On the Road Again

After this lovely month in San Francisco falling in love all over again with my neighborhood, it was time to hit the road. Not the long flights across the ocean awakening in a different season (that coming up in January), but the pack-the-car, find a good story to listen to (Marble Murders by Anthony Horowitz), a couple of CD’s (Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers and Hart Songbook/ The Johnny Mercer Songbook), some celery and carrot sticks, a chocolate bar and a bagel with cream cheese) and off we go! Our annual trip to Palm Springs for some whole family time. My wife and I driving down and meeting the others tomorrow.

 

The trip began with great promise, leaving on a sunny, warm, San Francisco day, the gift of no traffic through the city and over the bridge and on the 580 to 5 South. Immediately swept up into the Audiobook story and swept up in a different way by the bright green hills that look like frozen waves (missed the opportunity to take photos— well, I was driving). Passed the almond and orange groves, the tumbleweed on the side of the road that one trip years ago was rolling on the road and hitting the cars on a windy day like a giant pinball machine game. 

 

For some reason, four out of the five Rest Areas were closed—what’s going on, California? And when we got to the pass on the outskirts of L.A., all traffic ground to a halt and we were suddenly funneled off of Route 5 because the entire freeway was closed. (Later, found out it was a gas leak.) Google Maps ushered us off on a side route heading East and then weirdly told us to take a U-turn back toward 5. It seemed dubious, but other cars were probably listening to the same directions, so I followed them. I figured maybe the closure had opened, but no, the only choice was back on 5 North. And then the cars were literally poised to turn left across a divider to head back down South again to get back on the side route we had been on. Again, I followed them. Safety in numbers, right?

 

Once on the route, I was directed to turn right on 110^th St., some 90 streets down from where I was. Then the directions had us in more and more rural streets with more and more curves, literally some 25 miles winding up and down canyons in the pitch black. With no cars ahead of us or behind us. I hesitate to write this next thought, because these days the amount of evil unleashed in the world may give somebody an idea. But I’ll assume that you, my readers, lean heavily to the side of benevolence. Yes? It occurred to me that the next hit Murder Mystery Show on Netflix is someone who figured out how to hack the GPS and send people on detours that land them in some obscure cabin in a zero- population area and… well, you can imagine the rest. This route just seemed so random and convoluted that the thought crossed my mind.

 

But not to worry, it finally spilled us out on larger roads with streets lights and 9 hours later, brought us out to the Courtyard Marriott Hotel. My wife had a yen (pun unintended, but there it is) for Japanese food and that meant getting back in the car for another 3 miles to the Mall. The last thing on my list, but we did it and the avocado roll was excellent. 

 

Time to get horizontal after a long day. Tomorrow morning, we pick up my daughter and the grandkids at the Ontario Airport and try to figure out what to do in Indio before our Air B&B is ready. My other daughter and boyfriend driving the whole distance from San Francisco, hopefully with better freeway luck than we had. If I could, I would write the next post from the hot tub. Let the wild rumpus begin! 

The New San Francisco Song

Years ago—24 to be exact— I re-wrote the song “Manhattan” to make a San Francisco version. I can’t claim to have invoked the genius of Lorenz Hart, but still, it was fun to try. Interesting that some of the issues brought up near the end still hold true, even as some are obsolete (Lawrence Ferlinghetti, RIP, and the ball park is not new!). Today I added two verses, the negative and the positive, and definitely could have kept going. But not easy to rhyme “Tunnel Top” and “Slow Streets” and “Parklets,” etc.. So if you live in or have lived in San Francisco, I hope you’ll get a kick out this version. Sing it out loud! 

 

NEW LYRICS TO MANHATTAN (with apologies to Rodgers and Hart)

                                    ©2001 Doug Goodkin

 

1. The peacenik  kids go,      to San Francisco,     in July,

    They lie on hippie hill       so high.

    And all the rest go,     to drink expresso,       in old North Beach,

    They sit and write a poem,     or else they dial home,    on their cell phone.

