Attention San Francisco Chamber of Commerce

If I had to pick one of the most clever of the old jazz tunes— and certainly the one with most intriguing rhyming pattern— I would vote for Manhattan by Rodgers and Hart. The intricate phrasing and internal rhymes are unique in the jazz standard repertoire. Cole Porter’s You’re the Top comes close in the rhyming, phrasing and ingenuity department, but for my money, Manhattan stands alone.

For some reason, I was inspired to look up a version I wrote 10 years ago, changing locale and lyrics to San Francisco. Like so many things I do, I wrote it on a lark and probably three people have ever heard it sung. And then it sat in my computer file gathering dust. (What does gather in computer files—electron debris?) Until today, when I printed it and brought it to the Jewish Home to sing with my gang there. May I report that they absolutely loved it? And suggested I take it to the Chamber of Commerce and have it instituted as some kind of San Francisco anthem.

And so I include it here (note the copyright— no plagiarism, please!) in hopes that it will either go viral or some reader just happens to be good friends with someone on the SF Board of Supervisors or works in the Chamber of Commerce. (Does this still exist? Has anyone ever gone to the Chamber of Commerce? And no, I’m not going to Google it and look it up. At least not now. Some things deserve to just hang as questions.)

Of course, it helps if you know the song and I can’t depend on the average American’s jazz standard repertoire knowledge. So you may have to do some homework to get the full effect and sing along. I'm partial to Blossom Dearie's version, but any will do. You might also have to do some SF history homework. Do you know the Kingston Trio? Know that they used to sing at the Hungry I on Broadway and that Mort Sahl did political commentary until it became a strip joint? Did you know about Carol Doda? And I should add a few new verses to cover the last ten years of SF history. Especially with the depressing last verse.

At any rate, enjoy! And pass it on. (With my copyright attached!)

(Next posting, the story of my 3^rd grade year told through Irving Berlin’s “Always.”)

The SAN FRANCISCO version of Rodger and Hart's  MANHATTAN
                                © 2001 Doug Goodkin

1. The peacenik  kids go,      to San Francisco,     in July,

    They lie on hippie hill       so high.

    And all the rest go,     to drink expresso,       in old North Beach,

    They sit and write a poem,             or else they dial home,             on their cell phone.

    There's Ferlinghetti,             in old Spaghetti,             Factory

    He's signing books you see,             for me.

    This small town's city's a wondrous treat,

    Whether you're square or beat,

    In San Francisco,             we'll sneak a kiss so sweet.

2. Let's dilly-dally,    on Kerouac Alley,             near City Lights,

    Or hit the Hungry I,             Oh my!

    The Kingston Trio,             we'll never see so,             let's go in.

    Where Carol Doda's skin,     made all the leches grin,     chin to chin.

     Walk for an hour,        up to Coit Tower,             to catch the view.

     We'll watch the fog roll in,             boo hoo!

     Though the guidebooks always say,

      Don't dress for a summer's day,

      We're here in San Fran,             we'll change to pants and stay.

3. Embarcadero,             you've got the fare so,        get on board,

    The ferry on the Bay,             Hoo-ray!

    Drive south of Market,             if you can park it,             or ride on Bart

    To the Museum of Art,      or to the new ball park,    for a lark.

     In Sausalito,             where the elite go,             to stop and shop

     The trendy stores so hip,             or not.

     We can stop at Alcatraz,             then go out and hear some jazz,

     Another good day,             on San Francisco Bay.

4. In San Francisco,             you can go disco,             dance at night.

    By day, you fly a kite,            all right!

    It's very fash' nable,      the international        neighborhoods.

    Go eat a Boston sub,      or find an Irish pub,     or salsa club.

    We'll study Russian,             or play percussion,             at the Wharf.

    Or take a workshop on,             Carl Orff.

    We can learn what we want to know

    Or take in an ethnic show,

    It's San Francisco,    so come kids, let's go.

7. All day we'll mirth make,        forget the earthquake,        we'll live for now.

    Do what the crowds allow,             and how!

