Death Concert

As mentioned in my post, "Say Yes!," I was invited to play piano for someone's conscious death through euthanasia. So yesterday morning, I packed some music books and in the 20 minute drive to the apartment, listened to a recording called Adagio by Bizet. While driving on Sunset Blvd., the morning light streaming through the trees, I imagined I was driving to my own appointment with the next world. As the strings swelled and receded and the sunlight sparkled, I could briefly imagine it as a joyful rendezvous. It was good preparation for what was to come. 

Finding parking, getting past the workers operating a giant crane, finding the right code to get into the building and the right code to get the elevator up to the 12th floor, all became minor obstacles that luckily proved easy to negotiate. And there I was, meeting the husband John and the voyager Jim (names changed) for the first time. Jim was lying comfortably in bed, looking complete normal, conscious and coherent, probably younger than me. I asked if he had any specific requests and he just suggested I play whatever I had played at the Jewish Home last Friday when he and John were listening from the second floor. He did ask if I knew one piece (Pia Jesus?) which I didn't and he began to sing it to me. It could have just been a casual visit, with no obvious indication that this was literally a life and death moment. 

Off I went to the piano outside his bedroom, a fine Yamaha electronic grand and began to play. Started with Bach's Prelude Number 1 to set the tone and went on from there for over two hours without stopping. John would come out occasionally and confirm that he and Jim and Jim's cousin were loving it all, with tears in his eyes and his hand over his heart. And so on I played.

At first I thought the music should lean more towards what I called introverted pieces, those slower tempo, less cluttered, classically beautiful melodies that turn us inward and help us halt the onslaught of random sensation and breathe a bit deeper into the moment. But as I intuitively moved between various classical styles, ragtime and jazz, I realized that every piece can have its place. It was the slow motion equivalent of one's life flashing before one's eyes with a review of all the feelings a human being can hold. So why not a Scott Joplin ragtime piece, a Thelonious Monk blues, a Strauss waltz, a Bach fugue, a Jobim Bossa nova? In short, exactly the same kind of variety I offer each week at the Jewish Home, the same I offered in my recent house concert. If indeed, each piece of music rightly heard unlocks another faculty of soul, why not explore the whole spectrum?

Without Jim in the same room, the dramatic setting for the music was a bit removed, but still I could feel it and vowed to honor it by simply playing with my whole self, savor each note and give it its full expressive quality. Behind me was a view out to the ocean and the beginning of a rainstorm, around me was all the gorgeous sound so meticulously crafted and created by the genius of extraordinary human beings and this humble fellow trying to do it justice. Many moments where my own tears came forward, particularly with Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, Debussy's Clair de Lune, Gershwin's Embraceable You and Bach's opening Cello Suite. 

After playing Somewhere Over the Rainbow, I segued briefly into Bach's Joy of Man's Desiring and from there back to where I started, his Prelude No. 1. John came out and we both acknowledged that it felt like the moment to stop. The euthanasia drugs were doing their job, but Jim was still with us. I asked to see him and went by his bedside to hold his hand, even as he seemed in a coma-like state and his complexion growing pale. I told him I hoped the music helped him release into the waiting arms of the next world, where others were waiting to greet him. John pointed to the photos of his parents looking over them and affirmed, "Yes, they are." And I left.

I had never done anything like this before and it's likely I will never do anything like it again. (Though open to it, should the opportunity arise.) In some ways, it was intensely dramatic and in other ways, not so much. Why? Because I realized that every time I play, whether all those mornings at The San Francisco School before the kids came in for class or at the end of the Levels Trainings when people lie down under the piano in the darkened room while I play or every week at the Jewish Home or in the recent House Concert, it's all a Death Concert. As serious as imagining that this might be the last music we ever hear and both playing and listening with that kind of intensity. The kind of atmosphere that Keith Jarrett creates in his solo concerts, Yo Yo Ma evokes whenever he's on stage, Bobby McFerrin invites us to experience as he helps us release all our unsung songs. 

More to say about it all. For now, enough.

