music: Miles Davis- Kind of Blue
In June of 2006, Missa Toss hung ‘em up. Two hard years as a schoolteacher in Boston Public Schools was about all he had in him. David left Missa Toss be, and drove clear across the country. By himself. Now it’s the end of August in 2007, about 14 or so months after MIssa Toss said goodbye, and he realizes that it wasn’t goodbye after all. Tomorrow Missa Toss rises from the ashes and takes on a new school, a new city, a new group of kids, a new set of challenges. Missa be mad forcin’ it.
I myself am surprised at my decision making here. To be absolutely and perfectly clear, I am quite excited to be getting back into the classroom. There are so many good things to be said about teaching high school that I often take them all for granted. But there are also enormous challenges, herculean struggles, impossibly high mountains to climb. Teaching takes its toll on all fronts, especially the more sensitive, personal fronts. And after this past amazing year of movement and growth, after many who have been close to me as Missa Toss have said that I look and feel and act measurably better than I did when I was teaching, going back into it can seem like completely lunacy. Maybe it is.
Last March, when I realized that my current gig as a Naturalist in the Marin Headlands was not sustainable nor personally challenging to the extent I needed it to be, I began to consider other professional options. Resumes were e-splattered all over the Bay Area (because one thing is for sure: I’m nowhere near done here), and of the 30-odd probes into sectors ranging from education to nonprofit to consulting, not even a second look from any institution outside high schools. It’s like that in a city like San Francisco, I suppose, with thousands upon thousands of overeducated, overqualified, upwardly mobile young people all vying for the same 15 jobs on Craigslist. This significant reality check crystallized certain sentiments, though, namely that teaching (and more specifically public urban high school teaching) is what I’ve been trained to do more than anything else, it’s something I’ve been told I’m good at, and more importantly, it’s something I enjoy. That the David on paper could only appeal to that for which his resume was groomed made things much simpler and much more clear. And so by no large surprise, I’m back to exactly where I started.
But Missa Toss has come out of retirement to entirely different circumstances. The school I’m in now is a drastically different place: much more progressive in terms of pedagogy, much more collaborative, much more young, energetic, motivated, intelligent. Instead of planning for ten classes a week from scratch on my own, I am co-planning for three classes a week and working from precedent. Instead of traditional drill-and-kill tactics, I’m encouraged to think creatively about assessment and demonstration of understanding. I’ve been in PD for the past three weeks, and for the first time I feel like I’m being treated like a professional. All this, of course, is the backdrop to the real work that hasn’t even started yet. When 8:00 hits tomorrow morning and the kids are in their seats, expectant and restless, everything changes. No doubt it will be hard work. No doubt I will sweat, bleed, and cry over these kids like I did the last group in Boston. But given the perspective gained from a year away and the years I have under my belt already, I think I’ll manage much better. Beyond the job, I’m in a much more healthy place mentally, socially, and physically and I’m quite sure that I will spend far fewer weekend nights staring at the insides of my room by myself.
I’m apprehensive. That much is certain. I’m determined to put David ahead of MIssa Toss this time around, but I also know how David and Missa Toss have this tendency to work themselves into the ground for the things in which they believe. There will be some serious adjustment, and some long hours, and some days where there is nothing I’ll be able to do but come home and faceplant into my pillows. But I’m also expecting moments of exhiliration, transcendence even. Missa Toss is much more grounded, sure of what he’s able to do and how he’s going to do it, and because of this new context is all fired up. There will be time enough for all that in the coming months, but for now it’s time to get horizontal. It’s a school night, after all.
music: Beastie Boys: Check Your Head
My very early musical listening habits were not of my own devising, it was simply whatever was on the house stereo. I can’t remember most of it, save Peter and the Wolf. Around middle school I started developing my own tastes in music, and was split between the raw energy and power of hard rock (Def Lepperd’s Hysteria) and the funkiness of hip hop (Parents Just Don’t Understand). I was, like so many suburban kids, lost in a world of Top 40, because my sole inlet for new music was the radio. Once I got to summer camp, and could sample the musical tastes of way cool college students, my horizons opened up, and when I was 11 or so my ears were graced by three guys who found some middle ground between rock and hip hop. That was it for me for a while. AdRock, Mike D, and MCA became my first band crush, and it lasted clear through the end of high school. In terms of raw energy, varied style, fun, and catchiness, nobody could top the Beastie Boys.
The trio from New York CIty put a spell on me something serious in my teens. Beyond being able to bridge the gap between two styles of music that I’d been digging, the Beastie Boys represented something really important. Here were three guys, three white guys, three Jewish white guys, rapping over live instruments. They would do whatever they wanted, and they could do whatever they wanted, and despite it being hopelessly dorky most of the time we white kids in suburban America ate it up. The Beastie Boys were the Great White Hope for us floundering suburban kids wishing above all else that we could be down. If these three yahoos from New York could do it, then we had a shot, and we at that point refered to myself, and my friends CJ and Roger, who at the time were convinced we wanted to be Beastie Boys and not grow up.
But the B-Boys gave me more to chew on than good times and hopes of coolness. With the release of “Check Your Head” there also came incredible musical substance. I’d of course heard the 1980’s party anthems from “License to Ill,” and they were fun, but nothing could hang with the mix of hip hop, live instrument rock, and acid jazz that was “Check Your Head.” “Ill Communication” accentuated the point, and with the release of the instrumental compilation “The In Sound From Way Out!” I was completely and forever a B-Boys Fanatic. Now, ten years out of high school, the Beastie Boys’ instrumental work is what keeps me hooked and coming back for more. “The In Sound From Way Out!” has probably influenced my playing as a musician more than any other single album has. (It also would make a Beastie Boys fan out of many people who swore that they hated those three brats.) So when the Beastie Boys, now well into their forties, dropped their latest album, all instrumental, and announced a string of all instrumental shows, I knew what had to happen at all costs. I would have to dress to impress, and attend the Gala Event.
Last night, through strokes of incredible fortune, the Beastie Boys hosted a Gala Event (what they are calling the handful of all instrumental shows they are playing around the world) not five miles from my door. My buddy Adam (incidentally nicknamed AdRock, among other things) and I cruised down to the warfield, dressed to impress, and joined the three thousand or so well-dressed eventgoers (and people dressed up! Amazing!) for a night of Beastie Boys at their absolute finest. I was completely and totally hooked into it for two and a half hours, through the new instrumentals (“Off The Grid” holds high esteem), the rare punk breakouts, the acid jazz/funk grooves from the mid-90’s, and the live instrument hip hop that was offered up. It was the best concert I’ve seen in years. These guys, I am reminded, are more than dorky Jewish white guys somehow making it in the rap world; these guys are musicians who play instruments and are bold enough to leave lyrics out of their music despite all the ridiculous crap that has come out of their mouths for the past 20 years.
My band crush with the Beastie Boys never really went away. I dipped into other bands much more seriously after high school, but the Beastie Boys always had a special place in my heart. Seeing them do their thing in person last evoked me at age 15, but simultaneously scratched my more recent itch for quality groove-based rock. I had so much fun last night that tonight I think I’m going to spend way too much money to catch them again at the Greek. Y’can’t front on that.