The Orff Olympics

The Olympics have begun and the air is a-buzz with excitement. TV screens in Sports Bars are filled with pageantry, motion and emotion as dreams are realized or shattered in full view of millions worldwide. Our urge to push our bodies to the limits of possibility, to defy gravity, to court grace, to run, jump, swim, throw far beyond what the average bi-pedal human can ever dream of doing is the stuff of high drama, given a stage and 24/7 media coverage. The three-year old on the playground monkey bars shouts to the parents, “Look what I can do!!,” and indeed, we all want to show off our physical accomplishments. So when Olympic athletes put in countless hours training their body and perfecting their discipline, we are in awe of accomplishment and are quite happy to pay them the attention they deserve.

And though politics can leak in—who can forget the upraised Black Power fists in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics or the horror of terrorism in the 1972 Munich Olympics—the general spirit of crossing borders as athletes worldwide share the field and pursue their common passion is intended to uplift. Of course, they are in competition with each other and countries are counting their gold medals, but amongst the athletes themselves, I’d like to think that the old meaning of competition — co-petitioning the same god—is in the foreground. An Israeli and an Egyptian who both run marathons or pole vault or play basketball may indeed understand and respect each other more than the people in their own culture who have markedly different interests and jobs. They share a common love, a common struggle against the limits of their field, a common lifestyle of practice and discipline, a common admiration of what their fellow competitors achieve. I hope that people watching the Olympics notice this and feel the way that these disciplines brought together in this international event can supercede all the usual cultural barriers of race, religion, political belief.

Meanwhile, tonight another kind of Olympics will begin that will get no media attention, no newspaper coverage, no affirmation that it is worthy of attention. Down in a retreat center tucked away in the Carmel Valley, some 100 people will gather from the U.S., Canada and Mexico, from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuala, from Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia and Spain, from Iran, Quatar and Turkey, from China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, from Nigeria and South Africa. Instead of carrying a torch, they will pass down a xylophone mallet. Instead of leaping for height or sprinting for speed, they will be jumping, twirling, skipping, swirling for the aesthetic pleasure and beauty of the dance. Instead of manipulating balls or paddles for points, they will be using hands and sticks to coax beautiful sounds from bodies, bells and bass xylophones, often at lightning speeds and with intricate coordination. Instead of pushing against each other to win the medal, they will pull each other up to encourage their highest possibilities in learning better yet how to teach and reach young children in classrooms around the world. The Orff Olympics have begun.

Should the cameras start rolling and the crowds gather to watch, it’s just possible that it would ruin everything. The advertisers would descent, the product-placement banners would hang from the blackboards, the lessons would be interrupted for “a word from our sponsor” and the teachers might start teaching for show, prepped with make-up before each class and turning up their natural charm for the cameras. But if all the respective cultures were alerted that this is important stuff and paid the same respect and awe for a lesson well-taught, a song sung with heart and soul without a trace of American Idol expectation, a blues improvisation on the xylophone the astonishes the person playing it as they discover their buried musicality, if the people who make decisions in these countries gave this the same attention as the superstar athlete and aligned their politics and culture accordingly, well, wouldn’t that be a refreshing change. The children would certainly benefit from it and the viewers might just realize that they themselves might reclaim their musical selves that they sold to the devil of music consumerism.

Of course, I know it ain’t gonna happen. We teachers are going to have an incredible two weeks where miracles abound and not a soul will know or care anything about it. Except for the 10,000 or so children who will joyfully receive the fruits of the harvest.

Let the wild rumpus start!

Just Right

I woke up today thinking of Goldilocks. She seems like a random innocent little girl in a fairy tale story, but if you think about it, she’s a spiritual seeker. She enters the dangerous forest and dares to walk into the home of the three bears. From the beginning, the story is fraught with tension. When will they return? Is she aware how precarious her situation is? But nonplussed, off she goes to investigate.

