Farewell to the 50's

Today was my last day as a 59-year old and I couldn’t have imagined a better way to spend it. Most of it was in the music room, where 36 years of laughter, tears and miracles are stored in the walls and alive in the air. And more memories added—like watching my friend from Iran dance the Shim Sham so joyfully and later play a beautiful gem of a glockenspiel solo in our song Moonglow. Such a pleasure to spend the day making beautiful music with beautiful people, to have the campus alive with vibrant, buzzing adults from all corners of the globe alongside the children in summer school. A fabulous ending to a fabulous decade.

And tomorrow on my birthday, I’ll be back for more, as well as taking my class to play for and sing with my Mom and friends at the Jewish Home for the Aged. This will be the third year and I suspect it will be as extraordinary as the last two were.

This Saturday will be my party, mostly a poetry reading of my own and other’s poems about aging, elderhood and mortality, followed by a concert where I get to play jazz piano in a trio. Oh, joy of joys! So I’ll close this entry with one of the poems I hope to read that I wrote this summer. I suspect 60 will be the beginning of a scaling down in size, a companion piece to Wendell Berry’s poem about growing tall amongst the trees in his youth and growing small amongst the grasses in his elder years. Perhaps later I’ll include some of the lighter verse, including my infamous “Geezer Rap.” But first, this:

PEBBLE IN A POND

20 years old. Confident, cocky, sure that that boulder

I will heave into the mainstream

will make a big splash in the world.

Each decade, the stone

and the river

         got smaller.

At 60, that once-big splash a mere pebble

in a small pond.

But still it makes ripples, tiny rings

that circle outwards

and sometimes reach the shore

of someone’s life about to be changed.

All Your Answers Will Be Questioned

I’m on to my next course and how I love it! I like teaching anywhere, anytime, but between getting to teach in my own music room at the school, in my native language without a translator and with my favorite subject—the marriage of Jazz and Orff—I am simply in heaven. And this being Jazz II, I can jump right in at a high level, assume certain prior knowledge and get down to work with well-trained teachers and great musicians. What a pleasure!

In a go-around, someone said they just came from an Orff training in which the instructors said, “All your questions will be answered.” And I thought, “Hmm. That’s the opposite of this course. Here all your answers will be questioned. And mine, too.”

In a June graduation speech I heard, the speaker told of the three questions he had posted in his office:

1.     What? 

2.     So What?

3.     Now What?

Brilliant! "What" means first doing something with the students and then having them recall what exactly they have done. This is an important step in digestion, converting the foodstuff of experience to the conscious assimilation that will make the learning part of our bones and blood. Many times I have providing thrilling experiences for my students, but without that moment of reflection, neither they nor I are clear enough about how this is contributing to their growth and development. Learning may—and often should— begin in the hand and the heart, but it needs the cool reflection of the head to complete the loop. Ending a class with the question “What have we done?” and passing through it again in our spoken memory is an excellent strategy for strengthening those connections being made in the brain. And not just in the classroom. So many of my private journal entries are simply an account of what happened during the day before making any comments on it.

But let’s not stop there. “So what?” asks the students to reflect on the possible meaning of the experience. It can be the teacher’s intended meaning—“By studying Manifest Destiny, we have a lens through which to view colonial expansion that makes is more understandable.By learning the 12-bar blues pattern on the xylophones, we can now understand the music differently when we listen and also play a variety of blues.” Or it can be a personal meaning. “After reading this book, I understood my father so much better.” “The lyrics in this blues really spoke to me. I could relate to the situation.”

It’s a bold question to ask and one schools rarely do, being more concerned with simply parroting back the right answer without stopping to ask why it’s worthy to learn. A teacher asking “So what? What did the thing we just learned mean to you?” is vulnerable to the honest answer, “Nothin’.” So the habitual asking of “so what” puts pressure on the teacher to always teach within the framework of meaning and context, sometimes surprising the students themselves by asking them to discover a meaning in the material not immediately obvious to them.

