Fading Rock Star

Remember the old T.V. show Cheers? And how everyone yelled “Norm!” when that lovable character entered the bar? For years now, that’s been me when I walk in the door at pre-school singing. “Dougie!!” the kids shout in unison. It got so out of hand I had to insist on the silent cheer, fists in the air gesturing “Hooray!!” as I got my guitar out of the case. No matter what else was happening in my life, I could always count on this little hit of rock star fame at least once a week.

Until today.

It was my first day back teaching school after some seven months away (counting summer vacation). I had dropped in a few times in the Fall and even taught for five days straight around Halloween, but now this was the real deal. Every morning awaken to the alarm, drive in the near dark to school, struggle with parking amidst streetcleaning, PG &E work and school construction and show up at class after class. 8^th grade, 8^th grade, 6^th grade, a moment to visit the facilities, then Bam! 5 year olds, 5 year olds. Short lunch and singing time, short meeting and then, joy of all joys!, preschool singing. I walked into the room full of kids and was met with exuberant… silence.

Ouch! Was this my signal to start booking gigs as a has-been singer in Las Vegas? My demotion from giving Carnegie Hall-like concerts to appearing at the Rotary Club luncheon? My move from swinging with the wee ones at the Blue Note to getting on the birthday party circuit with a clown nose?

Well, to be fair, 1/3 of the kids were three-year olds who hadn’t really met me yet. As for the other 2/3rds, seven months in the life of a 4 or 5 -year-old is a pretty big percentage of their life span. They had switched—understandably— to adoring my colleague James and I was just a dim memory in their forming brain cells.

But I’m determined to get my mojo working and win their adoration anew. Pull out the show stoppers like “Free at Last!” and “Pat Works on the Railway” and “John Henry” that gets them so quiet just as John “lays down his hammer and he dies” and see if they can once again associate me with great music and festive celebration.

Check with me in a month. If it doesn’t work, I’ll see you in Las Vegas.

The Bobby Schumann Yiddish Country Folk-Rock Blues

What do you get when a renowned conductor of a Symphony Orchestra sings old Yiddish novelty songs and then plays Schumann on the piano, a Midwestern author sings songs by the Carter Family, Incredible String Band and Grateful Dead, a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, sings some gut-bucket blues accompanied by electric guitar, accordion and trombone? A stirring welcome back to the U.S. of A.!!!

After the weird sensation of waking up in Peru and going to sleep in San Francisco, we set off to Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion Radio Show at the S.F. Opera House and were treated to a reminder of what it feels like to live in diversity in all its rainbow splendor. I admire the clarity and focus of homogenous culture, the crystal clear sense of identity and belonging with an accompanying mythology, music and dance style, dress, food and cultural habits, but it’s far from the world I grew up in. And musically at least, it’s a world in which the borders of one’s chosen music are increasingly malleable. How fantastic to hear blues and Yiddish songs in an opera house, Tony Bennet and Ravi Shankar (r.i.p.) and Keith Jarrett in a symphony hall, Moroccan folk musicians and hip-hop artists in a jazz club!

From the show, it was on to Trader Joes and a choice of tofu, tacos, teriyaki, Thai noodles, tabouli, tortellini, turkey and truffles. Back home to bookshelves filled with Rilke, Rumi, Roth, Robbins, Rushdie, to my CD collection of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Bird, Burton, Brubeck, Beatles, Beach Boys, Brown (James), Brazilian samba, Bulgarian bagpipe, Bolivian panpipes. It’s a weird, wild and wacky world here in the U.S. and just right for this Russian Jew Unitarian Buddhist Jazz musician who has dabbled in Bulgarian bagpipe, Balinese gamelan, Burkina Faso xylophone and beyond traveling to six continents spreading the ideas of a German composer. It’s a world where a Shakespeare sonnet and the Mona Lisa live in the same song as Mickey Mouse and cellophane (Cole Porter’s You’re the Top), where King Tut made it into Michael Tilson Thomas’s father’s novelty song and Elvin Bishop’s blues song, where the rapper Tupac took his name from one of the last Inca emperors (Tupac Amaru).

