Beware Forces of Darkness!!

“We are the ones we have been waiting for.” No more hoping the Messiah will come or counting on the next Gandhi or Martin Luther King. Salvation will not come from the super-hero swooping in to save the day. No more excusing our own inactivity, passivity, apathy in naïve hopes that someone else will do the work. Time for us all to shoulder our little portion of healing and light working in our authentic corners of creation. The sweet victory will not ride in on a killer soundtrack with lightning, thunder and fireworks, but by millions (or billions) of loving whispers and small acts of kindness.

But just in case that doesn’t work, there is a back-up plan. Beware, ye forces of darkness and behold the all-powerful, all-fierce, all-loving (and incidentally, my granddaughter)—

Warrior– Princess Zadie!!!!!

 

She is ready to take it on!!! Go, girl, go!!!

Seen and Heard and…

“Children should be seen, but not heard, “ my father used to remind me if I interrupted an adult conversation at the dinner table, echoing the ethos of child-raising of his generation.

It was back in the days when “parenting” was not a verb as large as it was to become. To parent simply meant to provide food, shelter, clothing and baths to the little ones running underfeet. Extra points for lullabies and bedtime stories, games of catch and occasional trips to the circus. But mostly, scooting them out the door to play with the neighborhood kids and making sure they’re home for dinner was considered enough.

As a kid, that was fine with me. Grown-ups were somewhat strange alien creatures who couldn’t wholly understand my pride in spitting further than my friend or rigging up a system of ropes in the house to open doors from afar. I understood that I had certain duties as a kid that were sometimes excruciatingly boring—going to church, accompanying my mother to the bank with long lines, visiting family friends who didn’t have kids. I believe it helped me develop my ability to find interest in boring things, let my mind wander freely or notice the dust in shafts of light or dream about this or that.

The adult-child relationship changed dramatically when I grew up and my generation—at least some of us—was responsible for that. I taught at a child-centered school where we didn’t even have a teacher’s room—and still don’t. It was based on Maria Montessori’s radical idea that children have psychological/emotional/intellectual needs every bit as necessary at food, clothing, shelter and that we adults would do well to understand them and build our child-raising practices around them. And we did and we do and it has mostly worked out well, giving kids the independence, support, work habits, play opportunities appropriate to each developmental level.

But somewhere along the line, the mainstream American culture flipped the switch and now the “good parent” was the child’s buddy and best friend and the family revolved around the child’s every whim and want. To straighten the bent stick of the ‘50’s mentality, we overshot the mark and now it’s bent in the other direction.

All this was on my mind after a glorious day with granddaughter Zadie. We set up the electric train set, let her work the controls and decide how many cars and what speed and where the animals would ride. We did three puzzles, coaching her when she needed help. We let her play the piano alone and watched as she sang and pecked around and turned the pages of the music book to “read” the next song. We set up the markers and paper and helped her hang her creations around the house. We watched Dumbo together and applauded her dancing along with the pink elephants on parade. (Was Disney into hallucinetic drugs back then? Check out that scene!).

After dinner, it was time for our Christmas Eve rituals. We all gathered around the piano for one more carol sing before the songs lost their luster and I naturally chose the ones she could sing with us—Jingle Bells, Rudolph, Frosty, We Wish You a Merry Christmas. Then she requested the 12 Days of Christmas and tried to keep up with it, helped by adults modeling the gestures. But then came a few songs beyond her for the moment—Silent Night, Midnight Clear, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day—and then I remembered how important it is for kids to quietly observe the adults even when they can’t wholly participate. After singing, we walked through the candle-lit house and Talia did her ritual read of Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory. I warned Zadie that this was a grown-up story hard to understand and expected that she would protest somewhere along the way. But she sat in her mother’s lap listening quietly and helped me remember to also give kids some time beyond where they are. Yes, they should be seen and heard and played with and left alone to play and given useful work and taught to help and contribute and… also brought into an adult world just beyond their reach.

That’s what I’m thinking about on Christmas morning. May it be merry for us all!

