The Mathematics of Astonishment

This is the month of miracles. Each day, I get another lesson in the mathematics of astonishment. The cornucopia of almost a half-century of harvest is overflowing with fruits and flowers and each one delicious. No peasant finding a god’s face clearly marked in a tree trunk could be more overwhelmed by it all than I am. 

 

And so yesterday’s lesson: what is the sum of 8 miracles x 1? Get out your pencil.

 

1) A lifetime ago, I arrived at a Quaker Boarding School in the North Carolina mountains and before I was gifted with a named path called Orff, already had the sense that making music with these middle school kids was important for them and me alike. 

 

2) And so I started a jug band based on nothing but listening to a Jim Kweskin record and some blues and ragtime piano chops in their infant stages. 17 of the 30 kids in the school and three other teachers joined up and figured out how to organize some semblance of coherent sound on spoons, washboards, kazoos and even a trumpet mouthpiece. 

 

3) Near the end of my 6 months there, I single-handedly organized a two-week tour of the South with nothing at my disposal but some addresses and a few phone numbers. No e-mail, no text, no cell phone. Using just dial phones and stamped letters, I contacted some 15 different places—alternative schools, community centers, a radio station, churches and more— to house us and host our performances in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee. I was 21 years old. 

 

4) I also rented an old school bus, was allowed to share the driving with one of the other teachers (none of us older than 24), loaded up those seventeen 12-14 year old kids, helped organize the food and set off. For two weeks. With no cell phones. No thick notebooks of signed legal documents. Just trust in our abilities to pull it off, the guidance of fate and the kindness of strangers. 

 

5) I reunited with many of these students some eight years at the school’s 50^thAnniversary and some semblance of that Jug Band performed again (minus the other three teachers). Almost everyone remembered all of the tunes and at least some of the words. In some attic somewhere, we found an old group journal we kept and laughed about sentences like this: “Doug picked up six hitchhikers yesterday.”

 

6) There has been a core of about six of the students who mostly have kept in touch with each other throughout the years and a few that I’ve maintained some kind of contact with. But no one had been in touch with one of the teachers these last 48 years and only a few with the other one. The third teacher had married one of the students!

 

7) A few nights ago, I had a dream about two of the students and got in touch with one feeling the dream was trying to tell me something. In the course of writing to her, I got the idea of a Zoom reunion. She got out her e-mail list and last night, we had a two-hour reunion which could have gone on four more. It was the first time that all four teachers and these six students who represented some core spirit of the school had been in one place together since almost a half-century ago! Each one told some of their life story, I screen-shared some of the old photos from that time, and then we sang some of the songs—mics off, of course. One of the teachers said that this was the happiest moment of the entire past year for her and another eloquently spoke about how singing two notes of these songs was like smelling your favorite cookies in Grandma’s kitchen, instantly transporting him back to that more innocent and most joyful time.

 

8) After that delightful reunion, I turned to my nightly reading (A Gentleman in Moscow) and within twenty seconds, came upon this paragraph:

 

When you reach our age, it all goes by so quickly. Whole seasons seem to pass without leaving the slightest mark on our memory…But even as the weeks go racing by in a blur for us, they are making the greatest of impressions upon our children. When one turns seventeen and begins to experience that first period of real independence, one’s senses are so alert, one’s sentiments so finely attuned that every conversation, every look, every laugh is writ indelibly upon one’s memory. And the friends that one happens to make in those impressionable years? One will meet them forever after with a welling of affection.

 

This is the time in a live class when after telling this story, we would sing “Old Doc Jones” and find out who believed it. “Thumbs up” means that every single detail has to be true. 

What do you think?

 

You’ve noticed my recent posts about the inflated use of the word “Amazing!” and now prepare yourself because the real truth, the no-kidding-every-word-truth is…

 

Thumbs up.

 

And that, my friends, is amazing.

How Else Can We Do This?

(An article I wrote for the local Orff Chapter. Don't think many of those folks follow the Blog, so I'm also posting it here.)

 

Whether I’m planning an Orff class for kids, an Orff workshop with adults, playing a familiar jazz tune or imagining a social policy, this is the motto that guides me. It has kept my work fresh and new for over 45 years, kept my music constantly interesting (to me, at least!) and given a certain freshness and vitality to all aspects of my life. 

 

In the face of crisis—and that’s clearly where we all are now—it also has proven to be a handy companion and a useful discipline. It’s a question that helps keep things moving, keep things bearable, that opens the door to a new perspective and sheds light on the possible renewal just around the corner from the collapse.

 

Like all of us, I have always planned ahead “as if” what I plan can actually happen— and it almost always does. Until now. Everything changed on March 16^thwhen school announced we would be closing for a few weeks. A few weeks? Little did we know. The pandemic clearly had other plans. 

