The Power of Persuasion

We all hope to make a difference in the world. To say something, do something, make a helping gesture that makes a positive impact on someone. Yes? And the maddening thing is that we can never predict what that will be. Sometimes our most intentional help passes unnoticed and doesn’t make a dent. Other times, little things we may have done or said that we don’t even remember hit the bullseye of someone’s need in the moment that they are forever grateful for.

When I tell people in workshops about checking out my TEDx talk, I advertise it as something to show administrators who need convincing that music is important. Truth be told, I never imagine that they do or if they did, that it would make an impact. And then today, a music teacher told me this  story:

“My administrator called me into her office and said she was going to cut my music hours. I asked her to watch your TEDx talk and the next day she called me back in and said, ‘Never mind. We’ll keep your job as is.’”

Kaching!!!

Sometimes the things you hope make a difference actually do. 

The Goodkin Orff Association

… does not exist, I explained to the gathered crowd in a vivid dream I had last night. Nor will it ever. I’m perfectly content to be the interpreter of Carl Orff (and Gunild Keetman’s) work and besides, his name is more catchy. But if it did, these would be its 10 guiding principles:

1.    Simple idea, great musical result.

2.    Train the body, stimulate the mind, open the heart, stir the soul.

3.    The class as music— enticing beginning, connected middle, satisfying end.

4.    Play first, work next, then play inside the work and work inside the play.

5.    Don’t forget humor.

6.    Don’t forget jazz.

7.    Music lives in the body, voice, imagination and a circle of beautiful people.

8.    Listen, listen, listen.

9.    Watch the children. When they’re not happy, change your teaching.

10.   All of the above.

Membership dues are willingness to risk, commitment to your passion, keeping alive your own musicianship, unshakeable faith in the musical intelligence (and other potentials) of each child and unbridled love for children even when they’re running around out of control in movement class or bending the xylophone nails or sitting closed-mouthed in singing time or talking to their friend while you’re giving directions or… well, you know the list. A lifetime habit of reading great thinkers, educational and otherwise, throwing yourself into studying an unfamiliar music or dance, sacrificing the next cool TV series to meticulously plan classes (Downton Abbey excepted) and habitual questioning of everything you do and think qualify you for the Membership Gold Card with its accompanying perks— you get to arrive first at the workshop to help set up and leave last to help clean up. You also qualify to pack the U-haul van with instruments and drive it to the concert site.

Want to join? Just send the $500 annual dues to yours truly to help me pay for my next book publishing and win a free autographed copy! You’ll get a T-shirt with a photo of me playing bagpipe, downloads of 39 years of my planning books, an Orff ap that instantly arranges any nursery rhyme with complementary rhythms, drones and ostinato, a guided bike tour of Salzburg when you visit the Orff Institute and…

Oh, yeah, that was a dream. Okay, back to planning my next class.

Strange Bedfellows

It’s Easter Sunday. For the first 1900 or so years of Christianity, this was the most important holiday of the faith, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the central pillar of the entire theology. And still is in some places— Spain for example. But starting with the presence of the Virgin Mary in Medieval times and the proliferation of paintings of her holding the baby Jesus, Christmas was on the rise. A thousand years of mixing it up with solstice traditions and at the end, we got one pretty eclectic holiday that shot past Easter on the holiday hit parade, bolstered by Clement More, Hallmark, Macy’s and an American passion for shopping.

But modern day Easter is a pretty weird blend as well. Where was Peter Cottontail in the Bible? And why are rabbits supervising egg hunts? Maybe as Joseph Campbell made pretty clear, the real holiday is resurrection in all its many forms— Spring, for starters, leaves coming back to the bare branches, flowering adorning the earth and fertility (think rabbits and eggs and animal mating seasons) in the air. There are hundreds of stories with the death and rebirth themes, one hero with a thousand faces who lives on in one form or another.

So the kids are hunting for eggs in the park down the street from me, a ritual made yet weirder because Easter falls on 4-20. While they are scrambling for the chocolate eggs, they may grow a little woozy from the second-hand smoke. The pot smokers will be out in force trying to resurrect their sense of wonder with a little help from a weed.

And speaking of rebirth, yesterday was National Record Store Day or some such thing. Amoeba Records had a line some 50 people long and a lot of them with vinyl records in their hands! Looks like my decision to keep my 1,000 plus record-collection in the basement may pay off some day. Wait long enough and what appeared to have died may just come back. Who knows? Maybe independent single-screen movie theaters will make a comeback, there will be a Renaissance of independent bookstores, teachers will get to just enjoy hanging out with the kids and each other minus the constant fear of lawsuits and over-anxious parents, able to again welcome visitors without excessive fingerprinting and to work in their room after-hours without filling out multiple forms.

The Buddhist version of resurrection is the perpetual death and re-birth in each exhale and inhale we take. Attention to breath is one of the paths to daily renewing our full participation in the gift of life. So after a morning meditation, I hope to listen to my old vinyl record of Judy Garland singing Jewish songwriter Irving Berlin’s Easter Parade while eating hard-boiled eggs with the windows open and the 4-20 smoke wafting in from the passerby's— and figure out some way to include a rabbit.

