Whether the Weather

Whether the weather be cold

Or whether the weather be hot.

We’ll weather the weather whatever the weather,

Whether we like it or not!

 

We all speak from our experience and since mine has included a fair amount of plane travel, I have the stories that go with it. Much to the dismay of my daughter Talia, who starts to roll her eyes whenever I begin to tell one: “Dad…No one cares about your boring story!”

 

But now it’s her turn. 48 hours ago, she set off for the airport in Paris and met her first hurdle— a Covid negative test sent to her e-mail that mysteriously disappeared just when she needed it to board the plane. After a few wi-fi re-connections, she got it just as the plane doors were about to close.

 

And then they sat on the runway for an hour. Of course. Which meant that the connection time in Dublin was reduced and she found herself running yet again to board— just as the doors were about to close. 

 

But her travel woes were just beginning. When she arrived in Chicago for her final one-hour flight to join us in Michigan, she discovered that her American flight had been cancelled a week before and she was scheduled for a flight two days (!) later. Apparently, without American letting her know about either ahead of time. She went to Customer Service and joined the line of some 50 people— with two agents. Apparently, there were tornado warnings and some 300 flights at O-Hare Airport had been cancelled. Not looking good.

 

So she decided to jump ship to United, booked a flight on the phone and fled to another terminal (of course) and just hoped that her luggage from the American flight would get to her someday. This might have been the end of the story, but nope, we’re just getting warmed up here. 

 

So the short version is that in the next 18 hours, flights were either postponed or cancelled eight different times, she took an Uber to a Best Western (paid for both herself), looked into a rental car for the next morning just in case and not a single one to be had, went back to the airport and stood online for another 90 minutes with American to find out about her luggage, witnessed part of the airport ceiling collapsing and a fight between an irate white man (of course) and a customer service representative that required security guards to haul him away, got a 1:30 United booking with that kept receding to 3:30, finally got on the plane and when she arrive in Traverse City, had to stay on the plane another 25 minutes waiting for a gate. We were all grateful that we believe in gun control. 

 

By the time she entered the car—miraculously, with her luggage! (another story)— she had been traveling (in one form or another) for 48 hours. We drove the one hour to our summer retreat, she hugged her mother, sister, nephew and niece and we all jumped into the cool refreshing waters of Lake Michigan, her with a jubilation unmatched by any previous visits here. 

 

After a lovely dinner and fun family jigsaw puzzle time, she was about to go to sleep when a storm arose with a wind that entered the cottage and blew everything helter-skelter. We rushed out to clear the deck, heard the call of our next-door neighbor who had been doing the same when her door slammed shut and locked, went over with our extra key and helped her batten down the hatches, lighting flashing non-stop over the lake and the wind feeling like hurricane proportions. 

 

And so the opening rhyme. We “in-control” human beings are still at the mercy of the weather, sometimes with the annoying inconveniences of flight cancellations and sometimes with deadly serious consequences. Which appear to be getting yet more alarming and threatening partly because we think it’s essential to drive to the malls to buy things we don’t need. 

 

Meanwhile, grateful to have the family reunited and let’s see what tomorrow will bring.

True Summer

And so the page turns to the next chapter of the summer, an old familiar story‚ some 40 August visits to the Lake Michigan “cottage” made perpetually new by the ever-evolving main characters. Particularly my grandchildren. In the first 24 hours, I was thoroughly defeated by 9-year old Zadie in Rummy 500 and trounced by 6-year old Malik in Trash (another card game) and happy to lose, because the real winning is simply to be in their company. And then into the waves of Lake Michigan amidst shrieks and watery crashes, some solitude in the back lake re-starting my annual swimming routine, food shopping and a long needed new bathing suit in the still charming town of Frankfort, dinner on the deck minus the sunset due to clouds. Wife, two daughters (the second arriving tomorrow), two grandchildren, son-in-law working in Portland, but having his own family reunion with siblings come to visit. 

