exploding toilets, raising the streets and sidewalks one whole floor higher (and us walking through what used to be street level), women who helped fund the enormous expense of building up the city through their work as “seamstresses” (can you guess why the quotes?). Back for a delicious home-cooked meal and a visit from Jackie, another Orff friend and ending with Jackie, Laura and Karen singing show-tunes with yours truly at the piano. A delightful day!

 

Today began with returning our rental car to the airport and a weird GPS snafu that had us circling blocks and taking backstreets to the airport. Then the light rail to downtown and meeting Laura at the library. An impressive architectural structure and me talking to the children’s librarian about carrying my Jazz, Joy & Justice book. Determined to figure out how to get all my books more present in libraries everywhere, while the institution still exists. I’m sure the Republican Fascists, knowing that knowledge is power and how dare it be for free!, would be delighted to shut them down.

 

No visit to Seattle would be complete without stopping by Pikes Market, so off we went for lunch, sitting by the water’s edge and happily so. Meant to see the wall filled with chewing gum but got distracted and missed it. Instead, we drove on to the Arboretum and took a walk in the crisp, overcast (but not raining!) day amidst the glorious reds and yellows of trees still dressed in full Fall regalia. I especially loved the display in the Japanese garden, especially the reflections in the pond.

 

Back at the house, I played some Bach Cello Suites in unison with Laura’s 13-year-old son Austin—me on piano, him on cello. He had improved quite a bit since I had heard him play back in San Francisco 4 years ago! I then sight-read a Brahms cello-piano duet without feeling too much undue shame at my inability to expertly sight-read my part. 

 

Finally had to stop playing to walk the four blocks to the Isarn Thai Soul Kitchen, a most lovely restaurant with most delicious food with the most delightful three sisters who Karen and I had both taught back at The San Francisco School. As expected, the conversation flowed like a burbling and bubbling river, the waters so cool and refreshing, winding in and out of the present and the past, with much joy and laughter. Now 53, 51 and 47 years old, Paprika, Ginger and Maya have done—and continue to do—such fine work, much of it in education, art and international relations. 

 

Thus continues my Odyssey enjoying the harvest of my life’s work and path and I can testify, it is endlessly nutritious and delicious. My cup runneth over. And now, off to sleep in Seattle.

Think with the Liver

 The last post was inspired by a spirited discussion last night with my nephew Eren, who was defending AI as the necessary tool of today’s job market. At the end of it, I remembered a poem I had written in response to a poem generated by Chatgpt that a guest who came to dinner at our house sent to me. I’ve probably posted this before, but hey, it’s worth another read and I’m sure no one remembers. 

In my world, education is about transformation and my guest, a wonderful person and husband and father, had a moment of fun getting a machine to churn out the poem. But when it was done, he was the same person. Had he taken the time to write a poem himself, he would have felt the beautiful benefits of the creative process and treated himself to that feeling of transformation that all creative work offers. That's the missing piece in so many of these discussions about whether AI is good or bad. Or more accurately, when and why and how it can be good and when and why and how it can be bad for our own development. 

On the surface, you might be impressed by the Chtgpt version, but if you read the last post, you can see that it is indeed clever, but it’s a lie. The machine did not have the first-hand pleasure of being present for the dinner. We should be wary of that mere cleverness and remember to think—and eat—with the liver! (See last post)

 

AI POEM SENT BY A GUEST AT OUR DINNER PARTY

 

Hark, gentle friends, and lend thine ears to praise! 

For yesternight, a tapestry of mirth, 

Didst weave its spell through all our happy ways. 

The viands served did prove their sterling worth, 

A feast for kings, each morsel did delight. 

Our tongues, in converse sweet, did find their flight, 

Like birds aloft on currents warm and bright. 

And then the games, which did our souls ignite 

With playful jest and laughter's joyful sound. 

For such a night, where pleasures did abound, 

My deepest gratitude doth now resound!

 

REBUTTAL TO AI POEM ABOUT A DINNER PARTY.    © 2025 Doug Goodkin

Since gold and steel and chips with epo-xy

Are all that gives to you your power.

