Tour Guide

One of life’s many pleasures for me is to give tours of San Francisco. If you’re visiting and sometimes, even if you’re an SF Resident, I’m there to give you “the Doug Tour.” It changes over the years as certain special places close or change or are shut down, but from the whimsical—the Philo T. Farnsworth monument on Green Street (look him up), the Buddha on the Filbert St. steps where I usually hide a quarter, Jack Early Park, S.F.’s smallest—to the profound—the view from the Crown Room at the Fairmount Hotel and Labyrinth walk at Grace Cathedral, it’s a fun-filled romp through this marvelous city’s past and present. 

 

I’ve never felt like a schoolteacher in the traditional sense and looking back, “tour guide” feels like a better description. From the 14 Middle School kids I took on a Arthur Morgan School Jug Band Tour through the South over half-a-century ago in 1973 to the 20 years of leading camping trips for SF School kids at Calaveras Big Trees to the 17 kids my colleagues James and Sofia and I took to Salzburg to perform at The Orff Symposium to the other performing groups we took to Orff Conferences in San Diego, Las Vegas, Long Beach, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, trip leader is a role I love, revealing  and sharing worlds that I have known and loved with my students. 

 

Indeed, every class I teach is a kind of trip through the landscape of music and dance and games and our own marvelous possibilities, visiting the worthy attractions of a human incarnation, meeting (in person or imagination) the people that have uplifted us and are worthy of our thanks, going down the beckoning side alleys where many never travel to discover hidden treasures and the weird and quirky. Even indoors, we’re out in the fresh air, walking vigorously or ambling slowly, climbing stairs that take determination and effort, pausing to admire the views, eating picnic lunches in parks.

 

This is on my mind as I’m about to take on the tour-guide role again, this time through the past, present and future of Jazz in New Orleans, the place where it was born. I’ll share what I can in 10 days of the essential information, but not as a teacher at the blackboard (or “Smartboard”), but as a guide walking us through in living 3-D color fully inhabiting the mind-body-heart of our humanity. I can already feel the excitement of the 28 participants building in anticipation of the trip. 

Here we go!

Bargain Bliss

Here’s a confession. I’m not obsessed with big-picture money and have never invested in the stock market nor bought lottery tickets. But truthfully, I love a good bargain on the small side of finances. Like here at the SF Airport, where I shopped for a simple sandwich to bring on board. Found a passable pre-made cheese on wheat bread for $11.49, stopped to consider a bottle of water for $4.99 just because the bottle would be a great water bottle to use when teaching my New Orleans Jazz Class. The sign said “2 for $6” but I decided to pass altogether. The $5 too much for water and I didn’t need the bargain second bottle. I considered a second snack to supplement the sandwich and looked at Frito corn chips (one of the healthier alternatives), wondering if it was forth the $4.99. Decided to just settle for the sandwich, bypassed the self-check-in pay stations and came up to a friendly woman at the cash register. 

 

She said, “Would you like a bottle of water (the same I had looked at) and a bag of chips to go with that sandwich. Instead to the total costing $11.49, all three together are $10.24. “ What?!! How does that work? But I was getting it all for half what it would have cost if I had bought each separately. What a bargain!

 

And notice. None of these small pleasures— the bargain, the banter with the check-out person and opportunity to thank her— would have happened had I opted for the self-check out. Why are we so hell bent on replacing each other with machines? 

 

Dream Poem

Despite our over-fascination with AI, the human mind, that most mysterious of organs, remains the grandest mystery. Here is a little bit of fluff that came to me in a dream last night. Why or how is beyond our understanding.

 

A, E, I, O, U… and sometimes Y.

How, What, When, then Who… and sometimes Why.

The Miraculous in North Beach

For three nights this week, I’ve navigated my clever route on timed-light streets and the Broadway tunnel to get to North Beach the quickest way. Parked in the same secret parking space where I don’t have to pay these damn meters that now require money up to 9:00 pm instead of 6:00 pm. Walked to three different intimate clubs where extraordinary miracles were performed, in company with different combinations of my family.

 

The first was Keys Jazz Bistro where I took my granddaughter Zadie to see the Hogan Brothers. This is a family I’ve known almost 50 years, playing briefly with the parents Maddie and Jim in Gamelan Sekar Jaya. I’ve shared a stage with the eldest son Steve, bass player and beat boxer extraordinaire, had the pianist Colin sub for me at my school and performed with drummer Julian at the Untalent Show part of our Orff Levels training, where he came to do Level I. Steve got Covid the day of this show, so Zadie and I only got to see Colin and Julian with a sub bass player, but their precision, communication, imaginative solos and overall musicality was breathtaking and sublime. 