 

And of course, books— lots of them— a bike to circle the road around Upper Herring Lake, the walk up the steep Sugar Bowl dune tomorrow, the first of my 70’s and confidence I can still make it. A host of other annual traditions—the Cherry Bowl Drive In, the Cool Spot ice cream parlor, the walk to the lighthouse, looking for Petoskey stones on the beach and taking out the canoe when the water is calm. Usually all squeezed into one week before I go off to teach in Toronto, but this year I did the Toronto Course online in July and three full weeks stretch out ahead. True summer. 

 

In the seasonality of our lives, I’ve loved them all, but Summer has mostly been the time when the busyness and business slows down, when the outdoor life prevails and sea, sand, sky, stars, silence and solitude sends the spirit soaring and one gets the sensation that all the other seasons prepare for this, the real deal. The childhood sense of long, long days with nothing more to do than await the chimes of the ice cream truck, of letting the mind drift and gaze at clouds or stars or ducks on a pond, of relaxing the border of skin when the perfect temperature of air outside allows the body to feel inside and outside as one, not bracing against cold nor fanning away heat. 

 

As a child who deeply questioned the institution of school, summer was a blissful freedom. And in my revenge against school, I became a teacher who brought a bit of summer into the classroom—and then felt that same release into a 10-week vacation! (Now severely threatened as school start earlier and earlier in August. Stop!!!). So that was my rhythmic bliss for some 35 years and then the next 35 teaching Orff courses, first around the U.S. and then the world. But still some time to combine the teaching summer with summer’s teaching wherever I went, but most especially, in this annual trip to Michigan. 

 

Zadie invites me to play Boggle, where I could go down in yet another glorious defeat—but truth be told, she’ll need another few years to beat me. But at the end of three weeks, who knows? 

It's the Law!

 

“My freedom to extend my arm goes as far as your face.”   - Fran Leibowitz

 

Such a pleasure to hear the pilot on the plane clearly state that not wearing masks during the flight was a violation of Federal Law and would result in being escorted off the plane. (In mid-flight, I wondered?) Having just discussed with a friend whether the essential element in restoring a civil society and ensuring justice was the law or personal ethics, this was a point in favor of the law. An intelligent and just government will ensure that while you’re entitled to believe any crazy conspiracy theory you want, there are limits on how you can act on it (the face of your neighbor while extending your crazed conspiracy arm). If you refuse, you will suffer the consequences. The insanity of the T. Error was precisely the loss of such consequence, the wild dogs of rabid hatred and ignorance unloosed without a dogcatcher in sight. 

 

I wish we could extend the law’s arm beyond flights, require proof of vaccination to enter stores or concerts or restaurants. After all, the Delta variant and resurgence of Covid has everything to do with anti-vaxers refusing the collective move to herd immunity and adversely affecting everyone else. It is a perfect example of how law is indeed necessary to ensure both our civil and physical health. 

 

And yet law alone is never enough. Without a clear inside understanding of why any law is in place, a moral sense of why a particular action is just, decent and simply the right thing to do, nothing will change in a significant way. Witness the enduring legacy of white supremacy. We had the laws that gave voting rights to blacks, abolished Jim Crow, required school integration and more, but the people never convinced from the inside to move their moral compass towards justice simply found ways to work around the laws or ignore them or repeal them. 

 

And so we need both. The education and culture that leads people to their better selves and the law that protects us from those who refuse to do so. During the pilot’s announcement, he also encouraged us all to be kind and respectful and it was a good sign that the culture of air travel is both clear about the law and encouraging us to be nicer than the norm. 

 

My hopes that all our cultural institutions keep moving in both directions. 

 

 

Back to the Airport

And so we finished in fine fettle, lovely closing, farewell staff lunch, traffic-friendly drive back to SF, an evening unpacking, re-packing, cleaning out the refrigerator and up at 4:30 am for the cab that never came and I switched to Uber (still trying to support cabs, but this was not a happy moment!). Back to the airport that was such a big part of my previous life and feeling some happiness to be on the move again, as I have been fairly constantly the last 30 years or so. My flight actually had free movies on a screen on the seat ahead (yeah!), got to my so familiar O-Hare Airport in time to hop on the next flight and 10 minutes from boarding, the time suddenly jumped to 3 hours ahead—ye ole delayed flight! 

