Alien Invasion

“ Every time is a good time if we know what to do with it.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don’t need to remind you of the list of catastrophes in our face. So much of which would have been preventable had we been more alert, aware, caring for the future. So much suffering could have—and still can—be avoided if we just toned down the greed, the power-mania, the excuses we make to be bad versions of our possible self. 

But when it comes to the “isms,” there is a sliver of understanding as to why people might resist or outrage change their attitude and their practices. Though we would hope for a moral backbone and a rise to their religion’s ethic, let’s face it— we’re constantly disappointing ourselves and others. And the main reason why? In short:

We benefit from it.

Take racism. By any objective standards, white folks had no motivation whatsoever to accept the downfall of slavery because they benefitted so enormously. Got rich off of other’s labor, got to imagine themselves as God’s chosen because of skin color, got to beat someone if they were angry or rape someone if they were horny. And so when slavery officially ended, they did everything they could to keep both the practices and attitudes going. Read A New Form of Slavery and The New Jim Crow for just two examples of how white folks in power manipulated the system so they could still get rich off the unpaid labor of others. To look slavery in the face and see what’s morally reprehensible, to reject the ways of one’s antecedents, to have to build their identity based on their actual character rather than some trumped-up (the right word there!) notion of racial superiority, to actually have to do the work oneself takes a special kind of courage and determination and movement toward empathy, understanding, remorse and compassion. Not impossible, mind you. Some (not enough) have done it.  But most are too lazy or fearful or ignorant or stubbornly holding on to their unearned privilege. And so it goes on. And on. And on.

In most other ism’s, you see the same dynamic at work. Concern for the poor? Hell, no, I got mine and of course, I deserve 30 vintage cars and my house in the Hamptons. Women’s rights? Well, ain’t no one gonna depose this King of His Castle! War? Well, we need their oil and they worship the wrong god and what’s a little casualty statistic in the face of my busy day? Sure, go ahead! You get the idea.

Now climate change comes a little closer to “we’re all it in it together!” But still, the person in Nebraska isn’t worried about rising sea levels and the guy living high in the hill with his own helicopter poised to escape thinks he can afford to keep ignoring it all. As can the folks in the businesses that keep creating the toxic wastes or emissions that eat the ozone layer and profit from it.

And let’s face it. Some weird quirk in the human psyche seems to thrive on needing an enemy to vilify. In my childhood, it was the Communists, especially the Russians. Then came the Muslims and now it’s…… the Democrats?

In the face of this sad fact, I’ve often thought that what we needed to unify us, to make us realize that we’re way overdue to start working together…all of us… is some kind of alien invasion from Mars. One common enemy. Humanity against Martians. Let’s go, team!!!!!

And guess what? That common enemy is here. It’s called the Corona Virus. It doesn’t care what country you’re in, how much money you make, what religion you practice. It doesn’t want to know your sexual preference, your gender, your political affiliation. You’re a human host and it’s out to invade you and the only possible defense? All human beings putting aside their stupefying perceived differences and saying, “Let’s go, team!! We gotta beat this!!!” And if and when we do, finally realizing, “Hey, it was fun to work together and all the people (pay attention, Fox News!) who brainwashed me to hate you didn’t know what they were talking about and there might be something else down the pike— another virus, the melting icecaps, the last desperate stand of hateful power-mad dictators— that we’ll need to beat down. So let’s keep together!”

So sign up now for Team Humanity and let’s get to work! It’s the only way to make sense of what to do with the times we have been given. 

And who knows? Maybe the Martians are coming for a visit!

McCoy and the Rain

Awakening to a sound for sore ears—rain. In this new world where dread and epidemic uncertainty is the new norm, here is something we count on that we’ve been missing here in California and now it’s back. Such a welcome guest in this new day. 

I awoke from a dream about playing the Goldberg Variations on a piano while riding a bicycle and offering $5 to any kid who could correctly identify the song. Amongst my unorthodox teaching methods is paying kids to display knowledge, as I did yesterday with the 8^thgraders standing outside of the SF Jazz Center looking at the large display of photos of jazz musicians on the building across the street. Dug in my pocket for change and ended up paying out 18 cents to three different kids (6 cents each)who correctly identified Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington. (One of my favorite spontaneous intellectual bribes was telling my daughter Talia, then in high school, that I’d give her $10 if she could name the person in a photo in the book I was reading. Without missing a beat, she said, “Franz Kafka.” Apparently, she had just studied him in class. I took out my wallet and paid her on the spot.)

But ah, the 8^thgrade. After some deep doubt when the “mirror of malicious eyes” (some admin folks) tried to paint an ugly interpretation of my unorthodox interactions with this class a month or so ago, I felt restored confidence that their hearts and minds are with me as I chaperoned them on a field trip to The Midsummer’s Night Dream SF Ballet performance. Time to informally chat with many of them one at a time as they sat sketching by City Hall, watched them play so joyfully like little kids at the playground there (I love this quality of playful innocence that our school helps keep alive), was impressed as 12 boys sat through the hour performance far away in the deep balcony in pin-drop silence. These kids give me so much hope and so much pleasure. 

