Me and Charles Ives

Three days since I’ve written here and I feel like I’m betraying my routine. I’ve been happily busy with various pursuits, but none of them an excuse for hanging up a “Gone Fishing” sign. Reviving some sense of daily exercise—a long walk alongside the Embarcadero with the always-refreshing reunion with the waterfront.  A bike ride with my wife battling winds in Golden Gate Park. Another bike ride down Market St. to the Redwood Grove at Transamerica Pyramid and charming stroll around the Jackson Square neighborhood with the Men’s Group enjoying the lovely historic buildings and discovering an enchanting alley. Yet another afternoon in my 17 years of playing piano at the Jewish Home and meeting an old school parent in the audience and her daughter who I taught in the late 70’s. An intimate house concert in Emeryville featuring two horns and three drummers playing classic and newly composed Indian music. Some riveting and deeply moving episodes of This Is Us on Netflix. But again, none of this so busy that I couldn’t write a post as I usually do.

 

But the main reason is that with three weeks ahead of me without much on the calendar, I’ve reached to the back burner of writing projects and moved one of them to the front, with a fire now lit beneath it. It’s time to bring The Humanitarian Musician out into the light of day, to gather the ideas and stories that have been floating around for some ten years and give them a home and a form and a structure. (Sorry, alert writers, a carnival of mixed metaphors here!). 

 

And so I began and I’m back in the satisfying feeling of waking up with the next sentence or idea ready to set down, walking around with my little notebook for when the next needed thought appears, feeling that gratifying sense of connecting the days with the thread of a project that slowly takes shape like a photo in a darkroom (more mixed metaphors!). Such a fine feeling to take the constant free-floating ideas swirling around in my mind and set them down on the electronic paper to eventually be put on real paper in that still satisfying technology of a book with a cover and a spine.

 

Here I’ll share my proposed opening quote that sets the tone for the radical thought that musicians and the training of musicians could be a more humanitarian undertaking than merely learning to play notes well and that the humanitarian impulses in us can be nurtured both by actual music-making and musical metaphors. Before I ever read this quote from the American composer Charles Ives, I had an intuition that these ideas would inform my teaching. And they have.

 

Meanwhile, today’s the April 5^th protests I’ve highlighted in the previous posts and instead of a sign, I’m bringing my ukelele and a tambourine. 

 

“I feel strongly that the great fundamentals should be more discussed in all public meetings, and also in meetings of schools and colleges, not only the students but also the faculty should get down to more thinking and action about the great problems which concern all countries and all people in the world today, and not let the politicians do it all and have the whole say.

 

I have often been told that it is not the function of music to concern itself with matters like these. But I do not by any means agree. I think that it is one of the things that music can do, if it happens to want to…  —I have had some fights about this. “

 

Charles Ives (1874-1954) Letter to Lehman Engel. (p. 72- In Praise of Music)

  

Dancing in the Streets

 

“The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open.” —Gunter Grass

 

This blog, my Podcast, Facebook, speaking out at the workshops I give, speaking out with the children I teach, talking with friends— wherever there is an opportunity to question incompetence, selfish greed, mean-spiritedness, attempts to shut down free speech and Constitutional rights, I choose to speak out. While I can, without being sent to Siberia. Sometimes it feels like facing Goliath with my little slingshot of words, putting flowers in the barrels of guns, throwing pebbles at tanks. One never knows if any of it makes the slightest bit of difference. 

 

But I do know that masses of people taking to the streets not only makes an impact, but feels more empowering, more effective and certainly more fun that doomscrolling through the screaming headlines and raising my one little voice to protest. And the effective of collective protest may be so much larger than we might ever know.

 

Back in the 1980’s when I worked on the Nuclear Freeze Movement, I had a meeting in someone’s house with about 10 people—and Daniel Ellsberg (of The Pentagon Papers!) was one. He told a memorable story about asking the organizer of the Vietnam War protests in the early 70’s whether he thought his efforts made any difference. The man shook his head sadly and replied, “No.” Then Ellsberg told him this story.

