I Won!

“I don’t like winning,” said the 5-year old at the end of my class. If the U.S. was a religion, that would be blasphemy. As it stands, it could be grounds for treason and I kept my eyes peeled for a visit from Homeland Security. Despite the plea from Jimmy Stewart in the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” to put neighborhood, community and fellow feeling above all, let’s face it—it’s a sentiment that lasts a couple of days around Christmas and then it’s back to the cutthroat game of winners and losers.

I keep score in basketball, play volleyball with a net and get an annual thrill from the Super Bowl or World Series. I play to win in Boggle, Hearts and Solitaire and to this day, feel a childlike (or is it childish?) excitement in shooting the moon or shooting a winning basket. And a comparable annoyance when I lose. Winning and losing in sports and games is indelibly stamped on my character and I accept that. (Though even here, things can shift—my new definition of winning the Staff-8^th grade basketball game is that I can walk away when it’s over!)

But now everything seems to be a competition with winners and losers. The joyful communal experiences of singing, dancing, cooking and learning in school together is reduced to American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, Hell’s Kitchen, Race to the Top. Politics has never been more about the winning team and never been less about how to work side-by-side to create a working democracy and healthy culture. Schools have always leaned too heavily to the honor roll and not considered enough as to how each child can learn and contribute, but now whole schools can lose funds if their students fail the tests based on the lie of “no child left behind.” The pressure on children to achieve, the stress to not be called a loser, the anxiety of measuring up to someone else’s standard, has never been more present and never more harmful. It’s a toxic culture that infects everything it touches.

So when my 5-year old students wanted to know if it was a winning game we were playing and a few commented as the little boy above did, they were mirroring a parent culture trying to counter-balance our obsession with winning. “If winning and losing causes harm, “ the reasoning goes, “let’s eliminate games and structures that have winners and losers.”

But I have another point of view. In-between “winning is everything” and “let’s take the net down” there is a third alternative. The little game I was playing is one of several models for it, as follows:

Kids in partners held hands facing each other and walked away to the beat while reciting “Roses are red. Violets are blue. Sugar is sweet…” On the final phrase—“and so are you!” they had to run back together, hold hands and freeze. The point was to arrive on time and feel the relationship between time, space and energy.

The second level was starting back to back and not looking to see where their partner was until the last phrase— a bit more challenging. Then to add just the right dose of “volleyball with a net” tension, the new rule was that those who didn’t get back in time were “out.”

Pay attention here, because this is my punch line. It’s good to have winning and losing games to heighten attention, increase motivation (for some) and add just the right dose of excitement. But the question we must ask is, “What becomes of the losers?” In the deadly serious and poorly thought-out game of so much in the culture, the answer is often “Prison.” California, a state that for years now has spent more money on prisons than schools, is an experienced player of that game. But in the new thinking, we offer another choice for the “losers” (or better stated, “those who get out”)— to play part of the poem on some instruments off to the side.

The moment I explain that, you can see the wheels turning in the kids’ minds. “Hmm. Should I get out on purpose so I can play that big drum first?” This is Shakespearean drama! In my experience, kids mostly want to “win” the movement game, but immediately are quite happy to get to play the instruments. And of course, we then play again to give everyone another chance and see if they've developed their strategies better.

So when another child asked me at the end of class, “Who won?” I replied: “If you got to play an instrument, you won. If you were the last one out, you won. If you enjoyed the class, you won.” And I might have gone on. “If you learned something in class, if you made a nice contact with a partner, if you improved your triangle technique, if you were happy when the class was over, etc.” And he looked at me and smiled, "I won!" 

It’s a big topic and I have 20 more pages of comments, but right now I need to go kick some major butt in Solitaire.

The Culture-Makers

I’ve been going to Orff workshops for some 35 years now. You would think I would have finally learned what it takes to be an Orff teacher. But it’s not just because I’m a slow learner. The fact is, I’ve chosen a path with no final destination, simply increased awareness and a growing ability to respond to whatever I may encounter in the next step. In this Pedagogy of the Imagination, there is no recognizable border to cross to let you know you’ve arrived.