First there’s the porridge that’s too hot or too cold. We know what that feels like, when life throws us into situations too hot to handle and we burn ourselves seeking nourishment. We read a book or go to a workshop or meet someone at a party and suddenly, our head is on fire, our old life is called to account and we’re faced with more change than we can handle. At the other end, we’re served up some old used dogma that’s passed through too many unthinking hands and heads, sit in the church service with everyone dutifully going through the motions, but it all feels lumpy and cold. And then we have the good fortune to sit down at the bowl just right. And so we eat.

Then come the chairs, too big or too small. That sense of looking for the life, the job, the person, that fits us. David Whyte has a good line, “Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.” (I think of this often walking through the tiny halls of my old familiar school after having traveled halfway around this big world to teach in China or Brazil or South Africa. But still, inside the classes with the kids and their large imaginations and boundless spirits and sometimes at the lunch counter with some intriguing spirited conversation with staff, the school size still fits.) Other things may be too large, demanding an aliveness from us that we’re not prepared to give in that moment. And so we go from chair to chair until we find the one just right.

Finally come the beds, too soft or too hard. The first is too comfortable, we sink down too deeply, no resistance and nothing to push up against (remember the fantasies about making love in waterbeds? It was ridiculous!), we find it hard to get out and going in the morning, covered in big fluffy pillows and down comforters and all pastel colors with pleasant landscape paintings on the wall. The next bed is too austere, our back hurts, we feel like monks in hairshirts with no conviction that pain is the path to salvation. And finally, the bed just right. Ah!

So on my 61^st birthday, my mild vow is to stop complaining that I have only this and not that and come to terms with the truth of the life I’ve landed in being just right. Of course, I’ll keep tasting the porridge I’m served, try out the chair sizes and bed firmness, but crank up the gratitude for what comes my way and tone down the thwarted ambitions. I might as well enjoy it all while I can, knowing that the three bears are going to come home someday and chase me back screaming into the forest.

The Next One

Tomorrow I turn 61. It feels less dramatic than the switch from 59 to 60, but hey, they’re all just numbers. My friend Kofi from Ghana is baffled by our obsession with birthdays and I can see his point. But when you’re an American from a Baby Boomer generation and in a contemporary society where everyone is the star of their own movie, complete with personal soundtrack, such things take on large proportions. It’s probably safe to say that there has never been a more narcissistic couple of generations and it’s just getting worse. People assume that others are fascinated by their Facebook posting about their salmon dinner or the details of their child’s toilet training progress, get angry at the weather when it interrupts their plans and feel personally affronted by the world’s non-cooperation when the train runs late. And to set the record straight, I am one of these people.

On the generous side of this trend, we all need to make sense of our lives, search for some hidden meaning in the things that happen to us and the things we choose to do. And so a birthday or a New Year’s celebration or an anniversary serve as markers in our evolution, a time to pause, reflect, take a moment’s rest on the plateau and look back at where you’ve hiked, take stock of where you are and look ahead to what’s coming up. And invariably, our emotional brain attaches some kind of judgement to it all. It was a good year, a bad year, a confusing year, a revealing year, all of the above, none of the above.

For my part, 60 had its share of significant markers. There were numerous hard goodbyes— to my dear friend Luz from Spain, my cat Chester, to The San Francisco School Elementary building, to my teaching colleague and alum student Nova unjustly let go from the staff, to my mustache and about 20 pounds (well, that was a happy one), to my friend Ed at the Jewish Home and almost to my mother-in-law who announced her departure. And then some glorious welcome hellos and new beginnings. First and foremost to my granddaughter Zadie, but also to my first jazz group, The Pentatonics, to my new book All Blues, to my alum students from 40 years ago at the Arthur Morgan School Jug Band Reunion, to nephew Ian’s wife Madeline, to my daughter Talia after 16 months apart, and to my mother-in-law coming back from the edge to join us for what we hope will be many years to come.

And then all the ongoing things that continue to bring pleasure and fulfillment—my 38^th year teaching kids at the school, playing piano for my Mom and other friends at The Jewish Home, traveling and teaching, writing this blog, playing jazz, biking, zazen, reading, movie-going and so on. My teeth are a wreck and my hernia operation is now scheduled, but all in all, a year of good health and energy.

