The Lovers, the Dreamers and Me

Jumped back into the pleasure that teaching music to 8^th graders is without missing a beat. The first group got right into a groove with a rockin’ dance tune, Pick Up the Pieces and though we could use some pumped-up electric guitars and wailing saxophones, the killer grooves fit their turbulent, electric and energetic 14-year-selves. And then with the second group, I went in the opposite direction. Started a song made famous by…well, guess. They came up with Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and I told them, yes, those are great jazz singers, but this singer is particularly memorable. His name is…

Kermit the Frog.

Yep, we started to learn The Rainbow Connection from the Muppet Movie. Now given the prevailing attitude we have about 8^th graders in our culture, you would be imagining their eyes rolling clean out of their head with disgust and disdain—“We’re listening to X-rated and car-expanding rap and hip-hop and you expect us to learn a song from Kermit the Frog?!!!”

But of course, they unanimously got to work with the equivalent of “Yippeee!!” Now if you think these kids are special, you’re partly right. They’re part of a community so safe and supportive that they don’t have to shut their innocence and childlike-self away in the “uncool” drawer. And some part of their soul is rejoicing that the wonder of childhood can still be fed even as their bodies and brains change and they can sing about rainbows and hopes and dreams. Not too loud and overtly enthusiastically, mind you, but yes, they all sing and were motivated to find all the notes on the xylophone.

Of course, adolescence now and forever carries peer-group pressure, fear of ridicule, worry about fitting in and being cool, mandatory eye-rolling and its share of low energy and despondence next to hyper-crazed Yeehaw!! But teenagers I’ve met in Europe and Bali and Ghana and Brazil are not like the stereotypical American version. They’re more integrated into adult culture, work, talk with adults, let themselves be playful. And teenagers everywhere are dreaming, dreaming, dreaming and some with wonderful ideals and ideas and tender visions. "We are such stuff as dreams are made of" and we close that door at our peril. Anything that shuts them down— a heartless school culture that doesn’t care about its kids, the Wall St. predators hunting kids down to make them lifelong consumers, the mob mentality of peers and adults who’ve lost their own “rainbow connection"—is committing a genocide of the soul and everyone suffers. It takes effort and energy to keep the door open when the world keeps trying to slam it shut. 

How much do I love what these kids were willing to sing? Here’s verse two:

Who said that every wish would be heard and answered

When wished on the morning star?

Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it,

Look what it’s done so far.

What’s so amazing that keeps us stargazing,

And what do we think we might see?

Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection,

The lovers, the dreamers and me.

Okay, a little on the corny side, but don’t you dare think you’re too cool or cynical or jaded at any age to stop wishing and dreaming and stargazing. I’m not naïve and I can be as bitter and outraged and angry as the next, but still I keep one eye on the stars and guess what? They come through. Playing this song with the 8^th graders was my rainbow connection.

And guess what else? Today, an extraordinary rainbow did appear and all the kids and teachers ran out to the yard to witness it. Including the 8^th graders. It’s real, people! What’s your rainbow connection?

Letter from a Former Self

I have taken some heat from various folks about saving too much and it’s true that there are some things I could let go and would be happier for having done so. But then I come across things that are worthless just sitting in storage, but precious when I re-discover them. And illuminating.

Just today, I found a handwritten little essay that I believe came from a Board retreat when we were asked to reflect on why we chose to work at The San Francisco School. I didn’t date it, but I’m reasonably sure that the year was 1976, at the end of my first year of teaching. 40 years later, I re-read it and though I wish I could edit the writing, I’m stunned to see the continuity in ideas. Turns out that the vision I had then at 24 years old is pretty much the same as the vision I have now as 64 years old. The only difference is that back then, it was all conjecture and possibility and now it is a truth given body by all the years of practice.

William Stafford speaks eloquently of this unchanging vision:

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change.…

So here’s the starting point of that thread that has stitched together some 30,000 classes with kids at this marvelous school (I pick it up again tomorrow!) and will only end when I do. Thanks to that young, bright-eyed 24 year old—I think he would be pleased to see how it all turned out.

WHY I AM HERE:

To share what I know and what I don’t know and what we all know.

Sharing what I know solidifies it within myself. Having to present it means tracing back to the source and getting in touch with how it develops in myself and others. I work with children because teaching is where I plug into the greater process of survival and energy-exchange. The invisible realm of focusing and channeling group energy to create a joyous and self-expanding event is my workshop, voices, bodies and their musical extensions my tools. My specific goals are for children/people to acquire the vocabulary to speak in music, to know how music can serve them when words fail, to loose the song in their hearts.

