Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety-Jig

As much as I enjoy using nursery rhymes to speak my life experience, it’s quite a challenge to frame my recent trip as “buying a fat pig.” (Though I do have some rubber pigs that I’ve used as musical instruments! However , none were for sale at the recent Conference vendors’ booths.) 

 

Nevertheless, I did come home to a lovely sunny day, a happy re-union with the food in my kitchen, ready to return to my daily walk through the park and ritual morning meditation and always, the piano. Of course, I could have sat zazen in my hotel room, but not easy sharing with two others and it would have been a pleasure to walk and explore Charleston had it not been unseasonably cold and rainy. So as one does in travel, I let go the comforts and familiar routines of home and gave myself over to a different sort of home, the annual gathering I’ve been enjoying the last 39 years. A nice contrast from my solitude to jump into the intense social mix of some 600 folks, at least half of whom I knew, and immerse myself in the joyful activities of my life’s work.—playing, singing, dancing. All of it needed, all of it enjoyed.

 

Also so happy that I’m still teaching myself at these Conferences and offering new things while checking out and enjoying the work of the younger folks on their way up. And was particularly pleased to note that 22 out of the 66 teachers presenting—literally 1/3— were associated one way or another with our summer Orff course— 7 out of our 9 teachers, 7 alum students, 3 apprentices, 2 guest teachers, 3 students from our jazz and Orff-Afrique courses. I’ve often felt like folks in the national Orff scene viewed us San Francisco folks as out on the fringe (and they’re partly right!), but our presence at this conference (on the East Coast!) points to the fact that we’re flowing into the mainstream, yet without giving up our identity, simply enlarging that stream with our contribution. 

 

But back to the theme of returning home. It’s simply nice to come home to the routines I’ve established in the place I’ve chosen to be with the people and foods and activities I’ve chosen to accompany me. This place on the edge of the continent, also viewed as fringe by mainstream media and national discourse, yet leading the way in many crucial areas— Covid response, banning Styrofoam, protecting land, healthy lifestyles, prison reform and more. Naturally, much more to do in terms of homelessness, affordable housing, public education and beyond, but certainly heading in the right direction.

 

It’s the place I call home. And I’m happy to be here. (Minus the fat pig.)

The Teacher Is the Teaching

Not the lesson plan, not the person telling you what page to turn in the book, not the person clicking the buttons on the screen, but the very flesh and blood and heart and soul and vibrational energy of the teacher—that’s what’s important. Especially the music teacher. My Bulgarian bagpipe teacher once told me to take some lessons with his teacher and when I protested that his English wasn’t good, he reminded me that that didn’t matter a bit. Just to be in the presence of his sound, taken in by the aura of his musicianship, was what mattered. In the same way that simply sitting in the presence of the Indian guru or Japanese Zen Master transmits more essential information than any words they say, the musician creates a force-field that goes from vibration to vibration. 

 

And so my friend Tom Pierre presented his session “From Gullah to Gospel” and while it was well organized, following a historical thread and even supported by slides on a Powerpoint, what really happened there was Tom’s extraordinary movement, singing, spirit, not on display for admiration (though worthy of it) but as an open door to invite us into the mansion of our own expressive power far beyond what we had previously imagined. We pay big money to be a satellite in the orbit of the charismatic rock star at the concert, but more often than not, it becomes more about them, about admiring or worshipping their shining star and neglecting the light that we carry. But Tom used his hard-earned and deeply-lived talent to bring us into the fold, to get us singing better than we normally do, moving better than we normally do, letting our soul out because while sometimes shy and cautious, soul mostly wants to shout and exult and fully announce itself. Tom created a shining pathway between his soulful expression and our own and we stepped out onto it and danced on the path to the full glory of music’s power. 

 

The so-called Orff process is too often a clever baby-step now-overly-Power-pointed sequence to musical understanding and skill, with the teachers seated comfortably in their day-today voice impotent to fully release our greatest musical possibilities because they don’t reveal our own. What Tom modelled can’t be captured in print nor reduced to a formula— it needs to be lived and nurtured and developed. 