But again, why stop there? “Now what?” is the crowning question. “Now that you know about the kind of thinking summarized in Manifest Destiny that caused so much cruelty, suffering and injustice, what are you going to do with that information? How can you apply it to the stories in today’s newspaper? How can you educate others to drop their harmful thinking that God is only on their side and widen their listening to and acceptance of other ways?" "Now that you know how to play the 12-bar blues, can you improvise and compose your own in your particular style?"  "Now that you’ve heard some great blues lyrics, can you tell your own story through this form?” Any time you ask the students to apply knowledge in a novel situation, to create a project, to express their own understanding through poetry, art, dance, drama, music, you help them realize that anything they learn or accomplish in class is not the end, but the beginning. “Now what?” puts the responsibility back on them to do something novel, useful and meaningful with what they learn.

So beware of narrow educational practices and policies that go no further than the “whats,” that promise that “all your questions will be answered.” (Or more accurately and worse yet, "all our questions—ie, the testmakers—will be answered.") Train students to ask teachers “So what?” and train teachers to ask students “Now what?” When students enter a class and the teacher says, “All your answers will be questioned,” they know they are in an authentic educational venture. 

Viva Madrid!

The reader may have noted that the continuing confessions of a traveling music teacher have been leaning heavily to the side of “music teacher” and been light on the “traveling.” The armchair traveler cozying in for a flight to another land without the airport lines or mosquitos may have been disappointed to encounter yet another lecture on an esoteric teaching approach. But thought I’ve been in Spain a week, I haven’t wholly been here. Madrid has been out the window on the daily commute on Carretera A-6, but there’s neither been the real nor psychological time to do little more than look at it from a moving car.

But the night of flamenco helped me touch base with this city, which like Salzburg, has been a home of sorts, a touchstone during the last 21 years. It was actually in Salzburg that I first met so many of these Madrileño vibrant music teachers—Sofía, Luz, Fernando, Polo, Mariana, Leo. But it has been Madrid where the bulk of these friendships have been formed and re-formed. It has been fascinating and inspiring to see the various forks in the road we all have taken in the two decades we’ve known each other and a great pleasure to gather yet again around the table at El Meson and keep the stories and laughter flowing.

And so Madrid. A poster in the Plaza Mayor says something to the effect of, “Madrid has no beaches, no river, no astounding architecture, no world-famous historical monuments—why do tourists come here?” And concludes that it is the people, the vibrant energy in the street and the animated chatter of the folks dining for three hours at the open-air cafes and indoor tapas bars. I’m pleased to report that the Spanish tradition of sitting for hours just talking with folks at the table lives on, though I can’t help but note that even the face-to-face social genius of the Spanish is starting to wilt and suffer a bit from the rampant mobile phones. Now a conversation can be—and is—interrupted by a phone call and a lull in the conversation finds people with heads-down checking their text messages.

Madrid is an enormous city and after all these years, I recognize each of its neighborhoods, but couldn’t easily guide you from one to another. It recently constructed four skyscrapers that earn their name, standing out so arrogantly on the flat plain scraping the sky, the cousin of the Rincon Tower in San Francisco that still make me mad every time I see it. I have little routines in Madrid— a stroll in Plaza Mayor, usually stopping in the store where I replenish the Spanish berets (gorras) I keep losing, a trip to the CD store Finac, occasionally a re-visit to the Prado Museum or walk in Parque Retiro. And most important of all, eating some pimientos de padrón.

This dish from Galicia is both a culinary delight and a game of Russian Roulette. These tiny peppers, cooked in oil and salted just right, are mostly mild. But in every batch, there hides one or two (or occasionally more) truly hot “picante” peppers, one of which once sent me away from the table and walking around for 20 minutes trying to outrun the pain on my tongue. In my last dinner in Madrid on this trip, I finally found a restaurant that served them. They were delicious. And every one of them mild, making me feel both relieved and cheated.

It was also amazing to be in this tapas bar without a single person smoking and no cigarette butts below the bar. This is simply a miracle. That one can go into a Madrid tapas bar or flamenco club or jazz club (or equally, go into a pub in Ireland, Scotland or England) with no smoke is something no one could have imagined a mere ten years ago. This is living proof of Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point theory. That an idea could gather so much momentum and power that it completely turned around a smoking habit so ingrained in these cultures is simply extraordinary. If it could happen with smoking, why not with racism, corporate greed, harmful educational policies? Why did the smoking thing so completely convince whole cultures to change their ways? What was the secret of that success? This could be worthy of a study on the off chance that we can apply its secrets to things that cause even more harm than cigarettes.

