Tinker Tailor

“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, Rich man, Poor man, Beggarman, Thief!”

This rhyme is on the first page of Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman’s groundbreaking book Music for Children (the first of five Volumes) and suddenly seems more prophetic than a mere collection of words that promote beat awareness. Since I already wrote about one of the rhyme’s extensions—“Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief”—I wondered if the beginning of the rhyme would hold up and sure enough, it kind of does.

Take Tinker. The Orff teacher is often not only tinkering around on the xylophones, but also putting in new nails and laying rubber tubing. As Tailor, we stitch together the different parts of a lesson without letting the seams show. We also mend the torn cloth of art’s full costume, joining playing, singing and dancing, integrating with other arts and subjects, tailoring the full Technicolor dream-coat. We Soldier our mallets high to defend the boundaries of music education and are prepared to play high F’s on the sopranino recorder to tumble down the walls of Jericho’s Dept. of Testing. We sail off to the horizon, always looking beyond the safe and comfortable into the uncharted waters of possibility. We are Rich in our soul-life, doubly blessed with the legacy of music and the constant surprise and delight of children’s curious and quirky minds. We are Poor by the outer standards of career prestige in this culture and yes, sometimes need to Beg to save our jobs—or at least raise enough money at the bake sale. As for Thieves, we freely admit it, we shamelessly steal any new idea or practice that enlarges the imagination. The coda of Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief, discussed in the earlier blog, completes the 12 faces of our profession— and I’m sure I could think of 12 more.

I’m back at work, in Verona, Italy, teaching a morning class on “Structures for Improvisation” and an afternoon one on “Brain Rules: Teaching to the Way We Actually Learn.” I’m teaching part in English, part in Spanish, much through the body and gesture and some with a translator. So we might add Neuroscientist, Psychologist, Linguist, Dancer, Actor and more to that list and not be far off the mark. Oh, and Musician.

It is as much a pleasure as it has always been and if I let myself ease down into that swamp of doubt we all have below the surface, my two biggest fears are arriving at the moment when I don’t feel the same pleasure anymore in this work. Or worse yet, my students don’t feel any pleasure in attending my workshops or classes and my name slowly slips off the invitation lists. That day may come and the law of natural selection suggests that it will certainly ease off in the next ten or fifteen years, both to make way for the young folks coming up and to listen to the inevitable changes in body and mind that await me. But when I see jazz pianists Dave Brubeck and Marion McPartland still getting gigs in their 90’s and marvel at my Zen teacher still teaching at 104 years old, I feel heartened that it’s not necessarily inevitable. So if anyone wants to make be feel confident here, book me for a workshop in 2041 and I’ll make sure I save the date.

Meanwhile, I’m back in the double pleasure of putting in a good day’s work and having a taste of tourism. Instead of going back to my hotel overlooking a parking lot and flicking through the cooking channels on Cable TV, I go into Verona, eat rucola pizza on the piazza, go see The Barber of Seville outdoors at La Arena and pay my visit to Juliet, alas! too late for the traditional breast-rub out of reach behind the closed gates. But the night is a perfect temperature, the streets alive with people, the gelaterias remarkable. The heart and soul of Italy is alive and well. Jimmy Stewart had it right—it’s a wonderful life.

The Return of the Traveling Music Teacher

It’s been three months since I set foot in an airport trailing my two trusty bags. There are no “welcome back!” signs, high fives from the ticket agents or nods of recognition from the Starbucks employees. I guess plane travel has gone on just fine without me—and I have been just fine without it. And yet there is a homey familiarity and twinge of excitement knowing I’m about to be catapulted into a markedly different reality, from Frankfort, Michigan to Frankfort, Germany— same first names, but whole different landscapes, histories, language, culture. Not that I’ll partake of much of the German Frankfort beyond the airport, because it’s a mere stop en route to Verona, Italy.

Why Verona? Is it a pilgrimage to rub Juliet’s breast for luck? (It’s a statue, folks). Hear opera again in La Arena, the outdoor theater where, in 1973 on tour with my college choir, we went to Ponchielli’s La Giocanda? (There’s a short ballet in that opera called “Dance of the Hours” and I almost fell out of my seat when I recognized the Alan Sherman song “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadda!” That was my innocent “ugly American” moment). Or simply eat great pasta at sidewalk cafes?

