The Nest Refilled

When people talk about that time of life when the chicks fly out on their own, it’s mostly about the poignant touch of sadness when the nest is emptied. The house falls more silent, the animation at the dinner table goes down a few notches and the moments of melancholy appear. But being the resilient, adaptable creatures we are, most parents soon realize, “Hey, we cleaned up the kitchen counter and it stayed clean all day!! We bought some treats and they’re still in the fruit bowl! When the phone rings, we’re not as worried as we used to be that it was the police demanding bail money! And maybe we don’t feel like cooking, so we don’t and go out to dinner and take in a movie. This is great!!!”

When the kids come home over the vacations, we’re so happy to see them and the house is again filled with mirth and merriment. We sadly bid them goodbye again, but not quite so sadly as they might think. “Finally! We can get the house back together again and have some peace and quiet!!”

And then the whole pattern begins again with the grandchildren. I’m fine either way, but personally, I like having the house filled with their spirit. Sure, the house before they come and after they arrive is like getting on a train in Switzerland and disembarking in Italy. Order gives way to chaos, but there’s more electricity in the air. (No offense to either Swiss or Italians, but take that train ride and you’ll see what I mean.) Little Malik (one and a half years old) took great delight in removing a shelf of CD’s and spreading them out on the floor, Zadie this morning ripped through the presents and covered the floor in torn wrapping paper. Of course!! It’s the price one pays for their spirited energy filling the nest with shrieks and laughter, chatter and song. I love it.

Zadie spent the night with us last night while Malik, Kerala and Ronnie took advantage of a spare room at Talia’s house. Karen gave her a toothbrush (she had forgotten hers) and she ran to the door as the family was getting in the car shouting, “Look!!! I got a toothbrush!!!” Some 25 gifts awaited her under the tree, but she was SO excited about this toothbrush. Kids. You gotta love ‘em. And I do.

Now it’s out of the house and off to the park, maybe convincing Zadie to take off her fairy princess dress (nice balance to the Hulk costume she wore for Halloween) and maybe not. It’s all good. 

Women in Orange

In the course of my long and unconventional career, I’ve had the good fortune to lead music workshops with mimes in Maine, hippies on an Oregon commune, Zen monks, Community Food Store workers, Apple Computer business managers, jazz musicians, modern dancers, random folks at birthday parties and weddings, elders in Senior Centers, children in hospital cancer wards, deaf kids, teachers and kids in some 45 countries. But yesterday was the first time I led a class in jail.

Aaron, a music teacher colleague I know, has been working with a group of women at the SF County Jail on Bryant Street and following through on my expressed interest, he invited me to join him and another musician Naomi who had previously worked with many of the same women. It wasn’t the usual class format, but a kind of Holiday Party with music. We were the music, but with the intention that they would be also.

Instead of the usual circle, the women, all dressed in orange, were seated at long tables. At first glance, any one of them could have been my neighbor or colleague. Though I’d be fascinated to hear their stories, the story I read on their faces was simply one of making a bad choice at a bad time and getting caught. Could have been any one of us there. My thought was that on one level, the story matters and if I worked with them continuously, it would be part of that work. On another level, it doesn’t matter at all. Here we are, in this moment, in this place, with voices and bodies and minds and hearts and spirit— let’s play!

Taking advantage of the tables, I opened up the proceedings by teaching them Table Rhythms. I watched carefully to see who participated and how and when they dropped out from frustration and who was leading and who was following—in short, the exact same thing I look at with kids— and calibrated my pace and plan accordingly. Naomi said some poignant and stirring words to greet them and sang a soulful song, with Aaron accompanying on cajon. I started playing some Holiday Songs on the keyboard and they were as happy to sing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as they were to sing the more serene Silent Night and the more soulful contemporary repertoire that Naomi brought to the mix. Things led into some hot jamming on various drums, a spirited “Roll Call” improvised little rap and more. And we went on uninterrupted for almost two hours.

At the end, Naomi asked me what it was like for me to work in a woman’s jail. Without hesitation, I said, “Home territory. They were as willing as any group to jump in and try things and maybe it meant more to them and maybe it didn’t. The things we love about music— its challenge, its comfort, its way of connecting with others, its invitation to let our soul out and sing our story—are the same for all people in all places in all times. Truth be told, I haven’t yet taught in a situation that didn’t feel right. If I ever had the opportunity, probably the most challenging group of all to work with would be a bunch of male Republican senators. And that’s the truth!”

Thanks to Aaron and Naomi and these lovely women. It was an honor and a privilege.

P.S. If anyone wants to organize the Orff workshop for Congress, I’m in!

To See and Be Seen

It’s old news by now, but the echoes of the Holiday Plays keep singing in me. You music teachers out there know the Herculean effort required to pull these things off. The art of the matter is to make it appear effortless and just a natural outflow of everything you’ve been doing with the kids all Fall, while simultaneously attending to the 1000 details that make it all work— from the placement of each prop offstage, all entrances and exits, how characters react on stage when they’re not saying their lines, getting enough safety pins for the costumes and more and more and yet more. Getting kids on stage cannot be a casual affair.

But it should also be fun and relaxed within the tension and this year more than any other, I never once had to raise my voice with the kids or threaten them that they better get it together or else. We all were on the same team and wanted to make the basket together. And we did.