The mix of high and low culture, of black, white, red and brown, of an esteemed thinker like Jungian psychologist James Hillman (r.i.p.) featured on Oprah— it’s all as American as apple pie—served with soy strawberry balsamic ice cream and a side of tiramisu. Unbelievably, some of us (particularly in a major political party which shall remain nameless) are still stuck in the old divisions that would keep it all apart and all I can say is that they’re missing a great party. As for me, I’m happy to be back home where I can play the Bobby Schumann Yiddish Country Folk-Rock Blues. With a verse or two in Spanish.

And off I go to visit my Mom and do just that. 

Viva Peru!

Already light at 5:30 a.m., Cuzco shining outside the corner-room windows, it’s time to do the final pack and bid farewell to Peru. This the 59^th country of my travels and one that has earned my affection. I think I’ve finally stopped the search for the country and culture of my dreams. Doesn’t exist. That culture lies within the individual heart and mind and in any group of folks who share a collective dream about how to work, play and love together. But that frees me to enjoy just simply “what is” in each place and take a piece of it back to my own community.

So a fond farewell to Peru. To quinoa soup, ceviche, grilled trout, pisco sours, chichi morada, coca tea, potatoes, potatoes and yet again, potatoes, to cuye, the guinea pig delicacy none of my fellow travelers (thankfully!) tried, to cow’s heads in markets, licuado fruit shakes, Brazil nuts, round white bread. Goodbye to red-tiled roofs and cobblestone streets, to Inca ruins with mortarless stone work, to town plazas and women dressed in their distinctive hats, colorful skirts and blouses carrying baby alpacas for photo ops.

Goodbye to the constant presence of the Andes, thin mountain air, morning mist, rain, rain, rain, and then the gift of sunshine. Goodbye to llamas and hummingbirds, friendly dogs and the condors I never once saw. Goodbye to the restaurant and bus recordings of Andean music, with its formulaic major to minor chord changes, to The Condor Passes song that Paul Simon made famous, to the non-presence of live Peruvian bands on street corners because they’re all in London, Paris, Madrid, Athens, Moscow, Bangkok, Beijing, Tokyo, San Francisco, you name it.

Goodbye to Tupac Amaru, to Hiram Bingham, to Pachamama, Pizarro and the Conquistadores, to paintings of the Virgin Mary nursing Jesus with her nipple showing, of the Angel Gabriel stomping on the Devil who is sometimes red and sometimes black, of the Last Supper with guinea pig on the table. Goodbye to markets filled with alpaca blankets, ponchos, sweaters (I bought one for granddaughter Zadie!), hats with pigtails, clay ocarinas and more, to bargaining, to slightly torn dollars rejected at the money changers, to soles coins, to Visa cards that won’t work when the Internet is down.

Never delved much into recent Peruvian history, but the last thirty years seems the archetypal volatile politics of South American’s reputation— murder, mayhem, Shining Path terrorists, bribery, extortion, an ex-President in jail and more. Not to mention the coca trade exports to Colombia and beyond. But also an indigenous President and Truth and Reconciliation Hearings to heal some of the grief and loss. Things seem to be better now and one can only hope that the scales will keep tipping towards justice and genuine democracy.

And of course, a final farewell to the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu, where my body, mind and heart were put to the test and barely passed. But there was glory in the effort, pride in the achievement and some soul-stirring photos to keep me company when things feel too easy or bland.

So thank you, Peru, for a marvelous two weeks. May the best of the Inca spirit carry on and Pachamama move you forward into the 21^st century with one foot in the best of the past.

The Saturn Cycle

It was a perfect last day of travel. Just ambled around a small Peruvian town and sat on a bench by the river. My wife on one side sketching, my daughter on the other looking through the rough draft of my new book and marking it up, me writing in my journal. The sun just strong enough to be warm, the breeze just cool enough to keep us comfortable. Across the way the Inca ruins and mountains that cradle this Sacred Valley, by our feet, a well-fed dog borrowing our shade. The smell of wood burning that brings me, the way that only smells can, to those rural primary cultures where I have spent so many happy days of my long life. And the quality of silence, no drone of freeway traffic or blaring horns, just the rush of the river and a distant rooster call. Delicious.

