Indoors/Outdoors

You feel it the moment you step out the door. There is a scent in the air, a freshness notably different from the stale, recycled indoor air. The invitation to mingle, meld, merge and melt into the elements. To plunge into the watery warm womb of the back lake or yelp and shriek from the biting cold of the front lake, bringing every nerve cell alive and tingling. To feel the squeak of the fine sand and the grit of the coarse on bare feet, the tickle of dune grass on bare legs, the breath of cool air in the morning breeze on bare arms. Behind you the sun’s heat on the back of your black shirt, above the faint moon in blue sky giving way to its sibling. The winged gulls soar overhead and plunge for their breakfast, the morning birds sing in the day, the woodlands path is shadowed with light and dark dapple of leaves. You understand what old Walt Whitman meant when he wrote: “Now I see the secret of making the best person; it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.”

Indoors, the L.L. Bean bird clock chimes a different bird call on the hour and it is initially charming and clever. And yet the opposite of what any bird would want—to be predictable, to mark the hours in measured minutes, to remind us that time marches on instead of taking us in its arms. (What was the line from the old Incredible String Band song? “Sometimes I want to murder time, sometimes when my heart’s aching. But mostly I just sit and watch, the path that he is taking.”) Outdoors, we read the news of the tracks in the sand, deer crossing raccoon tracks zig-zagging alongside gull-prints, indoors, the criss-crossed print of newspaper tells us yet again how humans lowered down to their baser selves. Indoors, we wonder what’s in the frig or on TV or if we’re unlucky enough to have wireless in our little cottage in the woods, what’s in our mailbox. Outdoors, the sun trumps the computer screen’s light, we search frantically for our little arrow, give up and run down to the beach. Or lean against a tree with a book, a pen and paper. If we forget the paper, we can scribble on some peeled birch-bark or write in the sand.

And so it goes on. Indoors, we’re three-feet high on a straight-backed chair or slumped in a couch, outdoors, sitting cross-legged on a pile of sand or stretched out on the earth looking up at clouds or floating in the water. Indoors, we’re self-enclosed in our own skin and thoughts and fretting and worries, outdoors we can carry it all with us, but the world offers to take some of the weight and invites us to notice the ladybugs or hummingbirds or first turn of Fall color.

I’m writing this to remind myself to get out!, noting how I can come up to this haven by two lakes and sit at the table writing, reading, playing Solitaire, a mere ten feet from the deck. When I finally step outside, I always wonder why I didn’t do it sooner. Of course, there is much to praise about the indoors, especially in rainy or cold weather and of course, we can bring our outdoor self indoors in much the same way we can carry our indoor self outdoors. But it is Summer, after all, and there’s no excuse for not being outside for most of the day and partake of Nature’s bounty. 

And so I close—see you at the lake!

Kiss Me, Pretty Protoplasm

Yesterday was the 4^th anniversary of my Dad’s passing. I wrote a letter to him in my journal, catching him up on the news—one grandchild pregnant, one engaged, one off to college, one with a new girlfriend, one celebrating her two-year anniversary in Buenos Aires and so on. Me in Michigan, where exactly half my lifetime ago, he helped me shave my beard on my 30^th birthday. It was the only time he and my mom came to my in-laws cottage on Lake Michigan and the two families merged, but it was a memorable week. New York-born-and-bred, my Dad attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor just before the war, a chapter of his life I knew little about beyond a photo of him in front of one of the main buildings. We passed it again on that trip, but frankly, I don’t remember any more stories forthcoming.

In the book Corelli’s Mandolin, one of the characters talks about dealing with loss by “living on the departed one’s behalf.” That image has always stuck with me. Since those who are gone don’t have bodies and voices, we use our own to enjoy what they enjoyed, both to keep them alive in our memory and to keep us alive in theirs. An old Irish saying says something to the effect of “What’s wrong in this world can only be healed by those in the other world and what’s wrong in the other world can only be healed by those in this world.” This idea of partnership with the Ancestors is found in cultures worldwide and rings true for me far beyond mere anthropological curiosity. How often we feel the invisible helping hands guiding our destiny and whether we call them Angels, the Muse, the Spirits or Ancestors, their presence is palpable. Likewise, I often feel, as Bessie Jones notes in her autobiography For the Ancestors, that “when I’m singing the songs my grandfather used to sing, I feel him come around to listen. And I believe he be happy.”