 

Of course, it’s a tall order that every teacher emanate the power of their life and spirit and lived understanding and there’s a thousand steps along the way involving improving one’s craft, listening closely to and observing the students, creating engaging lessons that have a dynamic shape, flow and design, and so on. But it’s helpful to consider what the mountain peak looks and feels like as we begin our climb. And Tom’s workshop was a good example. 

 

Congratulations, my friend!

Claiming Identity

Part of me is envious of people born into clear identity, like Sherri Mitchell of the Penobscott Nation who I have quoted often in these pages and my good friend Kofi Gbolonyo from the Ewe people in Dzodze, Ghana. They have learned invaluable life lessons from their elders and extended families, identified with the land in which they were born and carry with them the songs, proverbs, stories gifted to them from their culture as carriers of cultural values and spirit. 

 

By contrast, I loved wandering around Warinanco Park in Roselle, New Jersey where I grew up, but can tell you very little about the local watersheds, animal lives, names of trees and properties of the local plants. There is some legacy of Russian Jews flowing in my veins, but I can’t articulately name the qualities of that blood flow. I can tell you episodes I remember from The Twilight Zone and Leave It To Beaver from TV, but these are not mythologies to pass on to the next generation to teach how to live with grace on this earth. 

 

And so the sense of exile from a clear belonging, of search for my lost tribe. And that has its own power, that gathering of the poems, novels, musical compositions and styles, songs, stories, teachers, artists and more that speak to my condition and help me form my own landscape of belonging, my own life-sustaining mythology from the cross-currents of diverse influences. And then finding others who arrived in similar places and either discover and create that sense of tribe. 

 

That is not easy work. In some ways, the school where I worked so long was my tribe until I felt betrayed by some and in some ways, cast out, by others. (Though, to be honest, appreciated and embraced by most all the kids and a good percentage of the teachers). The group of men I’ve met with for over three decades held some promise, but once again, I often found the conversations not strumming the strings that meant music to me and my own talk falling flat, all call and no response. And AOSA, the national Orff organization I’ve tried hard to connect with for so many years, has always been a hit-and-miss proposition. 

 

And that’s where I am now and have spent the day walking into workshop after workshop and not finding the energy I need to keep me there. I can read the vibrations of the room within 30 seconds and class after class, feeling too little musical energy, too little soulful engagement, too much of the bright screen with dead words on it. Some of it is fine, but so little of it is wholly engaging and inspired and both the topics of conversation and levels of depth of thought not what I need or what I seek. Not wholly my tribe.

 

By contrast, I was so drawn in by the Collective Trauma Summit I attended virtually and that sense of “my people!” with strangers I was meeting on screens. The ideas presented were alive and vibrant and needed and spoken from the depth of the heart, each word pressed from the mix of lived experience and imaginative thought. Quite a welcome change from discussing whether we should repeat the A section of the poem once or twice at the end or hearing people emptily mouth the 4 C’s of 21^st century learning without any sense of spark in their voice.

My complaints are neither arrogance nor insult, but the combination of lament that finding my tribe is so elusive and concern that we’re talking about the wrong things as the world burns around us. Every idea that reveals our trauma, that notes what cries out to be attended to, that is spoken with the full conviction of our muscles, bone and breath is water thrown on fire. Which is to say by contrast that every action and thought that carries on as if all is fine is dangerous and those that go further and actively try to shut down our questioning and courage and curiosity is downright treasonous to the human species. 

 

These are good people in these conference doing good work, but in my experience, not deeply enough. I keep looking for those who not only resonate with my work, but offer their own to reveal what I’m missing. Off to a few more sessions today, looking for my people.

