Go Niners?

I’m continuing my M.O. of being a fair-weather sports fan. First the Giants in the World Series and now the Niners. Turned on the TV in the 2^nd quarter with the score 17 to 7 and things looked promising when the 49’ers scored within minutes of my watching. Coincidence? I think not! I’m sure that my screaming at the T.V. and my little physical twitches aiming the ball at the right spot were entirely responsible for their victory.

It was a Shakespearean game, overflowing with high drama moments. But instead of writing a sonnet, I tried to capture it in a haiku, complete with the 5-7-5 syllabic structure:

Football Haiku

Missed field goal hits post

Fumble at the one… and yet,

Niners! Super Bowl!!

If I say it was an offensive game, sports fans will know it’s not an insult, but an analysis. But the unsung hero’s were the 49’ers defense holding Atlanta at bay at the 10-yard line. Way to go, fellas!

Since it was the first game I’ve watched all season, I didn’t have the pleasure of identifying with the players. But I was struck by the quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s  little knee-lift just before the hike and his occasional jog up to scrimmage shouting to his linemen. Also some pretty intense tattoos— and he had a lot of company there.

So I’m stoked! Could it be Giants and 49’ers in one (kind of) year? I even wrote another poem.

Joining the Crowd

It takes so little imagination

to join the throngs and shout,

“Go Niners!!!

And yet,

I so happily do so.

GO NINERS!!!

But in the midst of the excitement, I wonder how Martin Luther King would have liked the game. I’m preparing for my first TED talk (hooray! more on that later) about the importance of arts education and note that both sports and arts offer some of the same things to kids— discipline, a sense of belonging to a team, of working toward a common goal, of feeling personal power through focused achievement and more. But their final purpose is distinct enough to note. You could play a fantastic game, as Atlanta surely did, and leave the stadium downhearted. As did not only the players, but all the Atlanta fans. But if the SF Symphony and Atlanta Symphony both played a rousing version of Beethoven’s 5^th on the same night or even in the same concert hall, they all would leave uplifted. And the audience members too. That’s a difference worth noting.

Of course, I jumped up and down and joined the Facebook “Go Niners!” chorus and generally felt like I achieved something worthwhile by picking San Francisco as my home city. But truth be told, I felt compassion for the Atlanta folks— and later the New England folks (including my son-in-law Ronnie and grandson Alijah). Why does my exultation have to be at the expense of their disappointment? Well, that’s the way the game works and luckily there are other games in town— like the symphony and jazz clubs and gamelans and taiko groups and Orff classes. Thank goodness for that.

Meanwhile, I guess I should it say it one more time, but this time in deference to my brothers and sisters in Atlanta and Boston— “Go Niners.”

The Content of Their Character

“ I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

                                                                                       - Martin Luther King Jr.

Sometimes dreams come true. Today at The San Francisco School, our students fulfilled Dr. King’s prophecy. I conducted a little experiment and they came through with flying colors. Here’s how it went:

I showed the above photo to 100 1^st through 5^th grade kids and asked them if they had any questions. Here is a sample list:

1)    Who are they?

2)    Where are they?

3)    What are they eating?

4)    Are they having a date?

5)    Is it something romantic?Are they in love?

6)    Is it a wedding?

7)    Is it a camping wedding?

8)    Why is there a ping-pong table?

9)    Is the woman someone who went to our school?

10) Is the man Martin Luther King Jr.’s son?

I then showed a slide of Martin Luther King with the quote above and complemented the kids on their interesting questions, that had everything to do with their curiosity about these two people and the situation and setting and nothing about the fact that the couple in question had two different skin colors. (I did answer their questions as well— for those curious: 1) My daughter Kerala. and her now husband, Ronnie. 2) Up in the Trinitiy Alps. 3) Lasagna. 4) Not exactly. 5) Yes. 6) Yes. 7) Kind of. 8) One of the many things guests could do in the three days there. And then I told them the story about how I played ping-pong with Ronnie and how I’d give permission for him to marry Kerala if he beat me. He did. 9) Yes. 10) No. )

Then I told them, “Fifty years ago, most kids in the U.S. would not come up with these questions. 100 years ago, the law would have arrested my daughter and her husband, for such marriages were illegal. And if all of us lived in those times, we too would probably be stuck in these bad ideas that were all around us. But bad ideas can get smaller in time and you kids just proved how you were more interested in who they were and whether they loved each other and why they had ping-pong at their wedding than in wondering why two people with different skin colors would marry each other. Hooray for you! Hooray for bad ideas getting smaller and treating people decently getting bigger!”

“First comes love. Then comes marriage. Then comes Kerala with the baby carriage.” was my child-sized lead-up to the next slide of granddaughter Zadie. “Who would like to play with Zadie?” 100 enthusiastic hands. “Babysit her?” Again. “For free?” Still enough that I hope my daughter is reading this and will move back to San Francisco from D.C.!