 

Apparently, Nixon was on the verge of using nuclear weapons in Vietnam at the time of the massive protest in D.C.. (In fact, I believe it may have been the one that I attended!) Nixon told the press he didn’t care about it and was going to sit in the Oval Office and watch the football game. Instead, he was looking out the window at the thousands of protestors and decided that in the face of such massive opposition, it was not an opportune time to make such a decision. (As reported later by a Nixon aide). Nobody knew this story—including the protest organizer—but it was a powerful example of how such things can make more of a difference than we imagine. 

 

So with that in mind, I repeat my post on Facebook below and encourage you to get out on the streets wherever you may be. And pass this on to friends, family, relatives, co-workers far and wide. We may never know if it will make a difference, but we do know that staying silent is indeed complicity and allows the power-mongers to steamroll over the democracy we need and love without resistance. And if nothing else, getting out and dancing on the streets will feel so much better than doomscrolling alone in isolation. See you there!

 

“Grandma and Grandpa, what did you do to try to save Democracy?” ask your present or future grandchildren, either whispering in a fascist dystopian state or celebrating in a democratic free nation. I hope you can at least say, “I cancelled all appointments for this Saturday, April 5^th and took to the streets with tens of thousands of others in 600 cities worldwide to protect your future.” If you don’t know where to go, just Google April 5^th and find out where the nearest one to you is. Stand, be counted and let your voice be heard!”

April and the Holy Grail

I turn the calendar page to April and wonder what to expect this time? Will it be the “cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire…” or will it be “mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful” with the “little lame balloon man whistling far and wee?” or will “April come like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers?” T.S. Eliot, e.e.cummings and Edna St. Vincent Millay have all had their say. As have jazz songwriters Vernon Duke (April in Paris), Louis Silvers (April Showers) and Gene de Paul (I’ll Remember April). But what will we do with this precious month lying in front of us?

 

The month begins with a reminder that never have we been more fools than to peaceably elect our own demise. So April 5^th invites us to take to the streets to insist that we wisely restore the country we signed up for. Put it on your calendar, people! And show up. 

 

Meanwhile, April most certainly announces Spring and Spring reminds us that lilacs indeed will bloom out of the dead land. In the natural world, this cycle needs no help from human beings. It is simply the constant turning of life, death and re-birth. But in our human folly, we can create a bleak winter landscape in the midst of the most glorious sunny flowery day. And the cruelty of April is the reminder that we have fallen from the grace of Nature. The flowers bloom but we cannot smell them. They enliven the land with their bright hues but we are color-blind to them. They invite the bees to spin honey from their offerings, but we cannot taste them. 

 

Those opening lines, “April is the cruelest month,” come from T.S. Eliot’s epic poem The Wasteland, which in turn has reference to the Medieval tale of Parzival. Parzival is a naïve young knight in search of The Holy Grail who stumbles into the castle where it is hidden. There a king is brought before him on a litter with a wound that bleeds day and night without healing. Because of the bleeding Grail King who was wounded and shows no signs of healing, the land all around has become a Wasteland. (Make the connection here!). Parzival had been brought up not to ask questions, so he fails to ask the King what ails him or how he can help. When he awakes the next morning, the castle has disappeared and he spends many years trying to find it again. During that time, he matures and gains some degree of wisdom and an increased nobility of purpose. When he finally finds the castle again, he now asks the needed questions. “What ails you?” In some versions, the question is “Whom does the Grail serve?” And the answer is “The Grail King who represents a higher purpose and the potential for healing and transformation, rather than serving the individual.”

 

And so. Here we are, with a wounded King who thinks his wounds make him tough, a population trained not to ask why the bleeding wound of white supremacy and patriarchy and uncheck capitalist greed won’t stop bleeding and those who have the intelligence and courage and caring to ask the needed questions and begin the healing and transformation that will turn our desolate wasteland landscape into a joyful riot of Spring flowers. In the old legend, all were waiting for a hero (Parzival) to redeem the land, but now we know that the Hopi prophecy is the myth for our time “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”

 

Welcome to April and see you on the 5^th!