    We're here without Mom,   with all the dot com,     she'll never come.

    Because the scene's too young, all those pierc-ed tongues   climbing rungs.

     Rents astronomic,         a bad dot-com-ic,     mom and pops shut down,

     The low and middle class,    leave town.

     This great old city has lost its edge,     Turned into a well-pruned hedge,

     No longer shame-faced,             it's not the same place now.   

Fire Up the Neurons!

Let’s face it. War is a horror, but part of us gets a thrill from “the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air.” We love the noise, color and excitement of stuff blowing up and sparkling. I just added a new arrangement of a game I made up to my new book and suddenly, it’s 4^th of July and Chinese New Year together in my brain. I feel more alive, alert and vibrant, especially after the down time of Thanksgiving that was lovely, but found me thumbing through magazines, restless and lethargic at once. Why does it feel so great to create?

My amateur look into neuroscience tells me that the brain loves to make new connections and when the brain is happy, the rest of us follows. In an intriguing book with an intriguing title, Proust Was a Neuroscientist, author Jonah Lehrer makes some convincing connections between the intuitions of the artists and the laboratory findings of the neuroscientists. In the chapter on George Eliot subtitled “The Biology of Freedom,” he talks about animal experiments in neurogenesis, the ability of mammals to grow new neurons and new connections between neurons. At the end of describing various experiments, he concludes: “The mind is never beyond redemption, for no environment can extinguish neurogenesis. The brain is not marble, it is clay, and our clay never hardens.”

Well, almost. In a recent discussion with a friend about how people get more and more fixed in their ways and their thoughts as they age, I talked about the need to keep your mind as flexible as your body. What’s the equivalent of Yoga, Pilates or jogging for the brain? I suggest reading, writing, new experiences, learning new things, meeting new people, traveling, developing and maintaining a habit of constant questioning, reflection, expansion. But best of all is creation, whether writing a poem, improvising a jazz solo, painting a picture, cooking a new meal, planning a new class. This is what pours water on the “clay of the brain” and along with our effort to sculpt and shape ourselves, helps keeps the brain alive and vibrant. And here, I would like to find a new way to say what I keep saying over and over again in almost everything I write: Bring the arts into schools, give children the tools and exercise to keep their already flexible minds alive and alert, creating the habits that will help them resist the calcification of adulthood. And a word to us adults: be a model of a supple thinker who is constantly curious and questioning.

Lehrer goes on to note that some recent antidepressant drugs work by stimulating neurogenesis, “implying that depression is ultimately caused by a decrease in the amount of new neurons. For some reason, newborn brain cells make us happy.”

There you have it. That’s why I’m so happy today. A new tune poured out of my fingers on the piano, I transferred it to Sibelius and put it together with a new game I recently made up. “Doug is my name.” “Ho-la!” answers the group. “Jazz is my game.” “Ooh-aah!” Off we go around the circle to find out what each person’s “game” is—ie, what do they love to do that makes them happy—hang-gliding, baking, massage, etc. (For more details, you’ll just have to buy my upcoming book.) Great fun and a great way to find out new things about the people we’re with.

Lehrer concludes: “Neurogenesis is cellular evidence that we evolved to never stop evolving.” While it doesn’t scan so well, you could say it like this:

“The Brain is my name. “    “Ho-la!”

“Neurogenesis is my game.”  “Ooh-aah!”

Or something like that. 

Back in the Stacks

Time for another confession. A transgression almost as serious as removing the tag from the mattress. I can see your wheels turning. “Did he knowingly receive those videos of movies his Dad taped from TV? Feed his parking meter? Help himself to thirds at the Trader Joe’s sample table?” No, I’m afraid it’s something far more serious.

I let my library card lapse.

There. Now I feel better. And I really feel better because I went to the library today, confessed my sins and awaited my punishment. Had it lapsed so far that I wasn’t in the computer system, I could have applied for a new card for free. As it turns out, I was in the system and because of that, I had to pay ONE DOLLAR to be re-instated! Oh, the shame! The agony! And yet it helped cleanse my guilty soul. Now, with one card tucked into my wallet and a nifty mini-card attachable to a keychain, I was back in the stacks, baby! Oh, how sweet it was!