And so I gather with some 50 to 80 colleagues three times a year for the local Orff chapter’s Saturday workshop. Most teachers are motivated to come and gather material for Monday’s class, some are looking for the next dynamic idea of how to teach well, a few hope to improve their skill or technique in a particular aspect of musicianship and there are a few diehard enthusiasts who have retired or moved on to other things, but enjoy attending just to reaffirm community and remember the profound pleasure of playing, singing and dancing with fellow folks who have become friends.

As joyful as these trainings tend to be, there inevitably comes the moment when you chat with a participant and hear the old story, “Well, it’s great to be here, but I don’t know if I’ll have a job next Fall.” Ever since Proposition 13 all those decades back, music jobs in California have been on the chopping block and the steady schedule of beheadings makes the French Revolution seem tame. Music education is one of the few jobs where your job description includes “Be prepared to defend your chosen field and advocate tirelessly.” I don’t believe dentists feel compelled to convince, “It really is a good idea to take care of your cavities!” or doctors to plead, “Please let me help you with your life-threatening illness!” or first-grade teachers inquire, “Do you mind if I teach your child to read? Can I keep my job long enough to do so?” But somehow music teachers are constantly on the defensive, if not for their own survival, then also for the possibility that the bureaucrats might have an inkling of an understanding of what we’re trying to accomplish here.

Earlier this week, my wife went to a talk by Lois Hetland on Arts-Advocacy. She reported that Ms. Hetland spoke about how the old way for arts advocacy was to show how it boosted “academic” performance (as if the arts were another beast entirely from academics). The problem, she noted, was that no research had actually been done to support this. So current arts advocacy tends to downplay that angle.

I say Hooray. Never a big fan of the Mozart Effect, I felt demeaned that my professions existed merely to boost someone else’s chosen field. In New South Wales, Australia, music teachers are called RFF’s—Relief from Face-to-Face. In effect, instead of carriers of one of humanity’s most inspiring traditions, they are glorified babysitters, relieving the classroom teacher from face-to-face contact with students. Imagine having your profession defined so negatively. Even baby-sitters have a description of an actual activity.

The new tack that Ms. Hetland suggested was simply that students unexposed to the arts and merely checking off boxes on someone else’s multiple-choice test grow up to be deadly boring adults. The culture needs more. The culture deserves more. And as Daniel Pink often points out, the corporations demand more as well. And that last point has certainly attracted attention in our monied and achievement-oriented society.

My thought that has been hatching for decades but is in its infancy of clear articulation is that what really makes a school tick is its culture. Not its rules or test-scores or trophies or faculty with initials after their names. When I walk into a school, I can feel in five minutes what kind of culture is afoot. Is there student art work on the walls? Student poetry or stories on the bulletin board? Music coming out of classrooms? Children happily playing inside and out? An atmosphere of ease and excitement and fervor? A  buzz and a bubbly feeling? Kids with dirty hands? Might a group of teachers, after 20 minutes of a spirited Spanish singing time, spontaneously get in a circle after the kids leave and keep singing and playing drums and bells and calling each other into the middle of the dancing ring with the kids looking in at the window? (This happened at my school last Friday.)

When it comes to achievement and results measured by computers and children catalogued as numbers and ranked by letters, it’s no wonder that art and arts teachers are low on the list and easily expendable by a vote at the School Board meeting. But when it comes to culture, the thing that makes both kids and teachers eager to get up in the morning and travel to the edge of their imagination and find out just how wide the heart can open without bursting from joy, we arts teachers are at the forefront.

We artists are the culture-makers. Every institution is by-default a culture, which can be defined as the sum total of the daily small and big decisions a group of people make that reveals what they value. But to be a conscious culture, “celebrating and nurturing the imaginative, intellectual and humanitarian promise of each student within the circle of community” (a version of my school’s mission statement) is another achievement altogether. The arts give body to the lip-service, give muscle and bone and breath and through ritual, celebration, scientific inquiry and experimentation, poetry, stories, music, dance, art, drama, gardening, children’s games and more, make each day at school a wondrous participation in the mystery and magic that the world offers us.