Duke Ellington once was asked which was his favorite composition and without missing a beat, replied, “The next one.” My former image of 60-years old was sitting on the rocking chair on the front porch basking in the glories of your younger years and chewing on your accomplishments like a contented cow. But all I can think of is how much more I still want to do. Not exactly the Bucket List of seeing the Pyramids or Macchu Picchu, but all the books I’m still hoping to publish, the jazz concerts I’d love to give, the talks at Education Conferences or Ted or Oprah, the opportunity to work with college kids, the musical studies I still dream about. My gaze is more forward than backward, looking ahead to what’s next on the list rather than back to what I’ve done.

When I was younger, I was a slow developer when it came to ambition, just kind of knocking about in college and the few years after it. But once I found something I was reasonably good at, I developed a hunger for more that continues unsatiated. Or rather satiated in each opportunity, but then eager for “the next one.” Not for fame or admiration or personal glory and certainly not for money (wrong field for that one!), but simply for the chance to keep honing the craft on the sharp edge of diverse opportunities, to be of service and give what I can in only the way that I can do it. If I have anything approaching a birthday wish, it is simply my hope that this work can continue and grow.

Now who wants to hear the details of my birthday dinner?

The Postcard Project

A few years back, I had the good fortune to meet Camino, a music therapist working at a cancer ward for children in Madrid. The ward is an extraordinary place, filled with light and love mixed with the pathos of innocent children stricken by this disease. It is run by my friend Sofia’s sister, Blanca, and I’ve visited several times and spent a few hours sitting with kids at the piano improvising blues and other styles together.

Camino wrote recently to tell me of a 19-year old named Vero (short for Veronica) who has a difficult and complex form of cancer. Vero happens to love postcards and Camino asked whether I’d be willing to send some on my travels. Unfortunately, I had just returned from my trips with nothing immediately coming up, but remembered a stack of postcards in a desk drawer from other trips. So I began sending them to Vero one day at a time with little comments about the photo on the card or a little story about my travels to that place. One month later, I still haven’t heard anything directly from Vero nor seen her photo, but Camino tells me she is receiving the cards and loving them and will write soon. Of course, I’m curious to see her photo and will enjoy hearing from her, but meanwhile, it just feels wonderful to have a pen pal and think about what to send next.

Pay attention here, because this is an Action Item Blog! In a couple of days, I’ll be in a retreat setting with my Orff course and probably out of range of daily postcard writing. Here’s where you come in. What would it be like if everyone reading this blog sent one postcard from their town? You don’t need to say much. Simply write in English (or Spanish) something like “Hello Vero. My name is ________, I’m a friend of Doug’s and I live in __________.” Then say a few words about the place on the postcard and Voila! you’re done. Short effort with a big effect—especially if everyone does it. Science and common sense tells us that hope and love and any expression of caring boosts the immune system and helps us battle any disease. I’m imagining 25 or 50 or 100 postcards coming in from all parts of the world would really lift Vero’s spirits.

Of course, some of you younger folks may not know where the post office is and have to learn how to put on a stamp (don’t forget to ask the price to send to Spain) and pick up something called a pen and write with your own hand! But it’s worth it. Send it to:

Unidad de Oncología Pediátrica

Hospital Universitario Madrid Montepríncipe

Avda. Montepríncipe N. 25

Boadilla del Monte 28660

Madrid, ESPAÑA

Thanks in advance for your help. And have fun picking the postcard!

A Confident Uncertainty

I’ve recently spent some time in cafés in Marin County and just happened each time to sit next to a couple of men talking. Now I don’t want to be too harsh on my own gender, but in each case, these guys could best be described as “arrogant jerks.” Not that they were talking about anything horrible, like racist or sexist beer-guzzling frat boys. Written down, the conversations were benign enough and even occasionally interesting. But there was something about the tone that felt off. Loud, show-offy, overly confident that whatever they were saying was incredibly fascinating and 100% right. Each trying to one-up the other or affirm their mutual superiority. Do you know the type?