Musical Torment

It’s remarkable how quickly Heaven can slide down into Hell. Went to sleep feeling just fine and some stomach bug invaded making sleep and comfort impossible. Music, normally the most agreeable and healing of companions, suddenly became a torture in my fever-addled brain, with Irving Berlin tunes looping again and again in a severe-case of ear-wormitis. Be Careful It’s My Heart became the soundtrack to endlessly circling disturbing images and physical discomfort. Without getting too graphic, I was hoping for some discharge that would both relieve my stomach and eject the tunes, but was graced with neither.

I first heard the term “Ohrwurm” from my German friends and recalled earlier torments in my life. A passage from My Boy Lollipop by Mille Small that had me running for the radio dial when the song came on in my teen years. A couple of days in a Zen meditation retreat at Mt. Baldy, with Billie Holiday torturing me with endless repetitions of the bridge to Love Me or Leave Me. Research says such things are a common phenomena, more likely to occur with songs than instrumental pieces and usually just a fragment of the song. As a music teacher singing every day with kids, I’m sure I’m responsible for a certain degree of musical torture as kids go home imprisoned by small little melodies and lyrics. But there can be no heaven without hell and I suppose it’s the price we must pay for all of music’s considerable gifts.

I thought I might trick my brain in substituting Irving Berlin for Bach, but even if I could, it would not help. The most exalted passage of music endlessly repeated is still torment, like eating crème brule for every meal. There’s some deep teaching lesson somewhere in here, but I’m not in the mood. The worm keeps burrowing in my ear and the bug riding the roller coaster in my stomach. Well, at least they’re having fun.

Not the happiest way to wake up on Christmas Eve, but you gotta play the cards you were dealt. Wish me luck. "Be careful, it's my heart……"

Still a Wonderful Life

My idea of heaven is seeing the film It’s a Wonderful Life on a rainy day at the Castro Theater in San Francisco. And today I did just that. Made even more special by the “sensitive male” bonding I had with my son-in-law and my 16-year old step-grandson. We walked out of the theater dabbing our eyes without an ounce of shame.

The film has become a cliché in American Christmas culture, but it is truly a masterwork. Story, setting, character, conflict, resolution, extraordinary casting and acting, and of course, the heartwarming ending. Perfect for a film of any time or season and especially suited to the holiday times.

But in the midst of its unquestioned mainstream acceptance, has anyone noticed how profoundly radical it is? How Mr. Potter is a later incarnation of Scrooge and an earlier incarnation of Trump? How George Bailey is representing the working people, leaning toward generosity in his business dealings and would be right at home with Bernie Sander’s form of socialism? How community spirit wins out over individual, selfish greed? How Walmart would have no place in Bedford Falls?

Indeed, such themes have often surfaced in other Frank Capra films like Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,  Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Meet John Doe and more. Capra was a first-generation Italian-immigrant and a classic rags-to-riches story of the self-made man taking advantage of the opportunities America offered him. His first hit film (on my top ten best films list) was It Happened One Night  (1934) with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, a story about a spoiled heiress mixed up with a newspaper reporter with the inevitable love interest rising (Hmm. Similar theme to another great film, Roman Holiday). After the success of that film, Capra turned more to certain themes in his films, which he summed up as follows:

“In my films I championed the cause of the gentle, the poor, the downtrodden….My films must let every man, woman, and child know that God loves them, that I love them, and that peace and salvation will become a reality only when they all learn to love each other.”

In his actual political life, Capra was a conservative Republican wary of Roosevelt’s programs. (Keep in mind that “conservative Republican” meant something quite different in the 30’s and 40’s than it does today). But in his art, he is a prime candidate for my motto from my last blog— “comforting the afflicted, afflicting the comfortable.” At any rate, it’s a good summary of George Bailey’s relationship with his townsfolk and his thorn-in-the-side relationship with the greedy Mr. Potter.

Two mild critiques of the film, both of which made me smile:

• When Clarence the Angel shows George Bailey what life in Bedford Falls would have been like if George had never been born, the depravity of the town (now called Pottersville) is shown by a main street full of jazz clubs!

