The Courage to Be Tender

“Shall I tell you what you have that other men don’t have, and that will make the future? It’s the courage of your own tenderness. “

What a beautiful phrase. The courage to be tender. This from D.H. Lawrence’s durable masterpiece, Lady Chatterly’s Lover in a dialogue between the lady and her lover (Chapter 28 for those curious). But the phrase applies equally to relationships with children. We all know how to scold children, to shout at them from the soccer sidelines, to threaten or praise them so they’ll get good grades, but where is the collective effort and courage to be tender with them? I imagine there is an etymological connection between “tender” and “tending,” as in tending to their inmost needs, paying attention to who they are and when they need a loving strictness or a courageous tenderness.

Lawrence’s passage continues:

"…and he realized that this was the thing, to come into tender touch without losing his pride, his dignity, his integrity as a man. 'I stand for the touch of bodily awareness between human beings,” he said to himself. 'And it is a battle against the money and the machine and the insentient ideal monkeyishness of the world. ' ”

Bodily awareness between human beings. Not a popular concept in the culture of litigation where our most necessary human impulses are reduced to the fear of our most depraved behaviors. “Since some people have touched inappropriately and harmfully, we shall banish all touch to solve the problem. And thereby create a new kind of depravity— the neglect of our most biological and human need.” And so to pay Paul, we not only rob Peter, but leave him hurt, in pain, isolated, alone, on the ground without any comforting touch. We make all touch suspicious and thus, lose our capacity to be touched by the world.

“It’s touch we’re afraid of. We’re only half-conscious and half alive. We’ve got to come alive and aware. Especially the English have got to get into touch with one another, a bit delicate and a bit tender. It’s our crying need.”

As an Englishman, he knew what he was talking about. All of this was written in 1928 and though on one level, our public attitudes toward the body and sex, “the closest of all touch,” would probably shock Lawrence himself, our Puritan inheritance of distrust of the body lives on, now in the form of teachers being advised “don’t touch children.”

And yet, of course we do. And the more tender and the more constant and the more loving and the more playful and the more affectionate, the healthier and more robust and more happy and more loved our children become. So when the lawyers come to the University education class to advise the next generation of teachers to never touch children, I suggest that the students hold their hands and give them a back rub while they talk. Teach them about our crying need and give them the courage to be tender.

Sundays in Edinburgh

It was the Fall of 1978. My wife and I were at the beginning of a year-long trip around the world and had arrived at a Youth Hostel in Edinburgh. We settled in and awoke to a glorious Sunday morning with church bells pealing. We went to see about breakfast at the Youth Hostel, but none was offered and we were out of any food we had been carrying. So off we went to look for a market or a café or restaurant. Little did we know that in Edinburgh in 1978, they took the Sabbath literally. In our first pass around a ten-block radius, there wasn’t a single store of any kind open. Driven by our grumbling stomachs, we widened our search. No luck. We began asking everyone we met, most of whom seemed puzzled that we hadn’t prepared for this on Saturday. Didn’t we know the Sunday is a day of rest? I remember many weary miles later finding some bar open with a very bored stripper and grabbing some very dubious sandwich of sorts. In the rest of our European travels, we never made that mistake again.

I imagine things are quite different in Edinburgh in 2012, as they are in most of the world. Commerce and consumerism has conquered all and with so many of us permanently residing in cyberspace, the world is a 24/7 no-rest-from-shopping place. Banks and post offices still close on Sunday, as do schools, downtown offices and many businesses, so there is a faint echo of the notion of no work. And of course, some religious folks, like Orthodox Jews, still take that notion literally to an extreme, prohibiting turning on electrical devices, driving and cooking. (When I was in New York recently, I accidentally went on the Shabbat elevator, programmed to stop at every floor to accommodate the prohibition about touching buttons.) But for most of us—and here I confess to having joined the “constantly-connected-culture”—the weekend can feel like an inconvenient interruption.

So when I found out that the house in Sea Ranch I was retreating to with eight other people had no Internet service, it felt like a radical proposition. Two days off the grid?! I remember traveling to Ghana in 1999, a few months after I first began using e-mail. Five-weeks later, I returned to an Internet Café and discovered that I had—10 e-mails. In 2008, I went to Cuba and it took four days to find an Internet connection in a hotel. Awaiting me were— 185 e-mails! Quite a leap in a mere nine years. Not that I had grown more popular— simply that the mediums of communication had shifted radically. (And of course, the junk mailers now knew where I lived.)