And so yesterday I did a Crostic puzzle, listened to Beethoven and recited my Dad’s favorite poem. Had I been home, I would have played one of the piano pieces he composed. I always think of my father as an artistic soul waylaid by the 1950’s businessman culture. He had composed music, played some piano, organ and violin, painted many paintings, memorized some poems and wrote a few and tucked all of it away to be a responsible businessman who brought home the bacon to his two-child suburban New Jersey family.

When he retired, it would have been a perfect time to bring those old artistic leanings out of the closet, dust them off and enjoy them again. But he claimed that they had atrophied too far and despite my encouragement, never did paint or play or compose again. And yet, when I recorded a tape of me performing his compositions for one of his birthdays, he listened to it every single day for years and yet more often in his last six months. I believe it brought him a great deal of comfort.

At his memorial service, I read a poem by Rilke:

"Sometimes a man stands up during supper

and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,

because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,

stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,

so that his children have to go far out into the world

toward that same church, which he forgot."  

I’m grateful that my father didn’t abandon his family in pursuit of art. And perhaps he set in motion the invitation for my sister and I to go out as “far out into the world” as we have. But still I would like to think that one can raise a family and keep one’s artistic soul alive and well-fed. At least keep playing music, painting, memorizing new poems, writing a poem or two, simply for the pleasure of it.

Back to that favorite poem he used to recite at a moment’s notice. It comes from an obscure novel titled Finnley Wren by Philip Wylie, who also authored a collection of essays titled Generation of Vipers. It is the perfect blend of poetry and science, which as a chemist, appealed to my Dad. You may have to look up some words, but mostly, read it out loud to enjoy both the music of the language and the humor and imagery.

And should you be so fortunate to have your parents still living, don’t forget to kiss them next time you see them. A lot.

Life is just a passing spasm,
            In an aggregate of cells;

Kiss me, pretty protoplasm,

While your osculation dwells.

Glucose-sweet, no enzyme action
            Or love-lytic can reduce,
            Our relations to a fraction

Of hereditary use.

Nuclear rejuvenation

Melts the auricle of stoic:

Love requires a balanced ration—

Let our food be holozoic;

Let us live with all our senses

While anabolism lets us—

Till—with metaplastic fences

Some katabolism gets us.

Till, potential strength, retreating,

Leaves us at extinction’s chasm:

And, since time is rather fleeting,

            Kiss me, pretty protoplasm.

Who Needs TED?

A few years back, I wrote a letter to my friends asking that they consider nominating me to be a TED Speaker. TED is a series of videoed lectures on all kinds of topics that circulate through the Internet. The talks tend to be high quality, engaging and stimulating, the kind of intelligent public discourse that is so often lacking in mainstream media. Apparently, you must be nominated to be invited and so my letter-writing campaign. Indeed, many folks did write the proposed nominating letter (there’s a simple online form), but TED didn’t follow their lead. And so once again, that theme of my six-word biography: “Called world to quarrel—no answer.”

But after closing out the two-week SF Orff Certification Course yesterday, I thought about this strange notion I seem to have that TED would represent some important milestone in my professional career. If it ever came to pass, I would be ushered into some studio somewhere to talk for 20 minutes to people I had never met. I wouldn’t get to hold hands with them and dance, nor invite them to perform a blues solo on the xylophone and most likely, not sing a song with them that strummed the strings of our spirit. I wouldn’t get to give them a weekend tour of San Francisco and perform body percussion while walking the labyrinth, wouldn’t watch them create stunning stick dances or recorder trios, wouldn’t get to charge the air with bagpipe and 20 xylophones in 15/16 meter. I wouldn’t see one of their three-year old daughters dance so joyfully in the middle of our Brazilian Ciranda circle, spinning and twirling unselfconsciously while a hundred people danced around her and bowing with arms outspread at the end. I wouldn’t hear the constant laughter of 100 people spending two weeks together playing, singing and dancing, wouldn’t get to jump in on the vibraphone and join in the jazz trio jam, wouldn’t get the daily kissed and hugs from beautiful young women and men, wouldn’t witness the breathtaking array of talent I surfaced in our Thursday night show, nor remember how difficult it to sing in concentric circles when everyone around you is crying from the sheer beauty of the world we created.