 

    There's Ferlinghetti,    in old Spaghetti,    Factory

    He's signing books you see,   for me.

    This small town's city's a wondrous treat,

    Whether you're square or beat,

    In San Francisco,        we'll sneak a kiss so sweet.

 

2. Let's dilly-dally,          on Kerouac Alley, near City Lights,

    Or hit the Hungry I,     Oh my!

    The Kingston Trio,      we'll never see so, let's go in.

    Where Carol Doda's skin,     made all the leches grin, chin to chin.

 

     Walk for an hour,           up to Coit Tower,        to catch the view.

     We'll watch the fog roll in,    boo hoo!

     Though the guidebooks always say,

      Don't dress for a summer's day, 

      We're here in San Fran,      we'll change to pants and stay.

 

3. Embarcadero,    you've got the fare so,        get on board,

    The ferry on the Bay,   Hoo-ray!

    Drive south of Market,          if you can park it, or ride on Bart

    To the Museum of Art, or to the new ball park,   for a lark. 

 

     In Sausalito,     where the elite go, to stop and shop

     The trendy stores so hip,      or not.

     We can stop at Alcatraz,       then go out and hear some jazz,

      Another good day,     on San Francisco Bay.

 

4. In San Francisco,        you can go disco,   dance at night.

    By day, you fly a kite,  all right!

    It's very fash' nable,      the international      neighborhoods.

    Go eat a Boston sub,      or find an Irish pub,      or salsa club.

 

    We'll study Russian,    or play percussion,         at the Wharf.

    Or take a workshop on,         Carl Orff.

    We can learn what we want to know

    Or take in an ethnic show,

    It's San Francisco,    so come kids, let's go.

 

 

7. All day we'll mirth make,  forget the earthquake,        we'll live for now.

    Do what the crowds allow,    and how!

    We're here without Mom,        with all the dot com,      she'll never come.

    Because the scene's too young, all those pierc-ed tongues   climbing rungs.

 

     Rents astronomic,         a bad dot-com-ic,     mom and pops shut down,

     The low and middle class,    leave town.

     This great old city has lost its edge,     Turned into a well-pruned hedge,

     No longer shame-faced,       it's not the same place now.       

 

(2025 verses)

8.  The culture’s changin’,       AI invasion,   everywhere

     No billboard shouts “Beware!”    Who cares? 

 

     It’s a new day, so,    Get used to Waymo, you got no choice.

     They’re the new techno toys,  most rejoice,   why raise your voice? 

 

     The skyline’s growin’,   a phallic showin’,   like Sales Force,

     Big money is the source,    of course.

 

    Though we voted, long ago,  Manhattan here? No, no, no!

     Still it keeps growin’ and we have lost our glow. 

 

9. But good things comin’,   the bikes are hummin’,  on JFK.

    Because it’s now car-free,        Hooray!

 

     Go to Chase Center,    it's quite a splendor,   right by the Bay     

      Go see the Warriors play,    they're okay!   but you gotta pay.

 

      But not to worry, we’ve got Steph Curry, he’s Number one.

      4 times the Warriors won, ………..Such fun!

 

      This beautiful city still does shine,  forever a Baghdad shrine,

       So  hip-hip-and yes,hooray,   it’s here that I will stay!

       

      

  

Children's Underwear

It is a family tradition to go to the movies on Christmas Day, so after wondering what to do on our first Christmas in a long time without kids or grandkids in the room, my wife and I remembered—“Hey! Let’s go to the movies!” One plan was to take a long walk before arriving at the Balboa Theater to see a film about an ambitious ping-pong player, but between heavy rains and wind and a more appealing film, we crossed the bridge to drive to the Lark Theater in Larkspur. 

