Leaving the Lane

Amidst so much that bothers me these days, there’s a mentality from the left side of the equation that suggests that everyone can only play music or write books or plays or teach history from their own ethnic group/ gender/ class/ religion or else you’ll be charged with “cultural appropriation.” Some appropriation is, of course, real and of concern, but it is not in anyone’s interest to deny that a woman can write with insight into a male character and vice-versa, that a Japanese person can play gamelan, a black person study yoga, a Jewish person capoeira and so on. It’s particularly disturbing to me because it goes against the grain of my entire life’s work and point of view. 

 

Today I stumbled into an article I wrote for an Orff journal back in 1994 and I found it held up well in describing that point of view. Some excerpts:

 

A newborn baby comes into this world with the entire history of human potential radiating out of a body/mind of immense possibility. Every human quality is floating freely in seed form. Various factors affect which of those qualities gets watered and nourished—race, gender, genetics, climate, family and human culture. Each society will shine the light on some qualities, thus encouraging growth, and leave others in the dark. Some cultures honor expression of feelings, others choose to ignore them; some reward innovation, others adherence to tradition; some celebrate material wealth, others spiritual wealth and communal sharing; some look to the heavens for inspiration, others to the earth for nourishment. These choices make a distinct difference in the life experience of an individual and the life of a culture. They are at once reflected in, expressed in, shaped by the particular art forms of a culture and their most positive qualities given an artistic shape, form and style to grow in. One can say that the arts in each culture offer a gift to the human psyche in the form of one strand in the greater music of who we might become. 

 

The negative side of the cultural pruning of our vast possibility of human possibility is the wound of unlived qualities. What is offered to us in the music we listen to, the movies we watch, the books we read, the dances we dance, the rituals and ceremonies we attend may not wholly resonate with us. We may feel ourselves as spiritual beings, but not find it in the Catholic Church and discover it in Zen Buddhism. We may feel incompetent as a jazz drummer, but come alive when we play Taiko drums or Indian tabla. We may not find our blues singing voice growing up as a black woman in Mississippi, but discover we were meant for opera. We may think that poetry has nothing to say to us and then discover Rumi or Mary Oliver. By experiencing music and dance (or arts or literature or religions) of another culture, we are opening to the possibility of contacting an undeveloped part of ourself that turns out to be central to our fuller identity. 

 

Written over three decades earlier, it feels like a viable response to today’s “stay in your lane/ back to tribe” movement where your inherited identity defines what's appropriate for you to learn or teach. I stand firm in my conviction that a multicultural perspective helps us to, as I wrote then:

 

 "Learn about ourselves through the eyes of the 'other,' in realization that the other is often an unlived and unloved part of ourselves. Joyful and successful experience in 'other' musics opens up a psychic doorway in the child (and adult) that allows freer passage in the corridors of consciousness. Amidst all the other reasons for including multi-cultural music, this seems to me the most important—that children can learn to move freely in the marvelous dance of their human possibility."

 

That certainly has been true for this guy Jewish by blood, Unitarian by upbringing, Buddhist by choice and practice, musician playing Bach, Beethoven, Brubeck, Bird, banjo, Balinese gamelan, Bulgarian bagpipe, Brazilian samba, cooking tacos, miso soup, stir fry, pasta, falafel, gazpacho, curries, pad Thai, etc. etc., reading Rumi, Hafiz, Basho, Pablo Neruda, Shakespeare, Dickens, Doesteyovsky, James Baldwin, Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie, Amy Tan, etc. Would someone suggest I only read Phillip Roth, eat bagels and listen to Benny Goodman? 

 

I imagine there are many like myself who didn’t find everything I needed in my given lane and had to cross lines to discover who I was meant to be. Let’s keep the roads open, please.

Out of Line

“You’re outta line, young fella!” you might hear in a movie or TV show to reprimand some young person who said or did the wrong thing. And there is a place for adults to remind kids when they go too far. Or anyone, for that matter.

But this profound little story I found on Facebook puts a whole new perspective on things. Especially at a time when the fascists in charge are demanding everyone walk to their goosestep and support their lies and purposeful misinformation—or else! 