“When the miraculous becomes the norm” was again the theme of these two weeks, made even more powerful from the particular blend of cultures that converged at The San Francisco School, from Brazil to Spain to Japan to Uzbekisthan—and some fourteen other countries. Every day was notable, but I gave up trying to capture it here. All of it was along the lines of “you just had to be there.” And I’m so grateful that I was.

If a TED talk ever came to pass, it would be nice to let people know what’s possible with both adults and kids and help move public opinion in the direction of a humane and joyful education. But it all would just be a finger pointing to the moon. These two weeks were the real deal, a “trip to the moon on gossamer wings.” We were flying high with our spirits rejoicing and digging deep into the moist soil of soul. And yes, the constant shifting weather of our human frailities was there too, the crossed-signals, misunderstandings, frustrations and sheer exhaustion of being surrounded by so much brilliance and talent. But the music was always around us to sweep our doubts into the corner where they belong and invite us back into the dancing circle.

And not to say I didn’t warn them (see July’s entry: “Beware all ye who enter here.”). This community has no room for self-satisfaction and security. When we sign-up, we’re agreeing to blow ourselves wide open, in faith and confidence that we’ll put ourselves back together at a higher, wider and deeper level, supported by our fellow travelers. We are dazzled and amazed and sometimes blinded by the accomplishments of our fellow humans, but the end result should be to increase our own light. One of the most remarkable moments of the Thursday talent show was a duet between Bay Area Jackie Rago on maracas and Estevao from Brazil on pandeiro (tambourine). The virtuosity, humor and communication of this improvised piece with two simple instruments was beyond human belief. When the thunderous applause died down, the next person was called up to perform. Talk about a hard act to follow! But non-plussed, up stepped a young woman with guitar and led us in a hilarious song about the 18 wheels on a big truck, counting them forwards, backwards, by twos and most delightful of all, by Roman numerals. Perfect! The spirit of this Orff approach is not to breed competitive virtuosi, but help each person find the core of their own character and share it with the group. As simple as that.

So I had to remind myself that none of this could ever happen in a 20-minute talk in a studio and that I was a fool to think that the TED invitation would be the best affirmation of my work that the world could offer. In fact, I’d be hard pressed to think of any experience that could top the few weeks I just passed with the most interesting, funny, intelligent, good-looking, warm-hearted, talented and committed human beings any one could ever hope to meet. And to think that each is dedicating at least a part of their life to teaching young children means more than the most inspired TED talk could ever deliver.

Thank you to each and every one of the nearly 200 teachers who generated enough energy in the last three weeks to keep us all re-charged—until next year!

A Bitter Antique

I was 8 years old when I won the pie-eating contest in my school’s summer program. I forget what prize was offered, but the fact is, I never got it. Years later, I broke the high school pole-vaulting record and eagerly awaited the customary lunchtime announcement by the headmaster. It never came. That same year, I entered the school public speaking contest and waited at graduation to hear who won. I never heard it. (They decided that none of the speeches were worthy enough.)

And so began my initiation into the world of personal injustice and bitter disappointment.

I had done what the world required and yet it failed to deliver its promise. In the past five or ten years, the undeserved slaps from world have come one after another. I taught for six years at the SF Conservatory in each of their programs—adult, kid and collegiate, bought two sets of Orff instruments for them, hired the subsequent teachers for the kids’ classes and got consistently glowing evaluations from the collegiate students. And then was let go on the whim of the Dean with no explanation. I put Mills College on the map of music education, doubling the course size in our 12-year Orff Certification trainings there and was kicked out so they could clean the dorms a week earlier. I published three books with one company and one with another, but neither would consider publishing my jazz book that lay in the closet for ten years.