How with outrage might beauty hold a plea

Whose song arises beholding a flower. 

O, how shall summer’s honeyed breath sing out

Against the techno-siege of our darkening days,

When you have no lungs to sing or shout,

No comforting touch or voice to praise. 

 

A sad pretense to read your words

Oh cold machine, why should we care?

With no tongue that tasted, no laughter heard, 

You did not live it, you were not there. 

A poor imitation my humble poem might be,

Yet the glory is, it came from me!

The New AI

Years ago, I had an interesting discussion with a mask-maker in Bali. He said something to the effect of, “You Westerners are very clever with all your machines and inventions and ways of making money, but you only think with your head. We Balinese think with our liver.”

 

That intrigued me. One function of the liver is to aid metabolism, the chemical processes that convert food into energy for life-sustaining functions like breathing, growing, and repairing cells. Applying this to thought, “thinking with the liver” helps convert “food for thought” into both intellectual and spiritual thought, helps repair cells damaged by wrong thinking and brings breath—inspiration— into the process. Catabolism breaks down the nutrients to make them usable for life energy in the manner of critical thinking, anabolism helps build new materials, in the manner of creative endeavors. The liver also builds immunity and detoxification, protecting us from purposeful lies and toxic practices, aids with digestion, again, helping us separate the nutrients from the waste material (ie, the truth from the bullshit) and helps store the vitamins vital to our physical (and in this metaphor) mental health.  In short, thinking with the liver is a more wholistic, life-sustaining process than mere cleverness. That Balinese artist knew what he was talking about.

 

That’s the kind of discussion we need when talking about the onslaught and wholesale invasion of AI. All cleverness, confusing intelligence with making predictions and re-arranging existing thought and language, outsourcing our capability to grow our own potential to think for ourselves. As a teacher, this is the death-knell of our profession. Might it be useful in quickly summarizing a thousand pages of a lawyer’s brief into something more understandable and time-efficient? Might it help point us to the three “best books” written about a particular subject by reliable deep-thinking human beings? Might it show up at the top of the Google page summarizing the function of the liver? Sure, it can! Might some of that be useful in our own thought-evolution? Yes, it can. 

 

But then why does it need expensive billboard space on 9 out of 10 ads in San Francisco? Why isn’t that balanced by thought-provoking questions or social justice concerns or poetry on those same billboards? As always, follow the money. It’s the same old playbook that happened with computers. “This is the future! Your child will be left behind! Get yours now—and then the update one year or six months or two weeks later!” The promoters are not spiritual teachers concerned for the well-being of the species. The motivation is not enlarged thought or more open hearts or more expressive bodies or more connected communities. Its meta-message is “Machines are more reliable than humans. Our creations are more intelligent that our own capacity to create. Thought and feeling and values are commodities and get yours now! And make us rich!”

 

Meanwhile, the therapist’s offices are filled with people who are lonely, disconnected from others and themselves, unfulfilled, anxious, stressed, fearful because the whole thrust of society is to bond them with machines and disconnect them with fellow humans. They drive to their therapy appointment in the back seat of a driverless car, then home to shop online or if they have to go to a grocery store, choose the self-check-out, have e-mail conferences with their kids’ teachers, work from home in their isolated office with co-workers they rarely meet in person, scroll through their phones every few minutes designed to addict them and succeeding wonderfully. And then they wonder why they feel lonely and blame their mother or themselves. 

AI is just the next member of the “machines will save us” family and while we continue the fantasy that “it’s just a tool and we should learn how to use it creatively,” absolutely nothing is truly preparing us for how to do that. Because we’re not having the essential discussion that even makes that a remote possibility. The one that asks, “Who are we? What are we here for: How do we organize our lives around the human values that help us to think, feel and connect?”