Daily Excavation

Amidst a thousand metaphors for teaching, the idea of a daily excavation to scrape back the dirt to discover yet another hidden treasure is not a bad one. Thanks to the benevolence of the flight gods (both flights exactly on time without a hitch!), I made it in time for my early Thursday morning workshops at my 39^th AOSA National Orff Conference. I’m still working on my Jazz, Joy, Justice theme and each pass through offers the possibility of noticing another glint of gold. My presentation was delightfully rich with different media, a blend of me reciting a Langston Hughes poem, playing a children’s game, turning it into a live and swinging and learned in five-minutes blues, watching a video of my 4^th graders playing the same tune and a recording of my jazz band taking it up a notch, comparing and contrasting Elvis and Big Mama Thornton on Youtube singing Hound Dog, quoting Pope Nicholas’s treatise Dum Diversas (look it up) and Voltaire’s “follow the money” quote about slavery, telling some of the stories from my emerging JJJ book, urging teachers to rise to the demands of our times by “illuminating that which has remained hidden” (in the face of Republicans passing laws desperately trying to bury it again so the population remains ignorant) and ending with singing “This Little Light of Mine.” The Power Point gods were on my side, I ended pretty much right at the end of the allotted 75 minutes and despite only four hours sleep from a bad decision to drink some coffee in the Chicago Airport, kept my energy high and dynamic. Happy to have had the chance to do it!

 

The little gold I unearthed was a new couple of phrases about what I’m aiming for. 

 

1) Tell the stories.

 

2) Tell the story behind the stories.

 

In other words, it’s vital to tell the kind of stories I tell about the jazz musicians and their encounters with systemic racism. But alone it’s not enough. The kids have to understand the story threading behind the stories— the narrative of White Supremacy. To present that narrative without the personal stories examples is likewise not enough— too abstract. 

 

So both together. Tell the stories and the story behind the stories. Hopefully, that will help move the needed change forward. And if you can combine it with playing some great blues and dancing and singing, the body/mind is more open to receive it all and the vibrations can echo out further into the world. 

 

That’s what I set out to do and it was a good start. On to more digging tomorrow. 

 

 

 

Change of Diet

Back to confessional mode. My wife and I have been watching various thriller TV Series. So many I can’t remember them all, but off the top of my head— Broachchurch; Shetland; Endeavor; Unforgiven; Family Business; Deadwind; The Bridge. Here’s what I like about them:

 

1) The way the plot sweeps you into another world, slowly reveals a mystery to be solved with intricate turns and twists in the story that keep you guessing and certainly captures your attention.

 

2) The characters of the various detectives and their inter-relationships, their intelligence and dedication and courage to get the bad guys (and gals).

 

3) The continuity between the 8 to 10 Episodes, like a Dickens serial of old, providing a thread between the days, the anticipation of picking up the story where it left off, the comfort of spending time again with characters (detectives) you’ve grown to like. 

 

4) The battle between the wits of the detectives and the cleverness of the murderers. 

 

5) The fairy-tale satisfaction that in the end the evil ones get their just desserts. 

 

All well and good. But particularly in the last series, “The Bridge,” I began to feel that I was hooked into a toxic drip hurting my heart and depleting my soul. These shows are very well done and some just a bit too graphic and you begin to feel the accumulated impact of murder after murder after murder and start to get drawn into the  mindscape of the evil, psychopathic murderer using all of his/her intelligence to harm and hurt and maim and torture and kill other human beings. Is this really how I want to spend my evenings?

 

And then there’s the constant presence of guns, guns, guns. Pointed at people’s heads, threatening, actually shooting. Noticing how I began to love and crave guns, but only in the hands of the good guys and gals. As if going somewhere without a gun was like us going out without our phone and me shouting, “Get your gun!!” And then all the deserted buildings and scene after scene of entering them with the ominous music playing. I’ve never shot a gun, hung around people with guns, been out in the world walking by people (that I know of) carrying guns, but show after show normalizes it as just par for the course. Which I imagine has something to do with their epidemic presence in our culture. 