Fact is that I had loved the library just about my whole life. I went habitually as a child, spent some of high school and college working at the carrells and tables, feeling as if the mere presence of those books surrounding me was enough to seep into my skin, sitting at the epicenter of a knowledge energy-field. It was an odd combination of private and public, each reader in their own world as the black lines on white paper transported them to a world of imagination, of ideas, of places and people brought to life by the acrobatic feats of the author and yet, all of us gathered together, keeping silent company with fellow travelers with their furrowed brows, smiles of imaginative delight or mouths open in book-soaked stupor. I loved the smell of the books, the maze of the stacks, the mythos of the glasses-on hair-up librarian waiting to be swept away into the larger world. I loved the sensation of wandering in search of some Holy Grail or Philosopher’s Stone or bearded storyteller to keep me company, the anticipation and wondering what would appear, the satisfaction of that pile of books in my hand at the check-out desk.

And so when I arrived in San Francisco as a young adult a couple of lifetimes ago, I continued to be a loyal patron of the library. I mostly frequented the main library, thumbing through those drawers of file cards when I had something in mind, wandering when I didn’t. I discovered the musical score collection, the record collection and occasionally went into the deep tombs of the reference archives to find something yet more obscure—and thus, more valuable. I loved that old library, with its columns and wide steps ascending to the stacks like a Jacob’s ladder to literary heaven. I love the thick oak tables and yes, before I wax too nostalgic, sometimes the odor from the homeless seeking refuge was a bit too strong for my taste. But I passed many a pleasurable hour there and came home with many memorable books to help form my fledgling self. And they did, from the novels to the non-fiction, the poetry, the recordings.

So when did I stop going and why? The first blow was building the new main library. I just never warmed up to it. It felt more like a big store in a mall, everything too spread out and too well-lit and hard to find things. And the computers swallowed the file cards and in the children’s library, swallowed the kids more inclined to the screens than the books. It just felt too big and impersonal and still does.

But the branch libraries are cosy— why not just go there? Well, I did for a long time with my kids when they were young. But when I started reading non-fiction, I liked making notes on the pages. If I found a good novel, I liked to pass it on to other family members. As for poetry, it simply needed repeated readings. And as a budding author, I got the notion that it’s good to actually buy books and support authors. And so after many years of finding myself more in bookstores (until they began to disappear one-by-one—that’s a whole other Blog), I let my card lapse.

Why reclaim it now? Well, the kids are gone, there’s no more room on my bookshelves and a friend just recommended two new novels that are only out in hardcover. Too impatient to wait, I thought I’d find them at the library. So off to the computer to see where they were and found out that they were on hold by some 100 people in line before me! Oh well. Off into the stacks and back out with something that called out to me. No more little card to fill out and tuck in the back, the file cards are long gone, but the librarians are still nice and helpful and some wear their hair down.

So thank you, public libraries, for welcoming me back into the fold. You are one of the finest institutions in modern civilization, adapting with the times while still offering free access to all. Well, almost free. I’m still hurting from that dollar charge.

Declaration of Interdependence

When you’re sitting in airport or planes for 18 hours at a stretch, you have a lot of time to think. When the flight attendant brought my meal, I started to think about all the unseen hands that brought this food to me on this plane. And once you follow that thread, it’s a bit like counting stars in the sky—you feel overwhelmed by the enormity of it all, humbled and somehow grateful to be a part of it.

Consider. A simple piece of bread on your tray. Who baked it? How did it get from the oven to me? Who transported it? Who wrapped it? Who received it? And then back in the other direction. Who grew the grain? Who milled it? And the yeast? And salt? Perhaps a dash of sugar? And who transported each of those items and how and to where? What kind of vehicle transported it? Who made that vehicle and all its parts, down to every last screw? Who painted it and where did the paint come from? Who mined the ore and manufactured the steel and made the plastic? Who made the road that the truck drove on? Where did the asphalt come from? And where did the gas and oil come from? And at what price? (Now there’s a big topic worthy of investigation!)

