Running with the Bulls

Well, I’m not (see title), but I am in Madrid and watching the runners in Pamplona every day on the TV news. Definitely something I can cross off of my bucket list, but it is quite an impressive spectacle. When everything is flowing, it’s fairly remarkable to see this sea of humanity running for their lives with a few tons of muscle and razor-sharp horns behind, alongside or ahead of them. I imagine it’s quite an adrenaline rush, to put it mildly. Of course, one has to wonder why anyone in their right mind would put their life in danger simply for a few thrills and not only once, but for seven straight days. If they ever proposed it to their workplace's Risk Committee, I’m reasonably sure it would be turned down.

But there is much I admire about it. We have insulated ourselves from so much natural danger, lived our lives based on comfort and safety, become vicarious armchair players of thrills and spills and perhaps our life has lost a bit of flavor. Putting yourself on the edge of safety, from fixed gear bike riding without brakes to rock climbing to running with the bulls in Pamplona, brings a certain color and luster back into our life. Of course, everytime we drive a car and set foot out into traffic, we’re perhaps at as much risk as the hunter in tiger territory, but we don’t feel it quite the same way.

Of course, my idea of danger is to set out on an improvisation in a jazz tune and not know where I’ll end up. My level of risk is teaching my second jazz course in a row in Spanish and start sentences not knowing if I can finish them with grammar and accent correct. My way of running with the bulls is to lead a bunch of three-year olds down the hall to music class. Or starting a blog with a title that felt like a good follow-up to "counting sheep" not knowing if I have anything valuable to say or can come up with an interesting way to say it. Which it’s starting to look like I don’t and I can't.

So off to plan tomorrow’s class while watching today’s bull run on TV.

Counting Sheep

Logic doesn’t solve this puzzle. I managed a reasonable sleep through the first two nights after landing in Spain and by all the laws of jet lag, I should have been acclimated to the new time. And yet after turning in at 12:30 am last night, I was awake at 4:00 am. The kind of awake that I knew was hopeless. So might as well— what else?—catch up on e-mail. Then read another chapter in my book, call it a freak middle of the night awakening and hope to still catch a few hours sleep. But Insomnia had other plans for me.

I know a few folks who struggle with insomnia and the few times I’ve had it makes my heart go out to them. Nothing more maddening than lying in bed knowing you should sleep and knowing you won’t. Especially with a full 7-hour day of teaching ahead. If I was working on my next book, it would be a good time to knock off a chapter. If I lived in isolation with a piano, well, great time to practice! The flip side of insomnia is you can get a lot of stuff done. Apparently, Thomas Edison slept very little and hey, had he been snoozing away, I might be awake in a dark room with no electric light.

But I have no piano, I want to save finishing my book, I’m caught up on e-mail and there’s no one around to wake up and talk to. My only company is the church bells ringing every 15 minutes to remind me “Another quarter of an hour you haven’t slept. Ha ha!” And then, suddenly it’s light. Could be a good time for me to go out and walk around town, but I don’t. I’ve seen most of it and I wonder what kind of company I would have in the wee hours.

So here I am with you, dear reader, punishing you with this boring blog and making you secretly glad it’s me and not you. Well, happy to be of service. Sleep well and we’ll see what the day has in store for me.

Sacred Geometry

Out to dinner in this Medieval town in Catalunya waiting for my gazpacho, I found myself gazing out the window at a triangular wall leading to a curving street. The church bells were ringing, the children playing, the folks hanging out on their balconies with the drying laundry. I felt my spirit lifting simply from the act of witnessing a sacred geometry. Aesthetics matters. We feel differently in a Cathedral than we do in Costco, a different person on a outdoor rooftop restaurant in Santorini than at a formica table in Burger King, connected differently writing on a Balinese verandah than in an office cubicle.

While I was pondering this, I remembered an article a friend sent me called Fractals and Baroque Dance. After dinner, I opened it up and found this:

“The Ancients have taken into consideration the rigorous construction of the human body, elaborated all their works, especially their holy temples, according to these proportions; for they found here the two principal figures without which no project is possible: the perfection of the circle, the principle of all regular bodies and the equilateral square— from De Divina Proportione by Luca Pacioli, illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci.”

