Nice Neighbors to the North

Despite my difficult entry, once in Edmonton, relationships with my neighbors to the north were, as always, not just cordial, but hug-worthy. Arrived in snow, settled into a hotel with character and set off the next day to work with 60 kids with some 60 teachers watching.

The theme was Jazz and of course, that’s my home territory. Got both groups swingin’ and singin’, tappin’ and clappin’, swayin’ and playin’. By the end, we put together a full-blown performance with body percussion, partner clap, dance, drama, Orff instruments with solos. Sometimes we let the adults join in and wasn’t that fun, to just be embraced in a vibrant musical community with mostly strangers. (The kids came from some 10 different schools and didn’t know each other at the beginning. But they certainly did by the end!)

The day was capped off by a fun Italian dinner where I dared to try a Caesar Bloody Mary—Clamato juice with vodka, a spoon full of horseradish, a pickle and olives and a shrimp perched on the glass’s rim and salt/pepper around the rim as well. I suck at drinking, so naturally couldn’t finish it. But it was pretty good! Not needed for the laughs with these vibrant Orff Board members, but probably didn’t hurt.

The next morning, off to an impressive Arts School from elementary through high school—over a thousand kids and this a public school. In general, Edmonton has an impressive arts commitment, 90 minutes a week for all school music programs and a Senator who is a local jazz musician! (Tommy Banks). Taught a long class to 60 4^th graders, followed by another with 60 3^rd graders. Fun! At the end, I shared my new favorite song, “Gonna Build Me a Mountain” with them and started with,

“So here’s a song about having a dream and what it takes to make it come true. For example, I always dreamed of traveling around the world with a rubber chicken and getting paid for it and …well, here I am!”

That got their attention. But what’s more interesting is how sixty 3^rd graders listened in rapt attention as if I was a poet or a preacher saying exactly the words they needed. I think that kids, like adults, are starved to hear something authentic, heartfelt, real, true. I don’t want to claim too much for myself here, but I did feel that quality of listening that is rare and precious, the kind a poet once described as a “hushed silence of an audience listening as if their lives depended on it.” And then from the words to the song, the thoughts given both feet and wings by the notes and the collective singing. A perfect way to end a lovely day.

And my rubber chicken liked it too.

The Story Not Told

At 32-years old, my daughter Talia has mostly stopped rolling her eyes when I talk. Except for one circumstance. Whenever I tell a bad travel story.

So in honor of her perception that these are the most boring first-world-problem stories ever, I’m going to show remarkable restraint and not burden the reader with my tale of awakening at 4:30 am in the Carmel Valley, driving two-and-a-half hours to the airport and settling myself in Seat 2D in an unexpected Business Class with an enticing new book that I couldn’t find in San Francisco, but picked up at the airport, one copy left. I won’t go into the details of how that opening promise of a seamless and pleasant journey to Edmonton suddenly went horribly bad when the Customs guy in Calgary told me to go to Secondary Inspection because I answered honestly on the form that the purpose of travel was business. I won’t describe how I knew that it was perfectly legal for me to teach many groups of children from different schools gathered together in a special Children’s Day, but suffice it to say, I’ve been down the road to Secondary Inspection too many times before (and always in Canada! Great country! Horrible Immigration Officers!) and knew that I didn’t belong there. No need to get into my worry that with 45 minutes until my next flight took off that I might miss it because of this bureaucratic bullshit and missing it would mean my luggage would go without me and the person picking me up at the airport would be confused and I’d have to re-book another flight and it would generally be a big pain in the ass. And I won’t mention how being told I would be called when the officer was ready and I was number three and I saw two people go before me and suddenly there are five available officers just chatting away with each other and when I went back to the guy at the desk and suggested that perhaps that they could be a bit more sensitive to my pressing timetable, especially since I knew I didn’t belong there, one of them got offended and brought me over and started pulling up all past entries to Canada and looked at my contract on the computer and told me that if I was going to one school, I’d need a work permit and I told him I knew that and these kids were coming from many schools and I know perfectly well I don’t need one and he told me that they (for there was a group now) would be the judge of that and then they all ganged up on me for daring to question someone in a uniform and disrespecting them and it concerned them when I told them that the last time this happened last year in Toronto, an immigration officer just told me to lie next time and that they couldn’t answer for that officer, but lying to them would be a serious offense and I pointed out that’s why I was so honest putting down “business” and look where it got me. No, I certainly don’t want to go into that. And I know it’s not that interesting to hear that finally after many faked apologies on my side, the officer said he used to be a music major and what instrument did I play and now we were supposed to be buddy-buddy, but God forbid they admit I had actually been right that I didn’t belong there and they regretted any inconvenience it would cost me. And I’m sure that no one is waiting on the edge of their seat to hear that I rushed to Information and she wrote down the gate number for my flight and assured me I’d be able to make it in time, but then again, she didn’t see the long, slow line at Security. And how boring it would be to hear that I walked fast to the gate and 45 seconds away, heard my name paged and ran to the gate only to find it closed and no one behind the desk and I started pounding on the doors to no response and frantically looking around for someone official to help me and finally spotted someone at Gate 53 and ran over there and she said, “Ah, this is your flight. You’re the last one” and so no time to write back to the person who was going to pick me up (who I had written to while held hostage in Secondary Inspection to warn her not to go to the airport until further notice), so she would either have seen my message and stayed at home or read it at the airport or not read it and just been there. Had I told this fascinating story, I’m sure the reader, often envious of my travels, would have been secretly pleased to find out that my luggage didn’t arrive because I was supposed to pick it up in Calgary and re-check it even though no one ever to my knowledge told me that, so now I had to go to Baggage Claim Services and my ride indeed was not there and I didn’t know the name of the hotel I’d be staying in to send the bags to and this guy was nicer than the entire Canadian Immigration Officer population and called my ride on the phone so I got the hotel details and was able to tell her I actually arrived so that 20 minutes later, she picked me up (without my luggage, which may or may not arrive tonight) and drove me to the hotel. Oh, and I also would have mentioned it was snowing. On April 23^rd.

