Heaven and Hell

Every two weeks for the past 21 years, I meet with a group of men. We began spawned by the fervor of the “men’s movement” in 1990 and have remained steadfast beyond the rise and fall of cultural fashion. Sometimes we have a given topic, sometimes the dramas of eight lives is topic enough. But we always begin with a check-in and no matter the details, mine can usually be summarized as “Heaven and hell, gentlemen. Heaven and hell.” It may lean toward one side or another, but even in the shining glory of a fortnight filled with accomplishment, glory, revelation or sheer pleasure, the dark shadow of hell lurks in the background. And vice-versa—though its light is obscured in my tangled, hung-up mind or aching heart, heaven’s dawn is just a few bird-songs away.

A couple of days ago, it was hell’s turn to visit. A conversation that left me feeling unknown, unseen and unwanted in a community that I thought was home (I’ll keep the contents of that laundry tucked away in the closet here) grabbed me by the throat and threw me down. I went home and had to write out the words for the next day’s jazz piece (work doesn’t care how you feel—onward, soldier!) and it seemed like they were written for me: “Every mornin’ finds me moanin’, ‘Cause of all the trouble I’ve seen. Life’s a losin’ gamble to me. Cares and woes have got me moanin’. Every evenin’ finds me moanin’. I’m alone and singin’ the blues. I’m so tired of payin’ these dues. Everybody knows I’m moanin’”… Yeah! Nothing like a little blues to remind you that you’re not alone when you sing them and work it out with a few well-chosen flatted fifths.

After that, I played Bach, who remains a constant source of consolation. With his dazzling mathematical configurations, he’s known as a composer of the intellect. But it turns out that playing through the labyrinth of his complex thought softens the jagged edges of the heart. There is passion and soul hidden in the figured patterns of those notes, not the hand-wrenching sobs and passionate displays of Chopin, but a more understated emotion that surprises you when you discover it. Friends, next time Mr. Blues is pullin’ you down, play through a Partita and see what happens. Or at least listen to the Mass in B Minor.

The next day began with dark clouds again and not a silver lining in sight until I practiced Philippine pole-dancing (no, not that kind!), played jazz with 8^th graders and sang with 5-year olds. Then three boxes arrived and there were the books my colleague Sofia Lopez-Ibor and I had waited for after almost two years of steady, difficult and detailed work. On her part, that is. She is the author of Blue Is the Sea: Music, Dance and Visual Arts—I am the mere publisher, through my company Pentatonic Press, as well as friend who supported and occasionally advised throughout the process. I patiently waited for her to arrive at school before tearing open the boxes and seeing the marvel of work captured between two covers, in full color prints on glossy paper. The light of heaven glowed on each page. Things were looking up.

Then on to the Jewish Home for the Aged and a luncheon for all residents with birthdays in April—on the exact day of my mother’s 90^th birthday! To borrow her favorite expression these days: “Imagine that!” We ate a delicious mushroom soup with garlic bread and at one point she blurted out, “This is the best birthday I’ve ever had!” St. Peter's hand was firmly on the doorknob.

Back I rushed to school to continue rehearsing for next week’s Spring Concert—and in case you’re wondering, the second graders are now almost ready—and on to a parent-staff meeting where the 17 kids going to Salzburg with James, Sofia and myself this summer performed their dazzling body percussion routine to open the proceedings. By now, trumpets were sounding and angels playing harps—with a jazz inflection.

But my day wasn’t over yet. As I was packing up to leave school, a four-year old girl came with her mother into the music room. Her mom said, “She has something she’s been wanting to tell you since you came back to school from your travels.” And the girl said, “Welcome back, Doug.” After they picked me up sobbing from the floor, I gave her a hug and went on to a delightful and delicious dinner alone at Little Nepal restaurant on Cortland and then on to…the men’s group. I came prepared to open yet another difficult conversation about belonging and vulnerability and I did and felt over two decades of caring for each other flood the room. It buoyed me up, made me feel welcome and isn’t that all any of us want? To be in the club, invited to the party, to feel like we belong? But not at the expense of who we are—you can’t join the club that makes you leave parts of you outside without doing damage. And you can’t stand outside the door, alone with your whole self, without a different kind of damage. To find where we belong and to whom—that’s a life’s work.

Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

I Hate David Sedaris

Title got your attention? I went to hear David Sedaris read tonight from his various books and the guy is simply wonderful. Or at least his writing is—I’ll have to reserve judgement on him until we hang out some together. And if I had been patient enough to wait on line to get him to sign books and had the opportunity to tell him my snail joke, I’m sure he would be calling me to find out when we can meet again. Meanwhile, he is so damn funny while also hitting that serious and poignant universal bone that everyone can relate to. My father wasn’t quite as bad as his— “Big deal! Your book is number 1 on the New York Times Best-sellers List. But it ain’t number one in the Wall St. Journal!”—but he was of the style that said, “Why did you get that A-?!” when all the other grade were A. (Not something that actually happened very often—all A’s, that is.) His stories about waiting in airports or staying in hotels are stories I could have been writing on this Blog instead of all this Pie-in-the Sky visions of universal peace and brotherhood through music. That is, I could have written them if I was David Sedaris.

So though I loved the evening, it left me with the bitter taste of envy. The lines to buy his books were out the doors while I found that Stats part of this Blog and discovered that 4 people had read one of my entries! (But if you’re reading this, you’re probably one of the four, so THANK YOU! I love you and promise to play piano for you at the Old Age Home, your wedding, a neighborhood party or to cure your insomnia—Bach’s Goldberg Variations are just the ticket for the latter.) Like any passion, I write just to free up space in my head and it doesn't matter if anyone reads it—witness some 60 unread articles sitting in some distant dusty file on my computer. But it sure feels good to connect with a reader and what writer would not be thrilled to have a line out the door?

So I tempered the sharp edge of envy with some of the marvelous rationalizations the human mind is so expert at. Well, David, you may be a fantastic writer enjoying wild success, but you didn’t get to play Bulgarian bagpipe with middle schoolers on xylophones, fiddles and high-pitched recorders today, did you? You didn’t sit on a piano bench next to four-year old Demarcus impeccably dressed in his Easter suit visiting his Grandma at the Jewish Home (huh?) and jam for 30 minutes straight—first some black-key blues and then—much better—singing nursery rhymes in blues style without a pause, the young African-American genius calling out “It’s my turn” and making up his own songs when his repertoire ran dry. All of this with my Mom on the other side of him grinning ear-to-ear—“My, isn’t he talented!” and his parents filming like mad on their cell phones. Maybe it will turn up on Youtube and go viral.

And David, won’t you be jealous then!! But call me up anyway and I’ll tell you the snail joke.

Simple Pleasures

“Well, the sky is high and the ocean is deep, but we can’t treat the planet like a garbage heap!” So opens my Earth Day Rap and it got a lot of airplay today on Earth Day at The San Francisco School. (A full version with instrumental accompaniment and a photo of me “rappin’” with Bobby McFerrin is in my book “Now’s the Time: Teaching Jazz to All Ages.”) Today I rode my bike the five miles up and down hills to the school and passed a typical Friday morning. The 6^th graders played a dynamic piece from Argentina, the 8^th graders played some jazz from Swing Band style to Be-bop to Latin with such ease and finesse, both preparing for a concert in two weeks (local folks, mark your calendars for May 4^th—details to follow). Then five-year olds passed beanbags to a Ghanaian song, balanced them on different body parts while walking around the room, figured out how to stack fists while singing “One Potato, Two Potato.” Such simple pleasures. Had the electricity gone out, all would have been exactly the same, depending on nothing more or less than bodies, voices, acoustic instruments made from wood, metal, string.

In the afternoon, the elementary school walked to a playground about a mile away and spent some time playing on the playground. There are few things more heartwarming and entertaining than watching kids play on the playground. Perhaps playing in the woods or by a river or on the beach or in a field trumps the playground, which is but a synthetic version of those natural environments. But still pretty great to have it all condensed in an urban park. (And if your neighborhood is lacking one, contact KaBoom! where my daughter works and organize for them to build one!). The kids were climbing, swinging, balancing, jumping, crawling, doing precisely what kids need to do and trusting their bodies to choose which activity it needed at the moment and for how long. We really are born with an interior guidance that we can learn to trust to lead us to the next thing we need to learn and practice. Excessive adult-organized structure, constant electronic entertainment, lack of facilities, short-circuits all that and we suffer the consequences. (Amidst the merriment and carnival-like romp of the kids on the playground, a mother was pushing her babies on the swing while checking her text-messages. Aargh!!)

