From Lisbon to Tokyo

I was teaching in Lisbon when I got the news that my first grandchild, Zadie, was born. That night I went to a Fado Music Club and wrote a letter to her welcoming her to this Earth and promising that I would take her to this club when she turned 15. A promise that gave us both something to look forward to.

 

14 years later (not 15), here we are, about to share an adventure together in her first time out of the country. But instead of Lisbon, it’s Tokyo, by her request. I write this at the Bangkok Airport, about to fly to Japan. She should have arrived in San Francisco by this time, picked up by her Aunt Talia to spend the night before either Talia or my wife Karen will take her to the airport tomorrow for her flight to Tokyo. I admire Zadie’s bravery in flying alone all that way and appreciate that I didn’t have to fly all the way back to San Francisco and turn around back to Tokyo! Instead, I’ll spend the night at an airport hotel to make sure I’m ready to greet her when she arrives tomorrow. 

 

While I wait for her, I plan to wade through all the suggestions multiple people have made about what we should do and where we should go and what we should see. It seems like virtually everyone I’ve mentioned this trip to—in San Francisco, in Singapore, in Bangkok—has been to Tokyo and fairly recently at that. All without exception light up with enthusiasm, sharing how much they enjoyed it. 

 

The challenge is balancing the things an old Zen meditator/ haiku-reader/ Kurosawa movie fan, would like to see with a 14-year-old’s fascination with anime, manga, food machines, and pop culture. I’m perfectly fine mostly following her lead, but of course, will insist on a temple or two and a walk in a park with plum blossoms and maybe even a Bunraku puppet performance. 

 

I began this post in Bangkok and finish it here in Narita Airport, waiting for my airport shuttle bus. It’s cold!!!!  After two weeks in short sleeves and shorts, I’m back in blue jeans and my puffy jacket and eagerly waiting for the sweaters Zadie is bringing me tomorrow!

 

And so, a 14-year-old promise/dream about to be fulfilled. And who knows? There’s probably a Fado Club in Tokyo!! 

Insisting on Hope?

Imagine my surprise and delight when a literary consultant recently e-mailed to me her  glowing review of my book Jazz, Joy and Justice! Here is what she wrote: 

 

“Jazz, Joy and Justice is a stirring and necessary work that blends music, history, and moral responsibility into a vision for education that truly matters. Doug Goodkin writes with passion and clarity, inviting readers to hear jazz not just as sound, but as story, resistance, and resilience. As I read, I felt the rhythm of history itself moving through the pages, carrying both celebration and reckoning.

 

The strength of this book lies in its ability to connect art with conscience. Goodkin honors jazz as a uniquely American creation while illuminating the lives of the musicians who shaped it, not only as artists, but as individuals navigating and resisting systemic racism. By weaving musical listening suggestions with historical insight, he transforms jazz into a living classroom where joy and justice are inseparable. The book doesn’t shy away from pain, but it insists on hope, inviting young minds to learn through beauty, honesty, and courage.

 

This is a book that belongs in schools, conversations, and public forums. Its message makes it especially well-suited for speaking engagements, educator workshops, and podcast discussions focused on arts education, social justice, and cultural history. Jazz, Joy and Justice is both a call to action and an invitation to listen more deeply, reminding us that jazz has always been about freedom, expression, and the ongoing pursuit of a more just world.”

 

What a pleasure to read those words. I felt seen. I felt known. I felt renewed hope that this book that I imagined could make an impact might finally get to the kids, teachers and adults who would benefit from it. And then…

 

The doubts crept in. Did a person write this or was it chatgpt? Was it sincere enthusiasm for helping me reach more people or part of a scam to help me buy into the promotion offers that followed? I shared it with some trusty people (like my daughter) who thought my suspicions were correct. On one hand, even I was impressed by the eloquence of AI, but where is the glory in that? To be “known” by a machine. To seduce me and impress me with the promise that the company will help me if I pay them—of course— a certain amount of money. To feed into a culture where no one can trust anyone or anything anymore. While the review celebrates "insisting on hope," the machinery behind it lifts mine up and then dashes it down. This is so damn depressing. 