Kissing the Joy

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity’s sunrise.    - William Blake

Writing is the act of kissing the joy as it flies. It's a way to capture what resists capture both so that one can remember and share with others. If you don't set it down the moment it flies through your head, it's gone. The world will go on without your sentence, but perhaps just a little bit poorer. The mark of a writer is the commitment to be the scribe for the moments worthy of attention— the sweet joys, the agonized sorrows, the exalted ideas, the necessary questions. To recognize the thought worth inscribing and forego whatever is on one's list to set it down. If you defer, it will fly away, never to return. 

You could make a case that writing is an attempt to bind the joy, but keep in mind that Blake himself wrote that down! Thus allowing us to consider the full dimension of his advice. Perhaps, as the Buddhists suggest, it's less a matter of trying to capture the moment or more the ability to not attach too greedily to either the enlightened moment or its expression. In full confidence that the next flowing moment will bring the same refreshment in the river one cannot step in twice. (the metaphors are mixing here!)

So the thought of losing the annual Christmas letter trapped on my dysfunctional hard drive, the chapter of the new book I'm writing, is a bitter one. Yes, I can write both again and perhaps it will be better, but perhaps not. I remember a feeling of inspiration for both that won't come again in the precise way that it did. Even as I write this, I'm nervous that the Blog will actually save it, with no Save button to press. But that's my invitation to practice non-attachment. Wish me luck with that! 

Meanwhile, a few more thoughts and on to my day. I often wake up with a sentence in my mind—like the opening one above—and that's the entry into my daily post. A musician does the same with notes singing inside, a scientist with a thorny problem hinting at resolution, a novelist with the next twist in the plot announcing itself. That extraordinary miracle of creation that gets all the wheels turning in the whole landscape of our miraculous mind, above and below conscious surfaces, hiding in the synapses of the brain and then leaping out. We need a story where Pandora opens another box and out fly all the wondrous gifts of a human incarnation. Our capacity to nurture, to love, the think, to feel, to speak, to praise, to bless. And perhaps most wondrously of all, to create. Be it words, notes, motions, ideas, images, technologies, systems of thought, we are witnessing eternity's sunrise when in the throes of creation.

Now I can eat my breakfast in peace. 

Obsolete

You build your life around a machine and when it collapses, what's left? The full story remains to be seen, after three different days of three hour phone consultations with the Apple Help line. They really tried to be helpful and I remained calm through the frustration of "Let's try this…" repeated over and over again. Finally, we all agreed that I needed to go to the Genius Bar of the local Apple Store. I met my affable helper and wanted him to know that I hoped he had the skills to light candles for seven days and eight nights with just one small jar of oil. A Virgin Birth would also be acceptable. Because to get my old computer funcioning the way I need it would be nothing short of a miracle.

Well, he tried. I can say that much. But the candle did not stay lit and there was no visible Star in the East. I have one more chance at a Mac Repair shop that I'll try tomorrow. You would think it would have been as simple as buying a new computer a few months back. But you would be wrong. Because my existing Sibelius, Word, I-Photo, Powerpoint, perhaps I-Tunes, all of which I depend upon in my teaching and writing life, would have to begin anew. All the Jazz History PowerPoint's and lectures, thousand plus photos I took before I got my phone, thousand plus recordings I downloaded from my CD collection, 200 plus arrangements I made on Sibelius and all my countless documents on Word— gone. With this one last ditch hope to remove the hard drive, transfer it to some capsule, put in a new hard drive and reinstall on the old computer, with perhaps a slightly upgraded operating system. That might do it for now. "Might" is the key operating word here. I'll know more tomorrow. Isn't planned obsolescence wonderful?

Eventually, I will need to migrate over to a brand new machine and keep the old computer as the storage place. But for now, I'd be oh, so happy, to just see my old desktop again on my old computer and be able to resume a little bit more of that life as I've known in. 