After the playground time, we gathered to do a public rendition of “The Earth Day Rap” with different groups coming into the center to show their motions. We then set to work on the afternoon project, pulling invasive mallow weeds. The kids were in heaven, pulling up these large (some bigger than them!) weeds, calling for help and teamwork for the really big ones and comparing the root size, getting their feet dirty and their hands sweaty. Me, too. Great fun to be in the midst of a clump of weeds responding to the kids’ calls, working side-by-side with a 9-year old with a great work rhythm and thinking, “This is the kind of work adults and children have done side by side for millennium (I’m betraying my American urban experience here—of course, many still do) and there’s something so satisfying, so engaging, so communal, so right about the feeling. Simple pleasures.

My afternoon ended with a visit to my Mom, mostly me playing piano for her, first while she read a magazine and then, while she just leaned back in her wheelchair, closed her eyes and waved her hand to the music with such a beatific look on her face. Who would have imagined those typically boring, sometimes painful and occasionally fun piano lessons with Mrs. Lutz down the street would have helped lead me to a moment like this? Of all the pleasures of the day, there is nothing more satisfying than giving my mother a couple of hours of soothing music that transports her to some private paradise.

A good way to spend Earth Day—playing, working, dancing, biking, making music, side by side with people from 5 to 95 years old. Simple pleasures. 

Happy in Canada

It is snowing in Edmonton. In mid-April. I’m walking by the old Macdonald Hotel overlooking the river and am seized by a bone-deep happiness. In spite of (or maybe because of) a Spring snow in Canada, I am unaccountably, unabashedly, unreservedly happy. As if I’m precisely the person I was meant to be standing in precisely the spot I was meant to stand looking at the glass pyramid across the way as if it was beyond any heaven I ever dreamed of. Or rather, precisely the heaven I’ve always dreamed of, as if returning to the Home of all homes. We plan and hope for happiness, but this is how it comes— unexpectedly, surprisingly, on the wings of snow flurries in April.

I have been in Edmonton before and maybe it’s because it was one of the first places I traveled to teach an Orff workshop in the mid-80’s that there’s some buried memory of that freshness and freedom of being out in the world sharing what I loved with people happy to receive it. I can feel the years drop off, taste that feeling in the air, touch the joy of being footloose, free to both follow my fancy and offer it to the world.

Many years before, Canada was the first “foreign” country I ever visited. In the summer of 1963, my father, mother, sister and I (and our French poodle Impy) set off in a car to drive from New Jersey to the city of Toronto to combine vacation with my father’s business. We drove north through New York State, through the Catskills and beyond on winding, wooded roads.  I remember a visit to the Corning Glass Factory, watching the movie Niagara (Joseph Cotton, Marilyn Monroe) one night in a small motel and then going on to the actual Niagara Falls the next day, of which I mostly remember Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum and a boat ride on the Maid of the Mist.

Then we arrived in Toronto and met the McNabb family who hosted our visit. While my father attended to work, the rest of us took a trip to the Casa Loma, the former estate of Sir Henry Pellatt, a prominent Toronto financier, industrialist and military man. (In the late 1920’s, there was a house band there called Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra that played hot jazz for dancing.) My mother was driving behind our host’s car and worried that she might lose sight of the car, asked me to memorize the license plate number. For some mysterious reason that some neuroscientist or gypsy fortuneteller might someday illuminate, I still remember that number to this day. B23-882. Ask me next time you see me.

I also remember taking a walk in a Botanical Garden and holding hands with a girl close to my age named Lizzie. At 12 years old, I believe this was my case of puppy love. (Lizzie, if you’re out there, let’s get back in touch!) Four years later, I went to Montreal with my Aunt Flo to Expo 67 and what with the French language and teenager’s independence, this was even more exciting. I sometimes split up from my Aunt and went off to surreptitiously smoke a few cigarettes, think my philosophically emerging 16-year-old thoughts and wonder if Lizzie was there. (She wasn’t.)