But back to the bread on my tray. Who made the tray? Not to mention my seat, the plane, the airport or my clothes, my backpack, the books in my backpack and on and on and on. And what about the movie I’m watching? And the music soundtrack? Who made the recording equipment and the building where it was recorded and the instruments used in the recording? You see what I mean? Thousands and probably millions of people working apart, but connected to bring to each of us the things we use each day. A giant orchestra of interdependent harmonious parts— but the orchestra members don't get to meet each other. Each plays their own part, but they don't get to hear it in concert with the other parts and thus, the totality of the music is mostly inaudible. 

And that’s the missing piece of civilization. We get the convenience of the goods and services without the pleasure of hearing the whole music or knowing who sits next to us in the orchestra. That was my big revelation in 1979 living in Kerala, India. More than ever before and more than ever since, most of what people needed and used each day was visible and understandable. The main house of the little rice plantation where we lived always had something happening on the front porch that was in process—rice being husked or coconut being dried. Each day as we walked into the center of the 2,000 person village of Cheruthuruthy, we would pass the rug weavers working with coconut husk, the potters shaping our bowls, the spinners making the thread, the dyers coloring cloth, the farmers growing the food, the drum-makers, the match factory workers, the carpenters. Visible people with names we could come to know, visible processes of creation, visible community endeavors. An interdependent music we could hear and see and feel and touch.

One needn’t go to India for that. How about an Amish barn-raising or folks in the North Carolina mountains bringing their apples to make cider together while playing fiddles and banjos or urban gardeners offering up their surplus zucchini. And having been an urban dweller in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, it would be disingenuous to critique modern civilization when I have enjoyed—and continued to enjoy—so many of its benefits. But no way to escape my Aesopian conclusion here, with four points:

1)    Despite our fantasies of independence and wrong-headed “I don’t need nobody”

     definition of freedom, we are inextricably necessary to each other and entirely  

     interdependent. Those we think we shouldn’t like or are named enemies by our

     politicians or seem to wish us harm nevertheless have probably helped bring that bread

     to our tray. 

2) As possible, keep things local and visible, close at hand and close to home. Let’s  
    envision a future with less hands traveling shorter distances without need of
    soldiers (see gas/oil above). This not only makes sense ecologically and

    politically, but also aesthetically. While I sometimes appreciate the Trader Joe’s

    ready-to-go packaged meal when I think I’m busy with more “important” things than

    cooking, what is more important really than living a whole and connected life?

    When I take time to cook a meal using the arugula I grew on the deck, the bread

    I kneaded and baked, the beans I soaked overnight to make soup with vegetables

    picked out at the local farmer’s market, there is a tangibly different weight and

    texture to the pleasure of sitting down to eat the meal. 

      3) Try the exercise of following the steps that brought the simplest thing to you—

           a piece of paper. a thumbtack, an apple. Or if you’re really adventurous, a piano,

           a refrigerator or a computer. If you teach children, spend a week or month

           showing them what a big, marvelous, complicated and interconnected world this

           is and how much effort and teamwork is needed for even the simplest thing that

           we use and enjoy. As the boss in a factory or bakery or auto repair shop, help the

           workers connect the dots with their little piece of the whole, feel pride in their

           contribution and connection to the other unseen workers completing or

           complementing their work. In short, try to make the invisible a tad more visible,

           the music of how this world actually works a bit more audible.

      4) On so on Thanksgiving Day, take a moment to reflect and imagine all those hands

           who brought the food to your table, from the farmers to the truck drivers to the road

           builders to the construction workers to the truck builders to the auto mechanics

           to the store owners to the plants and animals themselves.

And thank them all. 

