The Ship of the Future

This morning, the Earth fulfilled its 24-hour rotation as it has faithfully done for billions of years. It gave the illusion of a sun rising, the morning birds sang to greet it, alarm clocks rang, coffee pots percolated, streets began to fill with cars and buses with people, most going off to do some kind of work that sustains life. Stocking the grocery store shelves, fixing broken cars, cutting hair, tending the park garden, delivering supplies, teaching the children. In short, a day like any other day.

 

Yet not. At some point, I will steel myself and read the news and find out whether we have risen to vote on behalf of life and love or chosen to make millions miserable, to threaten their lives, their livelihoods, their health, their happiness. My optimism and pessimism, my hope and despair, sit across from each other and stare into each other’s eyes, wondering who will win. 

 

Yesterday, I walked 7 miles through the city and happened into a labyrinth outside a hospital. It was the place where my Mom went for a short rehab and I remember walking that labyrinth on the day before Obama was elected. I walked it again. It was a call to the other world to watch over us, having done what we could to get people out to vote.

 

Also soon before the Obama election, I was driving somewhere in the Midwest listening to a song by The Incredible String Band called The Circle Is Unbroken. I had to pull over and listen from the depths. So I’m listening again now. I’m noticing that the completion of the sacred vision is placed in the hands of women. Those seeds of beauty of unborn children are not only literal children, the children they choose to have, but also the children awaiting rebirth within each and every one of us, that come to the world “trailing clouds of glory” with the full measure of wonder, curiosity, humor and love that we all carry. 

 

And then the final powerful image of being scattered by the life-haters, money-pushers, power-mongers and liars, but in bright morning, converging again. I’ll find out in an hour or so which way the wind has blown and naturally, hope to rejoice. But if not, tomorrow’s another day and we will finally triumph. I believe it in my bones.  

 

Here are the lyrics.

 

Seasons they change, while cold blood is raining. I have been waiting beyond the years.

Now over the skyline I see you're traveling. Brothers from all times, gathering here. 

Come let us build the ship of the future, in an ancient pattern, that journeys far.

Come let us sail, for the always island, through seas of leaving to the summer stars. 

 

Seasons they change, but with gaze unchanging. Oh deep-eyed sisters, is it you I see?

Seeds of beauty you bear within you, of unborn children, glad and free. 

 

Within your fingers, the fates are spinning. The sacred binding of the yellow grain.

Scattered we were, when the long night was breaking, but in bright morning, converse again.

The Seeds of Hope

Raining all morning and the mixed feelings of cozying in to indoor activities and a bit of gloom with the wet and the darkness. At first glance, such gloom is not an auspicious sign on Election Day. 

 

And yet. Rain (especially in California) is always a blessing, the needed gift in nature’s cycles that keeps things living and growing. The roots of justice and the seeds of hope need water to prosper. Though I feel cautious optimism that people will do the right thing and vote for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, we’ve all been betrayed before by the greed, hatred and sheer stupidity of far too many of our fellow Americans to allow us to relax and rest easy that “the wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, good will to all.” And so we wonder whether we’ll awaken to glorious sunshine or the sky weeping tears for our self-imposed downfall. 

 

Meanwhile, it’s a good day to clean the house, return to the piano after my three weeks of travel and do what I can to prepare myself for whatever the outcome will be of this momentous day. 

And you?

No Password Required

 

I’m writing this from the new Learning Commons in The San Francisco School which used to be the 1^st (or 2^nd) grade classroom which used to be the Activity Room where the community gathered before the Community Center was built. We had our opening and closing ceremonies here and some memorable moments during the MLK Ceremonies with Melba Beals, Linda Tillery and others. We had esteemed guests ranging from the Gee’s Bend Quilters to Baka Pygmies to Tibetan sand-painting monks. Our summer Orff Course held our dance classes and opening/ closing ceremonies and Untalent Show with extraordinary musical moments. In short, a lot of magic and beauty still vibrating in this space now filled with 5-year-olds looking at books. 

 

I just taught four Middle School classes to kids I did and didn’t know and I’m not sure who was happier. Me feeling their considerable skills, energy, enthusiasm, fearlessness in self-expression and good humor or them being with a teacher who could get them playing some stirring music in 15-minutes, praising every nuance of their efforts. (Of course, they’re used to that with many, if not all, of their teachers at the school, but it doesn’t hurt to get some more!) I had a few moments walking to the kitchen and feeling both the resonance of the familiar (45 years of walking those halls!) and the slightly strange surprise of the changes. I still believe in the power of preserving spaces while being open to the next needed alteration, but it’s the Spirit that counts the most and I could still feel the overall sense of happy children wherever I went. And the pleasure of still being known and recognized and enthusiastically welcomed by both the kids and the teachers. It’s sweet.