 

That e-mail came on the exact same day that the publishers of the book, who have been 100% unsupportive from Day One, doing absolutely nothing to promote it, wrote to me that they were dropping it because it hadn’t sold well, I can either buy the remaining books from them or they’ll pulp them. Pardon me for imagining that the world was ready to celebrate jazz, its legacy of joy, its history of justice and resistance, that teachers would heartily welcome the opportunity to educate children to one of the most inspiring and powerful strands in our broken history. Foolish me.

 

Oh well. I tried. 

 

PS If anyone is inspired to get it before it’s thrown on the trash heap, order soon!

 

Canaries in the Coal Mine

Another uplifting course completed, with 40 lovely international school teachers eager to upgrade their teaching while remembering their own delight in joyful music and dance. They were deeply appreciative of both the material and the seamless process of developing it. But when it came time for questions, the sentiments that surface time and time again were the issues of reaching reluctant or defiant or unfocused kids. I did two demo classes with the 6-year-olds and the 5^th grade, so they did get to see directly how I handled certain situations. My first answer, in both my thinking and my teaching, is simply to love kids, expect their foibles, invite them to play rather than scold them to work, give them engaging worthy material that effortlessly attracts them, give them space to not be perfect and so on. 

 

But it was indeed alarming to talk informally over lunch and hear stories like these:

·      The 6-year-old getting kids to pay him for him to play with him at recess. (New Age bullying.)

·      A teacher telling a kid he’ll have to talk to his Mom to get permission for the kid’s request and the kid (also 6) answering, “ Oh, my mom does whatever  I say.” (Not also the absence of the Dad.)

·      Teacher screaming at kids.

·      A Head of School driving a Ferrari bought from his school salary, but no money in the budget for teachers to buy paper.

·      Girl who’s one refuge is music punished for something else by taking away the chance to participate in music. 

·      A 2^nd grade kid habitually hitting other kids, breaking things in the classroom and even hitting the teacher without consequence because the adults are told to “honor his trauma.” 

 

And these are the stories from expensive private international schools where parents pay high tuitions!

 

Kids are the canaries in the coal mine, warning us of the dangers of imminent cultural collapse. That expression comes from derived coal miners using caged birds to detect toxic gases like carbon monoxide in mines. Due to their high sensitivity to fumes, the birds would stop singing or die, allowing miners to evacuate. Immersed in the toxic fumes of our poisonous cultural practices and the narratives that sustain them, the children have stopped singing the delights of childhood. Instead, they shout or scream or hit or remain mute and we guardians have run out the door and left them alone. 

 

But kids are also remarkably resilient and if you give them the fresh air of a glorious Spring day in the countryside, they will sing their beautiful songs. Soon after writing this, I worked for an hour with twenty 5^th graders and naturally, some kids fooling around a little bit or not fully participating and such. They’re kids. But I’m onto them in seconds and when I playfully redirect them and they realize that everything I’m teaching them— some cool body percussion patterns, a clapping play with a partner, a dance, a little drama acting out (without physical contact!) the older version of the Home Alone movie, Step Back, Baby, they’re with me 150%. I thread those four things together into one exuberant performance, check in with them constantly as to how they’re doing (with my thumb-o-meter), ask at the end who got better, who knew what their next step toward mastery will be, who enjoyed it, they were right there with me. Twenty singing canaries testifying that when adults give kids things worthy of their time and attention, they’re right there with you. 

 

So while the stories I heard are sobering, my actual experience with kids is always uplifting, thanks to 50 years of practice as to how to help kids sing their song. As are my workshops with teachers offering new perspectives on how to engage, support and love their students. 

 

And so I continue. 

 

Winter In My Heart

I’m in Bangkok dressed in shorts, awakened by roosters and morning birds sweetly singing in the day. Soon I will stand again in my home of homes, in a circle with teachers, eager and ready to joyfully play, sing and dance some jazz together. So far away from the American wintry ice and the American murderous ICE, but Minnesota is on my mind and entering my heart. 

 

Here, as we sing an African American ring play with the refrain “Remember me,” I’m holding Renee Good and Alex Pretti in my heart. I imagine them holding hands with those in the Other World who have been brutally murdered by the American nightmare. I imagine a small wave of comfort coming their way when we here left behind are remembering them and working on their behalf to bring the Beast to its knees. 