“How Can I Miss You If You Won’t Go Away?” is the catchy title of a funny book about relationships, but it applies to all aspects of our life. There is wisdom in the idea of rest and retreat, a time to pay a different kind of attention to the world, to step off the dizzying merry-go-round of hypercommunication and maybe, God forbid, feel bored for a few moments. Shift from the grab-your-attention glitz of screens and texts to what’s in front of your nose and who is at your side. And then re-enter the day-to-day refreshed from having stepped out.

Since this blog is titled “Confessions…” and I’m aimed for some measure of honesty and truth, I’m going to fess up here. I started writing this before my retreat, woke up at the retreat to complete the thought and was invited to join Linksys. So much for no Internet connection! “Might as well post this blog!” I says to myself and then step out to walk to the beach and join the real world.

Write It Down!

I don’t know about you, but my mind is usually Grand Central Station at rush hour, thoughts hurrying by like people with their heads down late for their train. Where do they come from? Where are they going? Who sent them? Such questions have been the stuff of Hindu and Buddhist investigation for millennium and as anyone who has ever tried to meditate can tell you, when you make the time and space to actually notice what’s going on in your head, it’s worse than you thought. At the beginning of a meditation retreat, it’s even busier than Grand Central, more like the L.A. freeway. But for me, sometime around the fifth day, I find myself for a moment on a lonely country road and have even managed to get out of the car, inhale some fresh air and sit down for a moment of genuine peace and tranquility.

In my life as an artistic teacher and pedagogical artist, my goal is not to stop the flow of thoughts, but to disintuish between them and note when a worthy one passes through. I know this is Buddhist blasphemy to discriminate like this, but it is the practice of the artist to stay alert to visitations from the Muse. Because my answer to where thoughts come from definitely includes a voice from somewhere else that calls to you. Not a general you, but a specific you who is partner to a presence from some other world. The Greeks used to call it the Daimon, your invisible twin who shadows you through life and tries to guide you to fulfill your particular image and destiny. Yeat’s captures that image beautifully: “It had become a glimmering girl, who called me by my name and ran, and faded through the brightening air…” The detail of calling his specific name is significant, as is the fact that she ran away and faded out of sight.

Yeats continues with “…I will find where she has gone and kiss her lips and take her hands… “ suggesting that when you hear a call like this, you would do well to pay attention. Not only in the sense of dedicating your life to search, but also suggesting that in each visit, no matter how small or big, you stop what you’re doing and pay attention.

For example, I was improvising on a tune on the piano the other day and hit on a little phrase that caught my ear. I repeated it many times until I remembered it and then decided to write it down. It was a big deal, because I had to interrupt my playing, find manuscript paper, get a pencil sharp enough to write and notate what I played. From there, it seemed logical to keep developing it and before I knew it, I had written a little jazz tune. It sounds like a jazz standard from the 30’s or 40’s and for all I know, it could be! Sometimes the Muse appears to be delivering original material when it fact it is the distant echo made audible of a tune you’ve heard before but forgotten you knew! But at any rate, I had myself a little composition, which surprised me because it has been years since I attempted to compose something other than a nursery rhyme arrangement for kids.

Now on another day, I might have decided not to write it down, thinking I’d remember it or an equally inspired theme would come my way. But it ain’t true. The Muse is merciless—if you don’t grab the opportunity in the moment, it’s not going to come again. Well, yes, something else might, but you will have lost that particular combination of words or tones or dance gestures and that is a loss indeed. That’s why I’ve carried a $.99 Mead Memo book in my front pocket these past twenty years or so. From front to back is the list of things I need to do, from back to front, those inspired ideas or phrases that visit at the most inconvenient times. (In the British Museum are Paul McCartney’s first-draft lyrics to Yesterday written on a piece of scrap paper. I’m sure others have a collection of restaurant napkins or paper towels with brilliant things scribbled on them.)

Of course, writing it down is just the first step. Then comes the next task of shaping it into form, editing, revising, bringing it to a full-blown creation. No wonder there are so few artists in the world! Everyone has an artistic possibility, but to be at the mercy of your Muse and do all the work necessary to attend to the moment of inspiration requires a dedication and commitment that must be carefully chosen. And I recognize that one reason not to choose it is you’re following the scientific inspiration or new business model or new insight as to how to nurture your family. It’s a long list of human potential to choose from. But no matter what your passion or craft, pay attention to those light-bulb moments and write it down!

Now just yesterday, I had the most amazing idea for a blog, but since I didn’t write it down, I got stuck with this.

Why I Love Children

Well, yes, there are those perpetual runny noses, the ear-splitting squeals, the sulky tempers, the whiny complaining, those bodies that just won’t sit still and a host of other behaviors that sometimes make a 60-year old wonder just how long he can keep company with the little darlings day-after-day. But when all is said and done, it is no secret why I keep coming back and why I love spending my days with children. For starters:

• Because they’ll give up a recess to sit and comfort their classmate who got bonked by a ball.

