The Place Just Right

Today is the first day of school and despite the fact that I have most of the Fall off, of course I’m going to come be part of the Opening Ceremony. Played the Bulgarian bagpipe to bring kids in under the Balinese flags and they went through the tunnel of teachers singing a song. I introduced the opening gongs from the youngest and eldest, watched the water ceremony, played piano for the Earth Day Rap and then got to give a little talk before leading Gonna Build Me a Mountain. Something like this:

Respect. Responsibility. Wise Choices. Enthusiasm. Effort. All lovely words to post around the school to remind us why we’re here and what our job is. And I predict that for every single person in this room, every child, every teacher, every parent, there will be at least one and probably several and possibly many, many moments when we make a wise choice and give our best effort and show respect for our teachers, our peers, ourselves. There will most likely be times when we surprise ourselves and the people around us with the beauty of our expression or the depth of our insight or the profound question that occurred to us. Times when the way we treat someone will be remembered their whole lifetime and times when the way we treat ourselves will bring us to the best version of ourselves.

But let’s be honest here. There will certainly be moments when we are cruel to our friends, mean to our classmates, disrespectful of our teachers. Times when we make bad and even really bad choices, times when we refuse to make an effort, times when we just frump around taking up precious space on the planet. In short, we will fail miserably to be as good and honorable and wonderful as we could and should be. That’s part of the deal and it’s true for every single one of us.

But what matters is how we react. Do we notice that we could have done better? Apologize? Renew our determination to be better? Forgive ourselves and others? That’s what will make the difference. And that effort to be better two minutes from now than we were two minutes ago—“better” meaning more kind, more insightful, more thoughtful, more accomplished, more expressive, more understanding—that effort is a hard climb up a steep mountain. We’ll have some downhill moments this year where you can just relax and let gravity lead you to “Yeeeeeeeehaaaaaw!!” But mostly you’ll be working out on the mountain path, pushing your dream up that mountain slope so you can find that little piece of Heaven that 300 Gaven St. can be. So here’s the song to remind us and off we go!!!!”

And with those welcoming gestures and fun songs and meaningful movements, the kids went to their classes where the teachers continued their creative and inclusive way of teaching and the day proceeded as predicted—ie, fun, engaging and a great start to the year ahead.

Back in the ceremony, I was standing next to my colleague Sofia while we sang Simple Gifts and amidst all this constant questioning about retirement, there we were singing “…Tis a gift to come round to where you ought to be, and when we find ourselves in the place just right, it will be in the valley of love and delight.” As the summer blogs testify, the Valley of Love and Delight is many places for me, in fact, anywhere where people gather with good intention, good music, good humor, which these days is just about everywhere we go. But I’m happy to report that The San Francisco School is still one of them, is still “the place just right.” And so off we go.

What? No Tears?

Closed out the last workshop today of my summer teaching, a lovely end to a fabulous five days in Toronto and a fabulous eight weeks of teaching a few hundred teachers from around the globe. We closed with the game Johnny Brown, the perfect vehicle to show the balance between blending in, feeling part of something larger than oneself by giving oneself up to join the group voice and beat and feeling significant by becoming an insignificant small part of a greater world, one joyful speck in the grand Creation, and standing out, taking the responsibility to gift the world with your absolutely unique way of being in the world with a body, voice, mind and soul that not a single one of the 7 billion co-inhabitants has in quite the same way as you go into the center and show us your motion. It was a spirited conclusion, but unlike most of my closures, there were no tears. Partly because I was ten minutes past the closing time, partly because such emotion generally takes a slightly greater effort in Canada (no insult, but it’s true) and partly because I didn’t feel the need in that moment, uncharacteristically so. It was fine, but truth be told, a bit later, it didn’t feel quite as satisfying as usual. Perhaps the crying fest of the last course in the Levels made up for it.

But I was done, had a brief visit with one friend on her way to a new life in Spain and then went to the movies with another. Crazy Rich Asians, which seemed like the kind of promising fluff just right for the occasion. It was okay, but truth be told, not wonderful to feel the land of Buddha’s deep revelations reduced to opulence and excessive wealth and all the twisted relations and damage such culture brings to the table. Capped it off with a ritual gelato walking down Bloor Street on a cool summer night and gratitude to again be in this town where I have taught most every summer for the last 18 years. A place that was my first taste of a “foreign” city when I came with my family in 1963. Who would have imagined this life that I grew into back then?