 

The film? Blue Moon. The topic? One night at a bar after Rodgers and Hammerstein premiered their new musical Oklahoma in 1943. The main character? Lorenz Hart, Rodgers former partner who wrote exquisite lyrics to Richard Rodgers' exquisite music for the 18 years they had worked together. On this night, he walked out of the premiere to drown his sorrows at the bar, knowing that this new musical would be a wild success and replace the more urbane sophistication of his own work with Rodgers with a more rah-rah corny Americana kind of vibe. Much of the film is his ongoing monologue with a sympathetic bartender and anyone else within earshot who will listen— including E.B. White. Hart is played by Ethan Hawke and if he is not nominated for an Oscar for his remarkable performance, I’ll give up on American filmmaking. And the film as well. So damn refreshing to sit for two hours without a single gun, superhero or special effect. Just the human drama of complex relationship and the wages of genius. 

 

Lorenz Hart was a complicated artist. Under 5 feet tall, a homosexual living in the cramped space of a cultural closet and an alcoholic on top of all that. He first met Rodgers when he was 23 and Rodgers was a 16-year-old high school kid composing melodies on his family piano. A friend brought them together and with their mutual passion for the emerging new style of theater songs being written by the likes of Jerome Kern and George M Cohan, they threw their hat into the ring and began pitching their songs to publishers. 

 

After five years of rejections, Rodgers threw up his hands and accepted a job selling children’s underwear. But as if a mirthful and mischievous cosmic puppeteer was waiting for the right moment to pull the strings, just before Rodgers reported for work, they got some songs accepted to a Broadway Revue called The Garrick Gaieties and much to the future delight of Broadway Shows, Hollywood Musicals and jazz musicians up to the present day, the doors were flung wide open to hundreds of songs that would be forever stitched into the tapestry of American popular music. Hard to imagine who we would have been without such gems as “Manhattan,” “My Heart Stood Still,” “With a Song in My Heart,” “Isn’t It Romantic?”, “You Are Too Beautiful,” “Lover,” “It’s Easy to Remember,” “Little Girl Blue,” “There’s a Small Hotel,” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” “Have You Met Miss Jones?” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” “I Could Write a Book,” “Where or When,” “My Funny Valentine,” “Blue Moon,"etc. etc. etc.. (If you don’t know these songs, you have much happiness ahead—check out the Rodgers and Hart album of The Ella Fitzgerald Songbooks, for starters.)

 

Generally, Rodgers wrote the music first and Hart followed with his exquisitely poetic and nuanced lyrics. Their first hit "Manhattan” was prophetic of the glories to come, with its clever, evocative, humorous and simply brilliant rhymes following the surprising rhythmic phrasing in the melody. Geography has never been so fun and artistic! 

 

1)   We’ll have Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island, too,

            It’s lovely going to, the zoo.

 

It’s very fancy, on old Delancy street, you know

The subway charms us so, as balmy breezes blow, to and fro.

 

And tell me what street, compares to Mott Street, in July,

Sweet pushcarts gent-ly gliding by.

 

The great big city’s a wondrous toy, just made for a girl and boy,

We’ll turn Manhattan, into an isle of joy.

 

2)   We’ll go to Greenwich, where modern men itch to be free,

            And Bowling Green you’ll see, with me.

 

We’ll bathe at Brighton, the fish you’ll frighten, when you’re in,

Your bathing suit so thin, will make the shellfish grin, fin to fin,

 

I’d like to take a, sail on Jamaica Bay with you,

And fair Canarsie’s Lakes, we’ll view. 

 

The city’s bustle cannot destroy, The dreams of a girl and boy,

We’ll turn Manhattan, into an isle of joy.

 

Hart’s alcoholism became an ongoing issue in his relationship with Rodgers, especially when he missed deadlines or didn’t show up when promised. Rodgers’ decision to switch to Oscar Hammerstein was both practical and financial, as the public in the midst of a horrendous war desired escape more than wit, some nostalgic immersion in the on-the-surface simple life of cowboys in Oklahoma and the more easygoing and sentimental lyrics that Hammerstein provided. Hart died some seven months after that Oklahoma debut, so there wasn’t even a choice but to continue the new partnership. From that groundbreaking show, Rodgers and Hammerstein went on with such iconic musicals as Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, Flower Drum Song, all the way to The Sound of Music. 