“Well, fifty years ago, you might not want to play with her because the grown-ups around you— your parents, your teachers, your mayors, your ministers— might brainwash you into thinking that was wrong. Or you might secretly want to play with her, but be worried that you’d get in trouble. And in some places, you would! There’s those big bad ideas again and so sad! All those people missing great fun and getting to know great people! But luckily, in our time and in our place here at our school, no one thinks twice about whether it would be fun or not. They’d just try out playing with her and find out!”

“So, kids, I want to show you how bad things can get better and how proud Martin Luther King would be of you and us and our new day. But we can’t relax yet. Because there are still many places and many people today who wouldn’t ask those interesting questions you asked because they haven’t left the bad ideas behind yet. And that my little granddaughter Zadie will probably come home from school someday asking her parents why someone called her an ugly name and what does it mean, anyway? And they will sigh and have to explain to her about the way things were here in this country and how they’re not gone yet.”

“So that’s why we celebrate Martin Luther King Day every year. My friends and I did the best we could to make those bad ideas smaller, but you’ll have to do the rest. And I hope you make them disappear so that Zadie’s children or grandchildren will hear about how things were and think, “What was wrong with those people? That was stupid!”

This was the perfect moment to stand up and sing We Shall Overcome. 100 children linked arm-in-arm singing with such passion and beauty. The adult tear ducts opened wide and some of the kids’ did too. And with the photo of Kerala, Ronnie and Zadie appearing as we modulated to a higher key for the final chorus, it was all I could do to keep playing and not melt into a puddle. Happy MLK Day!

Make It Sparkle!

Yet another day when I found myself astounded to think, “I get paid for this?” Here I was with the three-year olds and a birthday-cake stack of nested hand drums with rainbow mallets radiating out. They walked in the room and exclaimed, “It looks like the sun!” and off we went, singing and dancing, “Sally go ‘round the sun” with its contrasting “Boom boom!!” at the end inviting us to sit down. Anyone who knows three-year olds knows they are all impulse, eager to touch, taste and try out whatever is set before them. So it’s a little cruel to suggest— no, insist—no, threaten them (kindly and with a smile) with the possibility that they won’t ever play the drum today if they pick up a mallet before I invite them.

A quick go-around clapping the rhythms of their names for my own review (this was only my second class with them, after all) and then one by one, they lifted off the top drum and squealed in delight when they saw another drum below, stacked like those famous Russian dolls. As each picked up their drum, we softly played their names on it— and they sounded good!

From there, it’s marching and galloping and jumping and tiptoeing and twirling with drums in hand trying (or not) to make some coherent connections between the rhythms in the feet and those in the hands. I’m playing some piano to help glue it all together and they’re in seventh heaven. And then I invite their fantasy life to unfold as they walk with drum umbrellas over their head or drive around with drum steering wheels or wear drum masks over their faces as they dance or eat from their drum plates. They push the drums around the floor with their mallets, dance around them and jump over them and most fun of all, sit inside them and row their boats around. That’s when I think of all the folks sitting at their computers in terminals making graphs of profit margins and am so happy that I get to row around the floor in a big hand drum and call it work.

As fine as that was, there was more. They rowed up to my feet and one by one, we had a little drum conversation. I played something and then they played something back. When it got to one little girl, she looked at me with a twinkle in her eye and said, “Play something sparklely, because I feel really sparklely today!” Besides the sheer delight of such an exuberant proclamation, it was probably the most difficult musical challenge I’ve had in a while—just how do you play something sparkeley with a mallet on a hand-drum? I did my best, she answered back and off we went to lunch, all of us feeling a bit more sparklely spending 30 minutes with hand drums and the fireworks of the human imagination.

I can’t wait to go back to work tomorrow!

The New Dentistry

I’m happy to report I walked through the preschool yard today with cries of “Dougie!!!”

Mr. Fading Rock Star is making a comeback! But less happy about the call from my dentist I got just after my preschool music class. “Looks like you need an emergency root canal. In two hours.”

So off I fled and went to an endodontist (out of my dentist’s field). As I settled back, the hygienist asked me if I’d like to watch a movie during the procedure. Really? That’s a first. I was trying to imagine concentrating on Schindler’s List with the drill bit going and decided it would be just a little too weird. Then she asked if I wanted a massage. Really?!! She pushed a button and my dental chair started punching me in the back. Another first. And I am not making this up.

So why stop there? Why not headphones with a selection of books on tape or a Chinese foot massage or maybe a mariachi band? I mean, the possibilities are endless. I could imagine a ukelele lesson, a cooking demonstration or Spanish vocabulary class describing each step of the dental procedure. “Como se dice… OUCH!!!!!!!!”