How can we endure a single day of anything less?

The Peanut-Table Legacy

Last night, I felt deep nostalgia for the 70’s. The catalyst was the excellent play, Humor Abuse, the story of a boy growing up in the San Francisco Pickle Family Circus. (Local folks, get your tickets fast—ends Feb. 5^th!) The Pickle Family Circus was one-of-a-kind, a departure from the Barnum & Bailey variety that paved the way for future “alternative” circuses (most notably Cirque du Soleil). It featured a great band (at one time including Body Musician Keith Terry) and clowns Geoff Hoyle, Bill Irwin and founder Larry Pisoni (the subject of the above play) who took clowning to a high exalted level of physical comedy far beyond (but not excluding) squirting flowers. It was run as a collective and often raised money for other causes (day care centers, health clinics).

That got me thinking about other similar ventures in the SF Bay Area of the 70’s, artistic and otherwise. The San Francisco Mime Troupe, the Center for World Music, Gamelan Sekar Jaya, the Oberlin Dance Collective, the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, Art Lande’s Rubisa Patrol and La Bomba Jazz School, Cazadero Music Camp, the SF Zen Center, the Community Food Stores. All shared in common the spirit of some form of collective leadership, some on-the-edge thinking seeking to break through the too-narrow boundaries of mainstream American culture, permission to imagine and create in a culture of collaboration. Nobody made much money and nobody needed much money to survive—this was the time of affordable rents (like my ocean-view upper Haight place that I shared with my sister and husband for $45 each per month), food stamps, CETA and California Arts Council grants. They were glorious times. We lived on vision, on possibility, on brown rice and vegetables.

Another place that grew to adulthood in the 70’s was The San Francisco School where I started working in 1975. With an administration consisting of two people and a parent at the front desk, we built a culture that served the inmost needs of children—and the teachers as well. Who wouldn’t want to work in a place where you were entrusted to follow your passion within the boundaries of making sure kids could read, write and do simple arithmetic? A place where we could bring our dog to work, play Sardines at staff retreats, have an evening brandy at the camping trip after we had sung the kids to sleep? A place where we dodged the health-inspectors, ignored the standardized tests, kept the gates unlocked, but closed to anything that ran contrary to our stated and unstated (but deeply felt) values. Most importantly, a place where we gathered weekly around the homemade peanut-shaped table for the staff meeting and collectively made the decisions that would shape the school as we came to know it.

Now that world, both in the school, San Francisco and the world at large, has changed enormously, as change it must. And some for the better. Heck, we children of the 60’s and 70’s were kids, sure that we could do better than our parents and in many ways we did— changed prevailing notions about race, gender, war, diet, exercise and beyond. But we were kids making it up as we went along and with the freedom and exhilaration of that vision came all the dead-ends, weird notions, naiveté, as well as the usual squabbles and conflicts that are part and parcel of any human gatherings.

But now at my school and in institutions of all sorts, the gates are locked with video cameras and yet the toxic ideas of mainstream culture are coming through, sometimes even invited and welcomed in by a new generation of leaders who seem short on vision and long on law. The culture of litigation has its stranglehold on us all, skyrocketing rents and mortgages has cut out the young folks’ period of experimentation and market research is replacing innermost conviction that we’re on the right path.

"I dwell in possibility, a fairer house than prose, more numerous of windows, superior for doors," wrote Emily Dickinson and I’m grateful to have lived through that 70’s world of possibility. And I can’t help but feel a touch of sadness for my young teacher colleagues at school. They are bright, imaginative and ripe to stamp the school with their own imprint and character the way my generation did. And left alone in their classrooms, I believe they are doing that with the children they teach.

But what’s missing for them is the peanut-table. They are mostly having to respond to directives from an administration that has grown 10 times larger and is gathering ideas from Conferences or corporate structures far away from the children. What’s missing for them is the glorious—and yes, at times tedious and agonizing— gathering around the table each week to build a living, breathing culture collectively.

