The Wind at My Back

There are times when you hit a stride and everything works. You’re pedaling as you always do, but there are some mysterious forces at work, some wind at your back that propels you faster and further without any apparent additional effort on your part. The rhythm hits its groove, the chords fall tunefully into each other, the melody soars like it never has before. You’re in “the zone” and you can do nothing wrong.

If you’re Steph Curry, each three-pointer swishes through the net and you can win the championship. If you’re Yo Yo Ma, the concert hall will come to a hush and then erupt into a thunderous standing ovation. If you’re Martin Luther King, your dream finds it voice and you secure your place in history for years to come.

But sometimes that sense of flow can happen in matters less earth-shaking and dramatic. Like me yesterday. My task was to take care of business, to unpack and close out the intense and intensive two-weeks Levels training and to pack and prepare for the next week of teaching in Toronto. 24 hours to turn it all around. And so my day began with taking my colleagues to the airport and then step onto the battlefield of the 42 e-mails that needed answering, to arise a couple of hours later with a mere 4 left standing. Booked two flights for the Fall, filled out the school Room Request Form for September’s workshop, things were working! Out the door to the bank, post office, library, buy a new book at the bookstore (appropriately, Canada by Richard Ford), get air in the bike tires, take the car to the car wash. Yeah!

Came home to a FedEx box on my front stoop, addressed to the wrong name and the wrong address a block and a half away. “Oh well, I’ll just walk in over,” I decided in my Good Samaritan way. But I underestimated the weight of the box and realized the address was halfway up one of San Francisco’s steeper hills. Arrived worried about my back, rang the bell and the person who answered assured me that the person’s name on the box did not live there. I hid the box in a little alley, came back with the car and went to take it to Fed Ex. On the way, changed lanes and underestimated the willingness of the car in the next lane to let me in and we almost crashed. Continued on to Fed Ex with some angry honks behind me. Lifted my hand to try to give a silent “sorry” and realized that we actually have no gesture for that and the driver might have misinterpreted this as flicking her off. My perfect day was getting edgy.

But then the wind got behind my back again, dropped off the package, bought some props I needed for the next course, came home to do the watering and the laundry and cleaning out the refrigerator and all those little necessary tasks that strangely can bring so much satisfaction. No championships were won, no novels completed or songs written, no classes taught to happy children or adults, just life’s little chores completed, but with a kung-fu in-the-zone energy that felt great.

And now in the SF Airport winging to Toronto for my last Orff Course of the summer. With the wind at my back.

Better than Buddhism!

In our closing circle of the Level III Orff Course, a student made an intriguing comment:

“I’ve been to a lot of Buddhist retreats, but after this, I think they’re missing something.”

No time to follow up, but I hope to find out what precisely he was thinking of. But meanwhile it got me thinking. I’ve been to some 15 intense 7-day Zen meditation retreats (sesshins) in my life and they truly are remarkable experiences. Sitting in silence for 7-days, you not only dig down to some more intense vibration of seeing, hearing, feeling, feel more connected to each moment and the world around you, but you also, in a fundamentally deep way, bond with your fellow seekers without a word being spoken. And I often felt as we were walking rhythmically to the Sutra Hall at 3:30 in the morning that we were doing something truly important on behalf of all sentient beings, healing the world and ourselves through this practice.

But without exception, at the end of the 7-days, the people I felt deep communion with in silence, knowing them through their sitting posture and gestures and the rhythm of their eating and the resonance of their chanting, were now allowed to talk. And it was often (not with everyone) the breaking of some magic spell as personalities emerged and within five minutes I was thinking, “You’re really a strange person who I would never choose to hang out with.” And to be fair, many may have felt the same about me.

But in the Orff retreat, our connection comes from singing together, dancing together, playing music together, joking together, conversing at meals together and yes, also enjoying some deep silent moments together. It’s a different kind of connection from sitting on your own pillow in silence with a roomful of meditators. There’s physical contact, the shared vibrations of the singing voice and resonant drum, the intimacy and vulnerability of expressive dance, the surprise and unique character of creating something together and alone. All with the background common thread of a life dedicated to teaching children.