• Because they’ll sit mesmerized as Judy Garland takes them over the rainbow on the wings of song or Gene Kelly dances them through the rain.

• Because they (and here I'm talking about 3-year olds) will figure out fifteen or a hundred and fifteen things to do with paper plates—make sounds, balance them on body parts, skate on them, jump over them, skip around them, make Mickey Mouse ears—for an entire 30-minute music class.

• Because they’ll call up their 9^th grade friends who have a day off and visit their old school, sit down spontaneously at the instruments and play the jazz piece from last year note-perfect. And then do it again for the elementary kids, complete with solos.

• Because they’ll stand in front of 100 kids and at a mere 7-years old, improvise fearlessly a scat-song to the tune Ja Da.

• Because they’ll hang back after singing time and ask you if you plan to take part of next year off again—and hope you’ll say no.

• Because they’ll actually take you seriously when you give the entire elementary school the “homework” of turning their parents on to the Nicholas Brothers on YouTube. (Close to half of them actually did it!)

• Because they infect you with their energy, enthusiasm, curiosity, strange but delightful perceptions, their intact sense of wonder, their laughter, their smiles, their polymorphically perverse sensorial engagement with the world, their joy.

All of the above was my day today. And I got paid for it. (And as John Santos once said when a kid asked him if he got paid for making music, “Weekly. Very weakly.”

But I saved the best for last.

• Because at 3 o’clock, I get to do carpool and wave goodbye to them. And it’s time now!

Christmas in London

Four years ago to the day, I wrote in my journal about a day in Madrid when my colleague Sofia and I took a walk with our friend Luz Martin. Sofia was some four years cancer-free and Luz had recently been diagnosed and was in the middle of treatment. Since that day in 2008, it has been a hard up-and-down road for Luz. Yesterday, Sofia called and said that Luz is back in the hospital for what looks to be her last days. And so I include this old journal entry as a bedside hand-holding memory from afar, the story I would tell Luz if I could be at her side now.

“March 4, 2008: I met Sofia and Luz in 1990, that marvelous summer when I first went to the Orff Institut in Salzburg and it pointed my life to where it had been secretly heading, into this international music teaching. They were both young Spanish students in their late 20’s studying at the Institut and they both seemed to enjoy my workshops. I said “Hola” to them one day and when they found out I spoke Spanish (which I really didn’t beyond my high school classes), they set to work to get me invited to teach in Spain. And there hasn’t been a year that has passed between 1991 and now when I haven’t taught at least one course in Spain and often many.

Sofia and Luz have remained dear friends all these years later, but their careers have branched widely. Sofia has become a world-renowned Orff-Schulwerk teacher and author, is a voracious investigator, hungry to learn everything she can and always needing to keep working with her big love, children.
Luz continues to teach music education at a University, but stopped working with kids and generally drifted away from the Orff world, finding another place for herself as a performer on castanets. As a result, our paths didn't cross as often as before, though we always had at least one visit whenever I was in Spain. I always thought it a bit of a shame that she seemed to lose interest in the Orff approach because I had always enjoyed her lively and engaging classes. So it goes.

But here I am in Spain again and this will be my first visit with Luz since she found out she had cancer. Diagnosed in September, she is in her second round of chemotherapy. I had seen enough of that monster disease to expect the worse, so when she comes out of her house with a metal cane, bloated face and recently-re-grown hair, I am not shocked. We greet each other with a warm hug and take off in the car for a trip to a park and an afternoon walk.

The weather could not have been more perfect. Warm, but not hot, no wind, a day that appears like an unexpected gift from the gods. Not the take-for-granted-perfect-temperature of a summer day in a mild climate or Hawaii all year round, but an unmistakable smell of Spring after a hard winter, all renewal and freshness. It is a day made for Luz to be out walking with her old friends.

And so we stroll through the rows of blooming cherries and Luz talks and talks (perhaps a little hyper from sucking on morphine lollipops). She starts talking about how today’s kids are not like we were—don’t know many folk songs, can’t recite poetry, can’t think well, don’t have respect for elders. And though some of that is true and I’ve certainly done more than my share of head-shaking about a generation raised by appliances, I can’t help but smile. Ahead of us are two old couples, each with their own metal cane and I thought, ‘Here we are. Three old friends who used to be full of fire when we first met in our late youth in Salzburg, probably impatient with elderly people, walking peacefully down the lane in the Spanish countryside behind some fellow elders complaining about the next generation. How wonderful is that?’