And so the stories began to pile up, even inside the institutions closest to me. And in every single one of those cases, the closed doors led to another opening, a new direction that in retrospect made me grateful. Like forming Pentatonic Press to publish my own jazz book and the subsequent successes of the three books I’ve done myself and the one I just published of my colleague Sofia. Moving the Mills Course to the SF School has been a blessing many times over and while I still am sorry not to give Conservatory students a kind of experience they so desperately need, it has freed up energy in other directions.

So when students in my Level III class were asked to describe me in a student’s recent teaching lesson, “wise” and “fun” were joined by “bitter.” Of course, that threw me into defensive mode—“I’m not bitter. I’m just outraged and indignant. The more I see how fantastic things could be, how intelligent and heartfelt and envigorating, the more difficult I find it to accept the mediocrity, stupidity and frozen emotion that gets the larger press in the culture.” And that’s true. Still, though, I suppose a touch of bitter is on my tongue and I have to be careful not to let that be the dominant flavor. Because, as I reminded my students, I am lucky beyond anyone’s normal of measure of good fortune to get to teach the students I teach in the places I teach them. And that’s sweet.

The Brazilian’s have a beautiful word for the special combination of bitter and sweet—saudade— and I do find bittersweet chocolate most to my liking. So bitter need not be all bad, especially if it’s balanced by appropriate gratitude for the sweet. And as I said above, each closed door opened another one that in retrospect had to be. And then we find ourselves in the weird situation of thanking those who disappointed or betrayed us. Even if their intentions were not honorable, they moved us further down the path than we might have traveled otherwise.

As for the title, a student in the recent jazz course described my status in my school by calling me an “antique.” So there you have it. I think that I’m giving these teachers something worthy that they value and stand as a model of sorts for them to aspire to in their field—and at the end of it all, they perceive me as a “bitter antique.”

But luckily, I’m not bitter about it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I better get back on the shelf.

You've Got Mail

I received two letters today. Not e-mails, not bills, not junk mail, not text messages. Two letters. Hand-written address, envelope and stamps. The real thing. Both from my daughters, on the occasion of my birthday. In these days of the fleeting ephemeral rush of letters on screens and impersonal fonts, they arrived like messages from the gods.

All my life, I’ve loved letters. How many days I spent waiting for the clink of the mailbox and rushing to see what the world would deliver today. There was a sense of anticipation and often, disappointment. But when those letters did appear, it was a moment to relish. Look at the handwriting, feel the heft of the envelope, sometimes smell a familiar scent. And then wait for the right moment and the right place to sit down and slowly savor the news from a friend, feel his or presence, step into the moment and place it was written and enjoy the embrace of a soul-to-soul connection grow yet stronger.

And how I loved writing letters. I often would sit under a favorite tree in the park, begin by describing what was around me—hummingbirds hovering by the salvia flowers, little kids feeding bread crumbs to ducks, wisps of fog curling around the Monterey pines. Then the moment of taking stock and thinking about what was new in my little life or fresh on my mind and what might be of interest to my friend. A few lines asking what was new at the other end and then closing the loop with some kind of appreciation for the gift of our friendship. Even without such words spoken, the effort alone made every letter a love letter, a re-commitment to something important enough to step to the side of our busy lives and re-make a heart-to-heart connection.

One of the saddest things to me about modern life is not only the loss of the art of letter-writing, but the end of the saved letters in boxes in the basement or attic. When my Dad was at the end of his days, I found all the letters he had saved. They included the ones I had written to him and my Mom from college, the thin-blue aerograms I had sent from Europe or India or Bali, the birthday cards, the small tri-folded pages from San Francisco with news of his grandchildren. I also read some revealing letters he had written to my mother in the early days of their romance. How much I learned in the privacy of ink on paper that he never once revealed to me in conversation. And recently, my mother-in-law uncovered letters that my father-in-law Ted had written to his family during World War II. Such treasures! And again, out came the stories never once hinted at in the 35 years I knew him and my regrets that I hadn’t read them and discussed them with him before he passed away.