 

When we refuse to pass on the inherited and newly-minted lies of toxic narratives, the traumas passed on that thrive on us passing them down to the next generation, we not only begin the first step toward healing ourselves, but also contribute significantly to healing others. And sometimes it takes a 10-year old kid to remind us. 

Here's the post from someone named Katie Ford:

"My 10-year old son just offered me more healing than 15 years of therapy.

I was talking with him about healing and generational cycles of trauma and this is what he said:

' Mama, it's like dominoes, you know? They just keep hitting each other until one gets slightly out of line. The rest stay standing because of one small move.

You moved out of line, Mama.'

You guys, there's hope for this world."

Indeed there is, Katie Ford— especially if more of us move out of line.

Standing Ovation

I promised a review of the Bela Fleck, Edmar Castaneda and Antonio Sanchez concert I attended last night and I can give it in three words: “Go hear them!!”

What can you expect?

 

1)   Virtuosity: While technical mastery and virtuosity is not the sole criteria for musical expression, it is certainly indispensable. As Wynton Marsalis once said, it’s the guard at the gate that determines who’s allowed into the palace of sublime musical expression. Each of the three are masters in their respective instrument and are not shy to show it.

 

2)   Innovation: Bela Fleck on banjo and Edmar Castañeda on Colombian harp have both brought their respective instruments for beyond the borders of their original expressive styles. Bela has performed with jazz musician Chick Corea, old-time musician Doc Watson, rock musicians Jerry Garcia and Dave Matthews, Indian tabla player Zakir Hussein, classical violinist Joshua Bell, numerous African musicians in a wide variety of cultural styles (see his movie Throw Down Your Heart ).

 

Edmar has likewise played with a number of crossover musicians—Sting, Wynton Marsalis, Hiromi, Paco de Lucia, Gonzalo Rubalcabo and more, as well as mastering the folk repertoire of the original Colombian/ Venezuelan harp. 

 

3)   Connection: The chemistry between the three last night as they called and responded to each other in the heat of the moment, echoing and contrasting each other’s musical ideas, arriving at a cadence at exactly the same moment, is the stuff good live performance is made of. As Antonio Sanchez mentioned in a moving talk about music as Democracy, the ability to equally contribute, to listen to and affirm and expand each other’s point of view is a hallmark of great music and great government.

4)  Generosity: While they clearly were having fun and would have enjoyed playing if no one was in the audience, music, of course, is a shared experience and their generosity in bring joy to the audience was evident in every note. 

 

Not everything I write has to reference the terrible state of affairs over half the country has chosen, but I couldn’t help but notice that Mexican Antonio Sanchez and Colombian harpist Edmar Casteñeda could easily be on the deportation list. It would have been entirely possible for ICE to break into the concert and haul them off the stage. Think about that. 

 

Standing ovations are a dime a dozen in our country, with it’s “Rah! Rah! Everything is AWESOME!” mentality. But the one the audience gave these extraordinary musicians was as sincere as you can get and perhaps packed with a little more punch because we are all so hungry to witness virtuosic competency, exalted thought (musical and otherwise), innovative ideas responding to the genuine needs of the moment, connection between people and generosity of spirit. 

 

After Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, Leonard Bernstein gave a speech and said:

 

"But this sorrow and rage will not inflame us to seek retribution; rather they will inflame our art. …This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before."

 

 Of course, this is far from enough. But it’s part of turning things around and yesterday’s concert was a testimony to its power. It was intense, beautiful and reflected what happens when people are devoted to their art and to spreading joy. On we go. 

  

My Week in Lake Wobegon

Sometimes we live life and sometimes we just fill out the paperwork. The latter well describes this week back home. Preparing my taxes, my Asian invoices, my Ghana Visa application, buying my flight to Portland for the end-of-the-month grandkids’ visit. All of it necessary, but none of it fun. 