Let’s face it— the borders between discrete subjects and activities are dropping everywhere. If an i-Phone can take photos, check e-mail and download recipes, why can’t we have a multi-dimensional dental experience? Preferably in a hot tub. In Hawaii. With maragaritas in-between drillings. And hula girls.

At least that’s what I’m hallucinating while coming down from major doses of extra-strength Tylenol. Oh well. At least I have the preschoolers to cheer me up tomorrow.

Eating My Words

“I’ve had to eat many of my own words and I’ve found it a nourishing diet.” –Winston Churchill

I owe the Internet an apology. Years back, when the first enthusiasts treated it like the arrival of the Messiah, I was convinced it would spell the further decline and fall of Western Civilization, that the removal of the “expert’s” editorial filters would wreak havoc with reliable information and that people’s already over-mediated lives would move yet further away from a wholesome walk in the woods. I wasn’t wholly wrong about my various fears. But there have been many perks none of us could have anticipated and in Daniel Pink’s talk tonight about his new book To Sell Is Human, he revealed one of those unexpected shifts.

Lots to say about the talk, which was entertaining, informative and intriguing. He began with acknowledging our aversion to sales, our negative view of the salesman as pushy, overbearing, slick, smarmy and host of other unflattering adjectives. All of which came from the previous paradigm of sales, where the salesman held all the cards in the deck of information and the buyer was at his mercy. Now the tables have turned and in no small part because of the instant access to information on the Internet that puts the information in the buyer’s hands. Not only the kind of ongoing consumer’s reports reviewing everything from Air B n B’s to professor’s college classes, but the opportunity to instantly expose scams. Today’s Music Man can fool one town with his “Think Method” but after that, the word will get out.

I had just given a talk on how the printing press helped defuse the power of the priests some six hundred years ago. With literacy limited to the church officials, they held the power as the interpreters of God to man. When books were printed rapidly rather than handscribed by monks, the Bible became more easily accessible. It was a short step from there to the creation of schools to teach reading— still mostly for the elite— and another long step to arrive at the idea of public schooling for all. Mass literacy  allowed for a more equitable distribution of information and fit the democratic ideal of the informed citizen ready and able to participate in the political decision-making process.

In short, power rests in the hands of those who control the information and the rise of mass literacy, of schools and bookstores and libraries, allowed for a redistribution of power. Those who could decipher the word and had access to the word and the means to print and market the word held the power. Remember that it used to be a crime to teach an enslaved person to read and with good reason— once someone like Frederick Douglass had access to the power of the written word, look how eloquent he became in the cause of freedom.

Information control then shifted first to radio and then to films, T.V. videos. No one needed to go to school to learn how to listen to the spoken word or watch images. But someone was in charge of choosing the images, particularly on the nightly news and network T.V. and that power could shape and control people's thinking. (John McChesney’s book “RICH MEDIA, POOR DEMOCRACY” is a fascinating look at the struggle for control of the airwaves.) Of course, that story is not done, as Fox News continues to give the illusion of showing the world as it is rather than the pieces of the world they choose to select. As indeed, all news channels must (but few with such a narrow lens).

But the Internet has truly blown that all open. Now all the various technologies— the written word, the spoken word, the still image, the moving image— all deliver an avalanche of information at mere button clicks, uncensored by a presiding agency with its own particular agenda. And that changes the whole dynamic. We're too close to it to understand completely how, but from selling cars to political campaigns to how we get the news, it's a whole new world out there. And at least part of it gives the average person both the responsibility to be more roundly informed and the possibility of more personal power. 

Much more to say, but I have to finish eating my own words. Truth be told, they don’t taste so bad.

PS I didn’t buy Daniel Pink’s book at the talk.

Who Fed the Chickens?

Who fed the chickens?

Who stacked the hay?

Who milked the cow?

On this fine day.   

—    Ella Jenkins song

It’s Sunday and I’m trying to honor it by listening to Bach’s Mass in B Minor while I sit at the old computer. Make a little church of the work room and imagine that I’m beginning a day of rest where I can reflect on the glories of creation. “Imagine” is the key word here. Instead of exulting with the gospel choir or sharing the profound silence of the Zen Center, I’m sentenced to a morning at the screen trying to catch up on business.

It has been a full, rich and hard-working week. I’m back at school full time teaching kids from 3 years old to 14 years old and am relieved to discover that it still fits. Each class was a pleasure, each child was a pleasure and a few— like the twenty 4^th graders learning a new swingin’ tune I arranged in a mere 20 minutes—were over-the-top fantastic. At the end of the day, I still had enough energy to visit my Mom and play piano and even go out to a meeting one night and a party another. After seven months marching to my own drummer, I was nervous about being tied to a demanding schedule working with the little beings half-a-century and more younger than me. But it all felt good and right and they seemed happy to be with me and what more can you ask for?