Speaking of which, we had to take a different route to the airport because there was a demonstration in Madrid that closed some streets. Sofia began explaining the phenomena of “Los Indignados,” people inspired by a little book written by a German author to express their indignation at business-as-usual politics, corruption, greed and more. Though I have to both read the book and follow the movement to say something intelligent about it, the general idea appealed to me greatly. Haven’t I been outraged by certain actions in my little community and spoken out against them? Yes, I have.

I was in Spain at the outbreak of the Iraq War many years back and joined in a demonstration in the streets with people of all ages and classes. I was electrified and inspired by the energy in the air. While so many in the U.S. had shamelessly agreed to “go get ‘em,” fed by the government lies and neither the gumption nor the habit to question, here people were indeed expressing an appropriate indignation. So it didn’t surprise me to hear that Los Indignados had been camping in the Puerta del Sol for months on end to make their voices heard. My kind of people.

As W.H. Auden said, “All I have is my voice to undo the folded lie” and if we don’t use that voice, the lies proceed unchecked. The health of a culture can be measured by the habit of questioning, the courage to speak out and the sense to join voices together. The problem with politics is that while it is vital to speak out against harmful practices, a life spent in reaction to bad things is not yet complete. As well as speaking out against, we must also speak for something, to show and to live the good things. At the same time we undo the folded lie, we also stand for the spoken and felt truth. But good things and truth can be damped down or shut away if citizens are not vigilant and fierce enough to protect them. We need to be savvy in both politics and culture.

So hooray to Madrid for continuing to produce an outspoken citizenry and protect its vibrant culture, to all of Spain for its rich festival life, local character, passionate music, gazpacho, potatas bravas and pimientos de padrón. From the arid plains and hot sun, I’m heading back to the wet fog, rolling San Francisco hills and the waters of the Pacific.

It was some six weeks ago that I began the drive across the wide open spaces of the West, hiked the wooded paths of the Grand Tetons and stopped at Mt. Rushmore and the Corn Palace, arrived at sunsets over Lake Michigan and daily swims in the back lake, roamed through the streets of Verona enjoying sidewalk cafes and open-air opera, walked through the cobbled streets of Salzburg with SF School students and biked through the lush, green fields, bought the piano music of Federico Mompou in a Madrid music store, heard flamenco and ate pimientos de padrón. All the while sharing with some 800 teachers from around the world the little piece of good things that I have found in this endlessly delightful approach to teaching music, bringing people together and celebrating life that the Orff Schulwerk can be 

It has been a glorious, intense and gratifying time. Here in the Newark Airport, some 15 minutes from the New Jersey home of my childhood, I await the next plane to take me back to my beloved San Francisco, my home of homes.

And of course, the next Orff Course begins on Monday. Olé!

The Thrill of Mastery

Last night I went to a flamenco club. It is gospel truth that it takes time to understand the language of an art form, get familiar with its patterns of stopping and starting and developing ideas, understand its aesthetic, tune in to its particular way of communicating between artists. Yet still art can by-pass familiarity and go straight to the gut or the heart or the feet. There was no way anyone in that audience, from naive tourist to lifelong aficionado, could not feel the spectacular virtuosity on display on that stage. And it didn’t hurt that it was a small club.  I was in the second row, literally sprayed by the dancer’s sweat as he pirouetted at the end of a demanding improvisation.

From the two guitarists to the three male singers and rhythmic clappers and the male and female dancer, magic was abundant. The staccato rhythms of the feet were matched by the interlocking of clapped hands and strummed guitars, with a communication between all that was visible, palpable and far beyond what any of us ever achieve with mere words. I sat next to two flamenco dancers who clapped along and nodded in appreciation of the nuances I’m sure I missed, and with my friend Sofia on the other side who was enjoying the verbal improvisations and poetic images of the singers, much of which I also missed. But no matter. As I said, it was clear to all that there was something present far beyond the norm of even this passionate art form, that everything fell into place and the heart was wide open. Though it got a small laugh, it was perfectly natural that one of the singers spontaneously kissed his fellow musician on stage in appreciation of what had just happened.