Letters reveal something of the inner life that we hide away in everyday conversation. They are an act of the imagination that reaches down and across and up to the thoughts that need a special kind of invitation to reveal themselves and form themselves into articulate and evocative language. And yes, we can write them on a computer and send them on e-mail and even print and store them in a box. But we often don’t, at least with the same kind of depth of reflection that the handwritten letter composed sitting at a table with low light and soft music achieves. E-mail simply doesn’t invite that kind of time and space. It is a technology of the quick hit, the casual hi, the “hey, what’s up?” kind of connection. And Facebook even more so. Skype is it’s own kind of pleasure when we’re far away, but it also robs us of the feeling of being far away, off on an adventure away from our normal routine. Then when we start to miss our comfortable, familiar life, we sit under a palm tree and write to the folks back home. I think of that book title: How Can I Miss You If You Don’t Go Away? Our modern world of constant communication and instant access means that indeed, we are never wholly away.

Of course, it’s fun to Skype my daughters in Buenos Aires and Washington DC, but though pleasant, the conversations are inevitably casual. But to read in her own handwriting the thoughts one daughter had traveling alone in northwestern Argentina, to feel her pausing in a long hike “amidst cacti, red rock, low bushes and looming mountains” and begin to write 60 memories of our 27 years together, each one igniting the fireworks of my own imagination re-living those moments—well, that is a treasure more precious than all the Skype conversations we’ve ever had or ever will have. And then to feel my other daughter sitting around the kitchen table with her family creating a birthday-card passport with simulated stamps of the 57 countries I’ve visited (with three empty spaces to fulfill my 60-country goal), putting a saying or proverb inside of each country’s stamp, is to receive an act of love ten million times more powerful than the Hallmark e-card. Both are on paper that will invite me to re-read them many times over and store them in a special box that I will grab first in case of fire.

What’s the punchline here? Not the usual “electronic technology sucks” but a more measured reflection on what we’ve gained and what we’ve lost. For someone who has waited for the postman his whole life, e-mail is a gift from the gods! No need to wait for the once-a-day mailbox clink—it’s now replaced by the instantly accessible and constantly friendly greeting “Welcome. You’ve got mail!” And I do hear from so many more people so much more often than the paper letter ever delivered. And yes, sometimes it is deep and profound and makes me happy.

But having passed through my Luddite phase, I stand by the goal of conscious use of new technologies. Consider the right tool for the right job at the right time for the right cost, be aware of the limitations and curses alongside the benefits and gifts and choose wisely.I am making a plea for the return of the handwritten letter. In typical American-style, we probably need a holiday like “National Letter Writing Day” where once a year, everyone writes letters in their own script (while we still have it) to everyone they know and love. They could send them all at once or mail one a day or spread it out over a few months. Am I just imagining that the average person would be as thrilled as I was to receive such a treasure? Just wondering.

Meanwhile, I’ve got to check my e-mail.

Live Close to Tears

We had a joyful reunion of the Salzburg kids yesterday. 10 of the 17 who were able to make it came to perform for the 100-plus teachers in our Orff Certification Course. Before the first number was over, I noticed that several of the teachers were crying. By the end of the sharing, that number had increased exponentially, mixed with tumultuous applause, whistling and foot-stomping. This was the right audience for the kids, the ones who deeply understood the value and beauty of what they were witnessing. And the kids were the right performers for the teachers, allowing them to see what might lie at the end of the Orff adventure begun with the young ones. Though these middle school kids are hopefully in the middle stages of a lifetime of glorious music-making, the sad reality is that officially in the music education world, 8^th grade is about at the end of the line of formal Orff study. High schools have yet to figure out how fantastic this could be for the kids to continue.

Why the tears from the teachers? I had a talk recently with a friend who teaches 2^nd grade and the things she described to me about what the State mandated for these delicate little 7-year olds made my skin crawl. I’ll save this for another entry, but I think I could make a convincing case that the people involved in our National Educational Policy of excessive testing could be put away behind bars for institutional child abuse. It is so much worse than I thought and the stakes are the lives, hearts and minds of innocent children.