 

Well, I did have some notes to send out to the newly-graduated Level III to complete the loop, so might as well do it in the airport. And so I did and now with the departure continuing to change from 4:15 to 4:30 to 5:15, time to head to the gate and see if it will recede yet further. I could complain, but besides airport delay stories at the top of the list of the most boring (as my daughter constantly reminds me), I’m okay listening to my Audible book, walking a bit, reading a bit, the usual potpourri of ways to pass time before arriving at the place where you hope to be wholly in the center of time. Especially on a wide beach, a cool fresh lake and the grandchildren by my side. After teaching 5 plus hours a day for 10 days, hosting my birthday party on the weekend in-between, getting notes together, meeting with the team, the whole nine yards of the busy, scheduled life with deadlines, expectations, and responsibilities to others, you would think three weeks of laying on a beach as long as I want is the real paradise I’m thirsting for.

 

But not so. The teaching was its own form of deep summer, the sense of being wholly embraced in the center of what a good life can offer. Truth be told, I often get a little restless with the other kind. But eventually acclimate and accommodate to its different pace and possibilities. 

 

Grateful to have both. And now, Traverse City plane, are we ready?

Proper Proportion

There are a lot of happy people this evening at Hidden Valley Music Seminar. Having just shared performances summarizing some of their experience these past two weeks in Levels I, II and III, they passed through the mild anxiety of public performance and came out shining, each Level and each piece within each Level a stunning piece of art running the full range of expression from whimsical, zany, profound, dynamic, touching and more adjectives than this sentence can hold. And unlike the trauma of childhood piano recitals, it was the group effort that really sang out, the kind in which each person was necessary to the other and it was the merging of their unique skills that brought it all together. 

 

It would be tempting to say that every minute of every day in this intense 12 day gathering of music and dance has been happy. But of course we know that this could never be. 60 people living in close quarters is ripe ground for some kind of conflict, from mild annoyance to explosive frustration. It’s simply the law of the human condition. Now add to that people coming face to face with all the shortcomings that inevitably arise when you see that your neighbor can dance more effortlessly than you, your partner is playing lightning-speed recorder while you’re struggling with Hot Cross Buns, the hot drummers are flashing their virtuosity around while you’re still working on keeping a steady beat. And because the Orff approach asks for an impossible range of skills in so many areas, everyone—including the teachers— is destined to hit some kind of wall. 

 

And then there’s all the social doubts. You like this one, but he seems to like that one. Those people went out to eat and somehow forgot to invite you. You need some space and your roommate needs to talk. There’s no end of opportunity for some level of conflict.

 

The music doesn’t give you a free pass from it all or effortlessly solve things simply by singing a song, but it does keep things in proper proportion and offer its healing balm many times over. Not only the joy and connection of singing, playing and dancing together, but the added bonus of actively creating something together. 

 

And so tomorrow it comes to its final chord. Looking back, there have been tensions resolved and unresolved, but tonight, the hard-earned chords blended seamlessly and people left the theater so happy, smiling, hugging and yes, continuing to gather to sing. The big problem with the conflict we see in America is not the conflict itself, but the unnatural proportion of it that’s beyond the grasp of the normal highs and lows of human interaction. Conflict we will always have, but if kept within the proper boundaries, it is resolvable, healable, solvable, understandable, livable.

 

And so there are a lot of happy, happy people here tonight at Hidden Valley Music Seminar. 

 

And I am one of them. 

A Story for Every Occasion

I’m noticing something a little different about my teaching these days, live or online. If I sing a particular song or play a piece or dance a dance or get a question from a student, chances are that there is a companion story that goes with it. “This is what happened in my 4^thgrade class when we played this piece” or “This is how I learned this piece” or “This play speaks in images the deep condition of humanity and what the world is asking us to consider.” This has been true a long time, the way I feel music as its own self-contained beauty, but also as a doorway into so many other intriguing and necessary passages of the human experience. 

 

So finishing my 8^thday of teaching Level III, there has hardly been a piece I’ve taught that didn’t also carry with it a story from my life, one that I hope touches some universal experience that drives the point home deeper and will help make the experience memorable for the people playing and singing the music. Who may become part of my next round of stories about this piece or carry it forth into their own storied world and share it with the children. 