 

How tragic it would have been to have lost all of that to a salesman selling children’s underwear!!

  

My Village

One of many things I love about San Francisco is its walkability, bikeability, bussability. I appreciate my car when it’s time for the weekly grocery shopping with four heavy bags to tote, when it’s raining heavily, when going to a nighttime concert or movie. But most of my daily life is not only entirely possible walking, biking or bussing, but genuinely pleasurable. When I have an errand to do, the need to get something marries the need for daily exercise— not in a gym but out in the fresh air. So the practical errand and the cardiovascular workout are intertwined and also joined with being outdoors, enjoying the hustle and bustle of others out on the street or in the park and taking time to notice the houses (especially now in all their festive decorations), the crows and songbirds and occasionally coyotes.

 

So yesterday, my wife needed to pick up some books at the library and I needed to pick up a spiral-bound of my newest book at Kinkos. I planned a route through the Haight and Upper Haight, my old haunts before moving to the Inner Sunset. The sun was out for a brief interlude between the rains and as we walked, I spontaneously began commenting on the various businesses and houses we passed. Here was the Other Café where we heard great comedy (now the Crepevine), there was Rivendell School (now Cole Hardware) where I taught music for a year and was about to go fulltime before The San Francisco School snatched me up. Here is Zazie’s where the Men’s Group had an annual December dinner before we realized we could cook as well and at 1/10^th the price and we began a new potluck tradition. Here is the house where our midwife Judith lived that delivered Kerala. 

The Australian Aboriginals have a fascinating practice of walking the “Songlines.” In a culture in which the land and all things are sacred, a walk through the outback is a journey following the footprints of the Ancestors, singing to life each detail that contains both practical and mythological/spiritual information. Likewise, their paintings and dances are maps of the landscape. A walk is never a casual stroll through something external called “Nature,” but an intimate and intricate connection with the very foundation of their collective being. 

 

It's a stretch to connect my little walk through the Haight with something so highly developed as the Songlines, but I could feel a little echo of the sense that we weren’t just walking past houses on random streets but reliving significant parts of our lives and invoking our immediate “ancestors” who have been such an integral part of it all. Up we went on Belvedere St., sight of many memorable Halloween celebrations shared with the foreign Orff Interns we had hosted. Past alum student Artemis Anderson and her Mom’s Marcia’s house, both of whom we haven’t seen in a long time. Up the steps to Upper Terrace, past the Glanville’s house where Julia (another SFS student) lived and who had just come (now in her 50’s) to our recent caroling party. There was Dennis Aftergut and Caroline Muther’s house where I played a solo piano house concert as a school Auction item. And there was 1519 Masonic, where we lived for two years and our daughter Kerala was born. Down past 247 Downey St. where I lived for two years with my sister and brother-in-law in 1974-5, a two-bedroom apartment with a marvelous view that costs $125 a month split three ways!! Down to Haight Street, past the old Haight Ashbury Music Center (originally called Chickens That Sing Music) where I bought many needed instruments (and now is Gus’s Grocery), on to the library on Page Street where old college friend Peter lived across the street in an apartment without heat, down past 410 Shrader St., my very first apartment in San Francisco a half a block from the Panhandle, shared with roommate Andy who I haven’t seen hide nor hair of for the past 50 years. 

 

There was more, but you get the idea. When you live in a place a long time, the landscape is alive with a past that still sings on into the present. You stroll through all the selves you have been, some almost unrecognizable, others delightfully familiar. Your little village in a bigger city feels like a community, both in the living past and living present. How often I pass people I know or have known out on the street and stop for a brief chat.  Often school alum kids or parents and then the mandatory selfie to send to the school archives. It gives a warmth and a sense of meaning to life in the city that I value. 

 

And at this time of year, where cards still come through the door and others through the e-mail, it feels just right to pause and remember. Where we have been, who we have been with, catch up on the news and surrounded by our forever community of family and friends, prepare to take the next step into the New Year. 

