Keeping the Vigil

“The great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone.”  ­-David Whyte

Solitude is the art of being alone to know that you are not alone.  To remove oneself from the “pulling and hauling” (Whitman) and settle into some deep interior self that carries you to the center of the cosmic Self we all share. Through meditation, musical practice, journal writing, sketching or painting, a walk in the woods, a lean against a tree, away from the surface conversation and tweets and news of our human failing and screened entertainment, you have the possibility of re-entering with renewed love the human community that so consistently lets you down and sends you spinning off into despair, outrage, disappointment.

As it has with the recent hi-jinks and fool’s triumph in Washington that put its foot of hopelessness firmly on my neck and pinned me down all of yesterday. And in that state, Solitude was not the right place to be. I made the wise choice of going to hear Chick Corea’s new trio at SF Jazz and now I’m back on my feet, like the wrestler Anteus who Hercules threw to the ground and each time he arose stronger.

Chick’s trio is named Vigilette and in the liner notes, Robin Kelley writes:

“Vigil is the act of staying awake when one is usually sleeping. We participate in vigils, sometimes to mourn, sometimes to watch over those in need, sometimes to pray or prepare for a celebration, or just to wait. To be vigilant is to be alert, watchful and ready for whatever challenges might come our way. Young people today have coined a new word a new and creative term for vigilance: “wokeness.” To be woke is to be knowledgeable, open, humble, hungry, creative, ready to remake the world.”

How I needed to hear that! Mourning, praying, watching over a country in need, preparing for what I hope will be a celebration on election day, doing my best to stay awake, alert, watchful. But more importantly, how I needed to see knowledge, openness, humility, creativity and the act of remaking the world lived out and made visible and hearable in each note of shared music enacted and offered to a hungry audience. It is not a time to spend too much time alone in company with one’s despair and anger and disappointment and deep sorrow that those who have buried their intelligence, fellow feeling, humility and spent the gifts of a human incarnation to remake the world for their own greed and profit have risen to the top of the power game yet again, placed their by others who likewise have buried their intelligence and compassion. It is a time to be out on the streets or in the jazz clubs or at the poetry readings or in the schools with people. Not just any people, not the people given the script at the rally, but the people who care and do their best to feed their better selves. To share the vigil in the lonely night, forego comfortable sleep to keep alert and watchful and committed to protecting the children from these monsters that are all too real and our present nightmare.

Thank you, Chick Corea, Carlitos Del Puerto, Marcus Gilmore, for your dedication to following your genius, your generosity in bringing it to the world and for your extraordinary acts of remaking the world last night so that we may all return to our own work inspired, determined and refreshed. Friends, let us stay ‘woke.”

The Hot Iron Ball of Shame: A Koan for Our Times

Does anybody remember Zen koans? Those spiritual riddles unanswerable by the rational mind that push the meditator into a different realm of answering with the whole of their being. And then getting “passed” or “failed” (and mostly “failed”) by the Zen master. “What is the sound of one-hand clapping?” is one of the most famous, though today’s Body Music Musicians could answer that literally.

The one that struck my attention goes something like this:

“You swallow a hot iron ball, but you can neither swallow it nor spit it out. What do you do?”

What used to feel like an artificial metaphysical conundrum now feels like the koan of modern day America for anyone who still has a true north on the moral compass, a genuine thinking brain and an actual beating feeling heart. What is going on in Washington and the daily lowering of the bar until the old outrage becomes the new norm—and then sinks down deeper into the swamp of shame— is every day more difficult to bear. If you care one fig for social justice, human rights and healthy living, there’s no way to swallow it and accept it without compromising everything you spent your life fighting for. But if you spit it out, turn off the news, plug your ears and concentrate wholly on mastering your yoga poses, you end up letting the beast maraud unchecked through the land. Meanwhile, that hot iron ball is burning your throat and the pain is real and tangible.