 

I remember my Peter Pan childhood watching my Dad pay bills at the dining room table and hoping that I could live in Never-Never Land forever and Never have to do that! Having made my living sitting on the floor playing games with kids,  I’m quite happy that a bit of Peter Pan has lived inside me for over seven decades. But I’m equally clear that as bodies grow toward adulthood, minds and hearts must as well. The mind that plans, organizes, looks ahead, imagines consequences, makes informed choices, prepares and dreams ahead of time the moments when one will feel wholly present is the territory of the adult and has its own pleasures. Not necessarily while filling out the paperwork, but when arriving where it leads you.  

 

So it hasn’t exactly been a memorable week to write about. And yet here I am, trying to see if there’s anything worthy of reflection. I could mention my return to the Jewish Home, a new resident who knew every song I played and beamed with delight as she recognized each. Another new resident who started to sing along with a soulful jazz style and my disappointment to learn she was only there for short-term rehab! But we exchanged phone numbers and perhaps she’ll come again next week. 

 

I walked in my beloved park, got on my bike again, loved cooking in my kitchen (with its newly painted blue walls) after three weeks of restaurants, enjoyed shopping for groceries and hooked into a new nighttime TV Series that really has me hooked (This Is Us on Netflix). Had a short reunion with daughter Talia, who is now on Spring Break in Belize with boyfriend Matt and his family, a place Karen and I visited in 1975! Then of course, the deep pleasure of returning to Bach on my piano and the calisthenics of getting back in shape with his Inventions, French Suites, Partitas, Preludes and Fugues. And always finishing off with some jazz and keeping that part of my musicality at least alive, if not well. 

 

So yes, it’s been a quiet week in my San Francisco Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, the men trying their best and the children mostly delightful. (These the people I know, not the ones in the news!) Off to a concert tonight that promises to feed my faith in the extraordinary accomplishments of some human beings— in this case Bela Fleck, Edmar Castañeda and Antonio Sanchez. Stay tuned for the review!

Dorothy, Chopin and the Demise of Democracy

The piano teacher came twice a week to erase the awful gap between Dorothy and Chopin.

Like so many (but not enough), I keep trying to make sense of that which makes no sense. Here is my latest attempt, using music as the central metaphor:

 

“People are endowed with certain unalienable rights and among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. ” These words that birthed our country were like a Chopin composition, inviting us to rise to master the virtuoso techniques, nuanced emotion, intricate forms of our human promise. They asked us to use the full range of the keyboard of our humanitarian possibilities, in all 12 keys, to navigate through the churling stormy passages and savor the quiet tender moments that lived only measures apart in the same composition. 

 

The gap between what we said and what we did, between the exquisite vision and the brutal reality, was awful indeed. The very man who penned those words owned enslaved human beings who were systematically denied those unalienable rights. As did many of those white male landowners who signed that Declaration of Independence. But still they set in motion a mission for succeeding generations to achieve. Like the child first sitting down at the piano, their hands were too small, their minds just beginning to make the needed neural connections, their frontal lobes of empathy a long way from development. Their hearts could only hold what the past bequeathed them— the collective traumas and toxic narratives and cruel practices jumbled together with another lineage of inspired spiritual teachers, artists, authors who suggested a higher calling. 

 

The idea of consciously crafting a government with a more lofty and inclusive vision than the legacy of kings and queens and conquerors and caste that offered no choice and no invitation to rise higher, where life was merely “nasty, brutish and short” was something new under the sun. Those words from the Declaration of Independence became our North Star, our guiding light by which we navigated that turned our gaze upward to the heavens. It promised a life more majestic and astonishing beyond what we could previously imagine. It offered a whole universe of possibility and encouraged us to rise higher through our own efforts. Like hearing Rubinstein play Chopin and coming out of the concert inspired and determined to practice diligently to erase that awful gap between the mundane and the sublime. 

 

That North Star made all the difference and it was the terrible tension between the blood-soaked ground and the splendid sky that defined our American story. That was where the great drama was played out and where so many had their moment on stage to ennoble us all. From Phyliss Wheatley to John Brown to Emily Dickinson to Henry David Thoreau to Harriet Tubman to Walt Whitman to Frederick Douglas to Sitting Bull to Mother Jones to the Grimke Sisters to W.E. Dubois up to Ida B. Wells and Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King and Fannie Lou Hamer— the list is long and still growing. Not to mention the Jim Thorpes and Jackie Robinsons and Muhammed Alis and Wilma Rudolphs, the Zora Neale Hurstons and James Baldwins and Maya Angelous and Barbara Kingsolvers, the Louis Armstrongs and Duke Ellingtons and Billie Holidays and Charlie Parkers and Thelonious Monks and Nina Simones and John Coltranes who invited Dorothy to aspire to new complexities different than Chopin. All of them and thousands more dancing in that awful gap to bring us yet closer to our destiny among the stars. 