On this Christmas morning, our first without any kids or grandkids present, we are content to feel the presence of all those we have shared the Season with. May you enjoy the same, be they by your side or present in your memory. Merry Christmas!

What? Me Sing?

… is the chapter title about singing in my book Play, Sing & Dance. Here’s what I wrote back in 2002: 

 

Let me begin with a confession: I don’t sing. I came to music through the prestidigitation of curved fingers on the organ keyboard, deciphering those black dots that followed Trudy Treble and dropping the needle on my parents’ 78s and 33s. When those neural connections were supposed to be wired by my mother’s soothing lullabies and family sings, something else must have been happening. I don’t blame her, but since I ended up as a music teacher, it has made things challenging. 

 

School didn’t help much. I put in my Erie Canal time, but never had the experience of being guided towards more tuneful singing. Of course, given the situation today, it was a miracle that I had music at all—and twice a week at that. But I only remember three songs and we never played instruments and we didn’t improve in singing. It makes me wonder what we were doing all that time!

 

My main memory in high school was a mandatory try out in glee-club. “Sing a scale” asked the director. I had played scales throughout my seven years of organ and piano lessons, but no one had ever asked me to sing one. I tried. When he said, “Thank you very much. Next!” I shouldn’t have been surprised. 

 

These were also those teenage years singing along—well, almost—in the back seats of cars to the Beatles, Beach Boys and James Brown. (My friends were kinder than the teacher and didn’t kick me out of the car.)

 

Things picked up in college. I joined the audition-free Antioch College chorus and rode on the coattails of my fellow basses all the way to Europe. The music was actually quite difficult in some ways—the sacred Masses of Guillame Dufay and Johannes Ockeghem were hardly familiar to my ear. But the notes kindly stepped from one to another without too many leaps and the beauty of singing in Notre Dame and Chartres Cathedrals was enough to lift some kind of song from me.

 

After college, I moved to San Francisco and after a couple of years supporting myself  giving piano lessons and accompanying dance classes, suddenly here I was, the music teacher at The San Francisco School. We had a singing time. Every day. And I was in charge. 

 

Thanks to Alan Lomax, Doc Watson and Peter, Paul & Mary, I scraped together a reasonable repertoire of folk songs for kids, practiced my three chords on guitar and off we went. Most of music class was playing around on Orff instruments, dancing, playing games—the whole nine yards of Orff Schulwerk. But in the daily singing time, we sang. Every day. And I was in charge…”

And on we went, with me leading the singing for 15 years and then sharing it with my colleagues James and Sofia for 30 more. When I left The San Francisco School 5 years ago, the thing I thought I might miss the most is that daily singing time. To some extent, that has been true. 

But where there is a will, there is a way, and I’m happy to report that in the last three weeks alone, I have both created and responded to opportunities to lead group singing with all sorts of people of all ages. With seniors at the Sequoia’s Center for Senior Living and the Jewish Home for the Aged, with 2^nd and 3^rd graders at New Traditions School, with families coming to my neighborhood at the SIP Tea Room and on the annual Trolley Ride, with old friends and new at a Mexican Posada gathering, a Jewish Latkes party and our neighborhood Christmas Caroling and yesterday at a friend’s apartment who is bedridden with illness, with his wife and two other friends. 

When people gather, a shared song changes everything. That’s the greatest joy the venture brings to me, that power that this kid who rarely sang, grown to the teacher that sang every day, now has—and uses— to elevate any gathering with the simple technology of shared songs. It is a blessing I never could have imagined a lifetime ago singing Erie Canal out-of-tune in my New Jersey elementary school. 

 

That’s the greatest joy the venture brings to me, that power that this kid who rarely sang, grown to the teacher that sang every day, now has—and uses— to elevate any gathering with the simple technology of shared songs. 

