Slovenia, Salzburg, Spring and Spirit

Ah, to be alive on a Spring Sunday morning in Slovenia heading to Salzburg. Yesterday, a soul-stirring workshop with some sixty spirited Slovenians, the echoes of the hushed Estonian lullaby closing still singing on in me. This morning, a quick walk to the river and Old Town, crossing and re-crossing the seven bridges under the watchful eye of the castle on the hill, shoes click-clacking on the cobblestone streets, church bells pealing, camera clicking to capture the charm of exquisite architecture, New Balance shoe stores side-by side with statues of poets. The Sunday vendors unraveling their wares on tables by the riverside— old coins, paper money, medallions, cutlery, china, ceramic plates, watches, clocks, jewelry, knick-knack statuettes, small paintings, old LP records. Looked like a garage sale of grown children clearing out their parents hoarded accumulations. Wound my way back to the hotel and enjoyed an elegant breakfast of crepes with qvark, apricots, figs, chocolate sauce, grilled vegetables, eggs with red pepper sauce, beautifully prepared and served on real plates. (Ramada Inn, take note. Perhaps you might consider replacing the stale muffins and bad coffee in Styrofoam with plastic spoons with TV’s blaring?)

Off I go to the train station and three seconds on the platform called up that 22-year old virgin voyager I once was wrapped up in the romance of the European myth. You know, the sheltered American growing up with “Leave It to Beaver” initiated into the European aesthetic and swept away by the romance of it all. Wandering in wide-eyed wonder the streets of Paris, Florence, Barcelona steeped in history, art, architecture, croissants and gelato, listening to the tinkle of silverware and family conversations spilling out of open windows during the three-hour mid-day pause of lunch. How civilized! How much more sensible than the frenetic American pace of speed and greed and getting ahead, the quickly grabbed fast-food! Why not relax the tempo and savor life’s simple pleasures of good wine and good company and good conversation? Those newly-awakened Americans come back changed and a little haughty for having tasted La Dolce Vita, feeling pity for their uncultured neighbors. "I didn't know how to live until I went to Europe"' says the returned traveler. At least for awhile, until swimming again in the crazy pool of Americana and Europe feels like a distant dream.

These my thoughts as I board the train, find my seat, scan the car for my “Before Sunrise” adventure. (Ha! That train long ago left the station and ain’t no more coming down the line. But why not treat myself to the dream?) And so off we speed through the countryside, out the window the distant snow-capped mountains, the small towns with their church on the hill, the sparkling sun on a cloudless day. 25 years of fairly constant travel to Europe and it never fails to enchant me.

The train pulls into Salzburg four hours later and what’s this? When I left two days ago, it was Winter and now it’s Spring. Almost 70 degrees (Fahrenheit!) and the streets filled with happy people. I walk through the part of town I haven’t yet visited this trip and my favorite ice cream place is even open! Time to settle into my new room back at the Youth Hostel and then go have dinner with two former students, each of whom have two little children. The Electro Hummer store I passed on the way to the Hostel is still there a quarter of a century later, but meeting my students’ children is a sure sign that linear time is real and it is passing. Hopefully like a train through the Austrian countryside— heading surely and clearly to some destination, but isn’t the trip glorious!

Apologies to Marko

My mission in life is to help create a culture of flexible thinkers. Drawing from Orff and jazz and other practices that habitually break the rules to keep things fresh and new and forever contemporary, I’m in favor of all that thaws the ice of stubborn thought and mindless tradition and works to keep the waters flowing. At the same time, I honor the well-wrought building, be it Bach’s magnificent constructions or Chartres Cathedral or Ellington’s arrangements and see no reason to change them unthinkingly to “keep up with the times.” It’s the conversation between the notes as given and the notes as felt that interests me.

And so I came to Slovenia to give an Orff workshop and reach some peace with a weird little struggle I’ve had with a Slovenian children’s song, Marko Skace. It has been a big hit in my workshops and with my 4^th graders this year, just the kind of simple, but effective song I like. It consists of two four-bar phrases in the pentatonic scale, with the second half of each phrase repeated in both the A and B sections. (A=ab, B= cb). So what’s the problem?

Well, I feel it as a symmetrical AABB form, but almost every version I’ve found (after first learning it from a Slovenian-Italian friend) sings it as an ABB form. It just felt too weird to me to do that A section once. The opening idea felt simply too short to not give the comfort of repetition. So ultimately, I just refused to do it, trusting my instinct and affirming my sense of what is musical. And I went down to Slovenia seeking permission for my choice.

I discussed it with my host at lunch and she reluctantly agreed that as a folk song, she supposed I could change it if I wanted. I only know one verse, but she sang a few and I had to admit that it might a tiny bit more sense as ABB with further verses. I then did the song in the workshop and brought the problem to the group of 60 or so students. The distinct vibe I felt was, “Eeeewww! It’s weird if you repeat the A section twice. It’s not how it goes!” (I also found out that a Slovenian music teacher actually changed the original Marko from a hexatonic six-note song to a pentatonic five-note song for pedagogical purposes. But that seemed more forgivable to the Slovenians and to me too.)