It's such a pleasure to make the effort to truly see the kids and their potential. It is equally a pleasure to be seen. But in today’s world of endlessly streaming entertainment, will the parents get it? Will they understand the work involved and what it means to the kids and what it means for the community? Well, this parent did when she wrote the following letter:

Hi Amazing Music Teachers:

I know I say this after every performance but please know it’s from the depths of my heart. Seeing those plays brought tears!  You have made each and every child a beautiful musician, actor and dancer, and together with them continue to create a feast for all senses. Seeing each child bloom like that is incredible. Thank you for being the heart and soul of our community and for shaping our children with this core.

And I wrote back:

Thanks for your kind words. How to respond to such compliments? I think the most important thing is knowing that you get what we're trying to do, understand what we're aiming for and are able to see and appreciate when we get it right. That, of course, feels great.

It's so easy to shout like some media star, "We love you kids!!" and have everyone go "Rah! Rah! Rah!" But to really love kids (or anyone) is not so simple! It takes thousands of hours to try to get to know them, to see the special thing they carry that needs to come out into the light, to give them the skills and the time and the attention and the opportunity to coax it forth from its hiding place and show it to the whole community. The word "bloom" that you use is a good one, with all its associations of preparing the soil and weeding and watering and finding the sunlight and such.

So thanks for noticing that it’s more than just playing the right notes in the songs—it’s playing the right notes in the songs so that the song sings out truer and supports the dance and the drama and becomes part of the “feast for the senses” that the kids and audience alike can enjoy. If Shakespeare was right and “all the world’s a stage,” we might as well make it as colorful and musical and whimsically serious and seriously whimsical as we can. The kids’ work and performance is always more than enough to justify the effort, but the pleasure is doubled when the parents and fellow teachers truly see it. Thanks for noticing and sharing it with us! And now to the cast party!

To Be of Use

It’s time for the annual Goodkin Holiday Newsletter. In the past, they’ve been funny or poetic or a multiple-choice test. But it was hard to figure out how to pretend that things are rolling along with any semblance of normal. And so my introduction:

By any standard, it has been an extraordinary year. Some years skim merrily along the surface of life like a TV sitcom, dipping no lower than “Ward, I’m worried about the Beav” and no higher than George telling Jerry, Elaine and Kramer how he saved the whale. But this year the dial was set to Opera, Don Giovanni and Madame Butterfly at center stage, the songs pitched to glass-breaking volume and the drama at the edge of what a human being can comfortably carry. One has to wonder about this annual report of Suzy’s soccer season and Johnny’s trip to Disneyland with the school choir in the face of it all.

But perhaps honoring the full range of a life lived these past 365 days will give a clue as to how to keep going on. Here’s the news, such as it is, and some thoughts at the end of how to carry on.

And off I went with a few pages of notable personal events from 2016 accompanied by photos. And then ended thus:

And so here we all are. I write this on the Winter Solstice. In the natural world, the darkness turns back toward the light. In the political world, it’s the opposite. How to keep calm and carry on?

My strategy is to keep doing exactly what I’m doing, only more of it and more wholly and more forcefully. Most every day for six years, I write a Blog to try to make sense of things, to capture in the net of language some sliver of meaning for what appears to just happen, with an inextinguishable faith that there is some greater guiding order and reason in the chaos awaiting revelation.

I play piano and sing most every day, sometimes for three hours that pass like three minutes, diving deep into Bach and Chopin and Monk and the inexhaustible riches of the jazz repertoire and my own improvisations inside and outside of that all. I look for every opportunity to share music, not for fame or fortune, but to bring a bit of beauty and levity and connection to whatever occasion presents itself. Whether it’s at the daily school singing time, the Palace Hotel, a jam session in any city, the N-Judah streetcar (where I took the folks at our annual caroling party), an Old Folks Home, an Italian airport, a woman’s jail (going today!), a neighborhood Solstice party (going tonight!), a SF Jazz Center workshop, music is needed and I am happy to offer it.

I teach children and adults of all ages and aim to lead them to places in themselves they had only dreamed of before, to let them know I see the beauty they already carry and the future possibility they carry waiting to be awakened. And all of it happens in a circle of community bubbling with humor, vitality, connection, helping each of us know the blessing of belonging and feeling welcomed.

This is my spiritual commitment and political action wrapped up in one piece. Alongside taking to the streets and donating money and signing petitions and speaking out until they lock me up, this is where I stand, side by side with all of you reading this and many more besides. My hope is that all this tiny personal news serve to publicly renew my vows to be of use, to dedicate every skill and talent to the greater good, to work and play harder, to grieve and laugh deeper, to count my blessings and to bless, to keep outrage and gratitude in conversation with each other.

Onward! And Happy Holidays to you and yours. 

Message from the Ancestors

I find that when I stop teaching and the to-do lists dwindle, my mind turns to poetry. Reading it, memorizing it, reciting it and occasionally, writing it. These past two days, I walked some 8 miles each day through a sunny San Francisco, getting to know again by foot my beautiful city. And lo and behold, a little poem appeared.

And here it is.

MESSAGE FROM THE ANCESTORS

“Your boundaries are your quest.”  –Rumi

 When you reach the edge

 of what you can imagine

When you arrive at the boundary

             of what you can think

When you come to the border

              of what you can do

Take one more step.

And then another

                  and another.

Keep moving

toward the next horizon.

We are waiting for you.