• When George asks about his wife Mary, Clarence refuses to show him what happened to her, shaking his head that it’s just too horrible to behold. George insists, Clarence relents and takes him to the library, which she is locking up and walks away with her hair up and glasses—she’s an (GASP!) old maid librarian!

Sorry if you’ve never seen the film and that was a spoiler, but if you haven’t, lucky you! You have something wonderful ahead of you. And check out the other Capra films as well. We should be so lucky as to recover the American spirit and vision he presents (with some tweaking—see above).

Enjoy!

Comforting the Afflicted, Afflicting the Comfortable

I think I saw this on a bumper sticker somewhere, but it came to mind again in our caroling party. We started the party singing to a dear neighbor in hospice care and ended boarding the N-Judah streetcar in a Carol Flashmob making the comfortable passengers momentarily uncomfortable, joyfully and exuberantly inviting them to come out of their private streetcar-riding shells and sing along with the person sitting next to them. Music is my medium to offer comfort and healing to this suffering world and equally my medium to try to break through the gated communities of arrogant privilege and invite folks out into the dancing circle.

It has turned out be a blessing that I didn’t have the talent, training, ambition nor the discipline to treat music as a stepping-stone to concert fame and fortune. But I kept it by my side just about every day since my first organ lesson at six-years old and built a life around teaching it to children and adults. I was lucky to stumble into an approach that treated each musical moment, whatever the age or circumstance, as a reaching-out to a beauty as sublime as the highest concert art. I’ve had three-year olds play a few notes on the glockenspiel that penetrate as deeply as YoYo Ma playing Bach, accompanied a 93-year old amateur singer in her rendition of on old jazz standard that would have moved Billie Holiday.

And so comforting the afflicted. Not only singing for a hospice patient nor playing at “Old Age homes,” but simply being present to the power of music to soothe, ease pain, increase pleasure, energize, connect, heal. Like the four-year old who exclaimed at the end of our Preschool Singing Time, “I don’t feel so sad now.” The afflicted are not only the sick or infirm or emotionally distressed—they are all of us at different times and in different degrees. This is no do-good charity work for the poor unfortunate amongst us—it’s singing out our shared sorrows and joys.

It’s also about comforting the afflicted parts of ourselves—our aches, pains, childhood traumas, adult disappointments, unrequited loves, our despairs, angers, depressions. Music alone won’t cure, but will give us the strength to move on and give us a means to move into grief, not just push it away with loud disco, but to enter the fray with Mozart’s Requiem or Coltrane’s A Love Supreme.

And afflicting the comfortable. Nothing wrong with being comfortable—I turn the heat on first thing on a cold morning and because my bills are paid at the end of each month, I can turn my attention to more uplifting matters. But sometimes physical, mental and financial comfort become the centerpiece of our ambition and it does no good to our soul or spirit, puts them to sleep. And leaks into the political when we want to make sure our privilege is protected and we start to cause harm to those who need our help. Trump’s wealth could allow him to ease the suffering of hard-working poor and marginalized people, but he chooses time and time again to afflict them further with the barbs of his selfish power.

We listen to Mozart these days like New Age pablum designed to keep us comfortable and mellow, but his biographer Maynard Solomon insisted that his real role was to “disturb the slumber of the world.” And again, that means the overly-comfortable parts within ourselves. An older definition of “afflict” is "to overthrow, defeat, to humble” and that means to overpower our own complacency, our sense that we’ve done enough and ain’t no one, especially ourselves, that’s going to move us out of our comfort zone. Again, what a blessing that I entered a pedagogical path based on risk, one that demands constant re-imagining, re-inventing. With modest success in my career, I could easily repeat the same tried-and-true pieces and processes I’ve developed and call it a day. But what kind of life would that be? When each year after the school plays or Spring Concert, a parent says “That was the best yet!”, it’s an affirmation that the effort to keep moving forward has paid off.

“Comforted the afflicted, afflicted the comfortable.” I’m adding it to my six-word bio list.