 

And so as each plan became a provisional possibility that never happened, I turned to my companion question: “How else can we do this?” Now it was not just a luxury that made music classes more intriguing, more interesting, more satisfying—it was the necessary question that determined if and how I could continue with the things that had sustained me throughout my many long years of teaching. 

 

“How else can we do this?” I suspect you know the first answer— ZOOM!! Whoever could have imagined I would turn to a technological solution as the savior? But so it was. Zoom allowed me to finish the last three months of my 45 years teaching children at The San Francisco School. Not the way I would have wished, of course, but still a chance to keep the connections built in the Fall and Winter continuing through the Spring. And what of my annual Summer teacher-trainings? Zoom allowed a version of Orff-Afrique, my Jazz Course and many courses from the SF Orff faculty to sustain us through the summer. Zoom allowed me to “go to” St. Louis, Little Rock, Canada, New Zealand, Russia, Armenia, Ukraine and beyond to keep some connection minus the hand-held circles, singing in canon, dinners out and immersion in different cultures. 

 

“How else can we do this?” Back in April, I started an Alumni Zoom singing, gathering the “kids” now 30, 40 and even 50 years old together to sing the old songs, many with their own children on their laps. We did this once a week for some three months and it was also here that I put together a slide show and got to give a sort of farewell speech to the people, kids and former teachers, who had lived that life together at the SF School. The Alumni Sing continues, now once a month and my alum “grandkids” are learning a lot of the repertoire their parents did.

 

“How else can we do this?” Since my wife worked (for 42 years) as the art teacher at The San Francisco School, my daughters Kerala and Talia attended school for 11 years each and Talia now teaches at school in her 10^thyear, I had always hoped my grandchildren could go there and I could be their music teacher. But San Francisco is an expensive place for an alum from our school to live, especially since we told them to follow their bliss and not care about money! So with my grandchildren Zadie and Malik in Portland, Oregon, the best I could do was to an occasional guest class at their wonderful local public school whenever I visited.

 

Until now. With Zoom, I’ve started a weekly singing time with Zadie’s 3^rdgrade class which looks like it will continue throughout the year. Isn’t that a pleasure? We’ve sung getting-to-know-you songs, Halloween songs and recently, songs about food to lead us to Thanksgiving. I get to teach my granddaughter after all!

 

“How else can we do this?” Zoom was not the only answer. Knowing that it was safer to be outside six feet or more apart, I began a neighborhood singing time on the street and sidewalk. In the Spring, we gathered twice a week for about 45 minutes, took a break in the summer and resumed in the Fall, now once every two weeks. It is mostly the neighbors with kids ranging from 2 to 10 years old, neighbors who didn’t know each other before this, but have certainly come to enjoy each other now. One definition of community is a group of people who know the same songs and that is exactly what we’ve become. Drawing from my repertoire of over 200 songs that I’ve done in our daily Singing Times at the SF School, I’ve shared some of the greatest hits that are just right for the different ages of kids. Songs with motions, songs with a lot of repetition or choruses to join in on (no printed words needed), songs for different occasions (lots of protest songs, recently Halloween songs), clapping games (to be played just with the family members) and even dances adapted for the situation. Turns out the kids—and adults—are pretty good singers so at least a few times a month I can actually hear songs sung in canon or in parts! (None of which works on Zoom!) 

 

 “How else can we do this?” With legal pressures being as they are, my casual neighborhood solution of singing outside properly distanced probably can’t happen at school. And isn’t that a shame. But while we wait for the vaccine and proper leadership to control the pandemic, why not get together your own neighborhood sing? And wouldn’t it be wonderful if such things could become a new cultural norm of the future, not depend upon pandemics to organize? We are made to gather, to sing our pleasures and sorrows side-by-side or square-by-square together. Be in on Zoom with folks far-away or out on the street with your neighbors, the songs goes on. 

It's Over Now

Imagine if every day at school or work, some bully sitting next to you keeps poking you over and over again. One day he’s absent and you realize what a relief it is not to be constantly poked and prodded. Not only a relief from the pain and annoyance of these violations of your body, but a relief from the anticipation of when the next one will come, from having to recover from the bruises where the last one was. And if the bully is finally expelled or moves away, you realize that you can relax your clenched body and get on with your life. 

 

That’s what it feels like to me knowing that four-years of constant jabbing and pinching and punching is finished. It’s over now. But not quite. So I offer what will hopefully be my last re-active song parody inspired by Carmen Macrae’s version of Thelonious Monk’s composition Well You Needn’t. Listen to her version first and then substitute my words: https://youtu.be/qYADfnI-iSs

 

You say you weren’t beat, well, you needn’t.

You’re tryin’ to cheat, well, you needn’t.

Can’t admit your defeat, well, you needn’t.

It’s over now, it’s over now.

 

You’re re-countin’ the votes, well, you needn’t.

You’re pullin’ our coats, well, you needn’t.