I’m always trying to trace behavior to ancient hunter/gatherer needs and I suspect that unbridled confidence is essential to the male hunter mentality. As is an over-fascination with tools. “Hey, man, I know that this is where the game runs by, you see, they’re following some spiritual bio-rhythm that dictates their daily fluid intake at the waterhole. And by the way, check out my new spear, with a special drag-reduction tapered tip.”

Confidence is a good thing and a biological imperative as well. A Neolithic buddy wringing his hands and exclaiming, “Oh God-yet-to-be-invented, I know I am not worthy of bringing down this waterbuck” was not your hunting partner of choice nor was the waffling “I’m really not very good at this, but I’ll do what I can” type. When you’re in the act of doing anything, you need to exude outer confidence and feel inner confidence, even in the face of certain knowledge that you have no idea what the hell you’re doing. As I accidentally captured it so well in my song The Science Fair Blues— “I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m going to show it to you.”

But after the spear-throwing, basketball game or piano recital, that’s the time for humility to have its say. Indeed, it was J.M. Barrie (author of Peter Pan) who said “Life is a long lesson in humility.” I guess what bothered me about the guys at the café was the tone of “Look what I know.” Let’s face it. In the face of the overwhelming complexity of this world and the vastness of the universe, we know basically absolutely nothing. Not to stop us from grasping for something approaching a certain truth— of which there are many beyond death and taxes—but to keep us listening and questioning and investigating and revising. “All your questions will be answered” said one teacher at the beginning of an Orff training he was leading. “All your answers will be questioned—including mine” is how I start my workshops.

I have sometimes been accused—unjustly, in my humble opinion— of arrogance. From my point of view, the accusation mistakes a confidence borne from extensive experience for arrogant certainty. But it doesn’t work so well to respond with “You ignorant sniveling jerk, I’m not arrogant!” So I just shrug my shoulders in the Californian way and say, “I’m sorry you perceive it that way. It’s not my intention” while secretly thinking “You’re an ignorant sniveling jerk!”

So for the record, the one thing I’m reasonably confident about is my uncertainty and the one thing I’m certain of is the need for a reasonable confidence.

I think. But maybe not. On the other hand…

The Physics of Flying

After some two weeks away, I eagerly awaited the reunion with my piano. I shouldn’t have been so surprised when my fingers felt like lumbering bears bumping into the wrong notes and snapping twigs in the 88-treed forest. Music is nothing if not physical and when the digits lie dormant for awhile, it takes a while for them to get out of bed and join the day fully awake. So I took out the Bach Partitas and started cutting and slashing my way through them until some muscle memory kicked in. That helped, but if the phone rang for a gig in an hour, I would have been wise to turn it down.

But the next day, I started playing through some of the old jazz chestnuts and before I knew it, my fingers were flying through intricate paths with great fervor in a state of phalangetic bliss and let me tell you, there is no finer feeling than that. The body deeply rooted in the rhythms that connect us to this earth, both feet (barefoot!) firmly on the soil while the imagination kicks in and sends us soaring over the chords, dodging in and out of the notes to be avoided in the full freedom of ascending to the heavens. But not too high (remember Icarus?), always swooping back towards the roots, resting on tree branches, splashing in the birdbath on our journey to nowhere. No destination beyond the exhiliration of flying and the joy of unencumbered movement. And it doesn’t sound so bad either.

I suppose that’s why I love jazz, the physical and aural and intellectual embodiment of what it means to be free while still in this human body. The rhythms on drums made from animal skins and cymbals forged from the metals of this earth remind us of where we come from and who we are, mortals on the physical plane whose soul is connected to soil, in company with plants and animals, streams and stones. The chords on the stringed instruments take us to the left hemisphere of the brain, call on our capacity for abstract thought and call forth the sheer pleasure of intricate, nuanced and complex ideas, structures and systems. Then the melodies on horns and flutes and singing voices lift us in the air on the wings of our own breath, the exhales and inhales of the lungs so close to our heart opens that marvelous organ to the wonders of the feeling life. Our body-mind- heart, our physical-intellectual-emotional capacities all dancing together in a marvelous three-way conversation.