I am so proud of myself for not telling that story! And, dear reader, eat your heart out! I’m a traveling music teacher having fun in all the world’s exotic places! 

The Art of Variation

A donkey’s jawbone. A wooden box. A gourd with beads around it. Two small gourds with seeds inside. These amongst the instruments featured in our recent Orff gathering with a Latin accent. The quijada, cajon, maracas and shekere played by musicians from Mexico, Peru, Venezuela and Cuba. Simple tools brought to a breathtaking level of virtuosic expression by master musicians who have dedicated the time and intelligence to “extract the utmost information from the simplest apparatus” (Alfred North Whitehead’s advice for inspired education). How do they do it?

First is attention to sound. How many different sounds can one find on each instrument? Then technique. What is the most muscularly efficient way to release each sound? Then rhythm. How can I start from the center of a groove and circle around it, swoop under and above it, pass through it and take it on a side road or two? Finally, variation. How can I travel to the edge of imagination, armed with coherent knowledge, efficient techniques, full use of 360 degree possibilities of telling a story? It’s a wonder to behold—and behear—what a simple tool in the hands of a master artist can express.

Meanwhile, we get so distracted arming the students with the complex tools of i-Pads, giving them Smartboards and Smartphones, but often neglecting smart children prepared to do something important and interesting with them beyond text the next inanity to their friends or gorge themselves with pop fluff and the constant addictive stream of sensation. Might everyone be required to express themselves artistically with a wooden box before composing with Garage Band? Write a beautiful poem with pencil and paper before learning the word processing program? Draw 52 still lives with charcoal before delving into the cool graphic design program? You get the idea.

But I’m not just talking about the choice of tools. The deeper question is how do we cultivate human intelligence? A quick look reveals that it has much to do with the art of variation. Artists develop their craft through those 52 different versions of a bowl of fruit. Bach, Handel, Mozart and Beethoven honed their compositional skills with countless themes and variations, using both intelligence and imagination to ask and answer, “How else can I express this theme?” Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and John Coltrane did the same as they circled time and time again through the changes of the 12-bar blues or the harmonic progression of I Got Rhythm.

Such variation is only possible in the human world, a gift of the neo-cortex that has the capacity for choice, for stating one thing one way and then re-stating it another way and yet another and yet another. Animals driven by hard-wired instinct don’t have this flexibility, though it does increase as you climb the evolutionary ladder. If we are to be worthy of our species, we would do well to live our thoughts and our lives with the cultivated craft of variation, whether it be playing a donkey’s jawbone or writing a daily blog.

Have I said this before? Certainly, but here is variation number 612, inspired by the beads wrapped around a gourd in the hands of John Santos, a pair of maracas brought to life by Jackie Rago.

Where's the One?

The spiritual problem of our times is that too many people are asking “Who’s Number One?” and not enough are asking “Where’s the One?” Having just come from a Cuban rhumba workshop, I found myself as often, playing a pattern on the drum without clearly understanding the grammar and syntax of the whole language. “How does this fit with the song? The dance? The other percussion parts? And for God’s sake, where the hell is the One?!” (Meaning the first beat of the patterns that establishes a sense of home. The rhythmic equivalent of key in melody.)

The teacher was patient and first tried to relate it to the clave pattern. Clave is both a simple instrument (two sticks struck together) and a crucial function in the music, the short pattern around which all the other patterns are built. The teacher explained the clave is the key to the lock and if you don’t have the key, you’ll break down the door.