You’re singin’ wrong notes, well, you needn’t.

It’s over now, it’s over now.

 

It’s over now, it’s over now,

You had your fun, so take a bow.

You lost the lead, Dems did the deed, time to concede, get outta town.

Take the blow, it's time to go, let's close the show down.

 

You’re cryin’ “fake news!”, well, you needn’t.

Not tyin’ your shoes, well, you needn’t.

Lyin’ “Didn’t lose!”, well, you needn’t.

It’s over now, it’s over now. 

 

Miracles

 

Moses parting the Red Sea. Jesus turning water into wine. Buddha standing up and taking seven steps immediately after his birth. These minor miracles don’t interest me at all.

 

But the one I experienced today confirmed, as many similar miracles have before, that this world is mysterious, unfathomable and there are unseen hands and unheard voices guiding us in their own inexplicable way. Not with bells and whistles and visions of the Virgin Mary and oil lasting beyond its normal shelf length. Smaller, more intimate, less world-shattering and more, “Well, isn’t that interesting?”

 

Like this morning. For decades, I have woken in the morning and gone straight to the meditation pillow to ease myself into the day with good posture and attentive breath and the sense of awakening with the dawn. Lately, I’ve noticed that those slyly evil voices of the electronic Sirens trying to lure me to my doom have been succeeding a bit, as I sometimes check my phone texts or e-mail or Facebook before sitting my morning zazen. But today, I passed them all by and while sitting on the cushion, tried to recall a haiku that expressed the proper order of things in a life well-lived. And thought that perhaps later I would search for it.

 

Meanwhile, it would have been my Dad’s 102^ndbirthday today and to honor the occasion, I was curious if I wrote anything about his last birthday on earth back in 2006. So after zazen, I found that year’s journal and lo and behold… (Hollywood-miracle-approaching-movie-music here)… it opens with that very haiku!!!!! 

 

These are the kinds of miracles that interest me. Two seemingly random thoughts met and appeared together in the full depth of some mysterious connection. A world that appears to be random and chaotic and utterly incomprehensible reveals these hidden links that thread together. 

 

And the haiku? 

The messenger

Offers the branch of plum blossoms

And then the letter. 

-      Kikaku

 

Nature first. Take in the color, the fragrance, the beauty and then—and only then— turn to the world of human affairs. Smell the flowers, then read the letter, respond to the letter. And then get out of the house and observe yet more miracles— the leaves following their appointed schedule of turning colors, the rain returning to relieve the thirsty grass, the simple fact of being alive to witness and partake of it all. The miracles that count. 

And now, to my mail.

Reversing the Ratio

“If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.”                           – Michelangelo

 

Having just come from my 38^th  Orff Conference (and the first Virtual one), I couldn’t help but notice in the chat comments all the affirmations—"Wonderful!  Amazing! Love you!” There is this effusive, overflowing, gushing sense of affirmation in the Orff Community, people who feel they’ve found the El Dorado of adult professions constantly reminding each other of how wonderful we are, how wonderful the Orff approach is, how wonderful it is that we get to get up and move like chickens or make bird sounds on recorders or play xylophone improvisations with no wrong notes. 

 

And it is. All of that is great, as far as it goes.

 

But I couldn’t help but feel a little discomfort that we were in a constantly self-affirming cultish kind of loop and that our rush to affirm and celebrate each other and our work has perhaps tipped too far. Yes, I prefer it to mean-spirited criticism, cutthroat competition and people stepping over each other to climb up some ladder of success, But might swimming in the sound-bytes of superlatives with multiple exclamation points  weaken our sense of muscular criteria for what is truly worthy of admiration and appreciation? Might we be rushing too quickly to praise and sidestepping constructive critique? Might we be diminishing the meaning of applause if we give a standing ovation to the orchestra simply for picking up their instruments and playing the first five notes without a mistake?

 

In my book Teach Like Its Music, I have a chapter about the importance of Repetition, Repetition, Repetition, Variation. There is no exact formula, but one commonly found in music is the 3 to 1 ratio:

 

Skip, skip, skip to my Lou.

Skip, skip, skip to my Lou.

Skip, skip, skip to my Lou.

Skip to my Lou, my darling.

 

On the other side of “Fantastic!” is “Nicely done, but have you considered this?” “Okay, but that section needs some re-thinking or further practice.” “Hmm. How can we do this better?” The thoughtful inhale is as important as the exuberant exhale and indeed, perhaps more so. Our 3 to 1 ratio seems to be “Amazing! Amazing! Amazing! Is it possible to consider how can we do this just a little bit better?” What if we reversed it? 

 

“How can we do this better?

How can we do this better yet?

How can we do this even better?

Nice job.” 

