Taking It to the Edge

1)    The abandoned Margherita is in prison, accused of poisoning her mother and strangling her infant child.

2)    A wise sorcerer seeks to cure Orlando of the madness born of jealousy that torments him.

3)    After seducing Santuzza, Turriddu has returned to romancing his former love Lola, now a married woman.

4)    Imogene’s husband has been slain by her true love, who is to be executed as punishment.

5)    Ariadne has been abandoned and left heartbroken on a deserted island. She mourns her lost love and longs for the release of death.

6)    Mary wakes up to a beautiful sunny day, has a delicious hearty meal of organic oats with blueberries fresh from the garden and gluten-free crackers and soon is joined by her loving, supporting husband. They do an hour-long yoga/ Pilates routine, feeling their bodies perfectly toned and tuned and their biorhythms humming harmoniously along. They go to work at their non-profit supporting sustainable farming, with Kenny G. music playing in the background. At the end of the day, they pick up their darling child at the Rainbow Bunnies Preschool, where she has drawn a portrait of their happy family to be proudly displayed on the refrigerator. At bedtime, they tell her happy stories and sing her happy songs. They all have beautiful dreams and eagerly await the next wondrous day.

Which of the above would be the best plots for an Opera?

PS The first five above are the synopsis for some of the arias sung at Opera in the Park today as written in the San Francisco Chronicle. Seems like conflict is necessary for great art! And just perhaps containing it all in the longing and pathos and drama of musical notes helps us feel the feelings without have to live them out so brutally in actual life. Just a thought.

Competence

Just back from the annual Opera in the Park, the free event where select singers perform arias from the operas to be staged this Fall and some 5,000 people are spread out on the grass with their elegant picnic lunches and champagne ready to toast, listening like parched travelers in the desert sipping cool water. The trees are gently waving to the conductor’s beat, the planes flying overhead are always in the wrong key, the clouds are floating by as our spirits are lifted high into the air. Simply lovely.

And what is mostly obvious struck me quite forcefully. Not a single person sang off key. No one got off the beat or entered at the wrong time in the music. No one flubbed a note—at least one the audience could hear. The sound system worked perfectly. The stage didn’t collapse. In short, everyone who was hired to do their work well did it well and we expect nothing less. And for these musicians to get to where they are was no casual saunter up the career path. They worked, they practiced, they networked, they showed up, they demonstrated time and time again that they were worthy of Mozart’s and Verdi’s notes and intents. They delivered in front of audiences who expected not only a high standard of competence, but also a fair dose of genuine inspiration so that they could honestly hold up the “Bravo! Brava!” card.

And the same for the sound engineer and the stage crew and the same for my car mechanic and doctor and airline pilot. When I avail myself of their services, I assume that they have entered the necessary training and passed all exams and continued to improve their sense of mastery in their field. Can you guess where I’m going with this?

What happens when a person completely unqualified is elevated to a position they neither earned nor deserved in a field in which they have little or no background or expertise and have no motivation to improve? What happens when they get fired or resigned not because they prove to be unqualified, but because their boss, the most unqualified of all for the job, simply gets tired of them and wants to throw his weight around and then hire the next incompetent?

It would be as if you went to the Opera and someone randomly picks someone from the audience to come up to sing the lead part. You go to the jazz club and Josh Redman hands his saxophone to you and says, “Here, you try it. 1, a 2, a 1-2-3 go!!" As if you brought your car in to be fixed and the mechanic says, “I don’t know what’s wrong. Let’s ask this guy walking down the street.” Walked into the restaurant and cook said, "Hey, I'm tired. Would you mind making the creme brûlée tonight?" You get the idea.

Politicians do have job descriptions. They’re supposed to be knowledgeable about and swear to uphold the Constitution. They’re supposed to serve their constituents, not just the people who voted for them, but all the people included in the “of the people, by the people and for the people” clause in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. When we allow incompetents to be elected whose only qualification is they know how to manipulate emotion through hate speech and false promises, well, the music starts to sound pretty bad. The planes get dangerous to ride and the food in the restaurant becomes inedible. And the dishes aren’t too clean either.

I found a Website that named all the people who Trump appointed who he later fired or they “resigned.” In key positions like National Security Adviser, EPA Administrator, Homeland Security Advisor, Director of the National Economic Council, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Chief Strategist. US Deputy Attorney General, White House Chief of Staff and 15 other jobs in which we hope competent people are leading the country, 23 people have left. (See

https://www.businessinsider.com/who-has-trump-fired-so-far-james-comey-sean-spicer-michael-flynn-2017-7) That's a little scary. Incompetence has become the new number 1 job qualification in this administration, to be quickly replaced by the next incompetent.

In the face of this extraordinary list, it’s time to bring competence back into the American public sphere. Don’t you agree?