But I am ever hopeful, for them and for us all. The halls are starting to buzz with long-needed conversation and some of these young teachers are on the front lines. And outside the gates, there are other kinds of Renaissance signs, some descendants of our work in the 70’s, some new directions—community gardens, farmer’s markets, a burgeoning world music culture, a more inclusive and responsible hip-hop culture, full zendos at the SF Zen Center, corporations loosening up the old hierarchies (like Google) and beyond.

And when someone builds a new peanut-table at our school, then I can rest easy that all will be well. 

No Whining!

There is an old Zen story about a woman who had suffered a loss and went to the Buddha for help. “Please relieve me of my suffering.” “Easily done,” said the Buddha. “Just bring me a person who hasn’t suffered a loss.” The woman went from door to door but couldn’t find anyone who hadn’t had a similar experience. She returned to the Buddha ready to hear the first Buddhist precept, “Life is suffering.”

I think the same could be said of people who have been disappointed or betrayed. We all have our stories. We’ve been treated unfairly in our work. Or spoken out in an unjust situation with the backing of our colleagues at the water-cooler only to find ourselves alone on the front lines in the meeting. Or suffered the barbs of a narrow-minded newspaper critic. Or were at the wrong end of a smear campaign. Or generally felt that the world missed the opportunity to recognize our genius. All the myriad ways we expect life to be fair and people to be kind and just and all the ways they disappoint us, misunderstand us, reject us. And no matter how strong and clear we feel in our inner core, all the ways we begin to wonder if they were right. As Yeats so brilliantly puts it in A Dialogue of Self and Soul:

“How in the name of Heaven can he escape

That defiling and disfigured shape

The mirror of malicious eyes

Casts upon his eyes until at last

He thinks that shape must be his shape?”

I found myself telling my old war stories to my host in New York this weekend and though each story was at least mildly entertaining and had a larger point and punch line, it seems that other people’s stories are interesting only up to a point. And after I had gone through my list of the Institutions who had failed me (leaving out my high school pole vaulting story), I couldn’t help but wonder if I had passed that point with my host and started to come off as one of those angry, bitter old people. For no matter how detached or removed I think I am, telling the story to shed light on the workings of political power, the glory and necessity of resistance, the grist that betrayal provides the mill of growing one’s Soul, I’m sure there is an element of whining that creeps in. Our emotional memory is such that each re-telling of the story kicks in the same visceral physical reactions, brain patterns and heart responses that were present at the event itself. We literally hurt ourselves all over again when we call up those patterns in each re-telling. The whine creeps in. And nobody likes to hear someone whine, whether you’re 2, 42, or 82.

So I’m making a public vow by proclaiming February my personal “no whining” month. (It was timely that this thought came when it did, at the beginning of the shortest month!) And I in no way want to imply anything for Black History Month, though perhaps that is timely also. Along with Native Americans, ain’t no group of people in this country more entitled to whine than black folks. But whether a person or a group, whining only goes so far and then, as a friend of mine always quips, “build a bridge”—ie, get over it. Well, that can be too simplistic. More like go through it and come out the other end with dignity intact, love increased, determination renewed and the story re-told in a new frame.

No matter how much we hate to think it at the time of betrayal, we ultimately must thank everyone who did us wrong. A quick look back at our life often reveals that the door they slammed in our face turned us towards another necessary opening in our life that proved essential. On some level, such people in our life are appointed by our invisible helpers to see just how serious we are. They’re the gatekeepers of the Soul, providing the resistance that gives us strength if we accept the trial. Constant praise, affirmation, loving pats on the back can make us lazy and flabby from too much comfort.

I remember that old Greek myth from my childhood, where Hercules wrestles Antaeus, the son of Gaia (Mother Earth). Everytime he threw Antaeus to the ground, he sprung up stronger, renewed by contact with his Mother Earth. Hercules eventually won by holding him up in the air, something akin to a life of constant praise to the adoring crowds. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

 So my February challenge is to tell the story as needed without a whining me in the center. Wish me luck. Pleeeeeeaaassse?