 

And so I offer THE NEW AI, which is actually as old as the hills. Artistic Integrity. Learning to think like an artist, as the people in Bali and Ghana and the American (and international) Jazz community do. Using all eight intelligences at once in a flowing, interconnected conversation with each other. Analytic thinking dancing with creative thinking, with the heart and body and soul always present together on the dance floor. And that whole show connected with that most neglected of human values these days, Integrity. Which Mirriam-Webster defines as:

1.    Firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic value: incorruptibility  

      2.  an unimpaired condition: soundness

     3. the quality or state of being complete or undivided: completeness   

 

The tributes to recently deceased jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette continue to pour in because he embodied ALL of it. An extraordinary musician with integrity. The essence of the new AI. As you defend the invasion of the other AI, consider this: No one will ever write a tribute to a loved one saying, “He/she knew how to use AI really well.”

PS: I, Doug Goodkin, wrote all of the above with the resources of my own brain, thought and expressive capabilities. 

 

PNW Road Trip

It was an old familiar feeling. Waking up in a bed and wondering for a moment, “Where am I?” Back to my college and young adult days when I never could have imagined going to a hotel— too expensive, even at $40 a night back then. My travels around the country, whether hitchhiking, busing or driving, usually meant crashing at a friend’s house. Not only cheaper, but more convivial getting to visit and enjoying a taste of someone else’s home and life in a different place. 

 

All these years later, I’m doing it again. First, staying at my daughter Kerala’s house in Portland to be with the grandkids Zadie and Malik while she was off to a Conference in Florida. Before this trip, I had a series of reunions with old friends and colleagues and former students back in San Francisco. They included Tom Kearney, a 61-year-old SF School alum who I taught my first year in 1975, James Fox, an ex-neighbor whose daughter Gabby was born one month after mine and they began life as good friends, eight retired alum SFS teachers who still get together to hike every few months, and teaching guest classes for several Orff teachers who had trained with me. 

 

And so it continued in Portland, lunching with Jeff Thomas, a friend we shared a remarkable 3-months in a small village in Southern India with —in 1979! Coffee with Marc Bescond, an Orff teacher who just completed Level III with me. Brunch with Steve and Gabe, two college friends and going with them to sing Halloween songs at their grandkids' school— in an assembly in a gym with 300 kids! (Quite a challenge to make it quietly spooky!) Singing for my Malik’s 4^th grade class and his teacher, Brooke Murphy, who was my former student at SF School! Visiting my nephew Ian and singing my scary Skin and Bones song to his two kids Camille and Ezra, 6 and 10 yrs. old. (Two kids in a living room is quite different from 300 in a gym!)

 

Finished the Portland visit trick-or-treating —of course, in the rain!— and took off the next morning to head north towards Seattle—of course, in the rain. Stopped in Lacey, Washington to have lunch with my Level I Orff teacher Kathleen Poole. That Level I class was in 1983, we kept crossing paths until 1990 or so, when she moved from Carmel to Washington and stopped coming to Orff events to become a School Principal and later, Assistant Superindendent. We couldn’t figure out the last time we saw each other or even kept in touch, but it was probably at least 30 years ago. With the advent of Facebook, we’ve had some little exchanges in the past five years ago and finally, here we were sitting together at a table in a Thai restaurant. 

 

You know how it goes with some people. Within two minutes, you’re picking up where you left off three decades ago, crossing that immense gap of time with such ease and pleasure. It was a most delightful two hours and both of us, at 74 years old, vowed now to wait another 30 years before our next visit!

 

Then on to my nephew Eren and his wife’s Maya’s place in Des Moines—not Iowa, but Washington. The sun had come out, we entered the house and were stunned by the view out onto Puget Sound. He started a business marketing and selling salmon from Alaskan fisheries and she’s a newly-credentialed lawyer and they bought this remarkable place a year ago and did such impressive work on it, both contracted and done on their own with such impressive skills—especially for me, a certified non-handy-man. We hiked around the neighborhood a bit, enjoyed a lovely dinner and just chatted the evening away. And this is where I woke up this morning. 