But yesterday at The San Francisco School, teachers witnessed 10 children who could not only play the hell out of Ghanaian xylophone music, Bulgarian dance music, Vivaldi and Dizzy Gillespie, but do so with such ease in performing, such infectious joy, such pleasure in each other’s company, such a relaxed relationship with their teachers, such confidence and competence and deep understanding. In short, they were the living embodiment of what all of education could be like and as teachers saw before their eyes what they could only previously dream of, is it any wonder that those eyes were wet with wonder?

And yet, other people might have walked in the room and gone out the door not noticing a thing and with nothing changed in their insides. In order to be amazed by beauty, we need to live a life in pursuit of it. Albert Camus once said “Live close to tears,” asking us to open our heart to receive the height and depth of what life can offer. The trigger for the waterworks could be as dramatic as 10 kids filling the room with music’s highest promise or as simple as a leaf drifting down in the wind.

And yet, we mostly don’t live that close, in fact, go to great lengths to build armor around our hearts so we needn’t feel things so deeply. Why wouldn’t we want to live life at this intensity? Because the place of joy has the same address as grief and loss. To live close to tears is to be vulnerable and the heart that is ready to receive love and beauty is also open to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Things hurt. Better to keep things simmering at a low intensity—or turn off the flame altogether—than risk vulnerability. But without that flame, nothing inside of us gets cooked and life continues at its bland mild pace.

So thanks yet again to the kids for penetrating the armor and to the teachers for their willingness to be astounded, affirmed and re-committed to a life “close to tears.” 

Happy Thank You More Please

The birthday wishes and party echoes on and before it fades to silence, one more coda here. At the party, I gave a little talk at the beginning, read my poems and intended to give my main talk at the end. But it felt like enough words had been spoken and it was time for cake. I thought I might read it after the music, but the party took its own natural course. And so I include it below. A bit long for a Blog, but considering it took me 60 years to write it, it feels right to post it. Here we go:

60th Birthday Talk

None of us make it this far without the unfailing support of faithful friends. In addition to the tangible help and encouragement I've felt from every one here, I’ve had three more friends that have served as the ongoing threads in the fabric of my adult life. I met all three of them in college and they remain my closest companions. Their names are Orff, Jazz and Zen.

So Zen. Though I’m not sure my 104 year-old teacher would still claim me as his student, in my mind, I’m still a Zen practitioner, having sat zazen most every day since I was 22 years old. Zen reached into the corners of my spiritual interest that my Jewish ancestry and pseudo-Christian upbringing couldn’t touch, a hands-on approach to religion that eschewed dogma and sidestepped faith and asked me to get straight to the heart of the matter and experience for myself what it means to feel that transcendent force of the universe run through my meager flesh and blood. And thus, the physical practice of meditation and the discipline of group practice that indeed sometimes melted away the borders of the skin and my small mind and swept me into the arms of a larger presence that goes by the name of God or Buddha Nature or the Spirit.

Every time I devoted myself to a week of self-regeneration, I indeed came back renewed and I am ashamed to say that it is the combination of dreading the early-morning wake-ups and rigorous discipline and the justification that I couldn’t afford the time that has made my a very poor Zen student. But a decade in the 70’s of once or twice a year sesshin retreats instilled a habit that has served me well my whole life. My robes are torn and don’t fit as they used to, but they still hang in my closet.

Then, jazz. I often tell the story of how I saw a nationally famous Orff teacher do a workshop in 1978 and even just three-years into teaching, I thought  “I can do that. And I think that I can do it better.” I think some part of us knows what we were put here to do and moments like that are one of the voices urging us to claim it. Conversely, I once went to hear my piano teacher Art Lande at the Great American Music Hall and remember standing outside looking at his name on the marquee. I tried to imagine my name up there some day and no matter how much I squinted and squirmed, I couldn’t make the letters form. Some part of me knew that I didn’t have the training, the talent, the early-childhood musical brain connections to make it in the world of jazz musicians and that even if I had had, I had started much too late, playing my first ragtime piano at 21 years old and my first lesson with Art at 24 years old.