Flamenco leans heavily to the element of fire, beginning at a heat many art forms just barely suggest at a moment of climax. But like any art, it needs to be forged in the flame of discipline, its wild excess tempered and contained by the forge of form and structure. We all have the possibility of feeling passion unbound by our usual protective coolness, but it is the hard work of these dancers, singers and musicians that allows us to feel and remember.

Mastery in any field is thrilling to behold. We need to witness it to keep reminding us what heights this human body, mind and heart is capable of. We already know what degraded depths it can achieve, reminded far too often in every newspaper story. So to be in the presence of a masterful performer or worker in any field, be it a skateboarder, contortionist or basketball player, is to renew our amazement at what the body is capable of. And when the body connects with the heart, as in flamenco, that astonishment grows in geometric proportions.

In 1993, I met with a group of fellow Orff teachers in the Zephyr Café in San Francisco and we decided to meet once a week to explore the kinds of things we did with our kids in the classroom for ourselves. Out of those weekly improvisations, some pieces emerged built from our collective imagination and before we knew it, we began to share them and perform. We called ourselves Xephyr (X for the xylophone) and besides performing at several prestigious Orff events, including the Salzburg Symposiums of 1995, 2000 and 2006, we gave concerts in San Francisco. Part of each concert turned into a workshop involving the audience, who then performed themselves. We discovered that our elemental approach made the audience feel comfortable enough that they could imagine “ I can almost do that” and they felt encouraged to try.

This was a different animal altogether from the Flamenco show. I imagine no one in that audience was thinking, “I’d like to go on stage and dance with these folks.” I remember going to a concert with one of the Xephyr members to a group doing similar integrated performance at a very high level and he turned to me and said, “”Oh, yeah—that’s what we forgot. Virtuosity!” and we both laughed. In its exquisite genius of evoking good solid music and dance from simple elements, the Orff approach helps awaken the feeling that everyone is part musician and dancer and truth be told, I loved the concerts we gave and the unique way it involved the audience. The problem with mastery is that it dazzles and astounds and can make people feel smaller. But mostly, I think it does elevate us through our vicarious participation in the flash and the dazzle and remind us to work harder in our chosen field. In fact, the Xephyr members were virtuosos, not of specific music or dance, but in our craft of teaching. Time is too short to master more than one corner of creation—we indeed must pick and choose.

And about to board a plane to San Francisco and begin my fifth course in a row on Monday, I suppose teaching is my equivalent of passionate foot-stamping, clapping and singing, my flamenco burst of passion forged in some 30,000 classes with children and workshops in my spare time. Olé!!

The Pity Party

I imagine that many of us have said, “After this, I promise I will never complain again.”

That’s how I felt after reading Dave Egger’s What Is the What or visiting a friend with cancer or simply reading about the latest disaster in the newspaper. Really, how small our complaints feel in the face of the steady surge of tragedy and suffering that rolls through so many people’s lives. And yet, our memories are short. A mere tickle in the throat and we are feeling so sorry for ourselves.

So I got sick. I have a cold. The shift from lush Salzburg to arid Madrid and some ill-timed air-conditioning, combined with what should understandably be sheer exhaustion from teaching so much without a break and dealing with so many organizational details in the midst of travel, hit me and sent me into self-pity mode.

I hate getting sick! I hate feeling less than my whole self, unable to meet the world head on because everything is turning inwards to fight off the bad germs. It’s bad when I have free time because I can’t fully enjoy it and it’s bad when I’m working because I have to keep going. I’ve had some of both these few days in Madrid and while the teaching remains pleasurable, I feel terrible that I’m such lousy company in the dinner gatherings afterwards. Coupled with lunching in a noisy cafeteria with folks talking to me in Spanish, a language I’m almost fluent in, but still requires effort. My old ears simply are unable to filter out the clang of silverware and squeals of kids in the other room.