It's a long story, but I'm writing this on a friend's slightly newer computer that she gifted me a while back that I did try to migrate things over to. It's allowing me to keep up with e-mail, but won't let me write on a Word document. It didn't let me post on this Blog and miraculously, I, all by my lonesome, figured out the e-mail account Blogspot wanted and I can actually post again. But instead of first writing it on Word and transferring over, as I do, I'm writing directly on the Blog. Which doesn't allow me to control the spacing and the font the way I would like it. Bear with me as I navigate through it all.

Meanwhile, so strange to be wrestling with machines on the same day I played piano for someone on their deathbed. (See last post). That certainly deserves its own post, but first, had to get this out of my system. The old operating system of my own mind and body, constantly upgraded in small increments as I wrestle with life's big and small obstacles, with their death-like grip sometimes relaxing into a loving embrace. If the gods are with me, more tomorrow.

Say Yes!

In my recent posts, I shared my doubts about identifying as a musician and a poet. But there is one identity I can wholly claim that I’ve never felt a sliver of doubt about: I am a teacher. A teacher who uses music as the vehicle to both bring a community together and to integrate the body/heart/mind community that lives inside each person. One sign that “this is what I was born for” is the way I say “Yes!” without hesitation to every invitation I’ve ever received to work with a group of people. Including groups of people that I’ve never worked with before. I just step boldly forward in confidence that whatever I’ve done in my lifetime practice of teaching children in school music classes will connect with any group of people. 

 

I don’t exactly put myself in harm’s way like a soldier, but I do put myself in failure’s way, vulnerable to the possibility that things won’t work the way I’m used to. But never once— not a single time— have I regretted my impulsive “Yes! I’ll do it!”

 

I’m talking here about a broad spectrum of humanity—nationalities, ages, professions, abilities. I’ve worked with a Mime Troup in rural Maine, Zen monks in California, Community Food Store Workers, Apple Computer Systems managers, modern dancers, P.E. teachers, therapists, prisoners, mothers and babies, the elderly, music Conservatory students. I’ve led workshops at family reunions, teacher credential programs, school staff retreats, my own Men’s Group. I’ve worked with 80 preschoolers and a translator in Taiwan, deaf children in Japan, special education children in Scotland, jazz musicians in Iceland. I taught dozens of courses in Spain over the course of 20 years, all in Spanish, a language I barely spoke when I started and mostly learned by teaching these courses!

 

One of my most challenging trips was a few weeks of teaching in South Africa. Besides the usual Orff workshop with participants from four ethnic groups who historically were at odds with each other (Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans, British), I simply awoke each day and went where my organizers led me. Which included working with 60 elementary kids in the township of Soweto, followed by 100 high school students, followed by a professional choir. All of that the same day! Then on to other venues in the next week that included a college jazz band, a middle school Steel Drum group, an elementary math class, a preschool, a gumboot dance troupe. They were really stretching the outer limits of my teaching skills! Happy to report I came through it all still standing and with my dignity intact. 

 

Now I’m applying the same “Yes! I’ll do it!” to my role as a piano player. I’ve already mentioned my new habit of actively seeking out jazz jam sessions in places I travel to and am also expanding beyond the Jewish Home for the Aged and offering my services (or being invited to) many such places— not only four or five in the Bay Area, but a few I’ve done in Michigan, Toronto, Salzburg, Switzerland. This past week alone, I’ve said “Yes!” to performing at a House Concert, accompanying a school Holiday Show, playing Holiday Songs at a Tearoom, leading Christmas Carols at both a Marin Senior Center and a neighborhood public elementary school. It is such a grand pleasure to feel useful, to not only personally feel uplifted playing alone in my living room, but offer it up to others who find some pleasure and comfort in it all.

 

So imagine my surprise when I received the following forwarded communication from a nurse at the Jewish Home for the Ages to the Events Coordinators:

 

Hi Rebecca and Julia,

Ron and his partner Richard in Room 2032 are wanting to get into contact with Doug Goodkin both to express how much hearing his playing this week “brought Ron to heaven”. Ron literally said, “is this Heaven?” and was blown away by each song Doug played. They wanted to catch him after the concert to ask if he would be willing to visit them at their home to play while Ron receives his euthanasia drugs. The expected day is Wednesday Dec 6^th.

