by Fitz | Jan 31, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching
Anything worth succeeding in is worth failing in
~Ben Franklin
“Quit your whining and complaining” is probably a clause that can easily be translated into every language in every culture on earth, for, from what I know and have seen in the world, bitching about anything resembling a chore is probably embedded in our DNA as humans. And so it is at Fenn. Every year as WW Fenn presentations loom near I find myself wondering abut the whining and complaining about something as simple (yes it is!) and noble (yes it is!) and worthwhile (yes it is!) as our speaking contest. My only beef it that it is a contest. It doesn’t need to be a contest, nor should you think of it as a contest; rather, it is an opportunity to practice one of the most amazing things of being human–which is presenting and interpreting greatness in the miraculous song of the human voice.
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by Fitz | Jan 29, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching
Stories are a communal currency of humanity.
― Tahir Shah, In Arabian Nights
The most powerful and enduring connection we share as a human race is our desire and need to share stories. We engage in the art of storytelling more than most of us ever realize; whether we are describing our kids’ soccer games, critiquing the latest HBO series, telling a ribald joke, or remembering a long lost friend, event, memory, book, or experience. We listen to stories in songs, in long-winded meetings, in late night BBC broadcasts or self aggrandizing talk radio, on long car rides, and in intimate conversations with friends and lovers. We tell stories for reasons that are so deeply embedded in our psyche and DNA that storytelling is a natural and intuitive response to almost any situation. Sometimes, when stuck with a rather boorish person, we wonder why the sam hill that person insists on telling insipid stories; but, most of the time we listen, reflect, and respond—usually with stories of our own. It is out of this verbal give and take—our personal and cultural oral tradition—that we reflect and grow and expand the range of our limitations. It is our way to “shuffle off our mortal coil” while still alive. Through stories we live outside and beyond the confines of our short sojourn on earth, but while we are here and struggling through the vicissitudes of everyday life, it is stories that feed our roots and spread our canopy upwards into an infinite sky.
Stories that are worth telling once are worth retelling again and again. Out of this stream of unconscious revision a story is perfected until that story becomes part and parcel of our personal, interconnected, and communal eternity. The best stories survive the ravages of time because we know and sense with an almost mystic unknowingness that a particular story is too good or important to forget. These stories become the canons of our universal literature. We go back to those stories like spawning salmon to the streams of their birth. We need to know our source, and the best and most enduring stories lead us there, even against the tides, currents, and shoals that seem to bar the way. We need to tell and hear and read the stories that bring us to these places. We need to limit the trivial and search for and embrace the profound stories that have weathered the ravages of time. We need to ask ourselves why we read what we read, listen to what we choose to listen to, and tell what we feel needs to be told. We can’t go on accepting the debased and vapid simply because it is there and easy at hand in its glorified, extolled, and commercialized abundance. We need to seek the higher fruit and walk among the dappled grass and pluck until time and time is done, the the silver apples of the moon [and] the golden apples of the sun.*
Today is as good a day as any to look back and in and begin moving forward. Shut something off, and turn something else on. There is something else on your shelf, something in your mind, and something within your range that is waiting for you.
*from “Song of the Wandering Aengus” —W.B. Yeats
by Fitz | Dec 10, 2013 | Essays, Journal, Teaching
Just closed the lid, so to speak, on what seems to be weeks of school-related paperwork. I am excited to go to my classes tomorrow with only those classes on my mind–not the letters home to parents, the secondary school recs, the grades and comments to homeroom teachers, but just a bunch of teenagers looking to get through the day with a bit of joy, a tad of knowledge, and hopefully sloppy joes for lunch–and not much homework. This feels like the time of the school year when we produce too much and harvest too little as we feed the insatiable measuring machine.
I wonder sometimes why we assess “when” we do. The notions of terms or semesters is pretty ingrained in every educational system I know of, but I just don’t know the real reason. It is a sincere question. Maybe we should learn in short stretches of time–like three months or so, such that the year is divided into fourths and one fourth is rest and the rest of the fourths is, well…the three legs of the race…and that would work, right?