And speaking of getting old, which I will frequently as I hit my last week of 59, I did a game today where people had to walk counting to the beat and stop when they reached their age. Who was the last to stop? You guessed it. Out of 60 people.

Truth be told, it is a bit sobering, but mostly it feels fine. A physically graphic picture of how I’ve walked farther down the path than they have and have gotten to see some wonderful sights. 

I hope they’ll see it someday as well, but for them, it’s just a guess at this point. I’ve been there. How’s that for trying to put a positive spin on mortality?

So wash your screen after reading this, just in case germs travels with electrons, and remind yourself that we have no right to complain whatsoever. Though, of course, we will still do it. 

As for me, it’s time for a nap.

"Beware All Ye Who Enter Here"

I arrived in Madrid from Salzburg and the next morning, off and running in the next Orff Course. I was surprised to discover that one of the groups I worked with this morning were all beginners—this was their first Orff workshop. That was a moment of Shakespearean drama, worthy of blaring trumpets and drum rolls. I knew that for some this would be a life-changing moment, an opening of the door into a room they had dreamed about, but never entered in the flesh. For some, the Sound of Music soundtrack will go off in their head and they will “climb every mountain” to enjoy the refreshing rivers, meadows of peace and contentment and stunning views. For some, the heavens will part and they will step boldly and confidently into a glorious future of blissful classes with their children.

Well, not quite. As some people have complained to me, “I liked my life just fine and then this had to happen!” If we wholly accept the invitation, that mountain of work ahead that the Mother Abbess is exhorting us to climb can be a veritable Everest, complete with high winds, cold snow, landslides. Not to mention unpredictable children who aren’t immediately impressed with our transformation. And though we arrived at the Orff workshop because something felt too narrow, too dull, too uninspired or unsatisfying in our teaching, we may find ourselves doubting everything about how we have taught and enter a zone between dull, but okay and exciting, but not yet second nature. Should I warn my group in Madrid? “Beware all ye who enter here!”

Of course not. They’ll find out soon enough. If any of us knew ahead of time what awaited us when we embarked on a worthy endeavor—a marriage, child-raising, a career—I’m sure we would have turned and run the other way. We are guided into our choices by the carrot of pleasure and this is Nature’s great strategy (note the act that spawns conception and leads to changing diapers and wiping runny noses).

It seems clear that people are attracted by the freedom of the Orff approach and only later realize what a great responsibility is to decide what we will teach, when we will teach it, how we will teach it, how we will develop it with the children and so on and so on. Being handed a textbook and told to teach as it dictates leaves no room for our own passion or imagination or particular combination of interests and skills, but it occasionally must seem appealing when we’re wrestling with creating and re-creating our own curriculum.

There’s a gem of a book for Orff teachers just released with a long title (Texts on Theory and Practice of Orff Schulwerk). Orff’s brilliant colleague, Gunild Keetman, had just graduated from the school where Orff taught and she says: “Orff was looking for a colleague who could try out his ideas in practice and asked me if I would not like to stay on and help him. I agreed joyfully, not foreseeing that out of this a lifelong co-operation would ensue, not foreseeing the outcome and the way these experiments, begun in our restricted circle, would later spread, luckily also not foreseeing what a tough assignment it would be nor how much courage and overcoming of obstacles would be involved.”

And there you have it. Though we read our horoscope or go to fortune tellers, it really is best not to know, but proceed step by step in faith, guided by the pure pleasure of our work. In the case of Orff and Keetman, those little experiments begun in the 1920’s did indeed bear a remarkable and far-reaching fruit. But even if it hadn’t, I imagine they would have enjoyed it all the same.

After all these years of teaching, I sometimes wonder whether any of it meant anything to anyone. Of course, it’s nice to think that you may have made an impact on the world, ranging from making someone’s day a little more pleasant to transforming a life to reviving music education on a local, national or international scale. But ultimately, it’s the wrong question. More to the point—“Did I have a good time doing it?”—and to that I give a resounding “YES!” And I still am—and so off to plan tomorrow’s classes.