 

And now look at who we are. Schools are forbidden to teach the science of the stars, our history is being silenced, our art ignored, our very attempt to educate shut down. Tech giants prey on children to addict them to the machines so that they’ll walk beneath the star-studded sky and never once look up, their gaze buried downward in their device that reduces their immense intelligence and feeling life to distraction and sensation, violence and porn. 2% of our population listens to jazz, 3% to European classical music, so Chopin and Ellington don’t even cross their screen. Music is now only played on the white keys and confined to the middle range of the keyboard, reduced to dull repetition of meaningless simplistic phrases at loud volumes. If you listen hard enough and look for it, beautiful music of all sorts is still being played, but is not banned from the Kennedy Center and not broadcast on public media. Our founding documents are being trampled on left and right and not enough are noticing. In short, there is no gap to close anymore. The North Star is now real estate for billionaires to take their trip in space and claim it as their own. 

And yet. All around us are people refusing the attempt to slam the piano lid on their fingers. Like that extraordinary video of a woman playing Chopin in her home in the Ukraine reduced to rubble, this is how we will bear up while resisting the dismantling of our founding vision. This Dorothy has traveled fully across the gap to arrive at the promise we all equally share. And so should we. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-wS_Zio8Mg&pp=ygUrdWtyYWluZSB3b21hbiBwbGF5aW5nIHBpYW5vIGluIGJvbWJlZCBob3VzZQ%3D%3D

When It Rains

Back to “some clichés are true” as the bad news that usually is a trickle is suddenly pouring in. Of course, every day in our national disaster, but for me, also in the personal realm. The last post was about the unexpected passing of my friend Mary Goetze. And then in the next 24 hours I found out that:

 

1)   Another good friend who was my student in 1972 (and we’re still friends!) discovered she has ovarian cancer and is going into surgery soon. 

2)   A teacher I taught with for 40 years has another kind of surgery scheduled and it’s dangerous. 

3)   An elder Orff colleague fell on the ice and broke her hip and spent six weeks in rehab while trying to handle the bad care her 90-year old spouse with Parkinson’s is getting in his Home for the Aged.

4)   My daughter had a mediation session with her husband trying to sort out divorce proceedings and he told lie after lie to justify demanding outrageous sums of money from her in a settlement and refusing to help with the kids.

5)   And her good friend who has been a godsend of support is moving. 

 

Meanwhile, I saw a video of an ICE agent smashing the windshield of a 7-month pregnant woman to drag her out of her car and arrest her for deportation. Storms close to home and far away (and so many more the latter!) and I think of the last two lines of the poem I’ve been opening workshops with:

 

“We’ll weather the weather whatever the weather,

  Whether we like it or not!”

 

Indeed, what other choice do we have? Well, some people think there is a choice, that I should blame all of the above on immigrants or liberals or take-your-pick and lash out with anger. But I choose instead more kindness, more generosity, more love, as my friend Mary suggested in a song she wrote. To remind us all and to honor her memory, I include it here (along with a youtube link of a choir singing it). 

https://youtu.be/D2-_Dr8-WiE 

 

We dream a tomorrow with sunny days and birdsong,

Where all life can flourish in our time and beyond

 

We dream a tomorrow where all people are fed

And go to sleep at night with a roof overhead.

 

REFRAIN: 

As we live, let us give, each in our own way.

As we go, let us show kindness every day.

As we thrive, let us strive to do what we can do

Hand in hand, side by side, to make tomorrow’s dreams come true

 

We dream a world where all people are free

To choose how they live and who they want to be.

A world with more compassion, 

More generosity-- more love, more love.