 

We’ll be here for one more day and night and then on to another Orff friend’s house in Seattle, where we’ll connect with yet more SF School alums and other Orff folks I’ve trained. While treating ourselves to tourism in Seattle, a place we haven’t been in decades. Such riches combining re-connection with friends, family and colleagues with wandering around a new town or city.

 

PS There is a whole other list of people I would have enjoyed seeing in both Portland and Seattle and in points in-between, but it was just too much for this particular trip. One of them asked me where I was going to be in PNW and overwhelmed by our culture of initials, I had to ask what that meant. Now I know—Pacific Northwest. 

Coming and Going

And so November has arrived, the 9^th month (Nov-nueve) that is really the 11^th. (Go look it up.) It’s a month of significant birthdays that seem to come in pairs.  My nephew Ian and daughter Talia and (Nov 25^th/26^th), my father-in-law Ted, my granddaughter Zadie and my dad Jim (18^th/18^th/ 19^th), two old friends on the 8^th/9^th and so on. Today is the birthday of some beloved SF School alums, memorable Orff teachers who studied with me, a fabulous jazz guitarist who I’ve played with occasionally, a Finnish Orff colleague who teaches in Salzburg and another Orff colleague who teaches here in Portland. 

 

I remember the birthdays of the family group above without any prompting, but many of the others I know because of Facebook. I’m sorry to support the money-maker of selfish billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, but I do appreciate the way Facebook gathers community by giving us opportunities to send well-wishes to so many people we care about. Every day, I send off birthday greetings, mostly short without comment, but I know that it means something to the people—especially old school alums and Orff colleagues— that I’ve even taken the time to click and send. 

 

While I was on the birthday theme, I looked up famous people born in November and got mostly pop stars and movie stars (though Joe Biden made the list). So I tried historical figures and that was more satisfying—W.S. Gilbert (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame) on the 18th, George Eliot (classic woman author who had to pretend to be a man to get published) on the 22^nd, William Blake (inspired visionary poet) on the 28^th, and Winston Churchill (famed British Prime Minister) on the 30^th. 

 

At the other end of the matter, Facebook is also the place for obituaries and once again, I appreciate knowing about both the people I know and the people I admire’s exit from the planet. November is the month of both Day of the Dead and All Soul’s Day and as such, is sometimes called Remembrance Month. Some years back, preparing for a Day of the Dead celebration, I started to make a list of all the people I personally knew in my life who had left before me. I made a folder called Honoring the Departed and still keep adding to it so I know specifically to remember. Family members, friends, neighbors, fellow school alums, SF School alum parents and some of the “kids,” Orff people far and wide. As happens with someone over 70 years old, that list keeps growing faster than I would like it to and there are now over 200 people. I will light a candle in the next few days and take a moment to remember each. 

 

I suggest you might consider the same. It’s bittersweet, but important.

 

PS As for historical figures, JF Kennedy, C.S Lewis and Aldous Huxley all died on November 22^nd, Margaret Meade on the 15^th and Stephen Sondheim on the 26^th.

 

Perpetual Halloween

Witches, ghouls, ghosts, goblins, gremlins, demons, devils and zombies are afoot and fear is raining down on us all. I’m not talking about kids on the street, but the sub-humans in the government who every day are trick and treating. Treating the billionaires to free passes while robbing from the poor to stuff the rich people’s coffers. Tricking the voters to choose chaos, mayhem, bedlam, pandemonium, over simple human decency. We’re choked in the stranglehold of a perpetual Halloween that is as far from the fun of the real deal as it could be. Like the way children in Chicago wanting to celebrate their favorite holiday have to stay off the streets for fear of being strafed by rubber bullets from ICE agents. No Hollywood horror movie can come close to our current reality, a seemingly endless night of the living dead walking the Earth. 