 

And likewise a blessing that this is a time of year—in fact, the only time of year—where singing takes on an important cultural function. Whatever else you feel about the Winter Holiday season, it is the only time a group of diverse strangers might know and sing together a common body of sung music. Where there's a whole body of recorded material constantly playing on the airwaves. (Imagine recordings like Boo!! Ella Fitzgerald Sings Halloween Songs/ It's Turkey Time! Frank Sinatra's Thanksgiving Album/ Taylor Swift's Easter Songs— like I said, when it comes to music, there's nothing like this Holiday Season.) Imagine this time without Winter Wonderland, Deck the Halls, Frosty the Snowman, Silent Night and dozens more. How different it would be! 

So sing on, my friends and as 16th century composer William Byrd suggests at the end of a little treatise in praise of singing: 

 

                                    Since singing is so good a thing

                               I wish that all would learn to sing

                               Omnis spiritus laudet Dominum

December Delights

After two days of teasing drizzle, the real rains have come. In the back of the house, the steady drip of the ceiling leak that the contractors can’t quite fix. Here in the front, Public Works workers in bright green raincoats are cutting the green shoots at the base of my neighbor’s tree for reasons baffling to me. Rivulets run down the streets, the trees wave in the wind and Czech carols from my old LP give a meaning to it all that touches my heart. Puts it all into the story of a cozy home on a dark and wet December day. Not quite my childhood mythology of snow and a roaring fireplace indoors, but close. 

 

The whole feeling of randomness in this life, of mere news and entertainment and sensation and distraction and lists of things to do, is suddenly wrapped in the full embrace of a beautiful meaning,evoked by the first note of the first carol on the record. A needed reminder that we are players in a story in which every sight and sound and feeling has a significance that needs no explanation. We simply need to pause and let it wrap around us and savor its touch and taste and sound. 

All of this brought to life by the miraculous capacities of our gifted human faculties to create, to express just about everything a heart can feel and a mind can imagine through music. Music composed and learned and played on instruments that join together in their unique voices, captured on disks and machines engineered by scientists and sold in stores and stored on shelves. All products of human labor designed to bring beauty, comfort and a sense of deep belonging into our hearts, hearths and homes. As I said in an earlier post, we don’t need any miracles greater than these. 

 

While I sometimes think I would like to live in a perpetual summer, in fact, the seasons of this life make for a fuller and richer existence. I experienced all four growing up in New Jersey and here, now, listening to this music, I’m feeling some nostalgia for the particular tastes, textures, sounds, feelings, possibilities, splendors, each season evokes, savoring these songs that were made just for this moment. 

 

I think I’m “beating the system” by going to warm climates every January to teach— in the past few years, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and soon, Singapore and Bangkok. I will enjoy wearing shorts in January, but now I’m thinking I’m cheating myself of these old, cozy, familiar winter feelings. It has never been the same in San Francisco as New Jersey, but still a touch of Winter’s loving embrace—and especially when year after year, our family went with three others up to the snows in the Sierras. 

 

The needle lifts off the record, the soothing sound of rain now instead of the songs and in spite of all evidence to the contrary, the sense that “all’s right with the world.” A switch from the European mythscape that has lived inside me my whole life (Bach, Dickens, Da Vinci, etc.) to the American one, sung to life by Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby and Ella Fitzgerald. George Bailey had it right: It’s a wonderful life. 

 

  

Risk at Risk

When we think of risk, what might come to mind is skydiving, bungee jumping, rock climbing, race-car-driving and the like. But that’s just outwardly, showy, daredevil stuff. The real risks are things like getting up at a jazz jam session and taking a solo. Speaking up at a school faculty meeting and saying exactly what the admin doesn’t want to hear. Writing a tender piece and sharing it with your friends. Telling someone you like or love them without any guarantee that the feeling is mutual. In short, the things that make us vulnerable and put us in a kind of harm’s way. Not with bullets, but with the risk of being ignored, laughed at, shouted down or cruelly insulted. 