 

We dream a tomorrow

When all violence will cease

And people round the planet 

Will prosper in peace.   

-       Words and music by Mary Goetze

 

 

Silver Bells and Cockleshells

Walking around the Buddhist temple in Hong Kong the other day, I was struck by the sense of loss of people I have known who are no longer with us. Many of the people who came to mind— an Orff colleague, a college friend, a former neighbor, a school alum parent, all who died within the last year—were not folks I saw on a regular basis. Maybe once a year at most and some, once or twice in the past 20 years. But still I always felt warmed and comforted knowing they were still alive and walking on the same planet. And so I unexpectedly felt myself missing them knowing that I couldn’t write or call or visit them anymore.

 

Of course, loss of loved ones is the price of membership dues when we join the human race. And especially as my peer group has hit the late 70’s and into the 80’s, it comes as no surprise. But yet it always is a surprise. And a difficult one at that.

 

Facebook is the new obituary pages and I was stunned to read of the passing of Mary Goetze. Mary was a nationally renowned children’s choir director, educator, composer and arranger, truly tops in her field. I first met her around 1990 when we were teaching parallel courses in Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. We immediately clicked, appreciating each other’s expertise and enjoying each other’s wit and humor. It was Mary who invited me (and convinced me to accept her invitation) to be part of the Macmillan McGraw-Hill textbook-writing team of their Share the Music series. Every six weeks for over a year, we met in Manhattan with some 12 other authors and in-between the productive meetings were fun dinners out. One of my odd statistics is that I’ve never been flat-out drunk, but I do remember ordering a cocktail that was larger than I expected and while talking and laughing with Mary thought, “Ooh. I’m feeling a bit tipsy here!”

 

Mary combined the highest level of rigor with great wit and warmth when working with both children and adults. She could lecture on the physiology of vocal cords and the nuances of phonemes and equally enjoy humorous exchanges with whoever she taught. One of my favorites was her making her Australian debut with a lecture about the importance of “singing on the loo” referring to the vocal sound. One cheeky participant raised her hand and said, “Can you repeat that bit about singing on the loo again?” When she realized that loo is “toilet” in Australia, she joined in the laughter!

 

Her musicianship was impeccable and her children’s choir performances stunning. While at the top of her game with the Western Vienna-boys choir-style of vocal production, she got interested in other cultural expressions (and credited me a bit for this step into “World Music”) and began a second chapter in her career working with gathering material and recording singers from diverse cultures and styles. Mary also was a person with a big heart and cared for both abandoned kittens and big issues of social justice. 

 

After the Macmillan project, we continued to meet at various Orff Conferences (including Australia in 2002!) until she retired and we lost touch. She was on my Christmas card electronic mailing list and I was so happily surprised when she wrote to me after reading this year’s missive. Here is her touching and heartfelt letter. (The last two paragraphs she references were about the recent election):

 

Hi Doug

Thanks for your update and congratulations on all your successes in teaching, writing, performing and of course living fully, compassionately and generously—all with such contagious joy!  You are a gift!

 

I was totally overwhelmed and in tears reading the last two powerful paragraphs-brilliant, eloquent! You captured such an array of emotions that I’ve been holding in.  I was deeply touched and am grateful that your words gave form to what I’ve been feeling.  

 

So first THANK YOU!  And second, would you permit me to share those paragraphs with others, with credit of course.  And I’m wondering about adapting parts of the final paragraph for a benediction or anthem for our Unitarian church choir—just thinking about it. If I happen to find that the words “sing” then maybe we could collaborate on it.  

 

I’ll send you a link to a piece I wrote a couple of seasons ago with a recording by the choir entitled “We Dream a Tomorrow.”  

 

I’m doing well and keeping involved with volunteering—working with refugees, kids of incarcerated parents, food pantries, and most selfishly, fostering kittens for our animal shelter. (Such joy!) Bob has Parkinson’s but fortunately it is progressing slowly. He continues with Red Cross, virtually coordinating those who deploy to disasters.  

 

So again thanks for sharing your news and thoughts with me!  