Some 35 years later, I was back in Montreal teaching a workshop and went to the Expo site. Pigeons roosted in Calder’s sculpture, but Habitat was still there and it was inhabited. The American Pavilion biosphere was now the site of a museum, the French pavilion a casino. The paths once filled with bustling crowds, still bright-eyed about the promised wonders of the future, were now dotted with occasional bikers, roller bladders, tourists like me, taking a stroll through the park. Red-winged blackbirds sang where once crowds hummed. I marveled, as we often do back in places we once visited, about all the years that had passed, all that had happened in the world, in my life, all the Expo predictions that never came true, all of them that did, all my own predictions that hadn’t come true and all that surpassed my wildest expectations. 

And if I remember correctly, I believe I was happy. 

Me and Icarus

Dear Reader,

Guess where I am? Hint: I enter, kick off my shoes, take off my jacket, set down my backpack filled with work. Afterwards, I browse in a bookstore, see a fabulous Folk Art Exhibit, sit down with a cup of coffee and look out the window at the swirling fog, enjoy the murmur of folks chatting. Perhaps I’ll see a movie later. You might be thinking:

"A foot-massage in San Francisco Chinatown, stroll down to City Light’s bookstore in North Beach, drop into a hip art gallery, then settle down at Café Trieste with a triple expresso with a newspaper and see what’s playing at Embarcadero Cinema." Wouldn’t that be a lovely evening!

Instead, I’m back at SF Airport (read through the list again) and yes, there is a fabulous Folk Art Exhibit at the United Terminal called Second Chances. And maybe there will be a movie on the plane. I’m en route to Edmonton for a one-day Orff festival, where I have been chosen to judge and work with the performing groups. Something I’ve never done before and so when invited, I thought, “Hey! Why not?” Always up for adventure. Just looked at the weather there—33 degrees! Hmm. Not quite ready for that!

Yesterday was the third in my series of workshops Education, Arts, Anthropology and Neuroscience, this one based on Steven Mithen’s fascinating book “The Singing Neanderthals,” where he makes a convincing case that music was—and is—essential to our survival. So I combined the theme with jazz, a music that grew from a culture that indeed survived a few centuries of brutality, in no small part because of the power of music. We sang through the songs that lifted people up when everything conspired to beat them down, revealed the hidden messages and ingenious strategies for keeping their Spirits alive, finding ways to drum without drums and dance without crossing their feet. And then when we finally played some jazz blues, the people understood who had paid their dues and the music communicated even deeper and soared yet higher.

On of the highlights of the workshop was an alumni family dropping in. Maddie, one of the daughters, was in the 5^th grade group that played my arrangement of The Cookie Jar game back in 1998 when—and I'm not making this up—Milt Jackson came to my school and spent a morning playing for and with the kids. (If you don’t know who Milt Jackson is, first "Shame on you!" and then go look him up and be suitably impressed). I have a video of that momentous occasion that I often show in workshops and so have watched a permanently 10-year-old Maddie playing an impressive blues solo on the xylophone. Now she’s living in San Francisco as a young woman, some 13 years out of practice on the Orff instruments, but ready and willing to try it again. So she got to relive her moment of glory (minus Milt Jackson’s appreciation) to play another solo. She still sounded good—as did her sister, mother and father.

But the return engagement of the blues solo was nothing compared to playing the original Cookie Jar game with eight people in the class. This just happens to be a game I excel in and indeed, in my 36 years at The San Francisco School, I have only been beaten once. (Michael Canaveral, if you’re out there reading this, I’m ready for a re-match!) Michael beat me when he was in 4^th grade (he’s now 30) in front of 100 children who whooped and hollered like the Giants had won the World Series—times ten! So I set off playing with supreme confidence and still was relaxed when it came down to just Maddie and myself.