 

Now it’s time to get ready for Singing Time, that most tasty of icings on an already delicious cake. And double the pleasure—one with preschool and one with elementary! 

 

 

Sing we did and though a little weird that I didn’t know a single one of the 3-5 year olds, of course, I knew them all. They knew I knew them, I knew I knew them and as always, so tickled by the ones who pop out with their brilliant rhymes, expressive singing, inspired motions. Then came the elementary and here I was in familiar company with most of them and we just picked up from the last Singing Time we had together two and a half years ago without missing a beat. They requested some of their favorites (which included Frosty the Snowman), we sang This Little Light of Mine and had it shine all over tomorrow’s voting booths, I sang my scary Halloween song and of course, ended with Side By Side. Every second of the 20 minutes was glorious, but it was some six hours too short. 

 

I’ve worked hard my whole life to craft the details of the musical music lesson (summarized in my Teach Like It’s Music book) and those details certainly help make the class effective, pleasurable and musically vibrant for all. But not a single teaching tip will carry any weight without that feeling I have in front of a room of 20 to 200 kids of any age, that effortless sense of being wholly at home and in my element and embraced in the love for it all. The kids feel how relaxed I am, how happy I am to be with them, how safe they can feel to fully express themselves (short of anything that causes damage, of course) and the love feeds on the love and we can do anything, sing anything, feel anything, be anything. It really is a gift that simply is, though of course, it takes a lifetime of work to fully receive it and to be worthy of it. It can happen anywhere with any group of children or consenting adults, but it meant the world to me to taste it again in my old school and music room with the kids and teachers who still remember me.

 

So it turns out I still have that connection with the school I left. And if I need further proof, here it— the school Wi-fi remembered me!!

Back Home

Yes, back home in San Francisco from the Orff Conference in Kansas City, but today, back to yet another home for the first time in some two and a half years— teaching live at The San Francisco School! My colleagues James and Sofia at a wedding in Spain and how delighted was I to be asked to sub? Very!!

 

So of course, the class plans have been whirling about in my head, including last night’s dream where they simply weren’t working. My first two classes are with 7^thgraders who were my students in 4^th grade when I retired, my daughter’s students in 5^th grade and my colleague’s students in 6^th and now 7^th. Most all the kids I’ll see today are ones that I’ve taught, except for two years of new preschool students and the new kids in 7^th and 8^th who entered in 6^th after I retired. The music room has been somewhat changed, the second music room where I’ll teach two classes is in a new place, some new teachers in various grades and new folks in the office, but mostly I imagine it will still feel like home.

 

And so continues the theme of the homes I carry with me. The reunion with Spain with people and places I’ve returned to time and again for over 30 years, the seat on the plane and hotel room where I reclaim my habitual solitude, the teaching space filled with teachers eager to learn how to love their work and students more, the Orff family back full force after the “training-wheels” post-pandemic Conference last year and of course, my actual home, newly painted, but still mostly the same, with food in the refrigerator I choose, music stacked on top of the piano, bookshelves filled with the hundreds of books I’ve read and over a thousand CD’s/records I’ve listened to. My zazen pillow, my desk with one drawer filled with decades of little Memo books chronicling the lists I’ve made to keep my life rolling, the 30 plus handwritten journals in the hall closet that I started in 1973. Home.

 

The days roll on, moving from one home to another, and this traveler is grateful for it all. 

 

  

Family Reunion

Except for the pandemic when it was cancelled, I haven’t missed an Orff National Conference since I began attending in 1984 (with two before that in 1976 and 1982). Without my colleagues James and Sofia here or long-time colleague Rick Layton, with no Monday classes I need material for, with a $1000 dollar price tag with flights, hotel and meals and the tight schedule of returning from Europe and turning around to come to Kansas City, this easily could have been the first one I missed.

 

But I’m so glad I didn’t. More than ever, this feels like an enormous (1,000 plus) family reunion and I am enjoying it so much! Seeing my old-time colleagues, the students I’ve taught in the summer Levels Course, the Jazz Course, even Orff Afrique, meeting new young people (some of whom knew me from reading my books)— it’s an embarassment of riches and one that I’m treasuring. “Better together” was the late-pandemic mantra and I can testify that it’s as true as can be.

 

But then more surprises. The quality of the workshops seems to be one-notch higher than usual— great energy, dynamic music and movement, humor, imaginative ideas and people (as always) enjoying the chance to play, sing, dance and create together. It gives me hope for the future of this life’s path.

