Doing Great Work

At this stage of my life, funerals of various kinds are a regular event in contrast to weddings - though I did attend one on Saturday where the bride and groom made their way to a small church on Toronto Island from the mainland by canoe.

Walter Pitman OC Oont would have approved. Doing things a different way was something he excelled at.  He lived a full 89 years with many careers and achievements - secondary school teacher, first elected member of the New Democratic Party to the federal government, member of the provincial parliamentant so much more.  Electoral losses later never slowed him down.  He subsequently became Dean of Arts at Trent University, President of Ryerson Techological Institute, head of the Ontario Arts Council, head of the Ontario Instutute for Studies in Education - and in retirement the biographer of five outstanding Canadian musicians.  He and his wife Ida were inveterate arts attenders and I first met them as delegates of a major choral conference where they joined a massed choir for each of my eight years on the job. Incredibly modest about his own abilities, Walter always said to me, "You're doing great work!".

It was good to be cut down to size at his service of celebration.  We heard from a theatre director that he always said the same thing to him.  And we even heard in a moving tribute by his daughter that he said the same thing to his children.  But perhaps the best tribute of all came when she said of her parents, "Any time any of us came into the room - children, grandchildren and now the 10 great grandchildren - their eyes would light up.  A lovely memory of a man whose enthusiasm and support lit up so many of our eyes that evening.

Music Unites us

Toronto has a wonderful summer music festival going on and I take in the concerts almost every evening for three weeks.  Today was the first of three kids concerts, where I volunteer, and this morning something quite wonderful happened.

The performers were a change from the often classical fare.  The group was the Kinan Azmeh CityBand visiting from New York and the lead on clarinet, Kinan Azmeh is originally from Syria.  A good marketer reached out to ensure that some young recent arrivals from Syria were in the audience.  Imagine their pleasure when Kinan introduced the group and invited questions in both languages - and all the kids responded.  They clapped and cheered for music that combined familiar music blended with that of their new world.  It's a good day to be a Canadian.

Kiran was back in the evening for an additional concert as part of Toronto Summer Music Fesival program.  The volume was set lower and one could hear that the arrangements were beautifully nuanced to incorporate the two worlds of New York and Syria.  We visited his childhood village - now reduced to rubble. He commented on the travails of going through customs with a Syrian passport - nearly every time in returning to New York he was asked to step aside and join a line called "Other",  and then placed in a room with other nationalities of various ethnic backgrounds and colours and compelled to be silent for hours.  In response to the inevitable, he learned to use the time to compose - and he said he wanted to dedicate the next composition to all the "Others" throughout the world caught in those same waiting rooms and never knowing the final outcome.  Poignant moments.

More on Possibility

When I started this blog – which followed one created many years earlier – the tagline was suggested by a book by Rosamund and Benjamin Zander – entitled The Art of Possibility.  I first met Ben Zander on a TedTalk, where he introduced a bunch of techies to classical music.  The Talk has still maintained one of the highest ratings ever – over two million views. Their earlier book showed how both he and his wife have inspired many to bring out the best possibilities latent within themselves.

The new book, Pathways to Possibility, is even more explicit. Written by Rosamund Stone Zander, a family systems therapist, it resonates with another of my favorites in the field – Ed Friedman.  She unpacks the reality that most of our negative aspects arises from our own experiences as children, and unless we recognize and re-frame such experiences, they play into everything that we do as adults.  We can either recast them as memories – things in our past that no longer have control over us – or see them as part of our continuing story and growing maturity.  Her message is simple but profound.  I have seen this in action when another practitioner in the field helped a woman re-write a negative story and it changed her whole attitude in an instant.

Reading this book – and watching Ben Zander coach his music students on YouTube are excellent lessons for anyone who wants to initiate change – as another wise colleague has said – we have to be the change that we want to see happen.  Try these!