Sharing what I don’t know means opening up and allowing others to help expand my limited vision. It means sharing my confusion as well as my certainty. It means continually looking into the perfect mirror that children are and see my own anxiety reflected as well as my own joy. The school serves as a thermometer of my own state of being, a supportive community that simultaneously challenges me and brings me to task when I halt the flow and get stuck.

Sharing what we all know means dissolving all confining roles—teacher/student, woman/man, person/tree, and being with all people and things in affirmation of our unity. Singing and dancing as the mutual celebration of our common experience.

THE LARGER PICTURE:

What kind of school do we want to be? What kind of people to we want to be? What kind of people do we want our kids to be? As teachers, we must take complete responsibility for these questions, being in a frighteningly powerful position of creating an environment that affects kids’ and teachers’ growth. What messages are we giving out? What are the implications in the greater context of our culture and the messages it gives out?

The task for me is both personal and political. We are fighting a cancer and it’s my hope that we and the kids can grow big enough to absorb that cancer. The cancer is America’s greed and owning things and owning people and conquering nature and always bending things to our will. The antidote is taking responsibility for our acts, recognizing our place in the community of people and the greater community of plants, animal, fossil fuels. Opening to the inexhaustible resources within ourselves and learning to share that with others.

The most powerful message we have to give is a united, loving staff that handles its difference with caring and concern, affirms its unity in open expressions of affection. This is no naïve vision, it is our real potential to be realized through hard work, pain, anger, boredom and tears as well as joy and laughter. It is our poem to create in our own living flesh. May it be so!

Drawers and Closets

“Order is the only possibility of rest.”      Wendell Berry

After setting the bar high with Tennyson’s lofty resolutions yesterday, I decided to clean out my closet. Good choice. Found shirts that had been hiding in the clutter and managed to get a pile to bring to the thrift store. Now there’s room for them to breathe a bit and somehow that makes my breath a little freer as well. Then came the sweaters more neatly piled on the shelf and —why not?— into the drawers I went. Ferreted out the socks with holes in them and the underwear that would embarrass me if I got into an accident and had to be publicly stripped down. And then folding everything neatly, T-shirts by color, socks by thickness, nice little piles so that when I open the drawer, its contents sing to me, “See how nicely we’re in line? Aren’t you proud of us?”

On to cleaning the refrigerator, deciding on the surplus of sauces and condiments and scrubbing away tomato refuse and such. And now here’s another door to open and have its contents smile back. “Look! Here we are! You can see us and remember we’re here and hey, wouldn’t you like a little chili sauce tonight? Don’t think you’ve opened me for over two years and as you can see, I’m patient. But don’t you think now’s the time?”

By now the desk drawers got wind of what was happening and started whimpering, “Hey, don’t forget us!” There was a full-scale movement afoot and I had to try to shush them up before the file drawers heard what was going on. And if word ever got down to the basement, with my thousand plus records, Orff T-shirts stuffed in a box, tax records from the beginning of the IRS, workshop notes from over 40 years and crates of trivia that I can’t quite give up yet (don’t even want to think about the cassette tapes), I’d be a goner. Been saving such projects for a rainy day, but it would take a monsoon season and hey, we’re still in a drought.

But I have to admit, it makes me happy to walk into my closet, open my drawers, peek inside the refrigerator— order indeed offers a sense of rest from the chaos of the world. And it was a pleasure to revisit my lost clothes and foodstuffs, bid a few farewell and renew my relationship with the keepers. We can’t make the rain come, we can’t stop the media from broadcasting Trump, we can’t solve all of our lifelong issues that keep haunting us. But by God, we can organize my sock drawer! We’re in control, we make progress, we make decisions, we do something worthwhile that gives us pleasure for a few days.

Because the moment we rest on our laurels and savor the well-earned rest of order re-established, then it’s time to live again. And at the end of a busy day, the clothes get thrown helter-skelter, the desk gets messy with creative work, the refrigerator looks more like a teenager’s room than a military marching formation. Life goes on.

Until it’s time to clean again. 

Wild Bell Resolutions

My ritual New Year’s Eve is a party at a friend’s house that culminates in taking to the streets with her collection of Tibetan Bells. We ring them for all we’re worth to push the old year over the edge into the new and then go back inside for a champagne toast. I came up with something—never at a loss for words—but missed my chance to do it right.  Because this morning I stumbled into a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson that would have been perfect for the occasion! I’m suffering from poetic regret.