Live at the Vanguard

Stepping through the small red door was like passing through the portals into the underworld. Not the Hades of perpetual torture, but some soulful heavenly realm where devilish angels armed with horns, skins, sticks and strings gave voice to the passions, thoughts and feelings forbidden above ground. Back in the day, the ticket price was a vulnerable heart and lots of second-hand smoke. The smoke is gone, but the music that plucks the strings unstrummed in the workaday world above lives on— welcome to The Village Vanguard Jazz Club.

I had stepped through these doors first in my imagination, escorted by the stereo speakers. Such incredible jazz history pressed onto vinyl—Bill Evans Live at the Village Vanguard, John Coltrane Live at the Village Vanguard, Cannonball Adderly, Sonny Rollins and other giants who a half-century ago stooped to enter through the same door and work their juju magic. And in my more CD recent collection, Bill Charlap, Fred Hersch, Mary Stallings, Josh Redman and more.

So here I was, walking down those steps into yesterday’s history, today’s pleasure and tomorrow’s promise. Once seated, I looked at the photos on walls, a veritable Who’s Who of jazz history. And more. Max Gordon first opened the club in 1935 and for many years featured musicians as diverse as Harry Belafonte, Miriam Makeba, Burl Ives. It’s a small, intimate place, seating no more than 125 and you can’t help but feel the presence of all the great musicians and magical nights that had happened here in the past 75 years soaked into the walls and hovering in the air. When the musicians on stage strike the first note, they’re playing the next note in a decades-long ongoing composition, with the ancestors listening from their perch in the other world.

And so when Barry Harris, the 83-year old grand master and beloved teacher of jazz piano sat down and plunked the first rich chord of an evening of jazz standards, the magic began anew. In the audience were folks of all ages, including some 10-year old girls in the front row, while Mr. Harris toured us through the glories of a jazz standard repertoire with his trio, connecting each piece with a little story-patter that ended in the next song’s title. Near the end of his set, he told a tale about cloning and invited up his personal clone, a 14-year old piano student of his who now can put “played at the Village Vanguard” on his resume. The young man played well and to see the two standing together so proudly at the end would melt even the hardest heart. Mr. Harris bravely and publicly proclaiming that the show will go on beyond the lifespan of any one musician and that it is our responsibility and pleasure to pass it on to the young folks.

Since I had just come from giving a workshop to some 90 music teachers on the same theme, this touched me even more deeply. My workshop dealt, as it always does, with releasing the group community spirit of our collective musical intelligence before the kids choose their specific path and sit down for the private lesson. This particular group of New York teachers jumped into the games and songs with great gusto and spirit and we spanned the ages from babies to seniors, moved from protest songs to lullabies, played some intriguing music from the Philippines and some swingin’ beginning jazz. At one point I commented, “Sometimes this kind of work is more jazz than jazz!”

So you can imagine how thrilled I was when Barry Harris asked the audience for three numbers between 1 and 8, constructed a melody from the answer (4-6-2) that grew in front of our ears into a full-fledged tune with beautiful harmonies, and asked us to sing along. Between the spirit of instant composition and audience involvement, he embodies everything I’m aiming for—enough hard work and discipline to be able to craft such a composition on the spot and enough spontaneity, community spirit and flexibility to include it in a concert.

From the workshop venue to the historic jazz club, the lovely solos of music teachers on glockenspiels to the beautiful re-workings of jazz standards by Mr. Barry Harris and Co., it was a day worth marking on the calendar. 

The Next President?

I was on a tight schedule to catch my plane and the cab was five minutes late. I’m standing on the sidewalk outside of school with 70 beautiful preschoolers walking by for the fire drill. Each one breaking the code of fire drill silence to greet me with their smiling face and little burst of enthusiasm —“It’s Doug!” With such love, how could I not wake up each day eager to go to work? And I do. But at this moment, all my attention is looking down the empty street waiting for the flash of a yellow car to reassure me that I’ll make my plane.

It arrives just at the moment I take out my secret cell phone to call the cab company. I start the ride down the freeway annoyed, but within five minutes, realize I had won the lottery of cab drivers, one of those referred to in the popular wisdom, “If the cab drivers and barbers ran the country, we’d be in great shape.”