The second was magician Kevin Blake at the Palace Theater with Zadie, Kerala, Karen and I and that was 90 minutes with our mouths hanging open completely baffled and astounded—“How did he do that?” Simply beyond anybody's (but a fellow magician’s) understanding and he did it all with such humor, grace and obvious pleasure.

 

The third was the Dear San Francisco show with grandson Malik at Club Fugazi, where seven extraordinary circus performers defied any notion of what the athletic, coordinated and graceful human body can do, working together like a jazz band with a complex sequenced choreography where a missed cue didn’t mean a note dropped, but a body. Again, such joyful, warm-hearted energy, sharing their gifts to both astound and uplift us all.

 

Every so often— and very often this past week— I just sit back in amazement at what human beings are capable of. Of course, I actually feel this every day when I play Bach, but also when I go to Ghana and listen to the intricate drumming and witness the exquisite dancing, when I try out, as I did a few months ago, some Balinese gamelan music that requires extraordinary virtuosity alongside complex compositions, whenever I hear an Indian tabla player. Walking back last night past Keys Jazz Bistro, I heard a band I didn’t know and thought about how high the bar is these days. Just to set foot on a stage requires impressive virtuosic technique and the capacity to listen to others and compose on the spot (improvise) that used to be reserved for the genius masters and now just is the bottom line that thousands of musicians whose names we'll never know have accomplished. Go on to Youtube and witness piano players moving up and down the keyboard, be it classical or jazz, like Olympic skaters or gymnasts. And some of them between 6 and 12 years old. It boggles the mind.

 

Then there’s basketball, where Steph and Lebron are far from the only show in town and some of the amazing players come from Slovenia and Serbia and beyond. Really, you can pick any human endeavor and see people doing things that make you feel like you’ve done nothing whatsoever of value in your life and what you thought you were great at is really not that impressive. Not that it’s a contest, but still.

Finally, there’s people like the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu (R.I.P.), who suffered the extremes of exile and apartheid and came out the other side and joined together to meet and discuss the importance of joy in our lives. (Documented in a book and movie of that title).  

 

My takeaway is simple. Ordinary human beings who follow their passion and work tirelessly to realize it are capable of extraordinary things. Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. When that passion is in service of life, love and happiness, the world is refreshed. 

 

In light of all this, why do we put up with the constant media coverage of one of our lowest life forms, whose mouth spews nothing but garbage, lies, vitriol and insults and even that barely expressed coherently in anything resembling human language. Why is there always a crowd behind him cheering him on, as if his representation of the worst of our species is something that they need? What’s wrong with these people? What do they get out of it except for the justification of their own sad and sorry lives that they’ve refused to own in service of their higher capabilities? Will somebody please explain this to me? And shame on the media for turning their cameras toward it all instead of showing the couple doing mind-boggling things with Chinese yo-yo’s, the magician pulling the right card out of the air when he throws up the deck, the two spiritual leaders reminding us that suffering and joy walk hand-in-hand and genuine happiness is within our reach. 

While you’re thinking about all of this, take time out of your next San Francisco visit to go to Keys Jazz Bistro, the Palace Theater and Club Fugazi. If you do, I’ll let you know about my secret parking place. 

Revisiting the Ten Commandments

The thinking of the Republican Party— well, the incapacity of the party to think in any true definition of the word— is so twisted and convoluted that they can’t even recognize when they’ve just given out more rope in which to hang themselves. (And Mike Pence, if Trump had had his way.) In their rush to claim the U.S. as a Christian nation, Louisiana Republican Governor Jeff Landry has made a new law to display the 10 Commandments in all public schools. Besides the fact that this is a story about the Jewish Moses and not Jesus and that it openly violates the Constitutional separation of church and state, somehow it slipped his attention that students taught to honor and obey these precepts could not possible vote for the guy and the party that has flagrantly violated EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM!!! 

 

So I say, “Great idea, Governor Landry!!! I’m all for it!” First lesson of the first day of school is to give anywhere from 1 to 10 examples of how 45 broke each commandment many times over, some of them included in his recent 34 counts of felony lawbreaking (starting with number 7.) Lest you forget, they are posted below to remind you of which ones he broke and how and when. The second test would be so show how his cronies have joined the party of reckless 10-Commandment-Violations over and over and over again. Any student who has trouble connecting those dots would be held back from graduating. This is indeed the final exam.