 

But none of them, not a single one, would have chosen to be a martyr to remembrance. Given a choice they should have had but didn’t, they would certainly have chosen to keep living out the full measure of their days, finding their own way through all the joys and sorrows of a human life. They would have much preferred to wake up tomorrow, enjoy their breakfast, talk with friends and family, walk in the park, listen to their favorite music. If you need any reminders that the wild dog-pack of injustice is roaming free on the streets and murderers and their enablers still get to see another day, with no better plan than to see who they can hurt or harm next, well, here it is.

 

How I wish Renee, Alex, George and Breonna and so many others unjustly executed could have attended my class today and joined in the jubilation of people making music together, lifted up into their playful childlike selves. I think they would have enjoyed that so much more than simply being a passing thought of remembrance in our song. 

 

Perhaps I’ll meet them someday in the Other World and we can all sing together.  But I’m not counting on. That’s why we need to make Heaven right here, right now, and make sure everyone can come join the singing circle. 

 

They all deserved to live. Each and everyone. They deserved to live. 

 

Tropical Pleasures

Roostered awake into the bird-song morning, the perfect temperature air erasing the boundary between inside and out, the day embracing me with its open arms and a smiling “welcome back.” Because I’ve been here before—in India, Bali, Fiji, Hawaii, Costa Rica, Rio de Janeiro, those tropical climes that bring me awake in a way that washes me clean and invites me to forget the pain and isolation of the human body/mind. “All lives, all dances and all is loud” is the spoken poem of an indigenous group that I once read in a poetry collection and that’s the delight the day begins with. Me just another two-legged creature without a name taking part in it all.

 

Back at my old friend Zukhra’s house in Bangkok by river’s edge and two days before putting on my chosen identity as teacher again. An outfit that clearly fits me and brings its own form of joy. That “somebody” who seems to be a necessary part of a human incarnation. 

 

But he’s not the whole story and how I love the return to the “nobody” who is just a stranger passing through this wide, wonderful world, in company with the morning birds, the rolling river, the tropical trees. I greet that fellow, feel the echoes of him in all those other places and all those other years, and welcome them all. It’s a beautiful way to start the day. 

Coals to Newcastle

In my recent course with 40 Orff teachers held at the Jittamett School in Thailand, I told them (through my translator) about the expression “Coals to Newcastle.” I confessed that it might feel like sharing my theme of The Humanitarian Musician, my hopes to make better humans through music and create cultures of mutual respect and empathy was indeed “bringing coals to Newcastle." Thai culture is at the top of the list when it comes to showing respect via bowing, something kids as young as 2 or 3 are trained to do. And the remarkable Jittamett School, created by Krongtong, a visionary teacher who came to our Orff training around 2000 and came back from inspired to start a preschool based on the dignity and delight of children, is a model learning community that deserves international recognition. What could I possibly offer that they all don’t already know?

 

Well, when you wrap you thinking around the next imaginative possibility, even my inferior coal could be valuable if I shared new ways to mine it or use it or think about it. I believe my approach of doing one activity 10 or a hundred different ways was both valuable and intriguing for the teachers to experience and consider. 

 

But one day at lunch, Krongtong told me that it had been so important for her to hear my thoughts and stories because they so clearly mirrored her own. It gave her renewed appreciation for the initial vision she had that now was 25 years into “just the way we do things around here.” It’s easy for us all to take our accomplishments for granted and this renewed her conviction that she has indeed been on the right path. Especially with a new generation of parents that don’t seem to understand the depth of profound educational vision, it helped remind her to stay the course. I was moved to hear all of it. 

 

As the workshop came to a close, I thanked Krongtong, her mentor Mom Dusdi who first began Orff training in Thailand (and who I had met several times before she passed away in her 90’s), my translator Nance and the whole team of the Orff Association, almost all of whom had studied with me in our San Francisco International Orff Course. I also thanked my colleague Sofia for her part in watering this vision, teaching many courses here and especially helping walk the group through the steps to become an official association.