And so you live two weeks in retreat with a manageable-sized group of some 15 to 25 in each class and the bonds and intimacy formed (never mind what happens after dark!) has an intensity that few experiences in this life can match. And then you return the next year with mostly the same people and then the next, so that by the time you reach the closing circle of Level III, it’s almost impossible to find a dry eye in the house. The tears speak the joy of discovering selves that had been hidden or hurt or wounded or simply neglected. Or developed, but now to a higher and deeper level, always fully witnessed by all. They speak the reminder of how necessary and worthy this work is in the face of the year in-betweens retreats where one is isolated, dismissed, devalued. And of course, they speak of the joy of lifetime friendships (and sometimes marriages!) formed and the sorrow of parting. Truth be told, I never felt that leaving the Buddhist retreat.

So there you have it. Music and Orff Schulwerk and teaching is as bonding and blissful and breathtaking as a Buddhist retreat. And perhaps more so. 

Living Love, Loving Life

“And so we make our lives by what we love.” —John Cage

Every day in this Orff training is a life wholly lived. In my Level III, we travel the world without a passport, feel fully the excitement, newness, familiarity of getting out of town to see with new eyes and hear with new ears and feel with our old childlike sense of wonder. Carried on the sounds of Indonesian angklung, Bulgarian bagpipe, Ghana xylophone and more, finding surprising voices inside that can sing with new power, dancing through bamboo poles and slapping knees and thighs, each piece of music brings us so much deeper into the dizzying beauty of multiple worlds than any tour bus or camera constantly clicking ever can. And all of this in company with folks that now feel like long-time next-door neighbors, even as they come from Switzerland, Spain, Finland, Turkey, Mexico, Canada, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, Hong Kong, China, Thailand and the U.S.A.  It’s remarkable how much life can be lived in the intensity of our 90-minute journeys. And how much life can be loved.

From the 90-minute wholly inhabited worlds to the 24-hour cycles of multiple journeys to the 12 days we come together, there are rhythms and sub-rhythms and longer cycles to it all. Each day has a name and we are never quite the same tomorrow as we were yesterday. This week for example began with the Sunday night movie, Singing in the Rain, the Monday re-gathering after a weekend with whales, kayaks and the Laundromat, Sofia’s always heart-opening evening choral session. Tuesday was the Level III catharsis as 39 people showed their teacher-self and each unfailingly beautiful. We ended with a hug line with all the teachers, a chance to re-connect and thank and be praised by their tour leaders from Levels I and II. Wednesday was the always fabulous Untalent Show and it delivered as they all do with the astounding breadth and depth of people’s music and dance selves fully revealed. Last night was the sharing, the day where all the relaxed process tightens up and tensions mount and tempers begin to flare—we have to get a show ready!! The real life of the music teacher and the other end, the glory of accomplishment. It was spectacular, which the dictionary defines as “beautiful in a dramatic and eye-catching (and ear-catching!) way.”

The final piece was the always riveting Level III movement piece put together by our resident genius teacher Christa Coogan who has the knack of evoking movement from the students themselves and then helping to shape it into coherent form. This year’s theme was John Cage and one piece began with quotes from that interesting fellow. And amongst the many that caught my ear was the one above—“And so we make our lives by what we love.”

Yes indeed. The privilege to both teach in and lead this course is my testimony to everything I have grown to love given physical shape and form. And you might also say “And so we shape our love by what we live.” The two have intertwined in a way I could only dimly imagine when my teacher Avon Gillespie tapped me on the shoulder and beckoned me to follow him down this path. And then to keep going long after he turned off of it. There simply is no quantity of thanks sufficient for this gift. Except for the easy determination to keep the work he started in nearby Monterey back in 1983 going. And that I have done.

This morning, the closing circle with box of Kleenex in the center, the journey Level III will take through the birth canal of some 70 singing teachers, One final spiral song that Avon bequeathed to us “In living fully one finds peace.” Yes, and also love and also one makes peace through the pieces we play and one creates love by living fully the life we make. Hugs and tears awake and then we go home and do laundry and pay bills. On to breakfast.

The Wall

One of our students this week got the phone call we all dread. Her father, far away in Shanghai, had a stroke. We worked with her to change her ticket so she could rush home and miraculously found a flight with good times that was affordable. Off she went, only to call from the airport to report that because the flight had a short layover in Canada. The next flight technically left the next day (at 12:30 am!), so the rules said she needed a visa. And thus, they would not let her fly to Canada. Shame, shame, shame on those heartless robotic officers to let a pointless rule keep a daughter from seeing her father on his deathbed. She found something else and arrived too late—he had passed. Shame, shame, shame.