 

Participation in any public display of art— a music or dance concert, an art show, a poetry reading or a play— is an act of risk. The expectation is—or should be— that afterwards, the friends attending offer some kind of appreciative comment. A simple thank you, a few sincere adjectives—  “Beautiful! /Compelling! / Moving! ” and if you’re ready for the next level— “I couldn’t stop looking at your painting of that apple. /That jazz ballad was exquisite./ Your poem captured exactly what I feel but have never found words for.” You get the idea. And naturally, if you have a strong relationship with someone, after the affirmations can come some gentle sincere critiques.  That’s well within the bounds of proper etiquette.

 

But what it is not okay, rude, hurtful and seems to happen more and more these days is to not say anything at all. For example, when the music teacher has worked beyond human capacity to put on an extraordinary show with the kids and the fellow teachers, admin, parents or kids themselves don’t say a word about any of it afterward, this is simply unacceptable. Toxic, harmful and shameful. Signs of a dysfunctional school culture that is clueless and doesn’t even realize they’re clueless. So on top of everything else, the music teacher has to educate the staff about the expected etiquette that every artist understands without question. And then run the risk of being thought of needy, whining, defiant and how dare you insult your fellow teachers? This is not good.

 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. “If you see something, say something.” Particularly when it’s a fellow human putting themselves out there and daring to be vulnerable through the form of artistic. Better an honest “that didn’t work for me so well/ didn’t move me/ not to my taste/ etc.” than a deafening silence. At least that can spark a conversation. 

 

We seem to understand this better when we are invited guests to the dinner party where the host has cooked the meal. The expectation is that you will comment (positively) on the food served, thank the host at the end of the evening and sometimes even send a follow-up text/e-mail/ card. But I’m noticing that in the field of the arts, as in the recent school concert mentioned above, we seem to need to re-train people. 

 

Why would someone not say anything? One can only guess, but it could be a simple as no one ever trained them to this form of etiquette. Perhaps it’s because they’re self-absorbed and not mindful of the needs of others. Maybe they’ve been steamrolled by a leader whose model is to never say a single nice word about anyone or anything and in fact, take the most sensitive occasion to spew trash-talk. We’ve all suffered from the trickle-down-effect where nothing matters and mean-spiritedness and cruelty run the show.  

 

But there may be more lurking below the surface. We say we love the artists who share their vulnerability and reach far below the surface of the mundane. We admire those who touch some depth of feeling or thinking that we all have but might be too busy or distracted to go to. Or simply refuse to go there because to do so is to expose ourselves to a tenderness that we’ve been trying to cover up. Might it be that we don’t want something or someone to penetrate the armor of illusionary protection we’ve worked so hard to build? So instead of appreciating the person who does so, we’re uncomfortable that they remind us of something we’ve buried deep down or even (usually subconsciously) angry with them for breaking the deal of talking only about sports or real estate or the daily news. Don’t interrupt my “nice day” by stirring up what really matters. 

 

And so the value of risk is itself at risk these days. While I spent my days in the music classroom inviting and enticing the children to take great risks— sing or play a solo, take that challenging part in the play, dance in the middle of the circle— the school formed a Risk Committee devoted to fear and protection. In my classroom, that sense of risk was cushioned by a supportive community that understood how to welcome and applaud each daring venture beyond the safe and comfortable. Outside, the very definition of risk was limited to the negative associations I find in my thesaurus—danger, jeopardy, peril, hazard, menace and threat. When we seek to make ourselves invulnerable, we lose an essential part  of our nature. 

Risk means vulnerability and as defined by the poet David Whyte, “vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without… it is the underlying, ever present and abiding undercurrent of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature…” 

 

Let me be clear. No worthy artist creates to receive nice comments from friends in the audience. But every artist is also plagued by great doubt as to their ability to express the ineffable and when people walk away in a cloak of silence, that doubt grows larger. A few well-placed words, a look, a touch, is all that’s needed to let the risk-takers know that their efforts made a difference. Let us all take the simple airport motto to heart: “If you see something, say something.”