 I thanked the participants for their wonderful energy, expressive dance, great singing, excellent musicianship, childlike playful spirits, laughter and tears. To close, I taught them the exquisite canon Da Pacem Domine, walking in a spiral as we sang and asked Spirit to “grant us peace in our day.” As the last note echoed out, I told them the little story I’ve told before in these pages. About the man walking a beach littered with starfish who had washed ashore or were dying in the hot sun, unable to get back to the water. He began throwing them one by one into the water when a man approached from the other direction and asked what he was doing. When he explained, the other said, “Do you realize there are probably over a thousand starfish on this beach? You can’t possibly save them all. What you’re doing is foolish and will make no difference whatsoever. The man picked up a starfish, threw it in the water and said, “It made a difference to that one.” 

It was a reminder that when we feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the world’s evil and needless suffering, we do what we can to bring others to their true home, one starfish, one child at a time. I believe the tears shed after that singing and story and the whole beauty of our two days together was enough to water a thousand starfish. 

 

Magicians and Musicians

Doing the work I do, I have often felt like a preacher without a church, like a shaman without a headdress, like a magician with tricks designed not to astound, but reveal the magic we collectively share. I feel each Orff workshop, whether I title it The Humanitarian Musician as I have today’s class in Bangkok or something less lofty like Play, Sing & Dance, is both an act of healing and resistance to the evil afoot. So when someone posted this piece on Facebook, I felt wholly seen and known and affirmed and encouraged. 

 

To the shamans, magicians, priests, priestesses, and all who move energy:

 

We are not here by accident. What you are feeling—the exhaustion, the frustration, the witnessing of a world out of balance—is part of a larger correction. The matrix we live in is real. It thrives on fear, disconnection, and silence. But we were never meant to comply. Our work is to stabilize reality.

 

2026 will expose what cannot survive lies. Systems built on extraction, greed, and control will falter. Leaders without spirit will be unmasked. Truth will rise. And here is where we come in.

 

Not as saviors, not as gurus—but as stabilizers. As keepers of balance. As those who know how to move energy with integrity. .We dismantle the matrix by:

• Refusing to feed it with fear or silence

• Practicing magic that restores life, ancestry, and community

• Supporting each other without diluting our traditions

 

No one path holds the full truth. No practitioner is truly alone. In 2026, those who work with integrity will be amplified. Their words will land. Their work will spread. Their presence will calm rooms. Those who manipulate or harm will quietly lose influence. This is not punishment. It is physics.

 

Remember: you are not late. You are not crazy. You are not powerless.

You were trained for this moment. Do your work. Protect life. Tell the truth. Build what lasts. Bless what is real. Recognize other practitioners as allies, nodes in the same living network.

 

The matrix cannot survive coherence—and we are becoming coherent again.

 

So much resonance in these words. Indeed, my work is to move energy. To stabilize reality. To restore balance. To create community. To reveal the magic of music within us and lead it forth out into the open air. To break silence with truthful speech and heartful song. To build what lasts and bless what is real. 

 

This indeed is the work I was born for, trained for and committed to for 50 years without faltering. My little piece of the puzzle that helps complete all the pieces so many others are contributing, step-by-step bringing into focus the beautiful image of the lives we all are meant to lead. 

 

The death-dealers grab all the attention of the headlines, but we who are working quietly behind the scenes will bring them down and hold them to account. We don’t know when or how, but the work proceeds quietly and makes its impact, even if we can’t see it yet. Here’s to music and magic, today with 40 beautiful souls in Thailand, tomorrow with whoever shows up. Immeasurable thanks to Akaya Windwood for posting that piece and to the person who wrote it. 

Carnival of Stories

My most recent Podcast was about the role of Stories in education. (Check it out on Spotify: The ABC’s of Education.) It’s a theme much on my mind, as I find myself like a kid at the Carnival, rushing from one storied ride to the next in mild euphoria. Each one a world unto itself.

 

I’ve always been an avid reader and it’s safe to say that I’ve never been without a book to read for the last, oh, 65 years or so. Always a work of fiction, often a parallel book of non-fiction and sometimes, yet another book of poetry. But in my elder years here, I seem to be immersed in stories more than ever and in a multitude of mediums. 