 

Perhaps an occasional “Amazing!” for the fourth line, but I suspect that if we’ve paid close attention to the details and worked hard to craft our lesson, we wouldn’t feel it as “AMAZING!” but simply as the natural result of work well done. The “awesome/ amazing/ incredible” exhalations are confessions of sorts that we are overcome with your genius as a teacher because we have no idea how you did it. And that means we can avoid considering the steps and simply admire your innate talent or charisma, worship and adore you in the celebrity sense and excuse ourselves from finding our own genius. Of course, coming from a culture that daily gives over our innate power and beauty to “the stars,” be they entertainers, athletes or politicians, it’s no surprise that this leaks into every corner of our collective life. And so it takes an extra bit of awareness to avoid that trap. 

 

So the next time you say “Wonderful!” after a workshop, remember Michelangelo’s quote:

 

“If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.”

 

and reverse the 3 to 1 ratio.

 

Work

Work.

Work.

Praise.

 

PS: I worked really hard on these thoughts. Aren’t they wonderful?!!!!!

 

 

 

How to Win Friends and Influence People

Based on my extensive research on how people respond to my Facebook posts, I’ve come up with this handy, dandy list of what will make you loved and adored. Facebook style, that is. It’s a little dopamine hit every time you see those “likes,” “hearts” and comments and that's a big perk of posting. Though I don’t think St. Peter is adding them up. Nevertheless, here are some tips:

 

1) Images outdo words in that one-picture-is-worth-a-thousand of them way.

 

2) Short is better than long. Think haiku instead of epic poetry, the ad jingle over the philosophical essay.

 

3) Grief, sorrow, political outrage are not best-sellers. If people wanted to go to the dark side, they would have opened the news instead of Facebook

 

4) However, personal problems that ask for suggestions can do well—everyone likes to exercise their empathy genes and show off their advice wisdom. (Or perhaps get some secret pleasure that someone else is suffering more than them?)

 

5) Photos of your dinners are low-down on the list and just make people hungry or angry that they can’t afford the restaurant you went to.

 

6) Photos of you from long ago are a bit of a hit, especially if you’re bald or white haired and used to be a hippy with long flowing locks or a big Afro. 

 

7) You get more response if you stay in your lane. People who know me from my music classes are happier to hear me talk about teaching music or seeing a photo of the same because it calls up their feeling of when we were together in the music class. My thoughts about Zen Buddhism or poetry are not best-sellers.

 

8) Extra points if you have a silly Halloween photo of you and two beloved colleagues—triple your likes!

 

9) If the last three examples show you (and others) in an exuberant moment of joy (as my dancing with kids photo from 1978 just did), the hearts come pouring in.

 

10) The number-one sure-fire hit? Babies! (Except not right after they’re born.)

 

The punchline? This exhaustive sociological study shows that humans are made for joy, connection, empathy. Even though we’re vulnerable to the hate speech and the spun lies of you-know-who and the you-know-which-news-station and that also gives us a certain energy, at our core, we’d rather give helpful advice, offer our Facebook-friend shoulder, feel the connection, share the laughter and joy, feel our hope and faith for the future of humanity uplifted by the photo of a baby brimming with human possibility. There’s no avoiding conflict, suffering, the dark side of life, but Facebook confirms that we’re all yearning and leaning toward the light. Let us organize our lives—our families, our schools, our politics, accordingly. 

 

Now please click “Like.”

 

Packing Up the Circus

It’s happening. Four news stories on my AOL News and not a single one about that guy or showing his image. Instead, Biden edging his way into the media spotlight and when I read “Biden considering cabinet picks,” my body doesn’t grow hard with protective armor, wondering which absolutely incompetent heartless moron is going to wreak havoc in their appointed field. 

 

The Circus of Incompetence is taking down the tent and getting out of town, and though four years too late, still not a moment too soon. We are only just beginning to realize the toll this has taken on our psyche, our bodies, our tender hearts. What a relief to read a few news stories that don’t assault you or outrage you or whittle your faith in the goodness of humanity down to a stub of a dull pencil. I took a moment today to imagine if the worst had happened and four more years of this relentless attack on basic human decency would have not only continued, but grown worse and knew that I wouldn’t feel as I do today, relaxed, enjoying the sound of the welcome rain, arranging a Zoom call with some of the first kids I taught 48 years ago knowing we wouldn’t have to spend a minute of our precious time wondering how we were going to survive another day of the nightmare, never mind another four years. Life in the pandemic is far from normal, but the slow return to the normal of waking up to the welcome of a day without putting on the armor to survive the attack, well, that is so much more meaningful to me than being able to go to an indoor restaurant or even teach a live Orff workshop. The constant dark cloud over the head, that constant earthquake tremor of the ground we walk on, that constant ear-splitting siren of alarm is changing. The sun is emerging, the birds are singing, the ground feels more solid and dependable. It is a relief beyond words, even as I try to find some to express it.

 

And you, how are you feeling, my friend?