Now that’s a real life koan. There is no one-size-fits-all answer and there’s no answer that lasts more than a moment or a day or so before the next news report heats the ball to burning. But that’s what we have to work with and it takes every ounce of our attention and intention and asks us draw from secret reserves of strength and courage that we might not have ever known we had. And let’s face it: it may feel new for people used to things working within a moderate range of common sense and civil decency, but it’s the same koan Native Americans and African enslaved-people and independent-minded-women have to face forever in this country. These are some of the folks we can turn to in searching for clues as to how to answer the unanswerable.

So while driving about thinking about this, I was listening to Mississippi Fred MacDowell singing “Keep your lamps trimmed and burning” and that seemed like a good start. Without attention to keeping your lamp lit, you get pulled down into the darkness and that does exactly no one any good. He goes on to sing “Children, don’t you worry” and that made me feel a bit hopeful, that worry we do and worry we should, but not too much, because we’ve been through this before, feeling that if this happened, we didn’t know how we’d get through. And then we do. He might have been singing, “Children, don’t get weary” and that is also good advice, because all of this is exhausting—emotionally, spiritually and consequently, physically as the toxins enter our bloodstream and nervous system.

And then “this old world is almost done.” Yeah!! That’s something I need to hear. I want so fervently to believe that this is the last gasp of the good-ole-boys club, the death rattle in the throats of the Trumps/ McConnells/ Bill O-Reilly’s/ Kavanaughs, who are doing their usual gloating that they think they won, but also sensing that their kind is doomed. That old world is almost done. Especially if all our outrage gets focused like a hot white light on the Midterm Elections. Keep that ball in your throat, feel the pain and use it to get out the vote.

That’s my best answer at the moment. And yours?

The Eraser

“A composer’s most important tool is an eraser.” –Arnold Schoenberg

In a particularly thorny spot with my writing at the moment, trying to wrestle 100 different ways to say the same thing down to one, I say to Mr. Schoenberg ” You got that right!” Whether it's composing, writing, cooking or living, knowing what to include and what to leave out, what to keep and what to toss, is key.

The first step in good writing is to splash everything out and don’t hold back. Let it gush.

The second step is to get out your eraser. Take out everything that distracts, that covers, that confuses the main point and chisel it down to the essence.  (I forget which sculptor it was that said that he saw the image in the block of wood and his job was simply to take away the unneeded parts. But there you go.)

Duke Ellington once told an aspiring jazz pianist: “My, you play so many notes.”

An author letter to a friend and said, “Sorry I didn’t have time to make this shorter.”

And so Art is as much about what you don’t say as what you do say. Maybe even more so. As a writer, it’s hard to throw away all those words you wrote, but really, you can’t get attached to them. I often dump them in a “leftover folder” just in case there were some flakes of gold hidden in the gravel that I overlooked.

Some of it has to do with trusting your intuition. When I read something I wrote and I know I got it, I know I got it. When something feels a little off and I find myself saying, “Yes, but it’s important because…” that’s a warning sign. I didn’t get it and I’m trying to convince myself. Let it go!

Of course, these posts are larger unedited and the erasing part is minimal, but that’s just the nature of the beast. For the things that will end up on paper, one needs to take it more seriously. I'm keeping that eraser by my side. 

The Tweeter, the Rapper, the Three-year old Napper

I think anger can be added to death and taxes as one of the certainties of this life. And yet we have so little training as to how to deal with it.

If you’re a Christina Blasey Ford, you go through a lifelong process of trying to understand how to live with the trauma of being violated, you study psychology to find out how the mind and heart and body are connected and where trauma is stored and what triggers it. It doesn’t heal it entirely and certainly doesn’t make it go away. But then when you are confronted with the story in front of more viewers on TV than the Super Bowl, you can calmly answer questions and let the appropriate tears come forth without being wholly overwhelmed by them.

If you’re a Brett Kavanaugh who has had his unearned privilege handed to him on a silver platter and never had to confront his own failings and mistakes, you have no tools to deal with your anger and you get angry at the wrong things. So in front of the same audience, he whines, he yells, he shouts that he’s innocent, he tap dances clumsily around questions that ask him to look at what actually happened, he’s angry that someone dares interrupt his charmed life of white-boy privilege.