 

For example, on this trip. I’ve brought three books, one a mystery I finished (Richard Osman’s The Man Who Died Twice)  and then gave to a friend here,  and now another mystery I’m re-reading, E Is for Evidence by Sue Grafton. Her books are all plot with familiar characters I like and adequate writing. The third, by Niall Williams, titled History of the Rain, is low on plot and high in poetic and beautiful writing. I’m actually reading both books side-by-side, since they are so notably different from each other. Then listening on Audible to a third simultaneously, a re-“reading” of Memoirs of a Geisha to prepare for my upcoming trip to Japan. The Osman and Grafton books are part of a series and a good part of the pleasure is returning to yet more adventures with the same characters. Likewise, the Williams book is set in the same Irish town of Faha that was the setting for the two I read recently, This Is Happiness  and The Time of the Child. I think this book pre-dated those, so no familiar characters, but the village is the same. 

 

Since the pandemic, I’ve become mostly-delightfully addicted to the endless choices of streaming series on TV, often watching something every night. Immersed in series with 5 to 10 seasons and 5 to 10 episodes each season, I again feel the pleasure of visiting the same characters who you come to know and enjoy in all their idiosyncrasies. Even when I travel, like now, I can access Netflix on my computer and just stumbled on a new Australian series called The Newsreader  which is holding my attention, complete with its own cast of colorful characters. All of the above guarantees that I always have something to look forward to, something I consider a key component of happiness.

 

How to keep track of all these people and all these ongoing plots all at the same time? I couldn’t say, but I seem to be pretty good at it and I think it is both a pleasing jungle gym of mental exercise and probably a good way to forestall any encroaching dementia. Then on top of these stories is the ongoing saga of the Warrior’s basketball season, news from friends via Facebook or chat or WhatsApp or e-mail, the ongoing horror story of the news which I choose to merely skim in survival-mode micro-doses. 

 

Then of course, is the story I’m actually living. Not only living but reflecting on and telling here in this Blog and again in my handwritten journal and again in conversations with friends. Like I said, a carnival of stories and it is the anticipation of the next chapter and the re-connection with the people real and fictitious that is partly responsible for feeling that my life is threaded through with meaning, a constantly revealing and unraveling plot that brings so much more satisfaction than mere random moments of experience.

 

Not the most exciting chapter in my traveling music teacher confessions, but just my thoughts-du-jour sitting in the Singapore Airport, about to turn the page to my next Asian Music Tour chapter as I get ready to fly to Bangkok.

Stay tuned…

 

Behind the Scenes

I’m sure it’s clear to anyone reading these posts that I love this life of the traveling music teacher. I recognize both the privilege and the blessing of it and take comfort that as much happiness it gives to me, its purpose is to give inspiration and affirmation to others. The feeling in the room in the workshops, the shared reflections of the participants and little testimonies written to me post-workshop in e-mails confirm that it indeed offers something worthy to others and that only increases the pleasure of it all. 

 

But lest anyone feel a touch of envy, there is so much behind the scenes that’s needed to set up these opportunities, so many details I need to attend to in order to make it possible, so many ways I have to make sure all the moving parts are aligned and then effectively closed  before proceeding to the next. And so much of it is getting maddeningly harder and harder to do. 

 

There has always been the countless back-and-forth via e-mail with the organizers, the travel arrangements, the workshop planning and teaching, the preparing the post-workshop notes, but in today’s world, it is reaching the limit of my patience and skills. For example, consider this trip to Singapore.

 

Back in the golden years, I stumbled on a fabulous travel agent (forever thanks to Connie Dahlstet!) who would take any complex itinerary I sent her way and work her magic. She retired right around the pandemic and then passed away and her profession feels obsolete today. So I handle all my own travel and in this multi-city trip, it’s a complex maze to work through, especially dealing with multiple airlines, each with their own ap to download and different routes to actually get your ticket downloaded. Including needing a code sent to your phone to get through the next gate of the process, but not able to receive phone messages without paying being outside of the U.S..

 

I’m somewhat aware of which countries require official visas and that is its own nightmare labyrinth of bureaucracy. But lately, many places ask now for some kind of “visa-light” entry card. I was suckered into paying $85 for one to get into Singapore and later found it that it was supposed to be free. Flying to Bangkok today, I have to check all over again.  