The article goes on to discuss how “thoughts, emotions and psychological states are expressed by angles within the body as well as lines in space” and evokes the image of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man outlined in a circle, square and triangle, the meeting of the spiritual with the material. Exactly my thoughts as I sipped my gazpacho!

My whole life I’ve been searching for the ways to live well, to live wholly, to live fully. Thank goodness I never found THE way, because that would have been an illusion and would have immediately narrowed me to the full range of glorious possibilities, trapped me in a cage, however well-decorated, that I would have had to cling to in fear that I might have made the wrong choice. But between dogmatic fanatacism and “whatever” are all the things that make my day shine a bit brighter. All kinds of music, both listening and playing, Zen meditation, children—all of them—good food, good company, time outdoors, lifelong reading habits of great literature and stirring poetry and stimulating non-fiction,attention to doing things well and artfully with an eye to aesthetics etc. etc and again, etc.

Like all people, uplifted myself, I’m convinced that others will be too and what starts as a personal preference turns quickly to a social program and my plan to improve the world. “If only everyone understood the nuances of Chopin, the intricacies of Art Tatum, the soul force of Coltrane, if only everyone had experienced an Orff program or gone to a Zen retreat or shopped at the farmer’s market or lived in beautiful (not necessarily rich) places with architecture that cares and so on, what a wonderful world it would be.”

Of course, I’d like to think it would be a better world for all. But maybe I can just appreciate how these things sustain me and not put so much weight on its shoulders. Because I know that none of these alone really matter— inside this lovely town with its narrow curving streets and magnificent cathedral and elaborate stone work are people with the same foibles as people living in trailers or ticky-tacky suburbs. I love the work various artists produced, but the stories are out— you wouldn’t necessarily want many of them to be your neighbors or marry your son or daughter.

So I’ll leave my appreciation of a sacred geometry as an appreciation of a sacred geometry and nothing else. And then go search for my next restaurant with a good view.

Children at Play

Soundscapes I love while lying in bed on a hot summer evening with the window open

after 16 hours of flying:

• Children happily at play.

• Birds singing.

• Occasional dog barks and hardly a car motor in earshot.

• Children happily at play.

Managed an early evening nap after a long flight to Frankfort and another shorter one to Barcelona (where I miraculously met an Orff colleague also on her way to Barcelona!). Two good airplane movies and one more that deserved the theater—Promised Land, with Matt Damon. Just the kind of movie I love about bad guys hurting innocent people for profit— in this case, “fracking” for natural gas— and then some transformation occurs. As well as a surprising plot twist that I won’t reveal.

Awoke to the lovely sounds above, strolled up the cobblestoned street in Manresa, northwest of Barcelona, to a bar and a simple dinner of patatas bravas, chicken wings, a refreshing salad with Roqueforte cheese and walnuts (by why, oh why, does iceberg lettuce still exist?) and a clara beer (beer with Sprite). Just what the Spanish—well, Catalan—doctor ordered.  Short stroll to the church atop the hill, looking up at the stars and out to the Roman-arched bridge and happily so.

The children have gone to sleep, the birds are silent, small groups of men roam the small town’s plaza, we’ll see what jet lag has in store for this sleepy traveler.

Financial Advisor

I like money as much as the next person, but a shrewd financial advisor I am not. However, I do have one piece of sound advice.

Don’t change your money at airports.

I asked the fellow there how many Euros I’d get for $40. He replied “27E.”

I then asked how many dollars I’d get for 27E. He replied, “$30.”

I may not be Donald Trump, but seems like a bad deal to me.

Don’t take it.

Front Stoop Sitting

Back to the life of perpetual parting and professional packing. Took out my handy list that has saved the reinvention of many wheels and filled my familiar suitcases with the familiar items, with the necessary adjustments for weather (hot) and circumstance (jazz courses in Barcelona and Madrid). Got e-mails down to two, unplugged the appliances, closed up the piano, changed the answering machine message and even got the perishable onions and cilantro delivered to my upstairs neighbor. The CD’s re-shelved, the piano music piled neatly, all the wood showing on my various desks— travel a good motivation to straighten up the house a bit. This time last year also would have meant goodbye to Chester the cat and making sure all his needs were met and the housesitter prepared to care for him. Almost exactly a year since he left us. I do miss the guy, but must admit it makes traveling easier.