The conversation ambles at the same pace as our walking and eventually turns into the memory of Luz and Sofia flying somewhere together and Luz reading the airline magazine about Christmas in London. In the way of young people, the two of them spun a dream about going there someday and spending Christmas in London. Isn’t that one of the greatest joys of youth? That capacity to dream a future? And so here they are again, two friends who had grown apart, re-united in an unexpected way, fellow sufferers of the same disease bonded through the joint chemotherapy initiation. They speak the language of arimidex and swollen feet and changed appetites and that is enough to erase all the little hurts and betrayals and disappointments friends will always have between them. And now they stroll along arm-in-arm dreaming again, Sofia telling Luz how they will go spend Christmas in London and both of them smiling at the thought, once again dreaming a little piece of a future together, though now both of them knowing it will never come to pass.

We turn back to the car and as we approach the overlook of the parking lot, I stop and say: “Listen!” Usually, the “quiet” of the countryside anywhere these days is punctuated by machines mowing grass or cutting trees or planes flying over. But in this moment, there was just one sound—the orchestra of birds singing amongst the flowering cherry trees below. We stop, the three of us arm and arm, and just listen. Three aging friends wrapped together in the full glory of a Spring day in the Spanish countryside while the birds announce their clear message: ‘This life is meant for singing. Our bodies will grow stooped, terrible diseases may take root in us, but still the cherries bloom and send out their sweet fragrance. As you walk through the groves of olive trees, time will slow to a standstill and so will you stand still and listen to us sing. And your hearts will be glad.’

And so ended that little story. In the four years since I wrote that. Luz has continued to battle, sometimes up, sometimes down, mostly holding steady—until recently. Always hope in the air when we visited and both of us eagerly awaiting the day when she would be free from disease. But it doesn't look like that will come to pass— at least on this earth. 

Luz, you have suffered so much in your cancer body. Now is the time for you to be released, to fly into the light that is your name having left your imprint on so many hearts. We send you off with love and birds singing on a Spring day in Madrid and will meet again someday to finally spend Christmas in London. 

When Difference Is the Norm

I want to begin by apologizing publicly to Billy Greenwald. He was the lone Jewish boy in my elementary school and I believe my classmates and I made fun of him. It would be another four years before my older sister finally broke it to me that I, too, was Jewish. (That’s a story for another blog.) I believe when I found out that I was more grateful that I hadn’t known and been spared ridicule than remorseful toward Billy. But it’s never too late to own up. Billy, I’m really sorry.

I don’t remember us being excessively cruel, just that mixture of childish taunting and teasing and experimenting with the in-group and the out-group, that odious trait of building yourself up by putting someone else down. Kids trying to figure out where they were in the social hierarchies, what was cool, what was shameful, what conferred status and power. And a surrounding adult culture that either actively modeled intolerance or sanctified it with complicit silence. 

Distrust of the "other" is hard-wired in the animal kingdom, helping us figure out if what's different from us is prey or predator or something safe to ignore. But what is instinctive in animals gets complicated by the many layers in the complex human complex brain. The brain-stem shouts, “Warning! Difference here!” while the other layers can add their conditioned responses. In talking about intolerance, it’s a good idea to acknowledge the biological roots that developed for survival. It’s what attracts us to our own, the kids-in-the-cafeteria syndrome that makes us feel safe and comfortable and what makes us cautious and initially distrustful of the “other.”

At our recent Black History celebration, the head of school told the kids that we are a school of great diversity—people with different skin colors, economic classes, sexual orientation, learning styles, ethnic background, religious and political beliefs. He wished two things for each of us—that each of us accept, honor and celebrate who we are and equally accept, honor and celebrate who other people are. To value and respect difference. Noble thoughts here and a practice that requires we use our brain’s capacity to move beyond the hard-wired distrust and move into the frontal lobes of understanding, empathy, compassion.

I couldn’t help but think as he mentioned all the ways to be different that if each of us is different—and in many ways we certainly are—then what is the norm? To really see and acknowledge difference is to reveal that in fact that the norm is a convenient fiction, especially convenient to those who identify with the norm and in fact, often define it. The fact that a population—say Latinos or African-Americans or women— in certain towns, cities or states can feel like a minority when in fact they are a statistical majority reveals that many times the notion of “norm” is an expression of the power balance, of who’s in charge and holds the purse strings and gets to define what the norm is. Or a psychological mindset fueled by the chosen stories—Eve came from Adam’s rib and that’s why she has to stay in the kitchen. And even when nature suggest that one thing dominate—say heterosexual breeding or pine trees at a certain elevation, it doesn’t mean that the other ways of loving or deciduous trees don’t  equally belong in the biome.