 

With love and admiration

Mary

 

It felt so wonderful to re-establish contact, inspiring how she was continuing to do her marvelous work in various formats post-retirement and moving to read her kind words about my work. I wrote back and ended with:

 

Let's keep in touch! And maybe someday (gasp!) see each other again!

 

 

And now that door of possibility is closed. I still don’t know precisely what happened to her— she certainly sounded healthy, vibrant, alive and well a mere three months ago. I’m taking some time today to let that sadness sink in. 

 

Mary’s life was contrary to the mainstream horror going on yet more forcefully today, refusing in her gentle way the shallow, the noisy, the unjust babbling of so much of our contemporary culture through her deep commitment to caring, choirs and kittens. Combatting the ugliness by cultivating her own beautiful garden. And so — imagining the “pretty maids in a row” as children in the girl’s chorus—this seems a fitting farewell rhyme for my dear friend and colleague, Mary Goetze.

 

Mary, Mary, quite contrary

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockleshells,

And pretty maids all in a row.

Big Buddha

 

“Silence is golden in the spiritual realm,” I reminded myself and my readers a couple of posts back and so my little pilgrimage to the Big Buddha on Lantau Island seemed the perfect way to end my marvelous time here in Hong Kong. But not before finally using my swim suit I had brought with me—on the last day. Even though just three minutes into doing laps, the hotel lifeguard said he needed to leave and I couldn’t swim anymore! Oh well! At least my suit got wet.

 

Then off on the shuttle bus to the cable car taking folks up to the Po Lin Monastery where Big Buddha sits looking over the city. Not a San Francisco-style cable car, more like the ski-lift gondolas. I expected a short trip, but it was in fact 25 minutes soaring far above the island. Out into a touristed little village and then the walk to the stairs that led to Buddha. 

The sun was out and hot I was way overdressed in my plane-traveling clothes—jeans and jackets and shoes. So after ascending the steps to the indeed-impressive Buddha (I wondered if it’s bigger than the Buddha in Kamakura, Japan I once visited— it is), I descended and walked over to the monastery. I found some much-needed shade and sat down, eager and ready to take a few deep breaths and enjoy the silence and serenity of a Buddhist monastery. The incense was burning, the birds were singing, the architecture and the various paintings and sculptures of Buddha in his many forms all seemed gathered for this needed moment of tranquility. 

 

And that’s when the chain saws started up. Loud and relentless. First one to my left and then one to my right. I wonder what Buddha would have said. “Hey, guys, can you tone it down a bit? I’m trying to achieve awakening for the liberation of all sentient beings and this noise is really distracting!!” Or would he have just accepted it as sonic energy not to be judged? I’ll never know. But it sure was bugging me.

 

So I walked back to that touristed area and treated myself to an affogato, far out of the range of the chainsaws. But now I had to listen to banal pop music blaring from the speakers and then the guy one table over was talking loudly on his cell phone. Silence may be golden, but the world seems like a conspiracy to overpower it with constant noise and distraction. No wonder we’re so anxious and stressed and confused!

 

Still, it was a lovely day and now it’s ye old airport waiting for my gate number to appear. I posted my appreciations and thanks on Facebook and then talked about coming home like this:

 

I turn home with mixed feelings of coming back to the country I love as if visiting a relative in advanced dementia who I don’t recognize and doesn’t recognize me.  Still he’s my Uncle Sam and I need to help take care of him. See you out on the streets!

 

Hoping that Big Buddha’s compassionate looking over the world to alleviate suffering and awaken compassion will reach as far as the U.S.A.!

Propaganda Inc.

“Propaganda: To propagate, multiply, spread a barrage of small lies to sustain the big lie.”

 

Waiting for my flight in the Ho Chi Minh City Airport, I decided to listen to a podcast from Michael Meade (Podcast #427—Finding a Place to Stand to be exact. Definitely worth your time). Took some notes while listening and these days, there’s very few insights in talks like these that I don’t already share—just new details and sometimes historical perspectives. But everything I read and everything I write is mostly reminders of that which I— and I think, we—already know. So even though it feels like saying what’s been said before or preaching to the choir is pointless, they’re not. They’re the needed daily sustenance for the Soul which like food for the body needs constant renewal. 