So nothing left to do but wait for Super Shuttle to arrive. Brought the bags down and sat myself down on our front stoop— 13 stairs leading straight to the sidewalk. The sun had broken through the morning fog, a refreshing light breeze was stirring and suddenly I was back on my New Jersey front stoop, where I spent many a summer day sitting with my cat Zorro purring on my lap doing nothing more than—well, sitting on the front stoop.

Stoop sitting, especially on a summer’s day and often in the early evening, was a respectable and much-enjoyed pastime. We had no portable devices to distract us, no harried schedules running from one lesson to another. We had time to hang out, time that moved slowly and was marked by the exhaled purrs of the cat on our lap. It was a time to greet the neighbors passing by, indulge in the “Hot enough for you?”/ “How’s your Mom?”/ “And the kids?” kind of conversation. All the little gestures that glue together the social contract of good-neighborliness.

And also a time to exhale with the day, watch the fireflies coming out, think thoughts that passed through our head like puffy clouds in the sky. Feel a little relief from the sun’s mid-day heat, wonder about the folks driving by, listen to the sounds of my Dad playing the old jazz standard Tenderly on the organ on the other side of the screen door. “The evening breeze, caress the trees, tenderly…”

Sweet to remember that feeling in a rare moment of sitting on my San Francisco front stoop. It lasted for about three minutes and —Zoom! Super Shuttle arrives and off across the country and the ocean to this strange, weird and wonderful life that found me, that invites me to Barcelona to teach jazz to music teachers.

Maybe we’ll start with Tenderly.

Handwritten Vows

It was a glorious wedding by any standards. The venue was ideal, the weather pitch-perfect, the people smart, good-looking and fun to talk to. There were the old folks (my crowd) and the young folks, the locals and the come-from-afars, the bride’s side, the groom’s side. All the stars were lined up to be a memorable first wedding with me as an “officiant”— the rather cold clinical term for my status, since I’m neither rabbi, monk, priest or minister. In short, the officiant is the guy who runs the ceremony and marries the couple. And this was my virgin voyage. 

Was I nervous? Not in the least, since I’ve been the self-appointed “officiant” at almost four decades of ceremonies at my school. I’ve helped open and close the school year, host the Martin Luther King ceremony, told the Halloween ritual story, run the campfires on various camping trips, spoken about kids at graduations— including Erik, the groom, as one of his friends discovered pasting that photo on Facebook (making this moment yet more special!). I’ve led a few memorial services, made toasts at formal dinners, been the keynote speaker at music conferences and so on and so on. A lifetime as MC or Minister in the Church of No Dogma, work that fits just right for my way of thinking and my pleasure in public speaking.

The one thing I’ve learned is to use the whole of my personality and character and speak from the bottom of the belly with conviction while remaining transparent to the occasion. Not blocking the view with unnecessary flamboyance or center-stageness, but serving the needs of the moment. Having carefully crafted each word of the ceremony with Erik and Kerry, I felt prepared to shine the light precisely where it belonged— on them.

And when it came time for them to read their vows to each other, the blazing sun on a cloudless summer day in Berkeley was dimmed by the shining light of their beautifully spoken and deeply felt words. The kind that brings tears to the speakers and listeners both. And the one editorial comment that I couldn’t resist throwing in near the end— how moved I was that these were handwritten in pen and pencil on simple lined paper!!! Not typed, not flashing on the screen of a device. Real paper! Real writing! I can’t help but think that this added something to the sincerity and the personal nature of the vows spoken, but hey, that’s just me.

After the Tibetan gongs had been rung, the Unity candle lit, the poem read by Erik’s Dad, the exquisite vows spoken, it was just a matter of two “I do’s”, a slip of the rings on the fingers, the traditional kiss and the glass (light bulb) stomped on and broken. And then all the lovely friends and families arising refreshed, remembering their own vows, whether recent or long ago or yet to come, reminded that Love is real. Everything that a wedding should be. Congrats to Erik and Kerry for a most beautiful ceremony and their continued shared life to come. And thanks for the great honor of inviting me to be the “officiant.”

A friend wrote today, “How does it feel to be defrocked?” as my 24 hour license expired. I’m fine returning to the lay life, but hey, all you readers, I now can get a letter of recommendation if you’re looking for someone and my next 24 hour Ministerhood is just a trip to City Hall away. And I can throw in jazz piano, body music and Bulgarian bagpipe at no extra charge!

There’s only one condition.

You have to handwrite your vows.