 

Meanwhile, there's arranging schedules with two different international schools and one government school organization, all asking me to fill out different forms to get the needed permissions to work, all asking for different workshop themes in different spaces with different numbers of participants and different instruments available. Usually hosts take care of the hotels, but this time I was asked to do so myself, having to find two different hotels in two different parts of the city. Usually I’m picked up at the airport by the host, but this time I was expected to find my own way to the hotel until I asked for help and one host arranged a meet and greet driver. 

 

Most maddening of all is how unnecessarily complicated it has become to get paid for my work. Each institution with their own complex web of forms, their own timetable (often waiting one or two months to finally pay me), their ridiculous little details that make no sense (like requiring a paper version of a bank statement with the bank logo on it in an era where my bank pressured me to change to online banking and doesn’t have any such thing in their online version). In the good old days, I did the work, my host handed me a check or cash at the end of the workshop and we were done. While today’s institutions take their merry old time honoring their part of the transaction, I have to keep track of who owes me what and often remind them to “show me the money!” 

 

If I was a lawyer charging billable hours for the time it takes to wade through all these forms and writing them to remind them to pay and such, I would earn three times as much as the actual workshop! In short, I love the work itself, but the growing maze of paperwork to make it all happen has me wondering how much longer I can do it. 

 

So amidst all the gushing about the pleasure and the wonder of teaching like this, these are just some of the maddening behind-the-scenes details that are getting increasingly complicated and needlessly so. Maybe I should actually retire and just play golf. But hey, they probably now require three forms of identification, forms filled out from a QR code, proof of insurance and more before they let me on the golf course. 

 

Ah, this modern world.  

Confucius Says

One of the great gifts a conscious elder has to offer the young is the recognition that “we’ve been here before. And here’s what helped.” Insights that can only come from a long life of wholly lived experience.

 

Likewise, people of any age who read books from the days of yore can discover the same. How social forces twenty, two hundred, even two thousand years ago, had some similarities to today and how the courageous and wise people of the time dealt with it, can speak across the years to us. 

 

Take Confucius. He was born in 551 BCE in what is now the Shandong province of China. This father died when Confucius was but three-years-old and he grew up in a time when rival warlords were fighting to gain power. Highly educated, Confucius gathered a group of disciples who recognized his wisdom and was eventually given a small town to govern. His philosophical teachings emphasized personal and governmental morality, harmonious social relations, righteousness, kindness, sincerity, and a ruler's responsibilities to lead by virtue. These ideas felt threatening to those benefiting from their selfish and lavish lifestyle. At odds with the rulers,  he voluntarily exiled himself from his home province, not returning until he was 68 years old, and died at 72. 

 

As described in the Inspiring Quotes entry: 

 

“To Confucius, happiness came not through gluttony and self-indulgence, but through frugality and duty to others. He believed fulfilling the needs of others could also fill oneself with serenity and gratitude. Forgoing one’s duty to serve, on the other hand, could have wider damaging effects: A ruler who ignored the needs of their subjects might unbalance the cosmos and suffer a reign beset with natural disasters.”

 

As I suggested at the beginning, wisdom is timeless. Connect the dots with today. The entry continues:

 

“Confucius set out four simple virtues that he believed were enough to keep the world in its proper order: benevolence, moral wisdom, righteousness, and observance of traditional rituals. According to Confucianism, ritual brings together a community in peace and helps to cultivate humanity, goodness, and love. Confucius taught that once we understand our shared humanity, we open ourselves up to feelings of altruism, respect for one another, and even friendship.

In Confucius’ idea of the ideal state, the rulers were kind, religion was properly celebrated, and the wise were treasured. Despite living in difficult times and often in exile, Confucius spent his life seeking to help others achieve this.”

 

I believe Confucius would be quite at home in the No Kings Rallies. Some quotes from his writings that speak to us directly today:

 

“If you see what is right and fail to act on it, you lack courage.”

 

“The person of virtue is not left to stand alone. Those who practice it will have neighbors.”

 

“What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.”

 

"In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of."