 

And yet. Wanting to honor Jack DeJohnette (see yesterday’s post), I slipped into the rabbit hole of Youtube and was catapulted into the stratosphere of human beings at their finest. I started with the Keith Jarrett Trio’s With a Song in My Heart and the way it works on Youtube, all these other suggestions appear on the right. So on I went to Bobby McFerrin and Jacob Collier singing at Davies Symphony Hall, where Bobby later conducts a movement of Mozart Symphony, Victor Borge playing a hilarious and artful duet rendition of Brahm’s Hungarian Rhapsody, a compilation of Yuja Wang playing piano between 8 years old and 36 years old, some Herbie Hancock clips, Oscar Peterson on the Dick Cavett Show. 

Such a welcome relief from being flushed down the toilet watching bits and pieces of mainstream news, with the most despicable human beings I never hoped to imagine dominating the screen and taking me down with them. Here I was lifted up into the extraordinary beauty of hard-working artists devoted to bringing beauty and healing hope to all of us beaten-down by the zombies. That they inhabit the same species as the heartless, mindless and soulless pseudo-humans who are paraded in front of us every hour of every day, as if this is what normal people look and feel like, is a matter of great consternation. To put it mildly.

 

While we have Youtube and Facebook as free venues of sharing, may I suggest choosing wisely what you put before your eyes and ears? When despair wraps its bony fingers around your throat and starts to squeeze, some time spent with any of the above will loosen its grip. And on Facebook these days, I keep reading stories about courageous, brilliant and neglected women in history who were purposefully shunned and neglected. People like Francis Perkins who I never heard of, but wish I had. And now I have. And you should too.

 

My favorite teaching story is the spiritual teacher who said, 

“I have both God and the Devil inside of me.” 

Her student asked, “Which one is stronger?” 

“It depends upon which one I feed.”

 

So make a wise choice every day and offer the food to our children that serves their better selves, with the stories, music, dance, art, poetry that lifts them up and leads them to their own beautiful promise. Happy Halloween! (The October 31st version, that is.)

 

The Humanitarian Musician

…is the title of the new book I hope to have out by January or February. But now wondering if I should add something to it. My Facebook is filled with tribute after tribute to the jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette and the sheer quantity of people telling about their encounters with this remarkable musician and beautiful human being is something I’ve never witnessed before. Many musicians and other artists have left us, but again, I’ve never seen anything approaching the number of posts I’m seeing now. It makes me wonder why.

 

The depth and breadth of his musicianship is certainly part of the story. Everyone he has played with—which included Alice Coltrane, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Betty Carter, Michael Brecker and others— felt the music uplifted by his drumming. As one of the testimonies described his drumming: 

 

He didn’t just keep the beat — he re-imagined it. His playing bridged jazz, funk, free improvisation and world rhythms. He taught us that the drums are not just timekeepers, but colours, textures, stories.

 

His longest running engagement was with the Keith Jarrett Trio, recording some 23 albums between 1983 and 2018. When I first heard their first recording in the mid-80’s, I was hooked for life. They seemed a re-incarnation of the Bill Evans Trio with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian, changing the traditional roles of the bass walking the beat and outlining the harmony and the drums keeping the groove to support the piano player, who held the spotlight. Instead, the interplay was more conversational, three players improvising together as three sides of the same person. In the Keith Jarrett Trio, with Gary Peacock on bass, Keith on piano and Jack on drums, the chemistry between them was remarkable, taking the concept yet further while still coming in and out of the traditional grooves. 

I remember their playing All the Things You Are on their first album Standards: Volume 1 and feeling swept up in their collective energy. As Keith ascended in his developing piano solo, I could feel the energy behind him gain momentum and volume, like an enormous wave gathering energy and finally cresting. I believe it was Jack’s drumming that propelled it all forward. 

 

All of these Facebook testimonies—and I’ve seen at least 30 or 40 since Jack passed away at the age of 83— not only comment on his stellar musicianship, but his memorable warmth, generosity and overall humanity. One of the eulogies was from a drummer named Nate Smith, who tells this story. 

 

When I first heard Jack, I immediately knew I was seeing and hearing something distinguished, his relaxed demeanor, the fluidity with which he navigated the kit, his sensitivity to everything around him on stage. When I met him offstage I was impressed by how kind and warm of soul he exuded. The light he brought to this world is forever forged in my memory.