Tomorrow I begin the journey home after three glorious weeks of travel, each part of it feeling like months ago. The teaching in Brazil, the time in Buenos Aires, the Cuzco Christmas, the Machu Picchu adventure, the Ollantaytambo New Year’s. I remember writing the  “Home for the Holidays” blog and feeling reluctant to leave San Francisco and now can’t imagine having missed this trip. Part of me ready for the comforts and familiarity of home, but sitting on that bench, part of me wondering why I’m looking forward to stepping back up on the merry-go-round, with its morning alarm clocks, drive through traffic, seven classes a day with kids, staff meetings, the whole nine yards of my busyness and business. Maybe I should just keep traveling.

Had lunch at a lovely hidden jewel of a restaurant, our last great Menu del Dia deal where you get a soup, entrée and dessert for the equivalent of $7.00. Talia’s friend Zoe joined us with two more Argentine friends at the beginning of a six-month trip around South America. Zoe and Talia planning the next leg of their two-month wanderlust and all of them around 28 years old, the end of the Saturn Cycle where one phase of life ends and the next begins. That was certainly true for me all those years back when I ended my year-round trip around the world on my 28^th birthday and returned to San Francisco to get married, have kids, buy a house and go back to work at the school that I’ve never left.

That was my time, this is theirs and I’m not really envious. I’ll happy to be teaching kids, playing piano regularly, cooking my own meals instead of spending all those hours sitting in restaurants, arranging buses and figuring out my next stop. But it was a beautiful time, a hearkening back beyond the music-teacher-travels to something closer to the skin, that glorious sense of wandering through this wide, wonderful world trying to feel the beating heart of other lands and cultures, jumping into the fray of the marketplace, sloshing through mud in the back country, sitting on a bench by the river just happy to smell the air and be alive.

Safe travels, young people, and know that this time will be forever cherished as you step into the next phases of your life. 

Body Heat

When we wake up each morning, parts of the brain are up before others, the ones whose main job is survival. “Damn! It’s cold!” they shout and off we go throwing on sweaters, turning on the heat, putting a log on the fire or boiling water for coffee. Deciding whether Deconstructionist Theory comes from valid assumptions or not is way on the back-burner, if it makes it to the stovetop at all. Immediate comfort is first on the agenda and we’ll do whatever it takes.

Every morning this past week as I set out on the Inca Trail, I put on jeans, rainpants, thermal undershirt, shirt, vest, sweatshirt and poncho. My primary concern was to listen to the brain’s regulatory alarm clock; “Get warm! Now!” Off we went and by the time we had climbed some 100 stone steps, the alarm rang again: “Shed! Shed!” And so a long pause as I peeled the layers off, changed to shorts and wondered why I even bothered to bundle up.

“Chopping wood heats you twice, “goes the old country wisdom and part of that applies to hiking. Once you start hiking, especially uphill, the body heat rises from the effort and you don’t need all those extra animal or artificial skins to warm us. Makes me wonder why I can’t remember that and start the day with slight discomfort knowing that the body will warm up. Because then I’m stuck with my backpack filled with blue jeans, rainpants, vest, sweatshirt, etc. to lug around for the rest of the day.

As with the body, so with the heart and mind. We lug around the machines and accoutrements that layer us with recorded music, filmed stories, electronic messages all at the click of a button. But if we exercise our own imagination, get the heart out hiking in a world filled with wonder, sing our own songs and beat our own rhythms, we generate our own mental and emotional heat and feel lighter, more independent, less weighed down. Like all of us, I’m nervous and forgetful and short on faith that I can warm myself and so throw the i-Pod, computer, DVD, book and more into the backpack— and then have to carry that heavy load for the rest of the trip.

Naturally, I’m not going to throw out my rainpants or sweater or computer or i-Pod. They all serve their purpose and I’m grateful for their help and company. But fresh from hiking, just a reminder to myself to show more faith in the body’s ability to generate its own heat, the heart’s ability to evoke its own emotion, the mind’s ability to create its own imagery and soulful stories. We all need some time off the grid of the entertainment industry and its perpetual invitation to overdress and bundle up beyond what’s necessary.

I’m sure there’s some more stimulating metaphors hidden inside the main hiking theme, but just now the sun went away and I’m freezing. Got to rummage through my backpack for my sweater.