Born Again

No, I have not joined a Christian cult and yes, I agree with the bumper sticker “Born okay the first time.” But to live well asks for some kind of perpetual re-birth and that is the promise of each new day. To awaken at dawn with the sun dutifully rising and the birds singing in the morning and a freshness in the air, that feeling like just maybe today, we can see and hear and touch and taste the world as if for the first time, with all the wonder and delight that we once felt oh-so-long ago.

My morning routine during this time off from school is to get right to the desk while my energy is fresh and write through lunch. Then the luxury of routine exercise happens in the afternoon. But today I got right out on my bike and it felt markedly different. That connection with the re-birthing of the world, made more fresh by it being Sunday and not much human activity out on the streets. At the end of the ride, I was one of the first to get some fresh tomatoes at the Farmer’s Market rather than the last. Home by 9 am and with the day’s exercise behind me, free to do as I liked with the rest of the time. Which will include writing, but also sitting another couple of hours at the annual Opera in the Park in SF. A ritual event and the reason I was out and about so early was because it’s very close to my house and I always put the blankets out in near the front to reserve our space for the concert 6 hours later. It’s a good deal! (And note! I’m in the photo they used to advertise below!)

Truth be told, a lot of good writing happened while pedaling uphill and with a few notes jotted in my pocket notebook, I came home brimming over with inspiration. Moving the body appears to help move thought and maybe it's an even better way to invite the Muse each day. So I’m wondering about changing my routine and joining Thoreau and Mary Oliver and others who begin the day out in the world, singing it along with the morning birds, breathing it to life with the morning winds, walking it into movement with a stroll (or bike ride). We’ll see.

What’s your preference?

Speaking with Art

Yet another rally in San Francisco to let the World know that it’s not okay with us that politicians

are selling our future down the polluted river. This the Climate Change March and since the issue is so damn serious, we decided we better make it fun. And we did, as we have the past five or six rallies in the past two years. Starting with the oh so clever, hand-made (not corporate-bought), witty signs. For example, a student from the SF School with a sign that something like “Frosty’s worried.”

We weirdly had a very small school contingent, but my colleague James brought his large Brazilian maracatu alfaia drum,  a cowbell that I played, some vuvusela trumpets that the kids played and a sign with my Earth Day Rap written on it (I’ll share it on a future post.). We connected with a group behind us of young people about to study climate change abroad in Vietnam, Morocco and Peru and got them to join us on the rap. One of our kids would say a line and all 15 of them would shout it back, with drums and bells playing. From there, we went into singing “We’ve Got the Whole World in Our Hands” and in-between choruses, I started to improvise some couplets which I fed to the group a line at a time: Things like:

We’ve got to save the seas. We’ve got to save the lands.

We’ve got to hold the whole world in our hand!”

And back to singing the song. Then:

Frosty the Snowman doesn’t want to go.

But how can he live if there ain’t no snow?!”

And then into a verse of Frosty.

Sacred is the land. Sacred is the water.

We gotta work to save it for our son or our daughter!

And then singing the South African Siyahamba.

Then the challenge was to improvise verses based on the signs around us. Well, that was fun! And on it went back and forth for an hour or so without pause.

When we arrived at the gathering spot, people were painting beautiful collective murals on the street, mandala-like circles with beautiful images and important messages. My wife was part of a group called SF Sketchers and they sketched people while interviewing them about their concerns about climate change and including their comments with the sketch to be posted online.

There were no speeches at the rally, no political haranguing, just concerned citizens saying that it’s time to get out and speak out and sing out and play out and draw out and tell our stories. That felt good, to add art, music, storytelling to the mix. Because the issues are too serious to just get angry and rant and rave. Keep this in mind, dear readers, wherever you may be and get out in the streets armed with your paintbrush, drum, verbal rapping wit and story ready to be told.

The Wind at Your Back

After complaining about the fog, some weather god heard me and today was sunny by noon! So I hopped on my bike, something that I’ve been happily able to do every day for two weeks now, and took off heading west through Golden Gate Park. And though I was happy it was sunny, there was a fierce wind coming straight at me. “Well, better to exercise my muscles,” I thought, “and on the way home, the wind will be at my back. It will all even out.”

Scientifically speaking, the wind must have been at my back pedaling home. But the truth is that I couldn’t feel it. I could certainly feel it when I rode into the wind, but it was more of an invisible presence when it was behind me.

And following my mind’s habitual contours, I thought: “Well, isn’t that just the way it is? When people are in your face and life seems to be lining up against you and pushing back and making it hard for you to move forward, there’s no way to ignore it. And though it’s good to remember that the spiritual muscles and determination are being heartily exercised when the way is blocked or the wall rises high or the forces seem to amass against you, it’s not that much fun.

But when the opposite happens and the invisible hands are supported you or beckoning you forward or cheering you on, we often don’t notice it. It’s more subtle, more invisible, more needing of paying a different kind of attention. But there nonetheless."

So ask yourself when you wake up tomorrow, “Which direction is the wind blowing today?” And either answer is worthy of thanks.