And he’s backed by all of this with the number one tantrum-thrower emotionally- stunted narcissist known, unbelievably, shamefully, as our President. He is an angry man, who like his good-ole-boy buddy, had everything handed to him on a gold platter and kept it going by being mean, selfish, dishonest, by lying, by cheating. What the hell is he angry about? Well, that would be a long story. But meanwhile, look what he does—just lashes out impulsively on tweets to keep the anger and hatred and insult boiling.

And then his three-year-old counterpart who doesn’t want to take a nap and throws a tantrum. What’s her excuse? Well, maybe it has to do with being three and being at the mercy of her emotions and not having the brain capacity yet to calmly and coolly understand the situation. So she screams and pounds her fists and who can blame her? It’s appropriate for her developmental stage. But no excuse in a grown man.

And then the angry rapper? Well, here is someone who indeed has something to be angry about. He’s grown up black in a racist society and simply growing up without getting shot by police or gangs is a victory. He has a thousand stories to back up why he is angry and you or I would feel exactly the same if we lived those stories. So what does he do with his anger? He channels it into rap and simply by the act of having to fit it to a beat and rhyme, often remarkably so, means he’s transforming some of that anger through the vehicle of art. But with some exceptions (and hopefully more and more), it falls short. The lyrics themselves radiate anger and hate, some against groups that deserve it (police in the hood) and some that don’t (women).

And so the tweeter, the rapper and the three-year old napper. None of them are perfect models for dealing with anger. For that, we need to go to Count Basie or Ella Fitzgerald or John Coltrane, consummate musicians who put their anger in the crucible of art and shaped it with their sharp intellects, their practiced techniques, their prodigious imaginations, their soulful feeling and came out the other end of redemption and joy. When Count Basie plays the blues, ain’t nothin’ happier than that!

Perhaps you’re getting angry that I’m still rambling on trying to tie this theme together and at the end, don’t have too much to show for it except that catchy title. Well, go make a piece of art and you’ll feel better.

Peaches to Apples

It’s October 1^st. The Autumnal Equinox has come and gone and the northern world turns toward its slumber and rest, preparing for the next cycle of renewal. The produce stands turn from peaches to apples, the days grow shorter, the leaves begin to shed their chlorophyll and reveal their colorful selves. Trader Joes begins its Pumpkin Assault and few foods are left un-pumpkinned— cookies, crackers, cereals, breads, chips, dips, sauces, spices, drinks, coffee, all is fair game. My wife pulled out the Halloween costumes from the basement and modeled them for our grandchildren in Oregon over Skype.  

Even though San Francisco is low on deciduous trees and it has been a long time since I’ve had to rake leaves and jump in the pile, October remains one of my favorite months. I cozy in with my annual Dickens novel, inhale great gulps of that Fall smell in the air and that slight chill, start thinking about hearty soups to make and love the overflow of vegetables at the Farmer’s Market.

I pull out the old Incredible String Band album with October Song, with its poignant imagery of seasonal turning and the “falling leaves that jewel the ground that know the art of dying.”

And maybe that’s what October has been singing to me forever. That we all are bound by our own mortality and the thought of not crunching into a fresh apple again or playing Bach’s Partita or reading a story to our grandchildren or hiking the hills of Marin is a sobering and sorrowful thought. But if we practice the art of dying while we’re living, align ourselves with the cycles of leaf turn and leaf fall and bare branches and new buds and green leaf, we might eventually understand that we need not be afraid. We are perpetually changing and dying and perpetually being re-born in small and big ways and the Big D is just one more turn of the cycle.

So October is here to remind us of the beauty that partners with the wistful song of impermanence, to help us practice that turn to Winter without abandoning hope of Spring, to help us remember to cherish each moment of our time here and turn to the love and comfort of the family, the friends, the hearth and the home. Off to the side of this autumn scene above (from my calendar page and most definitely, not San Francisco!), the humans are bickering and fighting and desperately trying to hold on to their unearned pockets of privilege, but the trees know better and are there to let us know if we would but stop and listen.

Happy October to all!