Karmic Connections

It’s a Saturday morning and after catching up on business matters, I’m ready to take off footloose and fancy free to wander about Toronto. I’ll have some four hours before a dinner date with a friend, followed by a concert she’s singing in. Where should I go?

 

Truth be told, Toronto has never effortlessly lifted my heart the way that places like Vancouver, Barcelona, Salzburg, London, Paris, Venice, Bangkok, Kyoto, Rio de Janeiro and more do. No enticing rivers or beaches or hills or  parks or charming neighborhoods or thriving arts scene that enchant and delight me. Yet somehow I have a karmic connection that’s significant. Let me count the ways:

 

1.    Toronto is the first foreign city I ever visited, on a family trip back in 1962 (I think). It was the kick-off to a lifetime of visiting some 65 countries and hundreds of towns and cities. 

 

2.    On that trip, I had my first experience of puppy love. I seem to remember as a rising 7^th grader holding hands with a neighbor of my Dad’s friend, a girl named Lizzie. (I think it was a one-day romance).

 

3.    1962 was the year Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman brought Orff-Schulwerk to North America, an event that obviously wholly defined my life. If indeed it was the same year I first came here, I might have passed them in the street!

 

4.    Toronto is the place I came to year after year to teach whatever course suited my fancy (thank you Catherine West!). Between 2000 and 2019, I taught many Jazz Courses, World Music Courses, Music and Poetry/ Rhymes Courses and Pedagogy Courses. Alongside San Francisco, Salzburg and Madrid, this is the place where I have taught more often than any other place.

 

5.    I was teaching my Musica Poetica Course here in Toronto when I got the news that my Dad had died. We sang a song for him that day and I discovered that it doesn’t work when all try to sing and cry at the same time. 

 

And there’s more. Many people who came year after year to my various courses who became fun acquaintances and some lifelong friends. I co-taught at the Toronto Conference in 2006 with two beloved colleagues, Sofia Lopez-Ibor and Rick Layton. And now I can add teaching side-by-side with my good friend and colleague Kofi Gbolonyo at the Havergal School to the list. I listened to Oscar Peterson’s album We Get Requests in high school and passed by the line for his Memorial Service one time I visited. I listened to Glenn Gould’s recording of the Goldberg Variations and Joni Mitchell’s songs in college. All three of these musicians—representing jazz, classical and folk/rock— are connected to Toronto.

 

So despite my doubts about the delights of this fair city, it is deeply embedded in my own karmic unfolding and that is worth noting. Now that I have, it’s out into the day.