Strange bedfellows all.

PS Later that day, walked down Fillmore St. in San Francisco and ran into the Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival. One more sharing the bed of festivity!

Heaven's Gate

“Except you become as little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

                                                                 —Matthew 18-3

The mirror is daily testimony that linear time is real, that life will write its story on your face and gravity will pull you downward. But inside my spirit is perpetually five-years old and just why is that? Partly because my daily serious work is playing games— singing, dancing and clapping games. And playing them with real five-year olds as well, who remind me of my own child nature and encourage it to come out and play.

Yesterday, I was having a marvelous time in my preschool class when eight alum high schoolers showed up for a visit and peeked in the window. I could feel them watching the kids and exclaiming, “Oh, aren’t they cute?!” and I don’t blame them. That’s how we see it in our culture. But “cute” downsizes the complexity and dignity of the little ones, dismisses them with a backhand complement. And when a tantrum-throwing toddler defeats a crowd of adults, it ain’t exactly cute!

So I waved the high school girls in to come join us and within five minutes, they were making tree shapes for the preschoolers to peek out from behind in our “Cuckoo” game. And then skipped around the room themselves and hid behind the preschooler trees. From there to some clapping plays, 5 and 15-year olds joined as partners and then all of them doing some chicken struttin’ around the room on the B section. Keep in mind that these high school girls are stepping into adulthood, figuring out the dating game and pressured on all sides by the cool code of the teenage mentality. And yet perfectly willing to jump in and make tree shapes and dance like chickens.

I believe our school can take some credit for that, giving kids constant opportunities to keep in touch with all the younger children still living inside of them. Our Middle School Cool Code is to be exactly yourself and never be shy about being silly, expressive, quirky, joyful if that’s what you’re genuinely feeling. No need to wrap it up in protective secret clothing and only let it out when your bedroom door is closed. And as teachers, we’re modeling this as we freely display our own childlike selves in front of the children. Especially in music class.

The children in our school our wonderfully innocent in the way that children can and should be. Not naive, because our kids are smart and savvy and we don’t protect them from wholly from life’s travesties, especially as we initiate them into the responsibilities of social justice. But an innocence that, as Rachel Carson puts it, “preserves their sense of wonder.” We publicly proclaim it in our opening water ceremony as we speak of the first-grader’s beginner’s mind— fresh, curious, open to possibilities. That kind of innocence. The kind that allows 9^th graders the freedom to jump into a preschool music class with both feet and splash around in those refreshing waters.

I agree with Jesus here. Heaven is not a place you go to if you are compliant and obedient to religious authority. It’s a place you enter every day that you keep the inquisitive, curious, wondrous mind and heart of the little child alive and exercised. Thanks to the 9^th grade alums for reminding me yet again.

TGIF

My first week of school back after 10 weeks away. It has been a fine time with the kids, particularly today with 8 straight classes with barely a break, but each one with a seamless flow, great attention, good music being released and the always-surprising, but sincere, “thank you’s” from the kids at the end of class. One 4th grade sweetheart who has mysteriously liked me ever since pre-school so happy to have me back and asking, "Why do you go away?" 

We have a bird theme going at singing time and after reviewing some 6 lovely bird-themed rounds, I sang “The Grey Goose.” This a powerful call-and-response song from the African-American tradition about a goose who gets shot down, cooked, and brought to the table to be eaten, but “the fork couldn’t stick him and the knife couldn’t cut him.” He gets thrown in the hog pen and breaks the sow’s jawbone, taken to the sawmill and breaks the saw’s teeth out and “the last time I seen him, he was flyin’ across the big sky with a long string of goslings.”

What’s my job as a teacher? To provoke thinking— with the kids, with myself, with my colleagues. And so I asked the kids what the song was about and after listening to a few concrete and whimsical answers, called on an extraordinary first-grader who said, “It’s about a goose who is undefeatable.” I shared with the kids the context— slaves who had everything taken from them, but kept an inner Spiritual core that nothing could harm or touch. And went on to tell them that in their own life, people might try to make something beautiful inside of them seem shameful or ugly, but they should hold strong to their grey goose spirit and at the end of the matter, soar up flyin’ ‘cross the big sky, with a long string of goslings that will learn to treasure their own untouchable beautiful spirit.

That’s the way I talk to kids these days and why not?

At the end of this full and satisfying day, after playing piano for my elder friends, I came home with a feeling I haven’t had in a while—TGIF! That rhythm of working hard during the week and sense of satisfaction and release of a Friday night. Don’t have that 5-day work week feeling in my travels, so it was kind of fun to feel it again. Made a good grain salad for dinner, walked to the De Young Museum to hear live jazz and see the Georgia O-Keeffe exhibit, got back in time to see the Inside Llewyn Davis video with fresh-popped popcorn. A real Friday night!

A rare schedule-free weekend awaits and we’ll see what gifts it brings. TGIF, baby!