I go to Louisiana soon to teach my Jazz Course and can’t wait to give my first lesson with the Commandments proudly displayed in the classroom! Maybe I should invite the Governor to attend. 

                                                

Cultural Uplift

It’s Day 5 of the Grandkids in San Francisco visit and I’m happy to report that all is wonderful. For starters, we were blessed with three days of perfect weather before Karl the Fog made his appearance yesterday (and again today). Then the timing was such that 8-year old Malik could join my daughter Talia’s fabulous Golden Gate Park Camp in company with 19 other wonderful kids from The San Francisco School. He’s in Camp Heaven and we’re thrilled to know he’s so happily engaged every day from 9 to 3. I briefly joined the camp twice to lead a music activity and play cornhole with them and that was fun 

 

The general plan for all such visits these days is threefold:

 

1)    Games, games, games. Card games like Rummy 500, Kings Corner, Trash, word games like Bananagrams and Taboo, math games like Othello and Rummikub group games like Charades and Salad Bowl (a word game/ charades combination). Both Zadie and Malik are great game players and the competition is fierce!

2)    Get out of the house! Hiking (sometimes disguised as “walking”), biking, basketball, paddleball, cornhole, city walks. We’ve done it all in this visit and especially happy to do so with the great weather. Both kids are great hikers and bikers. 

 

3)   Cultural uplift. I take my responsibility to introduce them to what I consider good culture seriously and they’re generally trusting to both my wife’s and my choices. While also being open to what’s contemporary and on the kids’ radar. 

 

On this trip, I take Zadie to her first Jazz Club—Keys Jazz Bistro to see the fabulous Hogan Brothers (minus one brother who had Covid). Karen, daughter Kerala, Zadie and I went to see an astounding magician last night (Kevin Blake) while Talia and Malik went to a 3-D seat-shaking water-spraying movie Inside Out 2. While Zadie had a sleepover at Talia’s, the rest of us watched the Marx Brothers A Night at the Opera. Tonight I’m taking Malik to see Dear San Francisco, a circus-type show with great reviews, at Club Fugazi. After camp yesterday, Karen took Malik to the Academy Sciences to see Claude the White Alligator and go to the earthquake exhibit.

Zadie has been impressively disciplined working on an Eminem piano version of Hush Little Baby that she taught herself from a Youtube piano video. I helped her through it and then taught her the left hand to Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer (she remembered the right hand I had already taught her). Zadie also went to the park one day with Karen to sketch together. 

 

It has been a most marvelous visit with no emotional explosions or fights (knock on wood!). Two more days before I head off to New Orleans and Kerala and the kids return to Portland the next day. I’ll see them all again in August and Michigan. 

 

Have I mentioned I love being a grandparent? 

Social Life

I believe I’m in the middle of the introvert/extrovert scale. Given a choice between constant partying and sweet solitude, I’ll often choose the latter. But of course, as a teacher —and particularly an Orff teacher— I’m not only in the party but often leading it. Piano practice, reading, writing, morning meditation all feed the solitude side while making music with others, public speaking and occasional sitting in zendos with others in meditation lean heavily toward the community.

 

I noticed in Europe that I rarely had a moment when I was separate from my five companions and that felt just fine. Of course, solitude doesn’t just mean being alone. While riding my bike with the other four, I was still left alone with my own thoughts and feelings. But I did notice how breaking bread with others— the root of the word “companionship; “con”= with, “pan” = bread)— felt good and I enjoyed it.

 

Truth be told, my retired life at home leans quite heavily to the solitude side and while comfortable with it, sometimes those circling thoughts and checking in on feeling states gets tiresome, the constant effort of generating my own form of connection. Now the grandkids and my eldest daughter are here visiting for the week and the house is filled again with kid and people energy— and I’m loving it. No special effort required to fill in the hours, always something happening and someone to connect with via games, walks, bike rides, conversation and yet more.

 

And while Thoreau was my first literary and philosophical love, this world was not meant to be 7 billion individuals sitting around their own Walden pond. We are built for community. And in those places I’ve loved visiting and have admired greatly— Bali and Ghana spring to mind— there is the constant buzz of community, folks hanging out and all ages together and of course, playing lots of music and singing and dancing together as well as working and feasting and celebrating together. 

 

For me, at least, the challenge is to balance the two poles, to find those needed moments of Solitude inside the razzle and dazzle of community life. Which I’m trying to do now as my grandson comes around and asks for my attention!