Alas, nothing quite so romantic. Though I may do all three of the above, the real purpose is to put the traveling-Orff-teacher hat back on that I wore way back in January, February, March when I started this blog. There’s a three-day course for Italian Orff teachers and it’s time to get back into teaching mode. I’m not sure yet if I’m teaching in English or Spanish or simply gesture, but no matter, we’ll figure it out. But first a short hop from Traverse City, Michigan to Chicago that leaves at 3:44 and arrives at 3:40 (quite a feat of time travel). Then a seven-hour layover in Chicago. (Note to self—start reading the travel agent’s arrangements a little more closely.)

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Now in Chicago, arrived from a plane small enough that some passengers had to move to the back to evenly distribute the weight. So proud of myself, remembering a hidden outlet to the right of Wolfgang Pucks where I can write this without losing battery power. But alas! no juice. So it’s the modern hunter’s search for a free source of electricity and score! in the walkway between gates D and B/C, there’s one on the silver air units. And it works!

Of course, all of this would be solved by the Red Carpet Club, where I once had privileges as a United Gold Card Premier Executive. But despite my lifelong allegiance, they either upped the requirements or I flew under the minimum one year and they demoted me to the lowly Silver Premier. “Too bad, buddy— you’re out with the huddled masses, sitting on the floor leaning against a post munching on your $4 Dirty Potato Chips while we’re in plush chairs replenishing our free drinks and snacks.” When will we start to discuss class in this country?

I’m sure I’ll ask this again when I board the plane and walk back through the plush first-class cabins through business class through Economy Plus to my cramped little seat in row 40. Why don’t they put the cheap seats up front and spare us the misery? Do they really need to taunt and torture us by making us walk through the seats of our dreams, with their fold down beds, private videos, smiling attendants who call you by name and say in their sexy voices, “More champagne?” while we peasants sit in seats designed by the Masochist Engineering Department watching the same movie we’ve already seen twice with the seat in front one inch from our nose? Do they really need to rub it in as we parade down the aisle from the luxurious to the bearable to our seats? Soon I imagine it will keep going to the hard-bench- church-pews to the standing room only cabin to the isolation chamber imported from San Quentin.

And by the way, what did these Corporate Executives do to deserve this anyway? Exploited some sweat-shop workers in Asia, sold their product regardless of its effect on human health and happiness, climbed over their colleagues to get the big desk by the window? Do they really need one more glass of champagne? Shouldn’t some other profession, say the dedicated lowly Music Teacher, be given some strokes for caretaking the bodies, minds and souls of our nation’s children? Well, really, why not?

With five more hours of layover, the long trip across the Atlantic, another three hour layover in Frankfort, arrive in Verona 6:30 tomorrow night and teach the next day, I better have more positive thoughts than these! Stay tuned—I’ll be checking back in.

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18 hours since I left the shores of Lake Michigan and I arrived safely in Frankfort. The flight turned out to be pleasant enough, immersed in the world of Water for Elephants, a spontaneous buy while browsing the Chicago Airport bookstore. And then I fell asleep before the end of The Adjustment Bureau video. (Can anyone tell me if Matt Damon got the girl?) Now gratitude to Frankfort Airport, which unlike its American counterparts, has many seats without armrests inviting you to stretch out and sleep. And another great perk, at least in the Lufthansa area—free coffee and tea machines with choices like cappuccino, expresso, machiatto, café latte, hot chocolate, roiboos tea, etc. Yes, free! But boo-hiss to both Frankfort and Chicago, who have yet to follow San Francisco and other airports and offer Free Wi-fi. So the actual posting of this scintillating travel blog will have to wait, keeping my readers in edge-of-their-seat-suspense. J

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Okay, suspense is over. I arrived in Verona on time without incident, my bags arrived and the person who was supposed to meet me was actually there to meet me. It doesn't always go so well. Out to the workshop sight, a pasta dinner and at 9:15 pm here and who knows what body-time, the fun game of “let’s see if I can sleep through the night.” Wish me luck!

Rebuttal to Yesterday's Post

It’s a rainy day and my step-grandson and his pal are sitting on the couch talking about boogers, Darth Vader, arguing whether their classmate Danny is a doofus and exploring other fascinating topics. They start to punch each other and I can see it start to escalate. “Use your words,” I say, tongue-half-in-cheek and one snaps back with a vintage 12-year old boy rebuttal—“Actions speak louder than words.”

Mercifully, the sky clears and I push them out the door. The Zen master Suzuki Roshi once asked, ”How do you control a cow?” and answered his own question with “Give them a bigger meadow to roam around in.” (Not that I’m comparing kids to cows—cows chew their food much more thoroughly and with their mouths closed.) The architect of the outdoors designed the space just right for kids’ energy and in no time, they’re racing to the beach, digging holes and burying themselves up to their neck in the sand. I’m ready to settle down to read my book and they’re begging me to cover their arms with sand.