Odds and Ends

Just finished a two-day course with 35 teachers in Salou, a beach resort an hour south of Barcelona. A lovely town, but apparently quite deserted in November—we found one open restaurant in the whole town and enjoyed a fabulous meal of grilled vegetables with local goat cheese. Many folks in the course new to the Orff approach and it's always a pleasure to open the door to the wonderland of possibilities beyond the norm. As often happens in Spain, I found these teachers from the local music schools to be socially warm and humorous, intellectually sharp and probing, musically bold and skilled. A highlight for me was playing some of the improvisational games I usually do on Orff instruments with violins, recorders, clarinet and more. 

Now winging home after a marvelous two weeks of sharing music with some 200 kids and 120 teachers. Awaiting me back in San Francisco is a Thanksgiving dinner with my sister and family, a visit from my mother-in-law, a Skype visit with my new grand-daughter, colder weather than Spain and Portugal, the final touches put on my new book and holiday films at the Castro Theater. Meanwhile, a 4 a.m. awakening, quick flight from Barcelona to Frankfurt and now a few odds and ends before boarding the long flight back home.

• Frankfurt Airport is enormous. Employees ride bicycles. (Though a subsequent Google search found it much smaller than Denver area-wise and 9^th in terms of passengers. Oddly enough, Atlanta’s airport is the busiest in the world in terms of number of passengers.)

• There is no row 13 on my United Flight.

• Some people at the airport bar are drinking beer at 8 a.m.

• These tiny glass smoking rooms would make a Martian pause: “What the hell? *$%@”

• European passport control rocks! Grab, stamp and wave you through. End of story.

• European security rocks! Get to walk through with shoes on!

• European hotels rock! Featuring:

—   Small TV’s that don’t lord over the whole room.

—   Two or three pillows instead of 15.

—   Reading lights you can read by.

—   Breakfast with real food and real plates and silverware.

• The term “odds and ends” came from lumberyards—odds being pieces irregularly cut at the sawmill and ends the pieces trimmed from the ends of boards.

• This is a rather odd posting, but luckily, I’ve reached the end.

Apologies to Lisbon

Fact: Five T-shirts hand-washed in the shower with shampoo and soap, wrung from soaking-wet to extremely-damp, tamped in towels, blasted with hot air from the hair-dryer and hung in a closet are still very, very, very damp 24 hours later. Laundry continues to be one of my biggest issues in modern travel and after vainly searching for a laundromat and refusing to pay the exorbitant per-item hotel price, I decided to take matters into my own hands (literally) and try the above improvised method. It took a long time and my thoughts vacillated between praising the pleasure of the physical work, the range of hand motions, the fun of beating wet shirts against the tub walls, the sensual feel of soap and cloth and wetness and thinking, “I’m sure women who have had to (or still do) do this every day would erect an altar to the inventor of the washing machine and give thanks daily.”

So after a memorable Fado evening (see last posting), I had the morning to myself before heading off to Barcelona. I packed the five damp shirts in a cloth bag and took them with me to the river. I had hoped to walk far and long down the beautiful riverside path close to the Golden Gate’ish Bridge with a view of the Rio de Janeiro Corcovado’ish Christ statue on the hill, but first priority was to dry my shirts. So I draped them over some stones in the sun and hoped the rays, open air and fresh breeze would finish the job. Meanwhile, it was nice to sit in the sun myself and watch the world go by.

On the river were sailboats, a lone kayaker, a crew heading upstream. Along the path were the walkers, the joggers, the occasional bikers. Though November, it felt like a warm Spring day inviting me to simply sit and absorb and observe, unmindful of the ticking clock. But I had a plane to catch and had to keep track of the 30 short minutes available to settle into traveler’s mode.

Fact: Travel is a state of mind. Simply moving your body from one place to another is not enough. The travels I have savored are the moments when all the accumulated baggage of a human personality living out its drama in its always-complicated web of relationships is left behind. I move invisibly amongst the crowds, tasting the new sounds and sights, drifting, wandering where my feet will take me, following the clock of hunger instead of the watch on my wrist, the tiredness of my feet instead of tracking my miles. Nobody knows me, I know no one. The hotel awaits me as a refuge when needed, a place to re-group before leaping back into world, a time to just sit and read and write away from all the waving hands of my lists back home shouting for attention.