 

But there’s more. The first five workshops I went to were led by black men and women! Extraordinary! Never before in AOSA! Then one white man, a Jewish woman, a Filipina woman and a Latina woman. And it’s not about ticking off quotas— it’s about the quality of the presentations and the depth of the musicianship and the breadth of the cultural styles presented. In 1985, when I presented at my second Orff Conference right here in Kansas City, my teacher Avon led a spirituals/ gospel session one evening that raised the roof. But he was virtually the only black person in the entire conference. Last night at another Gospel sing led by three stellar black musicians, I could feel Avon smiling down and thinking, “Well, would you look at that! Yeah!”

 

One more workshop, a closing session and a banquet/ dance party still ahead and then back to my other family. Just this short report to affirm that I’m so glad I came and so happy we’re all back together again. May it continue!

The Economics of Worth

I just spent $40 to replace a broken leather watchband that took 10 minutes to put on. $27 for a thin piece of plastic to cover my phone— 5 minutes labor. $300 for 25 minutes of labor to unclog the toilet. 

 

Yet when I subbed at school recently, working with 24 Middle School kids and hoping to lead them to a more musical, fun and cooperative version of themselves, I was paid $25 an hour. An hour’s labor and not even enough for that thin piece of plastic. 

 

In Spain, I worked three hours to unclog the stuck plumbing of people’s adult selves, get their energy flowing and their playful child smiling again. And got paid around the same as the plumber who worked for 25 minutes. 

 

“Well,” you might say, “you always crowing about how much you love your work and how much fun it is while most of us are ground down by jobs that we’d rather not have. Stop complaining!” You have a point. But not much of one. The training I’ve undergone to be able to do what I do, the astronomic number of classes with kids (some 40,000?), the incalculable hours spent reading, writing, learning instruments, practicing instruments, going to workshops and Conferences, investigating dozens of musical styles and dances and myths and folk tales, at the top of my game in terms of mastery in my field— and still getting paid $25 an hour to sub like some kid out of college? Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

 

And yes, some of it is my fault because it is fun and I’ve made enough money to afford to be generous with my time and I’m still somewhat averse to heavy capitalist monetizing. I know my worth and my work's worth is not reducible to numbers. But when I get my phone screen changed and watch band replaced, I just have to wonder.

 

So there. I have. Now off to a Conference where I’m paying for the flight and hotel and food and as a Distinguished Service Award Recipient, I don’t have to pay registration. But still those others add up considering I’m not looking for new material for Monday’s classes or hoping someone sees my work (I’m not teaching at this Conference) and invites me to give a workshop later on. 

And yet. It will be fun. I’m happier to do this work I love and get paid a pittance than get paid a lot for something I dislike that does nothing to raise the bar of joy. But why not both together?

 

Just sayin'.

 

Into the Dark

Robert Frost once said, “Everything I’ve learned about life can be summarized in three words— it goes on.” Indeed it does and the turn of the calendar page to November is here to remind us: “Here I am again. Time to fly off to the National Orff Conference, as you have done every single year (except one—guess which?) since 1984. Time to bore or impress someone with remembering where each one was, accompanied by a significant event from that conference. Time to turn the clocks back. Time to order the Willie Bird. Etc. Etc.”

 

My second day back in San Francisco (though weirdly, back to the airport today to fly to Kansas City for above Conference) and two pretty good sleeps that should help with jet lag. Yesterday a day of catch-up work and errands, topped off by a walk through the park and feeling the turn of the year. The chilled air, the approaching Winter’s darkness.

 

When I turned my calendar page, the quote read:

 

“I will love the light because it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.”  - Og Mandino

 

Good to remember the many faces of darkness. The first impulse carried from childhood is to be afraid of the dark, the glitter of eyes without bodies threatening us with unknown terrors. Yet we can also find a comfort in the darkness, a turning-in and sitting by the fire and cherishing human company in the home and hearth. And though it’s rare for me in this night-lit city, I treasure those rare moments of true dark when the canopy of the sky glitters with stars and reminds me that the world is so much more vast and mysterious than my small problems. That sense of being reduced to one’s proper size—infinitesimally small, yet a part of something infinitely wondrous. 

 

As yet unresolved issues between family members I love, the tension of the approaching Mid-terms, the ongoing terror in Iran, Ukraine and other places, all give off a darkness without the comfort of stars. May the light come down from the heavens and guide us onward to the life we can love. It will go on regardless of how much we love it and how well we live it, but let us hope we can move forward happier into the light and the dark.