At this time where large-group gatherings are being cancelled left and right, there we were out on the steps of the Opera House with 3000 kids bunched together. When fear rules the roost, logic flies out the window. Our school auction for next Saturday is cancelled, we’re holding our breath about the announcement when school might be closed, but somehow, it was okay for this big crowd to gather to watch Puck turn Bottom into a donkey and have all the four main characters love the wrong person until it all gets set right at the end. Go figure. 

And here I am, on retreat again in Marin County. Last week with my reunited nuclear family riding bikes, now with the 30-years-together men’s group cooking, drinking, eating, talking, joking, hopefully hiking, cooking again. And again. These guys love to cook and love to eat. It is good to be together in this virus-time where isolation is the watchword.

Yesterday, I learned that jazz pianist McCoy Tyner passed away at 81. That used to sound like a ripe old age, but with our eldest men’s group member just turned 80, it’s uncomfortably close to home. I was a big McCoy fan in my early jazz appreciation days, especially his work with the John Coltrane Quartet and am proud to announce that I saw him live at the long-defunct Keystone Korner in San Francisco. So now the sky is weeping at his passing, the French toast is being prepared for breakfast and a new day has dawned worthy of our full capacity for gratitude and our full determination to do something worthy, even if it be just hang out with a bunch of guys for two days. I’ll leave the last word to McCoy. When asked how he achieved such prominence in the Coltrane group, he replied:

To put it simply, it was the fact that I played in a great band…we functioned like one person. It wasn’t like we were four guys on stage doing his own particular kind of thing. In other words, it had to be in relationship to the total. To me, it’s a wonderful way to not only think, but behave. I think to create civility in life and society itself, you must think of yourself in relationship to other people.

R.I.P McCoy Tyner.

Letter to My Reader

Amongst so much else going on, I’m noticing that the number of folks daily reading this Blog is quite small. No wonder that. Everyone’s busy tracking the pathway of the virus or taking the temperature of the Democratic voters or raiding the shelves at Costco preparing for the Apocalypse. Who gives a fig about hearing yet another reflection from a music teacher? I get it. 

But I did have one faithful reader today and to you, I say: “How are you holding up? What are you thinking about these days? How are you responding to all of the above? Are you hoping I’ll say something that gives insight or better yet, lets in a sliver of hope?”

Well, that’s certainly what I would like to read, but don’t know if I’m capable of writing it at the moment. Though truth be told, I had yet another wonderful class with 4^thgraders, first time I’ve taught them since end of January and we just got right into it and both groups mastered the melody of a Hungarian dance song. I told them that this was what I will most miss about school—having a tune in mind and knowing that the kids could play it no problem, with enthusiasm, perseverance, satisfaction. And then be ready for the next layer of texture the next class until four classes later, bam! we’ve got something worth sharing in the Spring Concert. I also told them that if my colleagues get an invitation to teach for a week or two somewhere next year, I will be so happy to jump back into school and teach them again! And they genuinely seemed to like that idea. (I didn’t tell them how happy I’ll be to jump out again without going to staff meetings or writing report cards!)

Well, dear reader, that’s what I’ve got for today. Oh, forgot teaching the 1^stand 2^ndgraders the Charleston knee-move after singing 5 Foot Two and cracking up watching them trying to master it! And most of them did. 

That’s the report for today. Let us see what tomorrow brings. But meanwhile, let us keep bringing our best selves to tomorrow and work to make each day memorable, fun and worthy of children’s time. 

Shoelaces and Sunglasses

Getting older seems to be mostly about shrinkage—the spine curves, the hearing and eyesight diminish and things generally just get pulled down by gravity. Except for shoelaces. Mine start out at 45 inches long and end up somewhere around 58 where they get caught in the bicycle sprocket. The daily tying just seems to stretch them out little by little until they’re untenable, like Dumbo elephant ears flopping around. 

And sunglasses—at least the $10 a pair kind I buy—seem to have a short shelf life before the flimsy plastic frame gets cracked and the “glass” falls out. Superglue could work, but who has patience for that anymore?

So while some days I carry big worlds on my shoulders—from social justice to spiritual awakening—today it was shoelaces and sunglasses. Such a pleasure to thread in the new ones that fit just right and break in the new sunglasses. And equally a pleasure to feel pleasure in small, tangible accomplishments that work and make sense in the face of everything coming down around us that is broken beyond reasonable repair and makes no sense whatsoever. 

So simple— tie our shoes with the laces just right and see the world through new rose-colored glasses. Well, why not?

Uncle John's Bagpipes

It was not an auspicious day back at school. Someone messed up the schedule which cancelled one of my classes and then tried to blame me for not reading the sentence in tiny print buried near the end of a 5-page epistle. We spent the entire staff meeting planning for the alleged “when, not if” closure of the school when the virus comes to San Francisco. Luckily, the kids were lovely and the classes I could teach were fun. But still I came home and felt like the world was becoming harder to bear. I wanted to make like an ostrich and bury my head in the sand of mindless television. Which sometimes is a necessary and needed short-term survival tactic. 