 

After a moment of sheer astonishment and a pause to take in the enormity of the request, I immediately called Richard to arrange what he proposed. Needless to say, have never done anything remotely close to this, but I said “Yes!” without needing to think about it. You will certainly hear back from me about that experience.

 

Meanwhile, I heartily recommend that we all say “Yes!!!” to everything that we are meant to do here on our short stay, to boldly step forth in full confidence that the World is calling to us for a reason and expects our response. Yes to Life and as above, Yes to Death. 

 

Thank you to my childhood piano/organ teacher, Mrs. Lutz. Who could have guessed where those lessons would lead?

Bringing Up the House

Yesterday’s reflection about my musicianship didn’t just come randomly out of the blue. I was preparing for a rare house concert, which I happily performed last night in a beautiful house with a spectacular view and a fine piano and the company of my musical soul-brother, Joshi Marshall on sax. Not to mention a lovely audience of about 40, many of whom I didn’t know and fabulous desserts!

 

Since I spend as much time on the piano with classical pieces as jazz, I decided to combine the two. Begin with a solo European classical piece and then go directly into a jazz duet classical piece. In some cases, the connecting thread was simply the key, in others, the tempo and feeling, in a few, a direct connection (like Jobim’s How Insensitive which purposefully was based on Chopin’s Prelude). According to the audience response and my own sense of it, it was an enticing formula. In the break, someone asked me how it felt to me and I responded:

 

“The classical piece is like driving alone on a beautiful road, uplifted by familiar and soothing sites. When I switch to jazz, it’s like changing lanes and zooming out on an adventurous road trip, with my best friend in the front seat with me. This wonderful feeling of release. And if I end with another classical piece, it’s like the pleasure of returning home after dropping my friend off.”

 

And that’s exactly what it felt like! Another way I felt it is imagining the classical piece as an improvisation, which gives it a new uplift and sense of freedom in my fingers. And then imagining the jazz piece as a well-thought out composition. In both cases, it helped me both play better and hear what I played differently. And I imagined that communicated to the audience as well. The juxtaposition of the two styles allowed all to hear each with new ears.Don’t know if it brought down the house in the House Concert, but it certainly brought us up, gave a sense of uplift to the evening that was palpable and present. 

 

For those curious, below are some of the selections from last night. It feels like Joshi and I are on to something, so anyone in striking distance who wants to set up another house concert, give me a call!

 

1. Bach’s Prelude No. 1/  Monk’s Misterioso

 

2. Chopin’s Impromptu No. 1/ Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag

 

3. Debussy’s The Little Negro/ Hello Ma Baby

 

4. Scarlatti’s Sonata in D minor/  Alone Together/ Bach’s French Suite No. 1

 

5. Chopin’s Prelude in E minor/ Jobim’s How Insensitive

6. Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata ( Middle Movement) /  Where Are You?

7. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata/ Cole Porter’s  Night and Day

8. Mozart’s Piano Concerto n. 23 (2^nd Movement) /Lerner and Loewe’s On the Street Where You Live

9. Scarlatti’s F Minor Sonata/  Jerome Kern’s All the Things You Are

10. Scriabin’s Album Leaf / George Gershwin’s Embraceable You 

 

Out of the Closets

For my 60^th birthday (end of my fifth cycle of twelve), I rented a church to throw myself a party. Besides beings a lovely space, it was where my daughters gave their piano recitals and where a performing Orff group I helped start named Xephyr often performed. I hired the school cook to cater it and invited four Orff teachers I had trained to play jazz for the occasion, the group that became Doug Goodkin & the Pentatonics. I also set aside a time to read some of my own poetry that I had never shared in public. 