When we reconvened on Monday morning after a weekend of rest, we sang some “welcome back” songs and the Georgia Sea Islands spirited “Remember Me.” And then segued into our responsibility to remember those whose lives were intertwined with our own, to keep them alive in our thoughts and conversations, to live on their behalf, to learn to still be with them in new ways. After the song, I said a few words about this and how we in this culture keep trying to sweep death under the rug and rush to the brightly-lit malls and shop to avoid the necessary and long process of grief. And because we cannot grieve death, we also cannot amply praise life. We’re good at making fun of things, of having (or pretending to have) a nice day, but when it comes to looking the harsh facts of life and death square in the face, we build a wall in our hearts and make agreements with our neighbors that this is not to be discussed.

But not in our Orff Course. We had a collective moment of silence for our student’s loss and that allowed us to enter the week honestly, the joy that awaited more real and authentic because we were willing to feel the sorrow and sadness of loss.

Yesterday, a student of Mexican heritage came and thanked me and told me a sad story about two of her students who had been murdered by their father and her school’s inability and unwillingness to host a ceremony to acknowledge the event. She spoke of the 7-day funerals she attended in Mexico as a child, the laughter, tears and music and how strange it was to come to a country that wanted to get such things over with as soon as possible so they could go back to work. Later that day, a student of Mexican-Maya heritage spontaneously led a short ceremony after his fellow Level III teachers completed their practice teaching to collectively praise their efforts and successes.

And it struck me that the proposed wall between us and Mexico is symbolic of our fear of people who know how to live and love properly. The wall is already there, as it is inside those Canadian Immigration Officers and all those who want to untangle the joined branches of life and death. And that’s why so many wandering ghosts haunt our culture, all those who have not been properly grieved for. That’s why fear rules our decisions, that’s why the arts are seen as frills because it’s too scary to feel the way Mozart and Coltrane ask us to.

We pay lip service to events like the Fall of the Berlin Wall, but pay scant attention to the walls we’re building in the hearts and mind of children. So here we are in the Orff Course, tearing them down brick by brick and refusing to build the next one. Radical, necessary work. And that’s why we’re having so much damn fun!

May I Report?

Today I observed some 19 music lessons given by my 39 Level III Orff students. May I say that once again—as they have been the last decade or so—they were magnificent? Each student taught in the full splendor of their character, with humor, tenderness, explosive vitality and/ or simple warmth at their side. Each worked hard to create an enticing beginning, to move the lesson forward with a connected middle and to reach the climax of a satisfying end—all within 16 minutes. Imagination was fully present, mastery was reached through fun, the body and voice spoke more than the words. Working with a partner, they seamlessly passed the baton back and forth and crossed the finish line in a blaze of glory.

If only all teachers, music or otherwise, could experience this, witness this, aspire to this. How happy the children would be! How transformed the school would be from a dull factory production line to a mixture of a temple, jazz club and dance hall. How pleased the teachers would be to be gifted each day with the chance to teach like this. How refreshed the culture would be with students graduating with their sense of wonder intact, their feeling of being welcomed and valued and seen firmly in place, their astonishment that the hidden beauty they carry was asked to be brought out into the open and was praised and admired. How hopeful would we feel for the future knowing that these future citizens would be making the decisions that might reject the strip malls, widen the radio stations, refuse injustice and the lying schemes of self-serving politicians, make ample space for the arts in schools artfully taught.

May I report that for those who feel cynical and hopeless and discouraged that the 100 plus people gathered here are living the life some of us have dreamed of, with deep connection and exchange between the 25 countries represented, with great joy and happiness and a circle of support that will catch us when we fall, guided by faculty who have been described by one student as “roundly skilled, unfailingly kind, moving transparently between their teaching personas and socializing with students, transmitting deep insights into developing the simplest of musical materials into works of ornate beauty, and navigating the complex creative and artistic personalities of participants from so many varied cultures with equanimity and humor.” Granted, it’s a two-week Utopia with ample food and shelter and no one competing for resources. But it shows that kindness and beauty and complexity and simplicity and artistry and humor are not only possible, but real and tangible and present every day of our short time together. That’s important for people to know.

Three days left and more miracles and laughter and many copious tears await. And I look forward to it all.