But after three Cheers re-runs, I needed something else. Looking ahead to a few classes that hopefully I’ll actually get to teach, I remembered a Hungarian bagpipe piece that I thought I should try with 4^thgrade. So I set to work transcribing it and arranging it on my Sibelius program and that brought such pleasure. It’s the kind of work that uses the mind, the ear, the imagination and ends with something usable and useful— a great piece of music for kids to play. “Play the Bagpipe, Uncle John” will surely be in the Spring Concert (if school’s still open in May), as will the second piece in the medley, “The Monks Are Walking in Clogs.” 

There simply is no substitute for good work to bring one back to Earth. I turn to face tomorrow, fortified by Hungarian bagpipe music. Bring it on!

No Progress

“I don’t develop. I am.”  —Picasso

“There is no progress in art or religion.”  — Gary Snyder

Or teaching apparently.

In 1978-79, my soon-to-be wife and I took a trip around the world, her to investigate textile arts, me to study music, both of us to get a glimpse into diverse cultures. I had a deep and rich experience studying the maddalam drum in the state of Kerala, India and looked forward to a similar immersion in Javanese gamelan music in Solo, Java. 

Alas, that was not to be as I contracted hepatitis (probably in Nepal) and lay in bed for some 4-weeks in my small room in Java. How to pass the time while waiting to recover? 

Why, might as well write a book. Never mind that I had taught for a mere three years at The San Francisco School (where I would return for 42 more) and that I didn’t have any of my class planning books with me. Just buy three Indonesian notebooks, get out the Bic pen and start writing about your experience of Orff Schulwerk. 

And so I did. Today, I uncovered those three notebooks and expected to find nonsense from that oh-so-young immature inexperienced teacher. But lo and behold, there were some of the very same ideas, almost some of the same sentences that I recently published in my book Teach Like It’s Music. And then I got out some of my old planning books to look at former classes, again expecting some off-base uninspired ideas and material and again, “Hey, that’s pretty much the class I did last month!” On one hand, depressing that I don’t seem to be progressing and coming up with new ideas, thoughts, musical arrangements (well, actually plenty of the latter) and on the other, affirmation that the blueprint for the oak is in the acorn and the only difference is the number of rings in the ever-expanding trunk. 

So below is a photo of the planning books and an excerpt from that Indonesian book. Which incidentally, I did have my brother-in-law type up and edit a bit and sent to some Princeton publishing company that rejected it. I later thought, “Whew. Thank goodness. That would have been embarrassing!” But looking through it again, I think it would have somewhat held up. 

Go figure.

Final Trimester

“March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb (or vice-versa)” was the proverb of my New Jersey childhood, a saying that really meant something in a place where seasons had more of a bite to them than the simply 10 degrees warmer of my San Francisco adulthood. Yesterday as we turned into March, the day began at 50 degrees and ended around 64. The rains will subside and the winds pick up, but the plums and magnolias and daffodils have already bloomed in February, so not the big contrast of snow turning to flowers. 

The idea of life lived in three-month units began for me with the seasons and continued into my college years, where I studied on campus at Antioch for three-month blocks, then went off to work somewhere for three months and then returned and repeated this cycle for the whole four years there. Each trimester was like a miniature lifetime. 

As an adult teaching school, the 9-month block followed by the almost 3-month summer vacation had some of the same quality. But it was in 2000 when I began job-sharing with my two-colleagues that I was back in the college rhythm, each of us getting three months off during the year (plus summer) to travel and teach, to write, to study. Some years I would teach in the Fall, take the Winter trimester off, return to teach in the Spring, then off again in Summer. This continued for 12 years until we began the Intern Program and all three of us were there together in the Fall and then each had around 6 weeks off in the months to come. But the general feeling of the 3-month rhythm remained.

And now we turn to March. Three months from now, I will arrive at the last week of my 45 years teaching at the school. This feels like a milestone marker and as I return to school tomorrow after my recent 6 weeks off, I’m thinking that today I will go deep into my closet and take out my planning books from all these years and see if there are any interesting classes set down there that I had forgotten about and that I might dust off and give them one last hurrah before walking off into the sunset. That might be interesting.

And speaking of seasonality, my wife’s recent 70^thbirthday—and my own coming up in a year and a half— feels like another marker that places us in the late Fall of our life’s Seasons. Spring was childhood, all flowers and future and new beginnings. A long Summer of adulthood, actively doing, doing, doing, with a bit of beach-time and strolling aimlessly with an ice-cream cone. Fall the hairs on the head turned like Autumn leaves (though the opposite direction, from color to grey), friends began to fall by the wayside, there was a chill in the air, less growing and more gathering the harvest. But now late Fall points to the Winter of our years, sitting quietly by the fireside (after the 50 miles we biked in the last two days!), the nights long, the days cold, but still some beauty amidst the bare-branched starkness. 

But for now, still classes to plan and three-year olds to sit on the floor with and though I won’t jump up as spryly as they do, I can still skip around the room with them like a frisky lamb and roar with them like a fierce lion. 

Welcome March and my final school trimester!