The Return of Dougie Fresh

My first affirmation as a free-style rapper came from a colleague my age (see Dougie Fresh II in May's postings), but now that I have the support of a few 14-year olds from my kid’s group, I’m paying attention. It was my free-style rap walking with them in downtown Salzburg that earned me my “Dougie Fresh” nickname from a few kids who seemed genuinely impressed. Of course, I know a lot is missing. I don’t really have the rhythm right and my accent is all wrong. But I am tuned into rhyming and there’s no lack of subject matter. Here’s an example I wrote for the kids on the Salzburg trip after they left (Jufa is the name of the Youth Hostel):

I’m sittin’ in the Jufa, gonna make a big confession.

My homeys all are gone and I got a bad depression

Missing all our music with its natural expression

Gotta to pay for a shrink in a therapy session.

Sayin’, “Why’d they have to go? They know I’d miss them so.

Can’t play any good music with no rosin on my bow.”

While I feel the pain, outside it starts to rain.

The memories of our time here are etched into my brain.

We got a good groove on, but now it’s time to move on.

And each and every one of us is now a lifetime Jufan.

The thunderclouds have gathered, folks are getting’ out their mops

I gotta ride my bike back in-between the raindrops.

But before I go, I gotta get this off my chest.

“I love you guys! all 17, you truly are the best!!!”

I really am motivated to start to listen to some rap and of course, this is the missing piece. The Input-Output ratio is crucial in any art form and without hearing the rhythms, inflections, accents, styles of genuine rap, I’m stuck in my older poetic forms upbringing. So I have no illusions that I’m going to go viral on Youtube, but it is fun to walk down the street and comment on the world with a backbeat.

Meanwhile, I went back again to the Jufa Youth Hostel last night to return my bicycle. I expected to see the kids walking through the lobby and I suspect that anytime I go there, I’ll have the same sensation. Certain places are forever etched in our memories, connected with the people we shared that particular time and place with. This morning, I stood in the hall of the Frohnburg where I was staying and remembered the party from the 1990 Summer Course, where I led a little contra-dance and the Finnish folks sang and strummed guitars. A couple of days ago, I biked with my old friend Rick to my farmhouse in Anif where I lived when I taught in 2003, 2005, 2007. Yesterday, I finished my last class in Room 27, the same room where a candle-lit surprise farewell party was once given to me and where I also gave a piano concert. Every time I pass the zip-line in the playground I think of my daughter Kerala at 9 years old. When I put my bike in the Frohnburg bike rack, I remember daughter Talia learning to ride a bike at 5 years old. Twenty-one years of one to six week visits has made the Orff Institut one of my precious homes on this planet and all of Salzburg is alive with each of those times, all of the people I shared them with and memories of the different selves I have been (I was 39 when I first arrived!)

And the remarkable thing is that we all keep crossing paths. In these last two weeks, I met with over a hundred people from those former times and here we were again, creating our temporary communities where miracles, fun and laughter abound and where future memories are being made. Five of the ten teachers teaching at this summer course also taught at that first one I did in 1990! We are growing old together and it’s always interesting to see how we change and how we stay the same. And mostly, it is just plain amazing that we’re all still carrying on. Good material for another rap!

Instead of playing music on the street at Fisherman’s Wharf

We all still carry on the Schulwerk of Mr. Carl Orff

Instead of going out at night to dance salsa or disco

We’re out there teaching workshops in the Drid, the Burg and Frisco.

We clap our hands in Italy, we play a game in Spain,

We ride our bikes in Salzburg in the sunshine and the rain.

We don’t go swimmin’ at the beach or go and ride a horse.

We finish teaching, then get ready for the next Orff course.

We see each other here and there, then later there and here.

We hang around at restaurants sipping wine or drinking beer.

We hope that we can carry on as we get old and gray.

And meanwhile, we’re grateful for each and every day.

That we can teach the Taiwanese, the Thai, Korean, French.

That we can lunch with Persian folks while chatting on the bench.

That we can learn a song from an Aussie or a  Dane

I got plenty more to say, but I gotta catch my plane!

Well, like I said, Dougie Fresh needs some help. But it’s fun to try.

On to the next course in Madrid!