Oh, dear brethren, how far we fall when hubris overcomes us. I was flying high, like Icarus on his waxen wings: “Who me?” asked Maddie, “Yes you!” I replied, “Couldn’t be!” she continued,  “Then we…” WE??!!! (for non-Cookie Jar players, the correct rejoinder is “Then who?) A moment of stunned silence—did I really just say that?—and then Maddie’s ear-to-ear grin. So I fell to earth in shame and humiliation and Maddie Katz became the second person ever to beat me in the Cookie Jar.

Well, I’m proud to report that the depth of my Fall took a back seat to the exultation of her victory. Like Michael, when times are dark and despair is in the air, Maddie will always have this comforting thought, “I beat Doug in the Cookie Jar. “ I’m happy for her. Really.

Still though, I’m ready for a future Maddie/ Michael rematch. 

Any time. 

Any place.

The Donna Reed Legacy

The tears trickled out, the laughter came and it was a beautiful memorial service for father-in-law Ted Shultz. It was held at the Ann Arbor Club on a beautiful sunny day in a lovely non-denominational room tastefully decorated with Ted’s quilt hanging on a screen, his large smiling photo in the window, a few tastefully placed flowers and the warmth of some 140 people who turned up to pay their respects. They entered the room via a receiving line, stopping to look at the three collages of photos we arranged the night before while I played Bach on the piano.

Even a Memorial Service these days begins with the cell phone announcement and then the Chaplain said some poignant words about the full arc of a live well-lived to a ripe old age (86) and hence, “this service as celebration. At the same time, we would have wished for a few more years and that brings a loss and sadness, a feeling of empty space never to be filled again in quite the same way.” Well-spoken—all truth comes in pairs and I continued the theme, saying a few words about death as both departure and homecoming and how song was needed for both. The welcoming angels needed help from us down here to join in their chorus and we who are left behind also need to sing to bring ourselves some comfort. Giving people permission to leave behind whatever insecurities their music teachers implanted in them, I invited them to sing heartily and with full voice and heart—and as we launched into “Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” they did.

Next came some well-chosen scriptures from the Old and New Testament and Buddhist writings chosen by my mother-in-law, Pam. I was particularly taken by the reading of 1 Corinthians, 13. Poetic, profound and if even half the people who profess to be Christians lived up to a fraction of its message, our world would be transformed. “So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” There was a lot of love in that room for Ted and Pam and we were just getting warmed up.

Next came a short talk by the Chaplain, a little story about each person writing a list of everyone who had mattered to them in their life, who had buoyed them up and sent them  forward, who had garnered their faith, increased their hope and surrounded them with their love. You take that list to the gates of heaven and the gatekeeper reminds you that you must leave everything behind. You protest, he takes the list, reads it and smiles: “You don’t need this anymore. They’re all here to greet you.” Whether or not it’s true is beside the point. It’s a lovely image and since we don’t know ahead of time, why not imagine the best?

The highlight of the ceremony was the family remembrances. My wife Karen and her brothers and two of her childhood neighbors painted the picture of the idyllic American childhood they experienced in the town of Plymouth, Michigan. Neighbors who all knew each other gathered for evening martinis and Saturday barbecues, had snowball or crab-apple fights with the kids. Dads went to work at Ford and came home with a paycheck and the news of the day shared around the dinner table, served up by the reliable Moms who mostly stayed home with the kids (though Karen’s Mom eventually went back to school, got a degree and taught Special Education). Summer was trips to nearby lakes or far-away mountains for hiking and fishing, Saturday mornings were accompanied by show tune soundtracks on the record players. There were baseball games, piano lessons, walking to and from school with teachers that both kids and parents respected. It was Donna (and Alex) Reed, Ward and June Cleaver, Ozzie and Harriet in the flesh! And with Ted’s children and those neighborhood kids now in their 50’s and 60’s, you could feel how much it all still meant to them as they re-lived it in their memories.

It’s tempting, of course, to romanticize it all and wax nostalgic, to skip over the fact that during part of that time, the Detroit riots were raging just 30 minutes down the road, the folks who couldn’t buy houses in Plymouth and live out that American dream expressing their rage. It’s easy to forget what prices men paid to conform to the 50’s male, what feelings were buried under cocktails never to be spoken out loud, easy to leave out of the picture how many “happy housewives” felt like prisoners in their homes. And while we remember a certain feeling of solidity and security and optimism, everyone buoyed up by the promise of the technological future with its marvelous labor-saving devices, let us not forget the “duck ‘n’ cover” exercises. (Karen tells a hilarious story of how distraught she was because she was told that families had to share their Fallout shelters and she would have to be with a boy she didn’t like. She was much more worried about that than nuclear attack!)