I really have not met anyone that has a massively compelling reason why we stop the wheels and give a semester grade except for because–it’s the end of the semester.
Not the most profound question to cast out there, but it is the question that is sending me to my sleep.
If you have the answer, let me know.
by Fitz | Dec 10, 2013 | Essays, Journal, Teaching
How about we all take the bull by the horns and make this blog thing work! Your job this week is to do something with your blog that is powered by the passion that is in you. Passion is the one thing you have some control over. There are plenty of smarter, more gifted, and more interesting writers out there than me or you–but there shouldn’t be a more passionate writer. For better or worse, your blog is you–as my blog is me, and until you want a better you and I want a better me, readers will find another place to go.
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by Fitz | Nov 26, 2013 | Essays, Journal
The house is quiet earlier than usual. I can hear Margaret playing her guitar and singing in her bedroom—door closed as she would have it, but still beautiful to hear. It reminds me of Kaleigh when she was younger singing her heart out, as if the world didn’t really exist outside of her room.
EJ and I played some banjo and guitar earlier tonight. He has some pretty fast fingers on the old “banjer” and a good ear for music. At some point all of the kids, sans Charlie, were playing something: Tommy on the trumpet, Emma on her new ukelele—even Pipo picking up a few chords on the guitar. We were talking about music at the supper table, and I noted that I have never met any adult who regrets playing an instrument. Maybe something actually soaked in. On Saturday night, we took all the kids to a party at Tom Cummings house and there was a big jam session going on all night. EJ and Emma sat in a for a bit, but at least all the kids got to see the purity of experience that music brings to a community. I do want all my kids to play something, and I want them to find joy in music. Really, all I want is for them to experience true joy, and that’s what music brings to life—done right.
I can’t figure how music is done wrong. I love traveling around on Sunday mornings giving guitar and song-singing advice to a few young teenagers. They are all earnest, sweet, and love their music. My only regret is that I really can’t do the same for my own children. I teach them on the rare occasions when they come to me for some advice, but we don’t have the spare cash to give them lessons. For the most part they have done well with our rather feral approach to music and have “figured things out” on their own, but there is always this pang of guilt that I haven’t given them the same kind of chances to have a teacher, guide, and mentor for weekly lessons, though I guess they have all had plenty of chances to have a heck of a lot of fun with music at pubs and campfires, concerts and camps, and living room jams and long car rides.
I should stop now, lest I indulge even more in one of my deepest fears—the fear of becoming that overly proud parent who somehow manages to spill out the accomplishments of their children to anyone willing to listen.
But damn, Margaret does sound good.
by Fitz | Nov 21, 2013 | Essays, Journal
Every Thursday, for some thirty years, I have been spending this same time each week wrapping up the loose ends of the day before heading down to the inn to play to whomever and whatever shows up. Tonight looks like a fun night: Maroghini will be with me for his last show before heading back to Jamaica; Seth will be down. We’ve played less with each other the last few months, so it will be good to “get back in a groove’ with him, and hopefully Hatrack will show up, too.
What’s cool is that I never really know who is going to be there or what kind of night it is going to be. I know a few posts back I wrote about the power of the “redemptive moment,” but tonight feels like everything is in place for a great night. I know some folks are coming down; I took the day off from school and feel pretty rested, and I am in the mood to sing. I even sent out an email to my list of folks who over the years have kept me in the business of folksinging.
I had been practicing the Mumford and Son’s song “I Will Wait” this afternoon because Joe, the bartender at the inn, has been asking me to learn it for far too long now, but I will take the reprieve and not spring a song I barely know on musicians that perform on a level far above most of their peers. In that sense, it is a humbling experience for me. I can hold my own on the stage, but when Hatrack, Seth, and Maroghini get going, it is usually wise for me to let them go down their own roads without me screaming…”wait for me…”
It’s a small stage tonight, but it will be a full one.