But it’s not too late. I offer his work here and for those still searching for a worthy resolution beyond  losing ten pounds, pick any one of the eight stanzas. That should keep you busy! Ring out the old failures, the false, the grief, the strife, the spite, the want, the care, the sin, the faithless coldness, civic slander, lust for gold and such. Then keep ringing to bring in the true, the nobler modes, the sweeter manners, the larger heart, the kindlier hand. First remove the cankers in your own heart and feed your better nature and then look at the forces in the world that undermine hope and care and do what you can do limit their power—especially in this election year!

I know, it’s all rather abstract and lofty. Much easier to go for ten pounds less and remembering to feed the dog or get a new car. But the world needs dreamers as much as doers and good dreams rung out across the landscape on wild bells. Read it out loud and if you have some Tibetan bells handy, punctuate it freely. Enjoy!

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky.

The flying cloud, the frosty light.

The year is dying in the night.

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow,

The year is going, let him go.

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind.

For those that here we see no more.

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause

And ancient forms of party strife.

Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times.

Ring out, ring out, my mournful rhymes

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite,

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold.

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand,

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Confucius Knows

                                    Stir yourself with poetry.

                                    Stand firm in ritual.

                                    Complete yourself in music.

                                                                        -Confucius

I first read this quote some 45 years ago (in Gary Snyder’s Earth House Hold) and it struck me as a good recipe for a life well-lived. And then I went ahead and lived it! I renewed my vows today, the first day of the Western New Year. Though on one level, one must agree with Paula Poundstone’s astute observation last night that 11:59 pm on Dec. 31^st of any given year is pretty much the same as 12:01 am on January 1^st two minutes later, still we are creature of mythic imagination. Renewing vows on specially marked days is as old as the hills, even if those hills look pretty much the same from one day to another.

I have this private fantasy that how I live the first day will set the tone for the year to come. Kind of like the way Beethoven announces his bump-bump-bump-buuuuuuum and the rest of the music sings back to it the whole journey. And so I donned my old monk’s robes from Mt. Baldy Zen Center days, let go of the sobering fact that they don’t quite fit anymore and chanted an entire sutra book in ancient Sino-Japanese, followed by a full insence-stick zazen meditation. I haven’t gone to a Zen retreat for 8 years, but some 43 years after I started, I still begin the day with a short sit. So clearly some part of me has indeed stood firm in this ritual and no end in sight.

After sitting, I combed the bookshelves for my little paperback book of Immortal Poems to select one to memorize. This time last year I had some few dozen poems by 10 or 15 poets memorized, loving the way the music of the words played on my tongue and uplifted me by keeping company with them while walking. (Trust me, a thousand times more fulfilling that texting or checking e-mail while strolling through the park.) But it’s been a while since I kept that practice alive, so spent some time dusting off the shelves of verbal recall before selecting a new one to try out. (Wordsworth and the daffodils). And lo and behold, here I was stirring myself with poetry.

Then, in this 50^th year anniversary of my school, began a little project of listing the names of every teacher and staff member who has ever taught there. Started trying it from memory and got about 180. Then pulled out the old rosters from 1990 to today and found an additional 150 or so. Still ahead is from 1966 to 1990. A time-consuming task, but remarkable to feel each name trigger a face and event and a moment in my long school history and gather everyone together in the imagination before (hopefully) many will gather in the flesh at the 50^th party.

Guess where I went next? (I know you don’t care nor should you, but humor me!). Yep, the piano. And here I resurrected the long ago thoughts of people named Chopin, Haydn, Bach, Beethoven, Grieg, Billy Strayhorn and brought them to life in my fingers and filled the air with their glorious sounds. A different kind of satisfaction than compiling lists of names and one that brings together the cadences and breath of Buddhist chants with the music of words poetically rendered and Confucius had it right—complete oneself in music, because music is the meeting point of body, breath, mind, heart and soul.

"Better get out and exercise if I want that thread to keep unrolling down the year," I thought. So hopped on the bike and pumped myself up a long hill with cold air biting my face. Though I’ve hiked a bunch of miles every day these past three, the bike muscles were a bit atrophied. Lots of work ahead there.

Okay, so now I had stood firm in ritual, was stirred by poetry, completed in music, and with aerobic exercise to boot! Things were looking good for 2016. But is that all? Just make sure that my own body, mind and heart are toned? I think not.

The best part of the day was driving to the Jewish Home, greeting my friends there and enjoying a solid hour of making music together. Including singing Unforgettable and When I Fall in Love to honor the passing of Natalie Cole, who sang these tunes as a virtual duet with her dad Nat on one of her recordings. When I left, I told my soul-mates Fran and Edie, “This was the most fun I’ve had all year!!!”

And it was. May it continue.