 

It was after that party that I dared speak the four words I had never felt wholly confident to announce in public: “I am a musician.” There was a lot in my biography to back that up. Started taking organ lessons at 6 years old, added piano at 8, quit both formally at 13, but continued to play Bach on the organ and Beethoven on the piano on my own. I took enough music classes in college to minor in Music, began my first forays into ragtime and jazz piano, sang in the Renaissance Choir that toured Europe. In my first decade in San Francisco, I rented a piano for my apartment, took some lessons with jazz pianist Art Lande, taught some jazz piano at The Community Music Center, spent six summers at Cazadero music Camp where I learned a bit of gamelan, samba, Ghanaian drumming and more. I got a job teaching music at The SF School and taught myself enough guitar, banjo, recorder, xylophones to keep up with the kids. While continuing to work on jazz piano on my own at home. And playing Irish tinwhistle with my brother-in-law Jim. I also took a year’s trip around the world that included an intensive study of the maddalam drum with Kalamandalam Narayana in the state of Kerala, India.

 

The next decade or so included learning Body Music with Keith Terry, Philippine kulintang music with Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo, joining Balinese gamelan Sekar Jaya, studying Bulgarian bagpipe with Hector Bezanis, Middle Eastern drumming with Mary Ellen Donald. I performed once or twice a year with some Cazadero friends at the Community Music Center, a combination of standard jazz and my own compositions. I also performed with the above-mentioned group Xephyr, combining singing, Orff instruments, movement and drama in our original collective compositions. All the while continuing to play piano at home. And making music every day with the kids at school. 

 

In the last twenty years or so, I performed with the SF School kids and my colleagues James and Sofia in some five different World music Festivals featuring master musicians from North and South India, Tibet, Kirghizstan, China, Korea, Burkina Faso, Venezuela and more. I studied Ghanaian xylophone (gyil) with SK Kakraba and Ghanaian Ewe drumming and dance with Kofi Gbolonyo. I began performing with the above-mentioned Pentatonics group, including recording a CD at the prestigious Fantasy Records. I played piano once a week at the Jewish Home for the Aged and set myself a project of memorizing some 300 Jazz Standards. Everywhere I travel, I consciously seek out a jam session in a local club and have sat in in places like Bangkok, Shanghai, Ourense (Spain), Hobart (Tasmania), Christchurch (New Zealand), Salzburg, Toronto and more. In my retirement, the piano in my home sings out daily with Bach, Chopin, Mozart, Debussy, Ravel and more joining the jazz improvisations. 

 

Combined with collecting some 1,000 records (stored in my basement) and another 1800 CD’s, all of which I’ve actually listened to, I’d say that’s a lot of music. Why would I ever hesitate to call myself a musician?

 

It was reading Howard Gardner’s book on Multiple Intelligences that made me realize that one way to recognize your preferred intelligence is to note what goes on in your head when you’re not consciously thinking. While the visual artist may be imagining shapes and colors, the mathematician noting patterns and formulas, the poet filled with artful phrases that seem to arrive on their own, the musician has songs and notes and rhythms constantly circulating. Bobby McFerrin was a parent at The SF School and I sometimes sat next to him at parent meetings, noticing how he seemed to be constantly singing inside and physically reacting accordingly. When he wrote the song, “I’m My Own Walkman,” he was simply sharing his experience.

That’s when I realized I’m not a musician. I think in words more than notes, suggesting that the linguistic intelligence is at the forefront. And indeed, as my ten books, numerous articles, 50 years of journals, 12 years of this blog can testify, I’ve certainly paid my dues in this field. Of course, none of this means that my musicianship is a lie, but it does explain why I’ve been reluctant to wholly claim it.

 

Meanwhile, before reading my poems at that 60^th birthday, I prefaced it by saying, “I’m not a poet, but I have written some poems over the years” before sharing it. At the end of the party, one person came up to me and said, “You lied to us.” Baffled, I asked him to explain. “You said you weren’t a poet.” Boom! That was the first time anyone had suggested I had something to offer in these poems I kept in the metaphorical closet. Twelve years later, I still haven’t claimed myself as a poet. I can say with some confidence I’m an essayist, certainly not a novelist, but perhaps a part-time poet? I certainly have thought about collecting my work ranging from haiku to parodies to rhymed verse to free verse and publishing them in some form or another. That would take a bold confidence that has not yet quite arrived. But saying this all out loud is a first step.