And there you have it. This man comes from an extraordinary tradition of spirit and soul and harmonious relationship expressed through carefully cultivated (over centuries) music and dance that coordinates the various rhythms in the body, the various feelings and emotions, the different faces of Spirit. It connects one not only with one’s own breath and pulse, but with the fellow players and dancers as well and also with the natural world and also with the spiritual world. In short, the whole glorious pageant of creation made audible and physical and visible through music, song and dance. You could feel all the long line of fellow musicians and dancers and spiritual beings behind this man and that’s where his vitality and humor and radiant joy came from. He has the key and can not only open the door, but invite you in as well.

When I look at the pale jowled faces and lifeless bodies and unhappy expressions of the Republicans with all the money and power who think they are the winners. I can’t help but feel pity for the state of their bodies, minds and souls. They have the money, we have the joy. By we I mean the convocation of these poorly-paid but rich- with- the- privilege-of-teaching-children teachers gathered in one of my sacred homes, Hidden Valley Music Seminars, with a special accent on getting a taste of the rich traditions from the Hispanic diaspora and beyond. Why do people spend so much time envying the rich, when paradise is right around the corner in the Rhumba dance class?

So yes, these people with the outward political and economic power need to be held accountable so they stop threatening the actual lives of those of us who just want to get on with the party, but let’s do it from a place of strength. Since they’re missing the key to open the door to their own soulful promise, they are breaking down doors everywhere. How can we stop them? How can we help them?

I believe they need to go to prison for their crimes and kept locked away to stop them from doing so much harm and hurt in the world. But in my prison system, they’d be learning drumming and dance from the African diaspora, singing Bach, Mozart and Bulgarian folk songs, dancing until they have discovered each part of the body below the neck. Once they learned the key to their own happiness doesn’t lie in money or the power to hurt others, once they learn to ask “Where’s the one?” more often than “How can I be number one?”, they could be released on probation and sent to teach children. All of this funded by the money they stole from the people.

Off to my next class.

The Walking Cure

Freud was famous for his revolutionary “talking cure.” For those beginning to suffer from the confines of too-much civilization, too many repressed layers of polite society, lying on a couch and blaming your mother was just the ticket to get better. He made his mark on the art and science of self-reflection, something I happen to think is a good idea (though I prefer other styles than the Freudian model). But sometimes I wonder if his work would have been just as effective—and perhaps more—if he had at least included “the walking cure.”

The Father of that approach was Old Man Mosie. Feeling sick in the head? Simple. Step forward, turn around, do the Hokey Pokey and get out of town! Preferably on your own two feet.

In recommending exercise as Rule Number 1 in a healthy brain, John Medina, author of Brain Rules,  notes that the human body was designed to walk some 12 miles a day hunting, gathering, foraging and the like. There were no gym memberships in Neanderthal days because survival skills demanded a cross-fit workout free of charge. We modern human humans have the same bodies, minds and emotions as our ancestors from 40,000 years ago and just because we think we’re smart just because we have computers. But sitting around at desks for 8 hours tapping ink keyboards is actually counter-evolutionary. Our bodies suffer and so do our brains. Exercise stimulates the proteins that keep the neurons well-connected. It brings blood to the brain, carrying glucose for energy and oxygen to soak up toxins. Without a sufficient dose of exercise, those toxins leak down to the heart and we feel—well, sick in the head. “Get off the couch and leave your mother alone!” says Old Man Mosie. “Start walking!”

That’s indeed what I have been doing, rain or shine, this past week in Prague and in Berlin. Now back in San Francisco, I took my two visiting Icelandic friends on my usual “Doug tour” up the 287 Filbert Street steps to Coit Tower and down to North Beach and through Chinatown and up again to the Fairmount Hotel and Grace Cathedral, blessed with the first sunshine and warm weather in the last 10 days. Wasn't that lovely! Yes, it was.

This morning, in honor of Earth Week, I’ll walk the 5 miles to school with the 5^th grade teacher (my daughter Talia) and some 25 kids. Of course, I could do this every day or at least once a week, but it takes Earth Week to remind me that this Walking Cure is available any time, any place, costs nothing, needs no Uber ap, is healthy both for the planet and my own body, mind and heart and in company with others, a great way to connect, talking while walking. With your mother, for example. Then instead of complaining about her to some bearded guy charging you by the hour, you could take a walk with her and find out what was behind her parenting choices while marveling at the wild parrots squawking overhead and the emerging Spring flowers and the view from the hill.

Extra-credit tip: Take along a little pink rubber ball and improve your hand-eye coordination while you’re at it. Or a book of poetry and memorize a poem, matching the cadence of the lines to the rhythm of your stride. Take out the damn earphones—you don’t need a soundtrack like your life is a film. Listen to the birds instead. And for heaven’s sake, keep that phone hidden away. Don’t let the machine rob you of attention to the world. Just walk.