Cadre Today- The Lori Dokken Effect

[Music] Good morning, cadre. [Music] 18 North, Andy Mack, how are we doing? [Music] Oh, a lot of banana. [Music] Let's sing along, Rosé. Here we go. [Music] Darryl Glaze, how are you, buddy? At all. A little Johnny Mitchell to play us in this morning. Yep, that was Jefferson the Jack Russell joining us for a little chill, peaceful, easy way into our Monday today. My name's JC, if we've never shared time and space together before. Thank you for the opportunity to spend some time with you right now.

I see everybody, Darryl Glaze just popped out in. Darryl, nice to see you. You can find some of Darryl's content. If you type in Darryl's name, Darryl's a wonderful, wonderful human doing wonderful things, serving people all around the Twin Cities. I mean, I already said what my name is. What I wanted to say is, I'm glad that I'm here. I'm glad that you're here. I know what I know and I care about you. Whether it's a frenetic Monday morning or a peaceful, easy, or whenever you experience peaceful and easy, you're always in the right place right here.

And that's because we do all of these things. Oh, my gosh, Ms. Shannon Paul is jumping into the room as well. We got a bunch of fun contributors jumping on in. And Ms. Shannon Paul is going to know the story that I'm going to share this morning because Ms. Shannon Paul is in the room. Quite often on Mondays, I speak about boldly following. I speak about in a world where we're supposed to lead and be out in front and always be the one leading the way and being the loud pot clanger and getting everybody to follow us.

But if everybody's leading, who's following? And we kind of live in a world where there's not a lot of people who are trained at being exceptional followers. If you've got a little bit of time later on today, I invite you to go ahead and type into your Google One of two TED Talks. One is by Derek Severs and it's called How to Start a Movement. It's three minutes long. It's really great. But the one, if you've got 15 minutes, type in Dr. Jane Bentley, the art of following. She's a music therapist in Belfast, Scotland.

And it really is a beautiful source of information on how following is actually a secret life, as James Taylor would say. I got a really great example of following that resonates with what Dr. Jane Bentley talks about. And that is that musicians are exceptional followers by trade. Their job is to follow. The job of the musician is to have the orchestra conductor in front bring all of them together as they make their music. And I got to experience this last night. It was a wonderful musician and spirit located in the Twin Cities called Lori Docken.

If you ever have a chance to see Lori make some music, go ahead and do so. She's divine. But this group that I direct, conduct, oversee, called "Alive and Kicken," we had an event last night where Ms. Shannon Paul also shared a story that I'm going to share tomorrow about her neighbor, Jan, and about the outward facing click, which is always my Tuesday topic. But Lori Docken yesterday sat down at the piano at our homecoming event, the kickoff of the season. And first of all, shared some stories and then shared a little bit of Joni Mitchell, both sides now.

And then all of a sudden I was like, "Hey, Lori, would you be willing to go ahead and accompany this group of 49, 60 to 90-year-olds? Do you want to make some music together?" And Lori, I knew, was going to be an absolute yes. But the cast, you could see on their eyes going, "We've never made music with Lori before. How do we know what's going to happen? How do we do it?" Knowing that we're going to have 150 people in this room watching us make music with someone we've never made music before. And I smiled.

I went like this to Lori. And then I started going like this. And all of a sudden music happened. And you could see in these cast members' eyes that they're experiencing something that they haven't experienced before. Because Lori started playing energy and music that was not on the page that was following the energy of the room, following the energy of the other musicians in the space. And all of a sudden the cast members started responding back to what Lori was doing. And the Lori responded again, and then the cast responded again.

And all of a sudden this beautiful performance of "Let It Be" wrapped up, and everybody was like, "What just happened?" And of course I knew what was going to happen. I didn't know what was going to happen, but I knew what was going to happen. Music was going to happen. This beautiful representation of boldly following. Now Lori's walked that path a million times, but this cast is not. My invitation for you today is to go, "Who can you follow? Who can you make music with? Who can you say a five, six, seven, eight, two, and go into your dance, or a one, two, three, four, and share your song?"

That's a metaphor. I'm not talking, you have to go ahead and sing songs and do dances with other people. But when you go into the meeting today, how can you follow the energy that's in the space? When you get in traffic today, how can you finally learn how to zipper merge? When you go ahead and walk down the sidewalk today, who can you go ahead and match the energy of? If you see someone sitting in their front yard happy playing with their offspring or their pets, or maybe you see someone walking down the sidewalk and they look sad and lonely, can you follow in their energy and see the beauty of the impact that you can have whenever you choose to follow?

The answer is yes, yes you can. Go do it. A little bit more Joni for you as we play ourselves out into the rest of the day. Let's go tears and fears. I love this verse. ♪ Tears and fears and feelings ♪ ♪ I love you right out ♪ Oh, I have to hit the pause button. Okay, so Lori, when she was singing the song yesterday, she's literally at the piano in her space, tears and fears and feeling proud to say she stopped playing and she pointed at the 160 people in the room. And you could hear, and I could hear machine and Paul go, ♪ I love you ♪ 'Cause everybody was singing the song, even though there's only one person singing the song.

Okay, we're going on. Have a great day everybody. We'll see you tomorrow. ♪ I look like that queen ♪ ♪ But now old things are at least free ♪ ♪ They shake their heads ♪ ♪ They say I change ♪