When they’ve had enough, they burst out, spraying sand all over my towel, then beseech me with a whine to pleeeeeasse take them back to the Sugarbowl sand dune. Reluctantly, I mark my place in my book and down the beach and up the dune we go. They Ninja-roll down it and then climb back up again for more. Show-offs!

While they’re crawling back up the dune like wounded war heroes, I head back the quarter-mile to my book and beach chair. Next time I look, I see their heads bobbing in the distant water, conveniently forgetting the “stay in sight” rule when swimming in the lake. There’s not a soul in sight to help me watch them, leaving me with a moral dilemma—do I keep reading my book and hope for the best or walk all the way back to get them?

Pesky kids! Why can’t they be more like us adults?!

Bridge to Childhood

“I’m tired of being an adult” announced by sister-in-law Lori and lying on the Lake Michigan beach, I knew exactly what she meant. I mean, really, what’s the point?

I have had two near-perfect days sans watch and shoes, walking the shore to the outlet or up the enormous sand dune known as “the Sugar Bowl.” biking around the inland lakes and orchards, swimming in the back lake, sunning and reading on the front. Long lazy days feeling the layers peel back, so that when there was an indoor rainy spell and I decided to delete school e-mails, it felt strange to read about this meeting or that, who misplaced the stapler or moved the laminating machine, negotiations around schedule changes, the whole heavy load of keeping the machinery of school going and well-oiled. Even here in vacation paradise, my wife spent two hours traversing the seven levels of AT &T Voice-Mail Hell to get the phone re-instated, had to spend a morning at the bank in town dealing with her Dad’s estate while I went to the library to answer my 51 e-mails about details of upcoming workshops and such. You know—adult stuff.

I loved Peter Pan as a kid, but reluctantly accepted that some day, I too, would turn into that strange creature called a grown-up and listen to Wendy scold me about leaving hairs in the sink after shaving. And to my utter astonishment, I have managed to be a full-fledged functioning adult who owns a house, pays the bills and gets the garbage out on Thursdays. I’ve raised two children, managed to hold down a job, taken groups of students on field trips and brought them back alive. But it just takes so much damned work to keep the simplest of human activities going, be it a household, a soccer team, a school, a government—you name it. Of course, modern civilization is working way too hard for things we don’t really need and we’d probably be amazed at how much life could go on without filling out forms or renewing out cable TV subscription. But even the Pygmies in the rainforest have to hunt and gather, cook the meat and pound the tubers, fix the hole in the thatch hut roof and take care of the kids.

Still, there are days when we should consider the lilies in the fields and wonder if we might live a simpler life. Remember the old college graffiti (was it from a Bob Dylan song?) “If dogs run free, why not we?” Hanging out with my in-laws’ dog Hurley, I can only be envious of his abandon at jumping into the lake, chasing baby raccoons up trees, generally running around so carefree and happy and equally content to stretch out on the floor and sleep whenever she feels like it. Not a bad life. Of course, someone has to buy the dog food and spray the Fantastic on the rug when she decides to pee indoors.

If we have to be adults—and we do—I hope we all get the chance to cross a bridge back into childhood and live, if only for a few days each year, a life reduced to sand, sea and sky. To run full speed down the sand dune shouting in delight with arms spread, to catch frogs and build sandcastles, to ride waves and jump off rope-swings, lie on your back and look up at the clouds. You know—kid stuff.

Maybe that’s why I’ve spent my life hanging out with kids. They get it. Adults arrive at the cottage and start organizing their sock drawers while the kids run down to the beach and splash into the water, temperature be damned. Adults feel the need to write about these things on their blogs, while kids…hey! the sun came out! Last one in the water is a rotten egg!

Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief

“To prepare ourselves for how we will be needed.” The poet David Whyte once said something to this effect to remind us how to plan our day. Not that we necessarily choose our career from altruistic motives. More likely, we simply follow some call we hear, track down that “glimmering girl who called me by my name and ran and faded through the brightening air,” as Yeats so beautifully describes it. If we follow her with persistence and dedication, we may someday walk with her and pick “the silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun.” Not just for us to savor and enjoy, but finally to offer them to whoever is nearby and hungry.

How lucky I have been! I followed that glimmering girl far down the path of “Orff music teacher” and lo and behold! it has proven to be of use to others. The children first and foremost, but these days, reaching far beyond the walls of the schools to people of all ages in all sorts of circumstances. It turns out that the skills needed for teaching a decent Orff music class can be of service in many other parts of life. “Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief” goes the old children’s rhyme (also the name of a Hoagy Carmichael song) and there is a little of each in my job description.