And so I had to face my stubbornness and arrogance and consider that the original song could eventually sound musical to my ears. And once I started letting go, I found myself getting used to it. The ice of my cultural bias and hubris began to thaw a bit. And of course, that made me wonder how many other biases I carry that form my judgments of the world and intentionally, or unintentionally, disrespect other’s point of view. I work hard on being aware of such flaws, but it’s a big world with lots of ways of interpreting it and while it’s human and even necessary to plant yourself in one point of view and not be blown randomly about, we always have to be on guard and consider opening the window a bit.

All this dangerously close to a musical nerd entry, but I’m fishing around here for a larger, more universal message. And I think it comes down to this:

Always sing the A section of Marko Skace once.

A Happy Adulthood

“It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”   -Tom Robbins

The above is my go-to quote when I’m teaching workshops that awaken people’s atrophied sense of play or help heal some damaging music education from their youth. But today, I came up with a new one:

“It’s never too late to have a happy adulthood.”

This after a joyful day of teaching 13 Special Course students at the Orff Institut who I already love after a mere two days of classes. Followed by a few hours in a cozy room playing a most beautiful Steinway piano with a powerful lower register and bright upper register and keys in the middle that sang just right for me. Bach, Scarlatti and Cole Porter never sounded so good to my enchanted ears. My fingers were on a reconnaissance mission in search of beauty and each one kept finding the treasure of a perfectly-placed D# or Ab. Each finger felt like it had its own personal brain and sharp eyesight and I just had to get out of the way and let them do their work while being washed away in the rich textures and vibrant rhythms.

Outside the window, it was snowing and I remembered that quality of winter, the earth being blanketed with love from above and us frail humans walking through in wonder and in search of a cozy fire. I walked along the river, marveled at the tenacity of songbirds braving the cold and the refusal of the water to be stilled into ice.

In short, I have returned to that blessed state of effortless happiness. I feel the smile on my face without having to search for it or force it or analyze how it got there. And truth be told, I feel it as my natural state, indeed, all of our natural states, but one that gets obscured by life’s assaults, our own poor choices, inherited patterns we let have their way with us or just plain bad luck. But happiness is our birth right, we are all worthy of it, we are all deserving—and we all are lucky when it finds us.

Not that I’ve had an unhappy adulthood. I’m well aware that I’ve been graced with extraordinary work in extraordinary places, lucky to be in mostly good health, blessed with the gifts of family. It’s not all peaches and cream and never has been— I’ve had my fair share of challenges and some painfully brutal betrayals in each of these areas. But for this moment in my adulthood, I’m perhaps happier than I’ve ever been and I have nothing more to say than the obvious— thank you.

PS to Note to Mr. Bell: Tonight at the Youth Hostel 10 teenagers were sitting side-by-side on two couches and every one without exception was… looking at their phone. I wish I could have taken a picture of them, but darn… I don’t own an i-Phone! Well, I do have a camera, but it was in my room— if I had an i-Phone and carried it 24/7, I could have taken a photo showing how bizarre it that everyone has i-Phones! Hmm. Get the irony?

The Walking Cure

Freud’s groundbreaking couch therapy was once called “the talking cure.” With all due respect for his and his follower’s breakthroughs, I often think that much of our malaise in Western culture could be as effectively healed by “the walking cure.” Instead of (or before or after) complaining about our mother, we get off the couch and out into the world and walk for a bunch of miles. We might discover at the end that Mom wasn’t that bad after all. Or she did us some damage, but hey, it’s time to move on. Literally.

John Medina puts Exercise as the first of his twelve Brain Rules (in his book of the same title). He speculates that our ancestors walked an average of 12 miles a day and that our brains depended on the oxygen it provides to soak up toxins, the protein it stimulates to keep neurons connected and the glucose it generates to give us energy. Any exercise is beneficial, but here I want to put in a plug for walking.

Usually in Salzburg, I rent a bike for transportation and in this most bike-friendly of just about any city, that has been both practical and pleasurable. But I haven’t gotten to it yet and instead am walking the two-mile path from the Youth Hostel to the Orff Institut each morning and late afternoon. I do love biking, but walking is pretty great as well. A slower pace that enables me to pay attention to things that I normally speed by on the bike, to notice more, to savor more. No part of my brain has to attend to traffic of any sort and thus, I'm wholly free to plan my day’s classes or begin shaping my next blog or wonder about the things I’m seeing, hearing, smelling.

If your walk is through a place of beauty, as mine is here, then extra credit. One gets the muscles toned, the breath rhythmic, the thoughts rising while enjoying some aesthetic inspiration from the falling snow, the waving tree branches, the mist-shrouded mountain. Walking there, the freshness of morning walks by your side as you emerge into the day. Walking back, the glow of evening sunset carries off the day’s accomplishments and invites you to savor well-earned rest and a beer and some quiet time in your room or enjoying the social buzz of the restaurant or club. No need to schedule your trip to the gym, it’s all folded into the simple need of arriving at work.

Once a year or so, I walk the five miles to school back home in San Francisco and now I’m wondering why I don’t do it more often. Parts of it far from Salzburgian in its aesthetic beauty, certainly not so flat and the two-hour round trip perhaps a bit too much. But worth thinking about.

Meanwhile, it’s mid-day at the Orff institute and the snow is thickening. Could be I’ll be humming “Winter Wonderland” on my return trip. 

Note to Mr. Bell

Alexander Graham, that is. I wonder what he would think watching two men across a small breakfast table talking to two other people (and not each other) on their cellular devices. And that such social weirdness has become normal.

“What madness have I wrought?!!!” comes to mind.