 

Back in the spring of 2001, just a few months before I moved to New York Ciity, my drums and cymbals were stolen from my car in VA. When I arrived in New York, someone leant me some drums, but when I told him I still needed cymbals, he said, “Call Jack!” I’d met Jack a few years earlier, first at Betty Carter’s memorial and then at a Betty Carter tribute concert. When I called him, we spoke for about an hour and he played me a bunch of different cymbals (over the phone!). A  week or so later, I came home to a box of factory-fresh cymbals, literally worth thousands of dollars, left at my door. The next time I saw Jack, at a festival in Europe, I thanked him for his generosity. “You owe me $15 for shipping!” he quipped — and walked away smiling. God bless him. 

 

There you have it. A stellar musician and a stellar human being. A true humanitarian musician.The best tribute you can pay to him is listen to his music— including an album where he plays piano! Amidst the sorrow of his loss is the extraordinary gift of his legacy. If you do choose to listen, you have so much happiness ahead.

 

R.I.P. to Jack DeJohnette. May others follow your example.

 

Greener Grasses and Redder Leaves

In some kind of archetypal and universal urge to check out your neighbor’s lawn, I’ve spent a lot of time in my life visiting friends or walking through neighborhoods with one eye checking it all out and wondering, “What would it be like to live here?” Making pros and cons lists in my head and trying to imagine myself in this town or that house or close to that other park. You too?

 

I’ve had these thoughts every time I’ve visited Portland, which I believe I first passed through in the late 1970’s. Back then, I was impressed that a city would have so many detached houses with front and back yards, each one unique and so many with large billowing trees. It seemed like a nice blend of urban energy with a small- town feel. 

 

Now that my daughter has lived here for some 12 years, I often have similar thoughts each visit. And everything yet more appealing at the moment dressed in the vibrant reds and yellows of the Autumn trees. Still impressed by the Bike to School families as I walk Malik down Everett Street, the principal at the front door greeting each and every student— by name! The restaurants continue to impress, particularly the Paper Bridge Vietnamese one an old friend treated us to yesterday where I enjoyed morning-glory greens with tofu stuffed mushrooms. (It was recently reviewed favorably by the New York Times and probably doubled its prices because it could—I was happy to be treated!). 

I’ve enjoyed the local parks—Mt. Tabor and Laurelhurst the closest—and the more distant walks along the river. For more rugged nature, Multnomah Falls and Mt. Hood are in driving distance. 

Years back, I had the good fortune to stay at the delightful Kennedy School Hotel— a converted elementary school where each room has a blackboard and a cloakroom, the old auditorium is a movie theater, the lunchroom a restaurant. Powell’s Books remain one of the Human-made Wonders of the World, Salt and Straw Ice Cream has made a name for itself and movie theaters here are still alive and well and affordable. 

 

Then, of course, the people, who first made a name for themselves in the Black Lives Matter Resistance Marches and now has started a new style of Protest Rallies with inflatable frog (and other) costumes. I have some five college friends who have settled here, many folks who have taken the Orff trainings with me down in California and other friends who escaped from the Silicon Valley inflation of the Bay Area to re-locate up here. 

 

Am I thinking of joining them? Moving to the same town as my daughter and grandchildren and enjoying all the above full time? Not really. Those greener grasses I might envy? That comes from constant rain! And the beautiful Fall will soon turn to a much colder Winter than I prefer, followed two seasons later by a hotter summer than I currently enjoy. 

For all its up and down issues, I’ve become a loyal San Franciscan and no, we can’t compete with the Autumn splendor or affordable charming housing. But hey, we do have Golden Gate Park, Marin County, Yosemite, SF Jazz Center, Flower Piano, stairway walks, City Lights bookstore, my beloved San Francisco School and our own glorious history of artists and spiritual seekers and wacky eccentrics living out on the edge of the Pacific Rim. I’ll take it.

 

But meanwhile, enjoying the Portland glories to the fullest. Especially Autumn.