On some level, just about all music does this, but in different ratios and balances. 12-tone music falls short of stirring body-based rhythms, hip-hop is low on complex intellectual structures (someone just sent me a joke photo of a “rap piano” with five keys on it!), smooth jazz has had all feeling drained from it. I love just about all authentic music, but when you’re in the midst of a hard-swingin’ jazz piece with evocative harmonic voicings and progressions and the improvised melodies flying into the outer reaches of the stratosphere— well, there’s nothing quite like it. Especially if you’re the one playing it all on piano!

Now I feel ready for the gig. Give me a call. 

Follow Your List

When the world finally wakes up to the worth of music teaching, I’ll be prepared for my Terry Gross interview.

“Doug, tell us, to what do you attribute your modest success?”

“Well, Terry, I can answer that in three words: ‘Mead memo books.’”

The memo book is a nifty piece of technology made by the Mead Company in Dayton, Ohio. It offers 60 sheets of 5 by 3 inch lined paper between cardboard covers, spiral-bound at top or side (I prefer side) and available in various colors—red, blue, green, black. When I started using them in the mid-80’s they cost $0.69.  Now the price has risen to $1.19. They have ridden with me faithfully in my front
shirt pocket these past 25 years, shared with my Niji stylist pen and in the last decade or so, my reading glasses.

In my desk drawer are some fifty books, the treasures of a memorabilia miser available for posterity, though probably the first thing to be thrown away in a post-mortem houseclean. But fascinating to see what I was up to in the day-to-day twenty years ago, try to remember the people whose phone number I listed, recall when I got such-and-such done. I picked one out of my drawer this morning and found some haiku written by the Calaveras campers! Serenditipous!

Here’s how it works:

• On the inside cardboard covers, important phone numbers—personal, inside front cover, business, inside back.

• On the pages from front to back, my list of things to do. A random example from 1987:   
            1) Call Lisa

            2) Dub tape for Avon

            3) Decide Xmas play story

            4) Make business card

            5) School reimbursement

            6) Guinea pig (What was this?!!)

When I finally do accomplish an item on the list, I cross it out. Sometimes I circle one if it rises in importance or I keep putting it off. When the page is full and all are crossed out, on to the next page.

• On the pages from back to front, inspired ideas for classes, workshops, articles, musical compositions, those little things that come to me at random moments and would fly away forgotten without my Niji pen and memo books. Also on these pages are directions to places, temporary phone numbers, notes from talks or concerts, etc.

Each book generally last around six to eight months. When it’s done, I go through it once more, sift out the inspired ideas from the mundane and re-type on the computer and move on to the next, usually a different color. And that’s it. The right tool for the right job for the right cost. Easy to carry, easy to store, no buttons to power off or on. Of course, I’m well aware that I’m a quaintly obsolete dinosaur in the brave new world of Blackberries and i-Phones that can do all of the above and so much more. But since it ain’t broke, I see no need to fix it and keep both the local Five and Dime store and the Mead Company afloat with my two books bought annually at a total cost of $2.38.

During my vacation time in Michigan, my memo book lay unopened on the table. But now back home with things to attend to, it’s back in its familiar front pocket reminding me to book my next flight, prepare my notes for next week’s Orff course, call the piano tuner and get fried tofu in Japantown. How do people get by without these lists?

Back in the late ‘80’s, my sister gave me a sweatshirt with a Joseph Campbell quote: “Follow your bliss.” A friend trumped her by making a custom-made T-shirt (in my own handwriting and as a surprise gift—no small feat!) that said, “Follow your list.” We need both. A list without the bliss is mere busy work, but to reach your bliss, I find the list indispensable. And so on to the day.

1.     Write today’s blog.

2. Fried tofu