But just because I knew my name would never be next to Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett didn’t mean I should stop trying to play jazz piano. And so with a random practice approach, but tenacity to keep trying in my living room all these years, I got good enough to have the nerve to organize a concert every couple of years. As far as I knew, no one in the audience got hurt or irrevocably damaged. And that has proved another practice that has paid its dividends far beyond whatever I imagined. First and foremost, in the past couple of years accompanying my 80 and 90 year old singers at the Jewish Home with my mother sitting at my side, sometimes immersed in the music with a face of pure bliss, sometimes furiously conducting or dancing with her hands. And then performing at various Orff events and occasional house concerts and people afterwards letting me know I made them cry—and not because I played so poorly!

Some part of me still harbors the fantasy, “When I grow up, I want to be a jazz piano player.” Playing alone when everything lines up and you get to the place that words can’t reach is happiness enough, but on the rare occasions when I publicly perform in a trio, the pleasure is tripled. Jazz for me is the perfect meeting point of the body, grounded in the earthy rhythms of the drum and tapping toes, the mind, feeling its way through the tangle of complex harmonies on the piano, and the heart, singing its passion through the horn or the voice, the raw beauty of the full spectrum of emotion, joy in every sorrowful note and suffering in each triumphant tone.

And finally, Orff. Clearly the center of my little corner of creation, the craft which has taken the bulk of my effort and energy and used every one of the strange combination of small talents given to me. 36 years in the same school, some 30,000 classes with kids, a few thousand workshops with adults in some 39 countries spread throughout every inhabited continent—and still going with all of it with no end immediately in sight. In terms of recognition within this small but powerful world, I’ve probably climbed about as high on the ladder as one can go. In terms of actual accomplishment, the next class with kids is ready to beat me down to a proper humility, knowing there is still so much I could and should do better. That ladder has no top or bottom.

I just saw a pretty good airplane movie with a dubious title “Happy Thank You More Please.” This work indeed has been the happiest of happiness for me and I am so very grateful for all it has given back. Not only the energy and discoveries and breakthroughs and growth of the kids, but equally, the remarkable moments with adult strangers who become instant friends. Indeed, some have become actual friends, the kind you write to and keep in touch with and have long talks with about everything, but what I mean by friends here is neither the “Let’s go to the movies” kind nor the Facebook kind. It really is a category unto itself, what happens when with the first 15 minutes of a class, you’ve held hands, massaged shoulders, laughed, dance, sung and played together. This creates a kind of musical communion and epiphany faster in a quarter of an hour than most people experience with others in a year of casual conversation. And of course, it has been a deep happiness for me to have had the chance to travel as I have and come to each country now with three hats—teachers, student and occasional tourist. And now I can add a fourth hat, as I reunite with these new-found friends in just about every place I go. The only appropriate response to it all is "Thank you." And while part of me is nervous about counting the years left and sad to think that too little remain, I also humbly entreat the Universe with the final two words of the title: “More Please.”

There’s more than just Zen, Jazz and Orff. A lifetime of reading, for example, equally excited by the ideas of non-fiction, stories of novels and the images, emotion and musicality of poetry. And alongside a lot of reading has come a lot of writing. 38 years of unbroken journal keeping, scores of articles, seven books and more coming, my online Travel Blog. I said that music reaches the place that words can't, but words can also touch some places that music can't and I love them both.

And then there’s the life of family and all my stumbling efforts, phenomenal failures and occasional good moments as a father, son, husband, brother —and soon to come, grandfather! And then all the other hats we humans wear—friend, colleague, acquaintance, neighbor, citizen. On my behalf, the best I can say is I’m faithful to trying to keep them alive and honest and perpetually falling short. But Orff, Zen and Jazz, the three disciplines and practices that have been such constant companions and such demanding teachers, help get me up each morning to work out my inch of progress. 60 years of inching progress seems to have reaped some rewards. Not quite mastery, but enough competence to dare to publicly share. A deep bow to all three and may we stay together in the years to come. 

Happy. Thank You. More Please.