My own life has been an investigation into difference. Starting with my Jewish blood raised Unitarian choosing Buddhism and labeled a generic privileged white male, I never felt a strong identity with any one particular cultural practice and ethnic heritage. This left me free to create my own identity, to search out and choose my own blend of values and claim myself as a world citizen. Since it’s the only life I’ve known, I’ve been grateful for the opportunity.

But I remember a deep discussion with my mentor Avon Gillespie, a middle-class African-American growing up in L.A. who stumbled on Bessie Jones and her Georgia Sea Island Singers singing on the streets during the Watts riots and his world stopped. He felt like he had come home to his essential identity that had been masked by his upbringing. And me feeling jealous, telling him that I would never have an experience like that when I would be struck to the core with the profound sense of belonging to a particular group. I’ve been to barmitzvahs, listened to klezmer music, traveled to Russia close to where my Grandparents came from and it just ain’t the same.

So I have a great sense of respect for an inherited quality of ethnic identity. And yet recognize that so much of the world’s sufferings comes from identities constructed in opposition to other identities. How to value the identity we have been given and equally respect the identities others have been given is worthy work.

But there’s more. What we get for free doesn’t carry the same power as that which we create and choose. We may identify with our race, religion, class, sexual orientation and more, but the essence of who we are is none of these. Ultimately, we are what we dream, what we hope for, what we do and how we do it and why we do it. We are who we love and what we love and how we love and how much we love. And since we all do that in our own different way, difference is indeed the new norm.

PS If anyone is friends with Billy Greenwald on Facebook, put me in touch with him.

Vintage Whine

March is here and my self-imposed February-no-whining policy has expired. Just in time for my trip to Edmonton. As you may recall from the “Kill-the Lawyers” blog, I was already grouchy from the crippling tire-iron-to-the-knees of common human courtesy that the litigious culture of insanity delivered in the form of “We can’t pick you up at the airport because of liability issues.” Combined with a ten-page form to fill out dealing with taxes and the news that airport transportation fees were mine to pay. So things weren’t off to a good start.

But I dutifully raced to the airport after a full day of teaching and managed the two-plane flights without too much problem. Except being stricken with an inner-ear pain because I had just gotten sick again from the San Francisco change in the weather—after a summer-like winter, temperatures plunged to the near-artic zone of 45 degrees and now my ear was hurting from some sinus imbalance. I arrived around 11:30 at night, but my green-tagged carry-on was sent out to baggage claim and after bouncing between two carousels for twenty minutes with the grouch-factor increasing exponentially, finally found it and made my way to the hidden-behind-construction Sky shuttle, to arrive at the hotel at 1:30 am, just in time to request my 7:00 a.m. wake-up call to prepare for a day of teaching at this Conference. Can you hear the whine here?

But to my credit, I did try to keep things in perspective. While waiting on the jetway for my bag that got sent away by mistake, the door opened and I was greeted with the –6 degree (that’s Fahrenheit—minus 21 Celsius) blast of cold air and within a mere 30 seconds, was cold beyond my endurance. My ear wasn’t too happy about it either. And I thought of the Inuit people of the real Arctic, tried to imagine them waking up every morning saying, “Damn! It’s cold!” and checking out their to-do list—“Hmm. Let’s see, what to do today…Oh, yeah. Survive!” I pictured them planning dinner. “Okay, it’s Friday. How about…seal blubber! Hold the arugula.” Figuring out fun Saturday activities for the kids. “Hey, guys, what do you think about—ice fishing!” By comparison, arriving later than I would have wished to my heated room at the Westin didn’t seem particularly whine-worthy.

So instead of vowing never to whine, my new thought is to keep these propensities in the dark, cool whine cellar and let it age. Take it out only for special occasions. And when the moment arrives, take time to sniff the boquet and savor each sip. Clink glasses with my fellow whine connoisseurs—“Here’s to our minor miseries!” Indiscriminate whining is like drinking rotgut— not good for digestion and no one wants to join you except some dubious lowlifes.

So even though the two-year old stil inside of us wants to throw a fist-pounding tantrum on the floor when things don’t turn out the way we want, our mature adult that lives somewhere in our community of beings bottles it up, sticks a prizewinning “Whine Board Control” label on it and carries it down to the cellar to store with all the other bottles of our litany of complaint and injustice. Yeah, my ear hurts like hell and I have to face too little sleep and two more flights tomorrow, but at least I don’t have to wake up and go out in sub-zero temperatures to go club a few seals. There’s always something to be grateful for.