 

Of course, there have been other shows. I LOVED Lupin because it had all the drama of good vs. evil minus actually killing. (But so far, just one season—too short!). Only Murders in the Building had a comedic lightness of touch that is more palatable. Seaside Hotel was a sheer delight, with a human-size sense of drama, only a couple of deaths, a few guns in the hands of occupying Nazis and enough intriguing deceit to keep things interesting. 

 

If we are what we read, what we listen to, what we think about, we also become a bit of what we watch and I’m thinking it’s time for a change of diet. Any suggestions?

Take Two (39)

 

So here I am again, packing my suitcase for the annual Orff Conference, tying up loose ends before leaving and this time, determined not to leave my backpack at home and only realize it when I’m at the airport, not to fail to take into account the time change when changing planes. And petitioning all the flight gods to please be kind as I am scheduled to arrive in North Charleston, South Carolina around 10 pm and then have to teach at 8 am (5 am California time!). Not much wiggle room for delayed or cancelled flights and though those flight gods have been sleeping the last few flights I took (and laughing at the ones that were my fault), I charge had with the required optimism that this time, all will follow the proposed schedule. We shall see.

 

Always at this time, I impress some poor, unsuspecting captive person with the chronological list of all these conferences I’ve attending year-after- year since 1984 (each one in a different city) and then two bonus ones from 1976 and 1982. The only I’ve missed in the last 36 years was the one everyone missed, the 2020 Covid-Cancelled-Conference. If I'm counting correctly, this will be my 39th.

 At their peak (Seattle 1997/ San Jose 2007) these Conferences have attracted 2000 music teachers from around the world. Given the state of the economy and the state of education, numbers have been falling and in the past 5-10 years, averaged a bit over a 1,000. This was is generously predicted to be 500.

 

But numbers are numbers and for those fortunate enough to make it, I imagine a joyous reunion after the 2-year hiatus. And some pleasure in the more intimate, less spectacle-like event. I know I am eager for my second live teaching this Fall. 

 

Oh, flight Gods, may it be so! 

The Faces of November

Woke up to a new month and deep gratitude that it was not November 2020. Then the air was thick with anxiety, with the toxic particles from centuries of misguided thinking gathering in the person of someone who never should have been elected to office hoping to continue his wanton destruction. Someone who broke every one of the Ten Commandments, gleefully embodied each of the Seven Deadly Sins, who stood in direct opposition to the values of indigenous cultures and enlightened Western thinkers—care for the commons, cooperation, patience, listening, humility, sharing, inclusion, collaboration. Had the worst happened, our edging toward catastrophe would have been geometrically accelerated. And even when the best happened, an entire political party still blindly loyal to his insanity, joined by two reprehensible Democrats, are doing everything they can to bring our democracy, the world and the earth to its knees. 

 

So with the anniversary of our turn toward hope upon us, a good reminder that release from the horror of the national mood held captive to a raving Tweeter, while to be noted and appreciated, is not a reason for complacency. The work continues and our participation in it is needed. On all levels. 

 

November is not just the time for the voting booth, but also the time for the giving of thanks and the turn towards the darkness, the descent with the year into the source of our renewal. Our refusal to align ourselves with the Earth’s seasonal cycle, our insistence on keeping the bright lights in the mall on to avoid the both the grief and deep comfort of the dark, is a refusal of sorts to vote for life. 

 

For me, November is also the time of the annual Orff Conference, a gathering I have loved and looked forward to each of 38 years. It was online last year, which means it really didn’t happen at all. But though severely reduced—from 2000 people at its height to perhaps 500 people coming to Charleston, South Carolina—I eagerly await this small sign of return to a normalcy that serves my particular path of restoring the world. November is also the birthday month of my daughter, granddaughter and nephew, and was for my Dad and father-in-law. And of course, the annual ritual meal with my sister and her family. Also the Day of the Dead celebration in San Francisco and a reminder to feel the presence of the departed in my life and keep the lines of communication open between the two worlds.

 

And so the many faces of November greet me on this overcast, chilly morning. Nine bows to them all.