 

Paraphrasing some of the podcast, he begins with Pope Gregory the 15^th, creating a College of Propaganda in 1622 to train priests in methods of proselytizing. These were designed to convert colonized people from indigenous cultures to believe in their God. “Follow the money” is one of those indelible truths that needs constant iteration and though some priests may have been sincere in sharing “the good news of the Gospel,” mostly they were backed by a narrative of material greed and power that the white Supremacy doctrine ("the big Lie" and not Jesus’ Gospel, to be clear!) decreed. By converting the “natives,” the path was laid open to harvest their resources for personal and collective wealth. 

 

Propaganda as a purposeful, intentional plan, using human intelligence to bamboozle, fool, convert, sway, became part of political dictators looking to control people and run (and ruin) their lives. Witness Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia as two familiar examples. One effective strategy was (and is) to polarize good and evil. In Germany, Christians- good, Jews-bad, in Russia, Communists- good, Capitalists - bad. (In America, Capitalists-good, Communists-bad—remember the McCarthy hearings?) Such polarization in simplistic terms made it easy to brainwash citizens who would then excuse and justify all dubious choices based on their manufactured illusion that all problems are caused by the “bad group” and the only solution is to remove them. 

Sound familiar? That old playbook is running—and ruining— my beloved country at the moment and ignorance of how this works is part of what makes it work. Hence, my mantra of the day— the race between education and catastrophe— has never rung so true. Without people understanding how they’re being duped and brainwashed, there is no resistance. 

 

Michael Meade’s Podcasts mostly look at the role of growing Soul in helping us bear up and ultimately, turn things round. He talks about how the epidemic of lying, disinformation, misinformation coming from the top down is creating a sense of helplessness and hopelessness and is being done deliberately and purposefully and shamelessly. 

And it’s working. Helped by Fox News and in more subtle ways, even the N.Y. Times and Washington Post, people are shutting down, are overwhelmed, are digging deeper into their insistence that they are being told the truth when some part of them must know it’s bullshit. How to resist the rapid-fire propaganda overwhelming us? 

 

Here Michael Meade hearkens back to Socrates who named two different kinds of lies. The first he called the Noble Lie— the mythological fiction that reveals actual truth. No one is harmed by such “lies” but in fact, uplifted and inspired by them. That is how Art works and Myths work and Poetry works. A ‘lie” that knows it is not a literal truth, but understands it is a deeper mythological and metaphorical and artistic truth.

 

The second lie Socrates called the Lie of the Soul. Not that the notion of “Soul” is a lie. In fact, the polar opposite. It is the lies being told for personal profit and power and privilege that are misleading and damaging to the Soul because when people swallow them whole, they become part of their identity. They will not seek to discover the truth because it is intolerable to admit that they’ve built their life on a lie. The scientist Carl Sagan noted: 

 

"One of the saddest lies in history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."

 

The only antidotes to these toxic lies? Tell and live the true truth of your own noble soul and wholly embrace the nobility of each person’s soul. The medicine that can convert lies to truth is only found in the individual soul. That’s the little piece of solid ground amidst the upheaving tectonic plates of the purposely manufactured earthquakes under our feet. 

 

It is well and good—though difficult— to live an authentic life based on the nobility of one’s Soul, to see through the game, to refuse the bamboozle. But maddening nonetheless that the epidemic of brainwashing becomes the collective air we breathe and our lives our dependent on those who won't admit the lie, who refuse to wake up. There is literally nothing you can do or say to convince these people that they’re being taken. The only hope is to manage the Propaganda from the State with accountability and the expectation that lies are unacceptable. Those guard rails are now being flung to the side and we are plunging deeply into the chaos. 

 

So I—we—are forced to live and breathe this toxic air that every day is becoming more poisonous. Nothing to do but keep living this life of feeding the Souls of children and adults with music and dance and play and honest speech. And to keep singing my version of Miss Mary Mack that ends like this:

 

                        She jumped so high, high, high.

                    She touched the sky, sky, sky.

                    And didn’t come back, back, back,

                    ‘Till the 4^th of Ju-ly, ly, ly,

                    DON’T LIE!!!!!