Take doctor. Music as a healing art is as ancient as the shamans in the forest and contemporary as the neuroscientist in the laboratory. Because music involves physical vibration, it works directly on our nervous system, our muscles, our heart rate and breathing, our brain waves. The details of precisely how and the stories of music’s healing power are freely available in many excellent books, but really, who needs proof? All I have to do is look at my mother’s face as the notes from the piano wash over her, listen to my 80-year olds friends as they sing the songs of their youth, watch their bodies sway to the waltzes and bounce to the swing tunes. The other day in Ann Arbor, I played at the home where my father-in-law passed away three months ago and seeing the difference in the faces of the folks there before I played and after was proof enough.

As for lawyer, music teachers these days are more practiced than most in defending our profession. We need to speak on behalf of our client, research the facts, connect the main ideas and speak with both passion and articulation to convince the jury that the schools are guilty of crimes against the young when they get rid of music programs. And when the verdict of “Guilty!” is brought in, we should let the punishment fit the crime. For all the politicians and school board members making these decisions, we would ban music from their lives for one month, put them in a virtual prison where not one note of music may be played, sung or sounded. Then they’ll understand (I hope) how vital it is to our sense of health. But I’d prefer to put them in reform school, where they had to go to an inspired Orff class every day for a month. Then they would get it.

And finally, political correctness aside, Indian chief. In my school, the music teachers often are the ones who hold the tribal lore, caretake the customs, teach the community songs and tell the stories. In the old politics, and still in traditional villages, it is almost always that way. Since the ways of a people are stored in ritual, dance, poetry, music, storytelling, the leaders must be practiced and trained in them all. And it turns out that these are precisely the skills the modern Orff teacher needs as well. Interesting, yes?

All of this is prelude to the second memorial service we held for my father-in-law Ted.

Having just put some of his ashes in a cemetery in Ann Arbor, the family wanted some scattered “up north” at the summer cottage by Lake Michigan they named “Ted’s Place.” They invited some of his summer friends and acquaintances, but being connected to no church here, who would minister the ceremony? Orff Music Teacher to the rescue!! I had the skills and experience to work with groups of people, knew the songs and could lead them, had lots of poetry at my fingertips and a musical sense of how such things might begin, develop and end. The details of the actual ceremony might be worth sharing as a model of sorts for others, but exceed the etiquette of Blog-length. Maybe tomorrow.

But back to the opening thoughts—to prepare for how we will be needed.  I’ve been accused many times in my life off taking too much of the spotlight and I’m sure some apologies are due. But I can’t help but wonder if this was a necessary step toward the ultimate purpose of it all, what Joseph Campbell called “being transparent to transcendence,” letting the light shine through you rather than on you, in service to others. It is such an unexpected pleasure that I’m prepared to walk into a senior home/ preschool/ university class anywhere on the planet and have something to offer. That I can officiate a memorial service, lead dances at a wedding, articulate inclusive decision-making processes at a staff meeting. I can’t help fix my mother-in-law’s plumbing, take charge of her finances or edit her old super-8 home movies on i-Movie, but it turns out that I can be useful to others in my own eclectic ways. Who could ask for anything more?

Recipe for Summer

The Solstice came and went announcing “Summer.” But true summer is a state of the soul, not accessible by calendar alone. How to arrive there? Try this recipe:

Change your answering machine to “Gone fishing,” throw the necessities, three novels, a book of poems and an old guitar into the car and start driving. Curse at the snarl of traffic from San Francisco to Sacramento and feel the first burst of release ascending into the pine-smell of the Sierras. Lose yourself in the Nevada sky and feel properly humbled by the purple-mountained-majesty of the Tetons. Note the change to the rolling hills and fruited plains of South Dakota. Set cruise control to 75 and sing along with each of the top 30 hits of June,1965—Catch the Wind (Donovan), Theme from a Summer Place (The Letterman), Sugar Pie Honey Bunch (Four Tops), Satisfaction (Rolling Stones), Mr. Tambouine Man (The Byrds). Feel the years peel away and remember that bright-eyed-bushy-tailed-innocence of a life yet-lived before you. Eat crackers and cheese at a picnic table rest stop by a grove of aspen trees. Breathe the silence and let another veil of busyness drop. Keep moving, now to the more intimate greens of Minnesota and Wisconsin with red barns contrast. Flop yourself down on the motel bed and stumble into an old Hitchcock movie on TV. Keep driving, now alongside the big trucks and lower speed limits and back into the swirl of Chicago-suburb traffic, the population having quintupled in the last two states. Spend the night at a friend’s suburban house with summer snow on the lawn from the neighbor’s cottonwood tree and remember the American paradise promised by “Leave It to Beaver”— the tree-lined streets, big-fielded elementary school, cozy downtown public-library, nearby Lake Michigan beach, large front lawns and everyone out walking their dogs while fireflies blink in the night. Pull into the Ann Arbor Holiday Inn to return the car 3,000 miles later and get a Turkish lemonade at a buzzing downtown café. Wake up the next morning straight into the arms of birdsong—summer has arrived.

