Gifts of Resonance
by Herine Coetzee Koschak
Prior to the Covid-19 lockdown, my last day of teaching students at the Nancy B. Jefferson School within the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center was during the first week in an eight-session Deep Listening unit. On that day, we planned to perform a text score by Pauline Oliveros called “Bowl Gong.” The instructions for this score are as follows:
“Sit in a circle with a Japanese bowl gong in the center, one person, when ready to begin, hands the striker to someone else in the circle. That person strikes the gong. Each person maintains the pitch mentally for as long as possible. If the image is lost, then the person who has lost it, hands the striker to someone else in the circle. This person again activates the gong in order to renew the mental pitch Image. Continue as long as possible.”
Initially, I hesitated to try this score because of the facility’s tight restrictions on spontaneous student movement around the room (typically they must request permission, and this activity would give them agency to move about the room freely, even if one at a time). Even changing the room setup to sit in a circle can be a challenge, since the plastic chairs are all affixed to square tables. Also, a percussive striker could be deemed a potential weapon by support staff. Having spent five years in the building and seen cleared items such as washable markers abruptly designated as inappropriate, we decided to try the score anyway, with a back-up activity planned if the administration had concerns on that day.
To set the stage: when we teach, there are four sets of people in the classroom – the students, the classroom subject teachers, the facility’s support staff, and the two Fifth House teaching artists (on that day, Sixto and I). The students in our group had recently lost one of their two English teachers to a massive heart attack. The loss shook them a great deal, and a new long-term teacher was starting this week. Another new face was a young man who went through intake the previous night – as is typical in such instances, he was sitting alone anxiously.
After some preliminary warm-up activities, we gave the instructions for “Bowl Gong” and commenced the piece. For the first few minutes, the students groaned, chided, and corrected each other for “doing it wrong” – “She TOLD you not to hit it yourself – you’re supposed to GIVE it to someone ELSE to hit!” They giggled sheepishly, retorted saucily, shrugged, and then started to get the hang of it: listening to the sound, and when it disappeared, walking up to the strike and handing it to someone else to strike the bowl anew.
What happened in the next 15 minutes was one of the most transformative experiences I’ve experienced in the facility. The young man who was new sat slumped over with his chin on his hands. The mother in me wanted desperately to bring him into the fold by handing him the striker, but my gut told me that doing so wouldn’t be nearly as powerful as if one of his peers (with whom he would be living for the foreseeable future) initiated the gesture. So, I sat on my hands, pleading in my mind that the next kid would get up and hand the striker to the new student.
The kids found their rhythm after a few exchanges, and then one of them passed the striker to a support staff member. I held my breath for a second, because of the very real possibility that the staff member might hand it back, saying that he didn’t want to participate – something that I’d seen occasionally with other activities. Instead, the staff member smiled graciously and struck the bowl. A few minutes later, another staff member walked up to the striker and handed it to a student. The support staff were now fully integrated participants in the piece.
A student got up to hand the striker to the new substitute teacher. She looked so moved, knowing that now a relationship with this cohort, still mourning for her predecessor, was possible. From that point on, both teachers were in the fold of the piece as well.
Finally, a young man walked over to the striker and handed it to the new student. As they made eye contact, the smile on the recipient’s face was something I will never forget! It occurred to me that his integration into that pod was probably fast-tracked by at least a week, perhaps obviating the need for him to be initiated through less positive means.
At one point, a support staff member burst into the room on official business. Having engaged in such a quiet exercise for some time, the interruption was rattling. One student looked up and asked, “Would you mind keeping it down? We’re meditating.” I stiffened, assuming that the official would call out the student’s insolence. Instead, he looked around and said, “Sorry about that,” and exited the room.
It’s hard to convey precisely how many “micro-miracles” occurred in the 15 minutes or so of the Bowl Gong performance. What I do know is that I have never seen one activity build community amongst so many groups, so striated in power, in such a short period of time. The agency that the students showed in offering the striker to their authorities, and the reciprocity in each case, were beautiful things to witness. When we talked about it, I asked the students: “What was it like to receive the striker?” One boy’s grinning response: “It was like getting the sword of honor!” When asked about giving it, one quipped that they don’t have the opportunity to give each other gifts, and that if felt “really good” to do so and to see how happy it made the recipient.
I, for one, was given a profound gift that day – the first-hand witnessing of what is possible when everyone, no matter their stature, is given the opportunity to connect without the encumbrance of words. Music liberates us from this need for language when feelings and interactions are too complex, too intense, to be describable. When our entire world shut down the very next week and I found myself flailing both as an artist and as a person with responsibilities, recalling this experience was grounding.