While climbing Machu Picchu, I had a moment when I set a retirement date for myself, perhaps subconsciously equating the arduous climb to the summit with my long 38-year career. There may be wisdom in consciously choosing such a moment, but now that I’m back with the kids, it feels a little contrived, like setting the time for a C-section birth. I think I’ll just wait until nature speaks to me, the moment when the waters metaphorically break and the contractions announcing a post SF School life begin.

But for now, it’s Sunday and when I should be resting from my labors, the chickens are squawking, the cows are mooing and the bales of hay are strewn all over the yard waiting to be stacked. I have to close out and file away the workshop I taught yesterday, send out the invoices for my books that have been ordered, update my Website, get the materials ready for the summer Orff program ad in the magazine, create an application form for the SF School Orff Intern Program I’m trying to birth, attend to the details of the local Orff chapter Miniconference I’m chairing and on and on. Unlike the satisfaction of good hard work with bundles of hay, a moment of bovine intimacy squirting milk in a pail and earning the love of the chickens as I toss out their feed in the bright sunshine or misty rain, I’m sitting at a screen dealing with abstractions. The words “Personal Assistant" come to mind here. Anyone looking for a job?

Meanwhile, I’ll enjoy Bach while slogging through the black lines on the glowing screen throwing out corn to the demanding tasks pecking at my feet, stacking my papers and milking my imagination to plan next week’s classes. Happy Sunday!

The Janus Portal

“One should stir oneself with poetry

  Stand firm in ritual.

  Complete oneself in music.”

                                               

                        -Confucius

I grew up in a household in which ritual meant watching the Walt Disney Hour on T.V. after my bath on Sunday night. Yet despite its absence in my own childhood, ritual became something essential in my music teaching and a significant part of what I had to contribute to the school community. And most importantly, I discovered that the kids warmed to it and both took it seriously and felt the play in it.

Like today. With my first classes of the New Year with 2^nd and 4^th grade, I brought out the metal standing song-sheet holder to be a doorway of sorts, put down a cloth before it with a large Tibetan bowl on one side and a small one on the other. On the other side was a circle of handbells on the floor. The kids walked in and immediately recognized it all, eager to tell their new fellow classmates what was about to happen.

It’s really a “you just have to be there” kind of event, but a short description is worthwhile here. The kids sit in line sitting in an aikido-like kneeling posture with hands on their legs and backs straight. One by one, they sit on the cloth between the gongs and privately to themselves, think of one music class challenge or behavior they want to put behind them. I give them a few prompts, mostly based on their behavior in the last five minutes. “For example, you might decide not to talk out without raising your hand or to stop pinching your neighbor while the teacher is talking or to not pick up the cowbell from the shelf without permission.” They then ring the larger bowl to send that behavior back into the old year.

Next they think of something they’d like to accomplish in the New Year. Again, some ideas: “It could be something like learn all the words to The Frozen Logger song or learn three new notes on the recorder or master the grapevine step in our Greek folk dance.” With their own intention in mind, they send if forward ringing the small bowl. They then step through the portal and sit behind one of the handbells. And there they wait, silent and still, while their classmates ring the bowls and step through the doorway one by one. It’s really quite something to behold, these serious young children so quietly reflective while the air rings with the long tones of two Tibetan bowls.

When the last one steps through and takes his or her seat, we lift up the bells and ring vigorously while exuberantly proclaiming “Happy New Year!!” —a perfect way to break the accumulated tension of so much solemnity! We then sing a familiar “Welcome to the New Year” song and off we go with a class about handbells, creating little pieces with different musical patterns.

Confucius had it right. We’ve stirred ourselves with a little sung poem, stood firm in the New Year ritual and completed the class with some fine music. We’ve learned that it helps to make conscious intentions and resolve to change, make little vows to leave aside bad habits and cultivate new good ones. (Here we keep it private, though I tell the kids that later I might ask them to share what their hope was or let me know when they’ve achieved it.) We learn that sending wishes out with the vibrations of beautiful tones adds another dimension to it all. We’ve enjoyed all the benefits of ritual common to all times and places without any of the baggage of dogma or theology.

We’ve also learned a bit of Roman mythology, that January was named for the god Janus who had two faces that could look behind and ahead at the same time, that he is the god of beginnings and endings, transitions, gates, doors and doorways. As such, he was the right figure to invoke for my first music classes of 2013 and the kids’ first time with me as their teacher again since two years ago (I alternate grades with my colleagues and see the same kids every other year). I needed it to make the transition, the kids needed it to make the transition and most importantly, it worked. We had a lovely, calm, centered and exuberant first class together, setting the tone for the rest of the year to follow.

After such a satisfying day, time to take a bath and watch an old Disney film.