 

And so to come out of these two closets, I hereby announce:

 

I am a musician.

 

I am a poet.

 

(Well, sort of.) 

Twelve

Though Dec-ember literally means “10^th month,” we know it as the 12^th. 12 is a powerful number, with multiple associations. 12 months in the year, 12 signs of the Zodiac, 12 animals of the Chinese Zodiac, 12 hours on the clock marking a 12-hour day and 12-hour night, 12 disciples of Jesus, the 12 Days of Christmas, 12 Gates to the City, 12 Knights of the Round Table, 12 Greek gods on Mt. OIympus, 12 Tribes of Israel, 12 eggs in a dozen. 12/8 time is a powerful meter in West African music, as 12 can be subdivided as 4 groups of 3 or 3 groups of 4 (also 2 groups of 6 and 6 groups of 2), which creates markedly different feelings of the underlying beat in the 12-beat cycle. 

 

I shared this with my granddaughter Zadie, who turned twelve twelve days ago!. Which prompted me to reflect on what happened for me when I was 12 (oh, so long ago!) and then led me to wonder about 24, 36, 48, 60. That was when I realized that at 72, I’m completing my 6^thgroup (half of 12!) of 12-year cycles. I wondered whether they were notable years. Of course, we can spin any year into a notable year, but in fact, these were fairly significant in my personal autobiography. As follows:

 

• 12: 1963— My last year (7^thgrade) at Harrison School Elementary School. Went to my first make-out party and kissed my first girl (Susan Herman). Listened to the first Beatles album released. Listened to my first jazz album (Time Out—Dave Brubeck). Marin Luther King spoke at the March on Washington. President Kennedy was assassinated. 

 

• 24: 1975— Traveled to Guatemala and Belize with my girlfriend Karen, then moved in together in an apartment on Castro Street, San Francisco. Began my first year teaching music at The San Francisco School (Karen’s second year as art teacher) where I would work for 45 years, Karen for 42. Keith Jarrett released The Kohn Concert. 

 

• 36:1987— Traveled to Bali with Karen and our two children, Kerala (7 years old) and Talia (3 years old) to study tingklik xylophone. Briefly met James Harding there, who would later be a colleague at the school for 30 years. Became president of NCAOSA, our local Orff Chapter. First Starbucks opens in Vancouver.

 

• 48: 1999— Kerala is in college and Talia in high school. Teach Orff workshops in Spain, Hawaii, San Diego, Minneapolis, Portland (Oregon), Sacramento. Perform with my Orff group Xephyr at the Phoenix AOSA National Conference. Teach my first classes at The SF Conservatory of Music and my first Level III class at our summer Orff training at Mills College. Record the 14^th cassette tape of music by the SF School Orff Ensembles (Jumping at the Woodside). Also the last tape before changing to CD’s the next year. Cancel our annual snow trip with friends and family because of the y2k scare.

 

• 60: 2011—Begin this Blog!! My first grandchild Zadie is born! Perform at my birthday with a jazz group that becomes Doug Goodkin & the Pentatonics. Teach Orff courses in Korea, Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Salzburg, Verona (Italy), Madrid, Lisbon, London, Barcelona, Vancouver, Edmonton, Regina. Perform in SF World Music Festival and Keith Terry’s Body Music Festival. Publish through my Pentatonic Press my colleague Sofia’s book Blue Is the Sea. Daughter Talia begins work as a classroom teacher at The SF School. 

 

• 72: 2023—Highlights so far include publishing Jazz, Joy & Justice, performing with the Pentatonics and Friends at SF Jazz Center, assisting the SF School Orff Ensemble Performanceat the Albuquerque AOSA National Conference and giving my own workshops onThe Humanitarian Musician, attending two local screenings of The Secret Song film about my last year of teaching at school. More to come. And may I make it to 84!

 

So on the first day of the 12^th month, may I suggest you make your own “every-twelve-years-autobiography” and see if it seems to resonate? Happy December!