Bringing in the Year

It’s the first day of the year and the folks are gathering in the Ollantaytambo Plaza in the highlands of Peru. There’s a stage, 50 red chairs below it and the loudspeakers with the over-amped mikes. Out from the church come the colorfully-clad conch-shell-blowing Quechua-speaking folks with confetti-size yellow flower petals in their hair. Kids and adults, men and women blow on the shells in random rhythms as they approach the chairs in the plaza. The Municipal Representatives sit on stage and shout into the microphones. Through the distortion I can pick up the platitudes of “God, Country and Community.” They all rise for the recorded national anthem and off they go again: “”Dios! La Patria! La Comunidad de Ollantaytambo!” The whole show is a reaffirmation of commitment, with the usual promises of reward and threats of punishment.

What seemed promising as a colorful, horn-blowing Festival is reduced to a dull Chamber of Commerce Ceremony. I think of Brain Rule No. 5—“we don’t pay attention to boring things” and find my gaze lifted to the green mountains cradling the town, who look down unimpressed by the New Year fal-de-ral, taking their breaths in thousand-year gulps. The sun blazes down through the thin air, a light breeze brings some relief, the loudspeaker blares on without a moment’s pause. A little girl in a pink dress and a yellow balloon skips past two soldiers with submachine guns, the conch horns blow again and the deed is done. All have reaffirmed their commitment to walk through the remaining 364 days with God, Country and Community foremost in their hearts. Or at least until tomorrow.

The tourists disperse as well as the locals and we climb up to some more Inca ruins, the town receding with each step. After all the rainy views in the Machu Picchu trek, it’s a nice contrast to see the village lit in sun. The usual photo ops (see above) and down to a three hour lunch— good food, slow service. Then back to the room, where I worked a bit on my new book and changed (after almost two years!) the cover photo of my blog.

It’s an auspicious beginning to the year, but now dinner calls and we’re all in that travel-weary sense of being somewhat tired of sitting in restaurants. Hoping for faster service, we set off into town, soon to close out the first day of the journey through the year.

Rummy 500 and the New Year

Each activity has its own rhythm, that sense of building on itself until the player hits some stride where things flow more effortlessly and more fully. Traveling is no exception. In my third week now and in that traveler’s bliss when one lowers expectations about what will happen and opens wide to the surprise and serendipity of whatever does.

And so having arrived in the small town— population 700— of Ollantaytambo, Peru to spend New Year’s Eve with my wife and daughter, my daughter's American and her Argentine friend, we had vague hopes of finding some stirring festival in the plaza as the clock ticked toward midnight. We finished a satisfying meal in a lovely restaurant and headed to the town square at 11:15 pm. And there we found— well, not much. A bunch of random kids setting off firecrackers accompanied by the tinny electronic recording of the crèche next to the green plastic bottle Christmas tree. The word was that the real party was tomorrow.

So we went back to the hotel room and played some Rummy 500 cards while listening to Helen Merrill singing Cole Porter on my computer. The game ended five minutes before midnight, Moon River came on the i-Tunes list, fireworks starting exploding out the window and voila!, 2013 had officially begun. Though not in San Francisco, where it was only 9:00 pm. And it had long passed in Madrid, Bangkok, Beijing and a host of other places where distant friends were celebrating. New Year is not a moment, but a work in progress.

The card game and familiar songs proved to be as good a way to mark the occasion as participating in ancient Peruvian rituals. And why not? Part of travel's delight is to check in on your old familiar world with new appreciation. It was delicious to hear some good jazz and just fun to play games with friends.

Especially Rummy 500. I had forgotten how much I liked this superior version of Gin Rummy. It’s a game where you start building in one direction— a straight here, three of a kind there, but when you make those hard choices and discard, breaking up some of your plans, it turns out that nothing is irrevocable. The card you may have needed in the future is still on the table available for you to take back. It’s the ultimate in flexibility. You do have to choose, but you can backtrack and move forward as needed, leaving that little window open that allows the perpetual presence of possibility. I like that.

It also is satisfying that the person who goes out first has a small advantage as the others must subtract the points from their remaining cards left in their hands. But they still can earn points, sometimes even more than the person who finishes the hand first. So everyone has the sense of adding to their score each hand, taking that small (or large) step of progress forward that gives us encouragement.

And so may the year be its own version of Rummy 500, choosing one path over another as we always must, but with the flexibility to retrieve your discards, to head down new paths, to stay the course, as the occasion demands. And I suggest that as you make your list of intentions for the year, you start this first day of 2013 with a rollicking game of Rummy 500 with friends and family.

While listening to Peruvian music.