Such a state of being doesn’t come for free just because you’ve stepped off an airplane. It requires some cultivation, some pre-dreaming, some anticipation. The traveling music teacher at the center of this entire Blog history is a great blessing— a chance to travel, get paid for it, meet great people, do good work and offer it up and know that it will reach some children somewhere. But it’s still work and just because it’s in Lisbon means nothing unless I give myself the time, space and intention to explore this truly intriguing and quite lovely city. The Fado night was a tiny baby step in that direction, but sitting with my five T-shirts along the river for all of 30 minutes falls pretty short of what Lisbon deserved. And what I would have enjoyed.

Not that Lisbon cares. But still I apologize for not making the time to know it better. I keep thinking “Well, I’ll be back” but goodness knows I’m not getting any younger and there will come a time when I can’t casually pass it off to the future. Meanwhile, they’re announcing my plane as I write. On to Barcelona! Or rather, more work in Barcelona.

PS. My shirts are still damp.

Letter to My First Grand-Daughter

Oh, Zadie, you are only one-day old, but you’re already changing my life. I’m sitting in a Fado club in the Barrio Alto of Lisbon and thinking that I’m going to take you here some day. When you’re 12 or 15 or some such age, we’ll go to Europe and take the cable car up the Lisbon hills and go to Club Luso. We’ll sit at our table, enraptured by the beautiful sounds of the three guitars and the sensuous singers whose words we might not catch, but whose meaning is clear: “This life is full of beauty and wonder and sounds, dances, songs that grew in Portuguese soil, but can touch anyone’s heart.” Maybe they’ll invite me up on stage again as they did tonight holding a wreathed arch and I’ll do tricky little dance steps that will surprise the musicians and impress the tourists and maybe you’ll be proud of your old Grandpa and not roll your eyes the way my children were required to do. We’ll take a cab back and chat with the amiable and knowledgable taxi driver who will tell us, as mine did tonight, how the ukelele came from Madeira to Hawaii and how Music, Mathematics and Metaphysics are the three most important things in life. Then we’ll walk into the Hotel Opera, where two men will be singing arias in the lobby and you’ll think, “This is definitely not the Ramada Inn!”

The next day, we’ll walk along the river looking at the bridge so much like the Golden Gate Bridge and if the future unfolds as I would like it to, I’ll show you where the monument to Columbus used to be until people finally decided to not pay homage to such a cruel man or celebrate such a greedy bid for power and money that caused so much harm. Perhaps we’ll go to the coast and I’ll tell you the story of how your great-Aunt Ginny and great-Uncle Jim slept on a beach in a sheltered cove in their newlywed European year abroad and then were awakened with water lapping at their sleeping bags, realizing just in the nick of time that the tide was coming in and narrowly escaping.

Or we’ll head north to Galicia and I’ll show you the park where Grandma Karen, Aunt Talia, your Mom and I had a perfect picnic lunch on our journey through Spain, close to the spot where I abruptly stopped our rented car and jumped out to see the Galician bagpipers and then show them my Bulgarian one. Who knows? Maybe by the time we take our trip, I’ll have actually learned how to play that thing decently.

You see what you have done? Given me something new to dream about and made me giddy with anticipation of sharing with you all the things I love in this world. The trip to the Cherry Bowl Theater in Michigan will have new meaning with you in the back seat ready for your first Drive-In Movie. I can’t wait to take you on my favorite bike ride in Salzburg or ride the Staten Island Ferry after visiting my old home in New Jersey or go see the elephants at the Pooram Festival in Kerala, the place your mother was named for.

I’m reserving tickets at the Castro Theater for the Sound of Music Sing-a-Long, anxious to show you the Calaveras Big Trees where we all used to camp with 60 SF School kids, ready to take you to the chicken place in Madrid after a day in the Prado. Oh, the places we’ll go and the sights that we’ll see!

So little Zadie, hope your first day was a happy and healthy one. Drink your milk, get plenty of sleep and grow up to be big and strong and ready to travel with your Grandparents. Maybe if your Mom and Dad are nice to us, we’ll let them come along too.