Now 4:30 in the morning, the full moon out my window, a plane back home awaiting me in a few hours and this opportunity to pause and marvel at this most wondrous summer, truly one of the finest I can remember in a lifetime of fine summers. Strange not to be putting my shoulder to the wheel of the school year the way I have the last 43 years and both freeing and terrifying to meet September with the full measure of an ambition to gather the work of the last 8 years or so since publishing my last book and strap myself down to write one, two or five more. Plus begin a new venture of Podcasts. 4 months before I do return to school in January, some travel, but not much and all within the U.S.

So one last turn back to the last 10 weeks with a full heart, deep gratitude and hope that children worldwide will find their coming school lives just a bit happier from the work I’ve shared with teachers this summer. How it goes on.

Get Out of the Way

Happy to report I made friends with two beautiful pianos here at The Royal Conservatory of Music. One is a Steinway, the other a Yamaha and after feeling pressured to sound great because the pianos do, I remembered to just play a chord and let it ring, to step to the side and get out of the way and let the music sound. To stop muscularly imposing myself on the keys and just let my fingers release the beauty inside of them. And now the music is singing.

I teach some 22 willing souls some jazz and Orff and humanitarian reminders from 9 to 4 each day and then stay after for another hour by myself, no written music in sight, just a stored repertoire of hundreds of pieces. A moment of silence to see which song suggests itself and then off we go together, skipping down the path and never a path that I’ve already walked in the same way. Last night, went to my ritual barbecue at a friend’s house and then played the mandatory Besame Mucho on her piano and ended with a montuno-like Latin killer groove that is somewhat new for me (thanks, Miguelito!) and it inspired her to play her favorite Latin pieces (she’s a ballroom dancer with quite a repertoire of favorite songs for her mambo/ rhumba/ salsa moves). Well, wasn’t that fun! Turns out I have an ear for the way the chords fall and just started playing along to some 15 songs from different artists and if I do say so myself, I sounded good! On her less-than-Conservatory-quality spinet piano. Sometimes the Muse just descends and we dance together and isn’t that fine!

Yesterday had an hour class with some thirty 6 and 7 year-olds I had never met and that was a class to wrap up in a ribbon and put under the Christmas tree of memorable experiences. From the first moment, we were in a heaven that flowed effortlessly from one activity to another and bubbled along with great humor (they liked my jokes!), the genius of child expression, the challenge of boys messin’ around gently but clearly re-directed, the absolute ease I felt with the children and their happiness and comfort with me. When I asked them 45 minutes later if they wanted to know my name and if they could guess it, the first one said “Mr. Potato-Head?” ( a brilliant guess since we had just done my version of the game One Potato) and we all laughed. With some hints, another guessed my actually name and started chanting “I got it! I got his name!” and that was his great moment in the class, since before that he was the President of the Messin’ Around Boys. And I acknowledged it. “Let’s all clap for the genius of name-guessing, Mr. Alistair! Way to go!!”

Today is the last of the five days and the last course of some seven courses this summer and in my teaching, I also have learned to get out of the way, just be a conduit for some great music, some great pedagogical processes that release music and some talk that reminds people of their better selves and illuminates all the obstacles society throws in our way to make us accept lesser versions of ourselves. Yesterday I began class with the Conservatory motto of “Cleave to the Masters” and ended up spontaneously improvising a lecture that included Bach walking 200 miles to see Buxtehude, Duke Ellington learning harmony in the back of a taxicab, a German fake scientist concocting the theory of racial superiority, statues being taken down in the South and some 10 other themes that somehow made sense. 30 minutes later, we played Little Sally Walker to clear the air and the day began from their with a vibrant Ghana xylophone piece.

My first public affirmation of my greatest hope beyond writing some five books this Fall—beginning my own Podcast series, more focused than this blog with live musical examples played by myself and friends. It will be the right medium for so many of these thoughts I’ve spent a lifetime cultivating. And whether playing piano, teaching or writing, the hope is the same—play the chord and let the sounds/ activities/ ideas fully resonate before they lead me to the next needed sound/ activity/ idea, get out of the way and let them speak. Hope you’ll be listening!

Back to the Drawing Board

As Daniel Pink confirms in his excellent book Drive, the urge for mastery is one of the great human qualities that we all share. It’s what drives us to work each day, the fuel in the car that gets us up in the morning determined to move from where we are to where we yet might be. It feels good to be able to do things well and there are few things so satisfying as that feeling of arriving further down the road from where we started, moved there by our own persistent efforts. It is good to pause and notice that we have improved, but dangerous to linger too long in that place of pride and accomplishment. For our restless dissatisfaction with our achievements is the foot on the pedal that keeps us moving around the bend to the next possibility.