 

“Study the past if you would define the future.”

 

Let us hope these reminders from the past will help shaped the future.

 

Land of Contrasts: Photo Gallery

 

Land of Contrasts

The day begins in Paradise with a bad soundtrack. A long morning swim in the Holiday Inn pool and then my dreams of summer bliss sitting poolside with a good book thwarted by soul-crushing musicrap raining down on me from the speakers. Why do we run from silence? What’s wrong with just listening to the wind rustle the water? Some time later, the music switches to some light pop with a bossa-nova beat, a blessed relief from the pounding disco beat and a just-right movie soundtrack that doesn’t intrude, but actually perfectly frames the moment and makes it yet a bit sweeter. 

 

Then off into the streets of Little India in search of lunch and doesn’t take long to choose a masala dhosa (South Indian thin crepe with potatoes inside) for $2.50 Singapore dollars (around $2 U.S.). Eat with my fingers as I used to do when I briefly lived in Kerala, India 47 (but who’s counting?) years ago, feeling the thread between that young man with an old soul and this old man with a still-youthful spirit. Wander down the crowded streets past the long chain of stores selling jewelry, clothing, electronics, food, none of which I need at the moment, none of which light my flame. But good to be out walking, even when a slight drizzle sends me under the eaves of the stores. 

 

Within five blocks or so, I pass a Hindu Temple, a Muslim Mosque, a Buddhist Shrine and a Christian Church. Diversity is woven into the very fabric of Singapore culture and while I’ve portrayed this modern city as one giant mall, the truth is larger than that. In-between those brightly lit shrines to Shopping are funky food courts, back alleys, strings of stall-like stores, roosters roaming freely, the hum of the crowds out on the streets and if you know where and when to look, some ancient festivals that include trance-dance and direct communion with the spirits. 

 

Out to dinner with some Orff acquaintances and catapulted back to the ultra-modern mall, where the restaurant charges $25 for a beer, $45 for a chicken and waffle entrée, all accompanied, naturally, with the disco beat from hell in the background and too-cold air-conditioning. There is a waterway inside the mall with boats you can board (for a fee). After dinner, we escaped into the perfect- temperature of the night air, just in time to see a light show over the waters with coordinated music soundtrack. Quite well done, I have to say, and standing there, feeling a bit of my childhood 4^th-of-July-fireworks-wonder.

 

Good to be a “tourist” briefly before turning to plan my next two-day workshop at a school. Stay tuned for the Photo Gallery.  

Apologies to Chiyo

With an upcoming trip to Tokyo, I decided to listen to a book I read a long time ago and remember liking —“Memoirs of a Geisha.” It is not easy to listen to, this tour of the ravages of Patriarchy and women’s complicity in salting the wounds of its cruelty rather than massaging each other and plotting resistance. The constant insults and beatings and just plain meanness that mark each day in this house training Geishas is testimony to the notion that human beings are the most wretched species to walk the face of this earth. Whether the setting takes place in Japan or China or South Africa, in Germany or Australia or Chile or the United States, our determination to make each other miserable all leads inexorably to two choices: 

 

1)    Our default setting is cruelty. We win the game by being the victorious attackers rather than the pathetic victims. Kindness is weakness, caring for others is ridiculous when you have to watch out for Number One. 

 

2)   Our deeper default setting that awaits our awakening is kindness. Cruelty is weakness, narcissism is toxic to both the community and the narcissist, deferring to meanness is cowardness.

 

Comparing these stories I read to my actual experience in the world and the quality of the people I meet and hang out with is what gives me hope that against all odds, we have evolved significantly and are continuing to move closer to our God than our Devil. Each day in my life is an indisputable testimony to this truth— especially in the classes I teach, but also in the neighborhood clean-ups my wife organizes, the alum teacher gatherings hiking out in nature, the No Kings Rallies I attend. 

 

The change we are all desperately awaiting does not just come from the voting booth, but from the switch in default setting that makes kindness the norm and cruelty the aberration. I’m not naïve— recent events expose how very far away we are from where we need to be. But also how much closer we’re getting. 

 

I only wish this had happened earlier for poor, suffering, abused, Chiyo in her geisha house.