But the point here is not to try to recapture what was a particular mythology from a particular time—both impossible and undesirable— but to remember the solid values that are the same for any community, whether it be a few blocks in Harlem, a Midwest farming town or a West African village. Know your neighbors. Eat meals together and talk. Get out in the woods. Sit on the stoop and talk to passer-bys. Sing and dance together. Let the children play—and sometimes play with them.

Back to Ted Shultz. What struck me about the talks from family and friends where all the quirks of character that set Ted apart from his neighbor. His inexplicable habit of burning incense while listening to show tunes. his particular style of casting when fly-fishing, a spontaneous dance he did once at a party, the way he greeted his grandchildren with a little sound and poking gesture. While the world is doing its best to mold us into predictable and replicable obedient citizens, what really matters at the end of the day are the ways in which we stand out. People sitting in that room who didn’t know Ted well felt like they did by the end of the service and people who knew him felt the fuller pain of the loss of his unique way of being in this world. That’s what made the service so beautiful and right.

We finished an hour later with a few choruses of Amazing Grace. I suggested that people put their hands on the back of their neighbors while they sing, to feel the vibration of their voices. This is what I used to do with my Dad in his last days, just put my hand there while he talked to savor the tingling in my fingers that his voice made. I suggested that while we are all still here, let us savor that living vibration and use our voices to set the world vibrating, each in our own way. After some soulful singing, the Chaplain gave the Benediction and I started my medley of show tunes on the piano with “Oh What A Beautiful Morning” while the room broke into appreciative murmurs, heartfelt hugs—and of course, the tinkle of silverware as the food came out. Two hours later, the crowd had dwindled down to a single circle of family, extended family and close friends. The stories just kept flowing and the laughter and the occasional tear.

It was a fine way to say goodbye. We’ll miss you, Ted.

Tears and Laughter

Back to ye old airport, my second home, and half-expecting the security people to greet me by name. Using our miles (and of course, charged double miles just because), we managed to get last-minute tickets to Michigan, but first had to go through Washington D.C. just to take the scenic route. With a longer layover, we could have had daughter Kerala come meet us at the airport for a Starbucks date. Ironically, our plane was going on Buenos Aires, home of Talia, the juniah sistah (as they called her in Ghana). Thought about writing a note and asking the passenger who discovered it to deliver it.

Settled into Hawthorne Suites in Ann Arbor and awoke to a surprising breakfast with real plates and glasses and no Styrofoam. Sunny outside, but Spring has still not arrived. The headline in the paper is “Texas considering new law for 85 miles an hour speed limit.” Way to go, Texas!! Burn that fossil fuel, baby!! Hold on to that adolescent version of freedom—“I can do whatever I want and ain’t no one gonna stop me!”

Today is a day of details—tape the photos to foam-core, check on the flowers, go to the Ann Arbor City Club to figure out how to arrange the chairs for my father-in-law’s memorial service. The cousins and family friends are arriving from all corners of the country to pay their respects and say their farewells collectively. It is at once a fun reunion, the celebratory side of departure as all the people who shared in Ted’s life come together to enjoy each other’s company and hopefully soon to be a time of shared grief as well. God in any language loves both tears and laughter. In New Orleans, they make space for both formally, with the old hymns bringing forth the salty waters and the infectious jazz rhythms bubbling up some joyous festivity. My job in tomorrow’s service is to invite both, through a few well-chosen songs and words.

Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, an alum student all of 15 years old lies in a coma after a snowboarding accident, one of our 8^th graders on the school Spanish trip to Nicaragua had an emergency appendicitis operation and a friend in Finland begins chemotherapy. Despite the best efforts of our Risk Committees, life remains a dangerous and precarious proposition and the best way I have found to cope is to live more fully, with more awareness, more gratitude, more vigor and more love. Failing every day, but doing my best to keep the senses alert, mind active and heart open.