Useless Beauty

What do Mt. Rushmore, elk antlers and a building called the Corn Palace have in common? I’ll give you a hint. Think Snow Sculpture Festival in Edmonton, Hubcap Ranch in Napa Valley, bamboo archways and xylophones in Bali, imbenge baskets from South Africa—all variations on “use what you’ve got.” (Or more proverbially, “When you’ve got lemons, make lemonade.” Having finally arrived at hot weather on the first official day of summer, that sounds appealing.)

The antlers are found in the hills of the Tetons, not only elk, but deer and moose as well. The Boy Scouts collect them and sell them and if you go to the plaza in the center of town in Jackson Hole, you’ll see four archways made entirely from elk antlers. The stores sell antler chandeliers, antler sculptures, and just plain antlers. The next state over, you can see the stone mountains of the Badlands and lo and behold, there are four large faces starting down from Mt. Rushmore. And nearby is Crazy Horse looking out from his perch. A bit further down the road in Mitchell, South Dakota, you can stop at the Corn Palace and see the murals on the outside made from—well, corn. (Still hoping to learn how to include photos—meanwhile, you can probably find images online.)

There indeed is a snow sculpture festival in Edmonton, equally remarkable sand sculptures on the beach at Rio, a ranch in Napa Valley with hundreds of hubcaps artfully arranged. Bali has scores of instruments and artwork made from bamboo, the South African imbenge baskets are made from discarded telephone wire, the galimotos in Ghana from old soda cans and such. Use what’s around you. That’s what humans have been doing for millennium and it’s one of the things that makes the art and technology of one place different from another.

Daniel Pink’s new book Drive talks about the importance of “intrinsic motivation” as a deep human instinct, but mostly uses examples from the computer world. People working from love and curiosity and making something useful—like the capacity to write this Blog online without either you or me having to pay for it. But there’s another kind of work we do that has no practical application at all. It’s entirely useless and yet, it gets us off the couch and out the door. It’s called art. It brings tourists flocking from miles around to witness the 17-year project that left four faces on Mt. Rushmore. Talk about intrinsic motivation! Imagine getting up every day for 17 years to chip away a little bit more rock to fulfill some inner vision and make it visible to the world.

Which is precisely what people called artists do. They’re no different from you or me, except that this urge to express something that we all share is in the driver’s seat instead of tucked away in the glove compartment. Like poet William Stafford, they might wake up early every day to write a poem with no idea what might appear on the paper or whether it will ever be sandwiched between two covers and available at the bookstore. Like Charlie Parker, they might wash dishes at a 52^nd St. jazz club just so they could hear Art Tatum play and then go home and practice.

In Victor Hugo’s epic Les Miserables (yes, it was a book before the musical), a Bishop is showing off his flower garden and his visitor remarks:

“You are always eager to make everything useful, yet here is a useless plot. It would be much better to have salads here than bouquets.”

…the Bishop replied, “You are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as the useful.” He added after a moment’s pause. “Perhaps more so.”

William Carlos Williams put it another way:

“It is difficult to get the news from poems, but men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.”

It has been a while since I’ve stepped up on the soapbox of arts advocacy, but I’m still getting e-mails from music teachers whose jobs have been cut. We should note that people are not driving off the freeway exit to marvel at someone’s math test. Be it Mt. Rushmore, the Corn Palace or a bunch of antlers artfully stacked, art adds a brightness to our day and reminds us of a life beyond the ordinary and mundane.

If we really pay attention, we might also be deeply moved by the original art of mountains carved by wind, rain and time, corn growing in the field and antlers atop the heads of elks. We humans are mere imitators, after all. But from the first cave paintings in southern France to sculptures made from hubcaps, the human urge to co-participate in creation is profound, thrilling and worthy of attention. School boards, take note.

Meanwhile, praise to all who’ve taken a moment from their day to pile stones in interesting formations, create a piece of art from old cell phones, make music from abandoned oil barrels. Useless beauty that somehow is necessary.