He started with noting I taught at a school and off he went: “Man, it is shameful the way they keep cutting funds to education. Ain’t nothin’ more important. But the s.o.b.’s take money away and outsource the jobs so the young people have no choices left except join the army and fight in their wars.” And good morning to you!

“Well,” I rejoined, “Some make these bad decisions out of ignorance and some just because they have money and their kids are in the good schools, so what do they care? And yeah, you don’t see too many sons and daughters of the warmakers signing up to enlist.”

“Some of my fellow cab drivers are worried that we’re going to start bombing their countries, but I tell them not to worry, ain’t gonna happen until after the election. We start dropping bombs on Iran, price of oil goes up and the voters get mad. Politicans can huff and puff all they want about freedom and all that crap, but it’s all about the almight Buck. Always has been and always will be.

“The politicians don’t run things anyway. With 24,000 lobbyists in Washington, they’re all just puppets of the big money corporations. Makes no different who we vote for— both the Democrats and Republicans suck. Only difference is that the Republicans got teeth, so it hurts.”

Like I said, this was an interesting cab ride!

“My kids doing all right. Both went to Lowell (a high-achieving public school in SF) and my daughter’s in Stanford. I just made sure that I was there to help them through their schoolwork when they were kids and it paid off. My son is not only smart, but an entrepreneur. He’s trying to sell my sperm on E-Bay using himself as an example of product reliability—‘Hey! Look how good I turned out!'

“Anyway, I didn’t have to read books on how to raise my kids. Just used my common sense. Ain’t nothin’ so uncommon these days as common sense.”

It was about then, a couple of miles from the airport, that he noticed he forgot to turn on the meter. “Well, heck, it’s usually around $30, but you’re a teacher, let’s just say $25.” I had done this ride enough to know that this was indeed in the ballpark and not only got to the airport in time, but had the treat of an engaging conversation. Was close to asking his name to find out when he would run for President, but when he started talking about how much he liked Howard Stern, he lost my vote.

Still, I think we should try out a new idea this Election year—only barbers and taxi drivers can run for office. Heck, couldn’t be any worse than it is and just possibly a whole lot better. The only rule is they’d have to keep working part-time in their profession. That way, they keep in touch with people and we keep in touch with them. Imagine a haircut or cab ride where you got to talk about the cuts in education with someone who could actually do something about it.

Think about it.

Confessions of a Seinfeldholic

The unimaginable has happened. After some 13 years of nightly re-runs, Seinfeld has been permanently sent out to the pastures of TV history. How will I survive? Truth be told, that half-hour 7:30 –8:00 fix became a necessary method of shedding the day’s accumulated stresses and shoring me up to meet the tasks of the evening. Sure, it always created some tension around dinner— would the meal be finished and the dishes cleared in time? And yes, some episodes I knew by heart and eventually chose to skip over. And even with the mute button, the commercials were unbearable. But still.

No TV show in history has ever hit so many nerves of those tiny things that we all notice and experience—waiting in restaurants, the difference between first class and coach flights, going to the baby shower, looking for your car in the parking garage, breaking up with the girlfriend/boyfriend. How many times have I been in a group where someone references a Seinfeld episode in discussing an experience? Even at the recent poetry retreat of the erudite David Whyte, he referred to the Soup Nazi while telling a story.

So I guess it’s time to say goodbye to the Soup Nazi, Poppy, J. Peterman, the Bubble Boy, Art Vandelay and the whole cast of colorful characters. The references to double-dipping, being sponge-worthy, muffin tops, puffy shirts and more may live beyond the demise of re-runs, but will eventually go the way of all mortal creations and fade in memory. I was consistently taken by the tightly-woven plots, as many as four strands coming together (the connection between the golf ball, the whale and the “marine biologist” amongst the most brilliant of many), came to love the characters, even as they stood opposed to the kind of caring I care about (again brilliant exposed in the episode about the do-gooder alternative-reality Seinfeld characters who were excruciatingly boring). I’ll miss them all, but hey, I guess it was time to move on.

And now I have 30 more minutes a night to… well, I’ll keep you posted.