 

Today, I talked about the setting for one of the pieces Orff and/or Keetman composed and how I used it as the climatic piece in a 5^thgrade version of the Greek myth Demeter and Persephone.This happened some 35 years ago, but as I began to describe the play we put on and the background to this particular piece, my voice cracked. For it was the piece that heralded the return of Persephone to the upper world and her reunion with her mother after a long exile. 

Between little sobs, I could hardly complete my sentences, but there you go— the power of art properly rendered in which an amateur 5^thgrade play can move one at the same level as Yo Yo Ma playing Bach on his cello or Keith Jarrett playing a solo jazz ballad. 

 

And that was the real lesson of the day. Not how the piece was a good example of a I-V-IV chord progression, how it used thirds harmonies, how it could work equally on recorder or xylophone or how skillfully the bass accompaniment was handled. All of which is true. But I hope that the Level III students noted how seeing their teacher publicly cry remembering a sublime moment in a 5^thgrade play 35 years ago is the deeper reason why we’re doing this work. 

 

A story for every occasion and the occasion is to dig deeper into the full glory of a life lived to the edges of joy and sorrow. 

Homecoming

The afterglow of the birthday celebration cut in half by numbers from the relentless pandemic, but made beautiful by the sharing with some 30 friends from all corners and times of my life, the touching video sent by Brazilian folks and the hundreds of one-sentence love notes sent by people whose lives were touched by the work I’ve been blessed to carry forth. “We all sit down someday to a banquet of consequences” said Robert Louis Stevenson and the feast could not have been more delicious. I felt that rarest of feelings— being wholly seen and known and appreciated and yes, even loved, for all of who I have been and what I have done and what I have cared about it. I led a workshop with the folks, shared a slide show, listened to their music and words, gave a talk and played a solo piano piece and three hours later, it was time for dinner.  And the intimate size of the gathering made it possible to actually talk with each and every person, share laughs and stories and level down to the ground of true friendship, get out of the center of the circle and just enjoy being side-by-side with everyone. 

 

And if that wasn’t enough, the added pleasure of the post-dinner jam session and seeing people from different parts of my life meeting each other and making music, dancing and talking together. Minus the presence of most of my family (though my sister represented so marvelously) and my jazz band and of course, all the people I would have loved to be side-by-side again in this moment (or any moment), it was all a mere mortal could ask for —and then yet more. 

 

The next day a brunch with my colleagues, a visit to the John Steinbeck Museum in Salinas, a walk on the Asilomar beach and lovely dinner at our favorite Carmel Valley Mexican restaurant. And then back to teaching, the first day of our second week. I’ve been teaching more than usual, recorder as well as Basic Orff and leading some of the “tutti” gatherings, some five hours each day and nothing could feel further from the feeling of work as mostly we know it. I am never more at home than when teaching a live workshop. Never. I loved the year of Zoom workshops, neighborhood sings, the resumption of playing piano at the Jewish Home, writing on this Blog and writing a new book. teaching kids, all the ways I connect with the world and hope to contribute. But at the top of the pyramid is the live workshop with people hungry to play, work and live the Orff Schulwerk way. Without an ounce of effort, I awaken with a spring in my step and a smile on my face and am 150% present for each and every minute of each and every class. 

 

And so I worry a bit that while I thought I was content with my retired/pandemic life of Zoom, playing piano, writing, walking, biking, jigsaw puzzles, enjoying various TV series— and I was—I am not as wholly alive with any of it as I am teaching. I have a workshop or two at an Orff Conference in November and one potential live Orff Conference in Australia in January that now looks dubious and that’s it for my calendar. And if that 70 number on my birthday cake means anything, it’s that feeling that “well, there will be plenty of more opportunities” is not quite as casual as it used to be. 

 

And so the usual punch line of immense gratitude for the blessing of each and every opportunity I’ve had in this life and continue to have, the reminder to savor the moment, the faith that whatever presents itself can be food for the Soul. Today I stumbled upon two exciting variations on familiar material while teaching, yet another sign that work has not abandoned me just as I have not abandoned the work. It is my sacred ground.