I’ve been dabbling at improving my piano skills for 61 years now simply for the pleasure of greater expression. It’s a small part of my job as a music teacher, but since I’m not a concert pianist or a jazz professional, there is no motivation beyond the pleasure of playing well and getting a little bit better. Yesterday at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, I got to play a Steinway piano that simply was extraordinary in the sound it gave back. It was at once gratifying to get such a beautiful sound coming back to me and daunting to realize that if it didn’t sound as good as I wanted—and there were many such moments—it was entirely my fault. Couldn’t blame anything on the instrument. Darn!

That night, I stumbled on some Youtube treasures of some of my favorite jazz pianists playing solos that were transcribed and you could follow the written notes while listening. A perfect blend of ear and eye and a chance to see more clearly what I was hearing and admiring—chord voicings, phrasings, scale choices and such. Part of me was feeling happy that I could somewhat follow their thinking and that my own playing had progressed to a point where I had narrowed the gap between my own emerging playing and their genius. I must admit I was feeling that sliver of pride until…

Brad Mehldau’s version of the be-bop tune Anthropology. Damn! Just as I felt like was able to walk the same path with him jogging just slightly ahead, he turned a corner and started sprinting and I was left eating his dust. I mean really! He just left me breathless with his phrasing, rhythm, technical mastery, all at a breakneck pace.

So it’s back to the drawing board. Put that pride on the shelf and get to work! While I abhor the star system of mindless adoration, I am a big fan of choosing wisely those inspiring folks further down the path and enjoying the double duty they do as models and teachers to affirm you and then kick your ass. That’s my own hope as a workshop teacher, not to do so much ass-kicking that people get discouraged and give up the way so many pianists did after hearing Art Tatum play. And not to do so much affirmation that people leave feeling good about themselves, but are not challenged to dig deeper and teach a little better. And note that the kicking is not direct and mean-spirited or overblown with my own ego, it’s simply the mastery I’ve achieved from four decades of teaching kids and adults displayed side-by-side with the encouragement to go from where you are and keep going. It’s the style of “all your answers will be questioned” rather than “all your questions will be answered.”

Thanks, Brad. And Keith Jarrett and Fred Hersch and Bill Charlap and Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock and Gerald Clayton and other contemporary pianists I admire, alongside Joey Alexander. No room for shame that a 13-year old (the latter) can kick my butt. And if I ever get too discouraged, I can always say, “Yeah, great solo. But let me see you teach a class of 3-year olds! Bam! You better go back to the drawing board!”

End of Summer: Talia Goodkin Guest Blog

Both my daughters (see above) are eloquent writers, not only apples falling close to the tree, but trees in their own right. My teacher-colleague-daughter Talia just posted a reflection on Facebook about summer for teachers, using the brilliant metaphor of the airplane oxygen mask. I proudly share it here. I should also add something she didn’t—that she went to a one-week writer’s workshop in New York to further develop her 5^th grade language arts curriculum and spent another week getting her new room at school ready. So it wasn’t all beaches and (sun) cream!

Today was my last day of summer vacation.

You know on airplanes how they say that you have to put on your own life mask before assisting others? Summer is a teacher's life mask, so we can assist others full time the other ten months of the year. I grabbed it eagerly and have been pulling deep breaths all summer long. It’s easy to fall into a trap of feeling guilty about having a two-month summer when so many only get three weeks. To feel guilty about taking all the time for myself- “I should work summer school and make extra money. I should spend a month working on my curriculum. I should use the time to do some overdue house projects...”

 I had a summer that nourished me to my core because I took it unabashedly for myself and I am grateful. I am grateful for the chance to travel- to climb warily out of comfort zones, to get lost on purpose: I spent a mapless day wandering the streets of Barcelona, danced until I couldn’t stand anymore at an outdoor music festival on a lake on the Pyrenees, and hiked nine consecutive days in Swedish Lapland. I am grateful for friends who graciously hosted me, opened the door and let me right into their European lives, for such quality time with my chosen family amidst a general friend culture of a brunch here and there.

I am grateful for the opportunity to disentangle my phone from my palm. I am grateful for my tent, which was my home for half the summer and the many paths that gently guided me. I am grateful for time with my family, playing together. And lastly, I’m grateful for the time to read and write regularly, a practice that grounds me emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually. I wrote in my journal every single day and I read ten books. And now, I feel refreshed and ready to assist 23 others. . .

One last inhale of oxygen and a steady reminder to myself, to you, to everyone to grab that mask on the weekends and strap it on tight because getting through the school year should not mean holding your breath.