dreams and false alarms

it's time

2008-11-05T11:55:00.002-05:00

I haven't written here in 10 months, but I'm so ecstatic today, so proud to be American. I never thought I'd write or say those words. Watching the returns last night with my parents, watching all the faces in the crowds in Chicago, Atlanta, New York... I commented on how it was the first time I felt like I saw people on TV and LOVED them, felt connected with them in the anticipation and hope, and then the incredible joy and, heck, incredulity. We did it! My father spent many days this month canvassing in Pennsylvania, so when it went Obama he felt a direct sense of pride. When Obama referenced Lincoln so beautifully in his speech, talking about the original ideals of the *Republican* party, my father broke down. It was so beautiful to share the moment with him, and with my mom. It's always been something of a personal legend, how my dad worked in Wisconsin and Iowa for Gene Mccarthy in 1968, but in my own lifetime I hadn't seen him so fired up about politics. This July 4, I had a great conversation with my friend Sol's father Richard. We talked about the HBO John Adams movie, which we'd both recently seen. I said that what struck me about it was how back then, politics were the science of things that so directly affected people's lives. I felt like it wasn't so true now. Richard vehemently disagreed, and proved me wrong with so many examples. Maybe it's irrational, but it really feels like things could get better for each of us personally. Maybe we'll have to pay more taxes, and dramatic improvements won't happen overnight right now. But this feeling like our president is going to ask us to help each other, and make sacrifices to make our country better, it makes me feel like we're all so much more connected than we were even a day ago. I took a run this morning with Lupe, and everyone I saw, I felt like, we're in this together. Of course, it's Jersey City. I'm sure, like, 110% of us around here voted for Obama. Whatever. We did it.
The best text-message I got last night was from my friend Katya: Yes we did.

2008-01-22T09:13:00.000-05:00

So I'm kind of an Oscars junky. Which is ironic considering I see, maybe, one movie a year in the theater. I just looked up this year's nominations, and got such a very very cool surprise: Beaufort, on whose soundtrack the ICSQ, my old quartet, played, is in the list for best Foreign. It's the first Israeli film since 1984 to be nominated. Apparently it's really good. I hope the nomination means it will be released in some more theaters in the states...
Here's the website for Beaufort (called Bufor in Hebraicized English. I could list a lot more words that get transformed in double, or reverse translation. Love it)

the golden age

2008-01-09T08:09:00.001-05:00

How did this become uncool? Tap dancing, singing, hot outfits... I'm gonna learn this for next Halloween.

beauteous boys

2008-01-09T00:17:00.000-05:00

2008-01-08T23:52:00.000-05:00

I know I haven't written for ages. I'm really just writing this for myself. But I'm so angry at this Op-Ed piece by Gloria Steinem, and I can't figure out how to comment directly to it, so here I am at my own corner of the rant-and-rave universe.
Gloria Steinem has always been a hero for me, but what she wrote today was so narrow and bitter, and seemed directed just at people like me. She started off her opinion piece by saying that a woman who had Barack Obama's life could never make it to where he was. What kind of statement is that? Who, looking at Obama's life story, would predict that he himself could make it to where he is? The whole mystery about him, the whole thing that's making Clinton supporters freak out, is that completely undefinable quantity and quality: charisma. On top of that, Clinton just doesn't inspire people to think she could really make anything different, considering what she's already done and who she's connected to. I know it's not fair. I've wanted a woman in the White House my entire life. But I hear stories of things happening elsewhere in the world: of the things government is capable of. Actual rehabilitation in prisons. A fairer share of resources and wealth. Government support for its national culture, aka arts and education!!! Obama isn't the only candidate I could see somehow making those things happen here. I bet Kucinich would do a lot more, and Richardson too. But not Clinton. And that doesn't make me any less of a feminist. It makes me so so pissed that someone like Steinem would suggest that. I don't vote with my vagina. I vote with my brain.
It's this sentence in particular that makes my blood boil:
But what worries me is that he is seen as unifying by his race while she is seen as divisive by her sex.
Followed by this a few sentences later:
What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age.

Grrrrrrrrrrr.
Supporting Clinton makes you more radical because she's a lady??? Do you know how much I loved Geraldine Ferraro when I was a little girl because of the historic importance of her candidacy? I was five. I drew pictures of brides and grooms with the brides literally 4 times larger than the grooms. Then the groom's top hat would threaten to compete with the bride's height, and I'd give the bride an extra headdress just so she would tower over him even more. So now I'm a total subservient, pregnant-in-the-kitchen, housewifey, non-feminist because I don't support Clinton? Her policies are fine. She's been a good Senator. But I'd rather be idealistic, and vote for someone I actually want in the White House, who I could actually imagine maybe, possibly turning things upside-down, at least the things that need to get flipped.
I was touched when I saw the footage of Clinton getting emotional. The primaries are f*cking brutal, and anyone would be spent and wrecked by that much travel and exertion. She obviously wants to be president and was bummed when Iowa dissed her. That doesn't mean I'm going to vote for her. I knew she was human before. It's not like I'm like, "OMG! She's real!"
Anyway.
Apparently Obama is appearing at a rally in Jersey City tomorrow. He's like, Jersey City's a must-win, I'm going there straight after NH!!! I don't think I can make it, but I'd like to. Hearing Howard Dean speak 4 years ago was a goosebump-filled experience. I got all over that bandwagon, writing letters etc. Then super disilliusioned when the whole country tossed him out because of an improper scream. So it goes in the U S and A. Gotta be smooth to win. I got enthusiastic and idealistic again this time around. It's cool that Clinton won NH. But remarks like this from her: "his free ride's got to end sometime," and this piece by Steinem bring up the question that was in my mind after Dean's rise promise proved a fantasy, after I felt like fool for getting involved in his campaign: is it worth it?

2007-11-27T01:02:00.000-05:00

Oh my gosh, this is getting so meta. I just realized I could maybe submit a writing sample from this thing with my DMA applications! And now I'm writing about said submission ON this weird outlet that I feel funny about. I've felt about communicating on blogger sort of like how I feel about my myspace and facebook "friends:" it just makes me feel bad for not picking up a pen and paper, or phone, or, for that matter, good old-fashioned email! And now it's going to substitute for scholarly research as well! My head's about to explode. Am I the laziest person on earth? I mean, I'm sure I could find an old paper somewhere. But then I couldn't even scan it in-- I'd have to type it out into the computer for these online applications! See, I'm being encouraged to do it this way. Or my sloth is, anyway.
BTW, Christopher read me a great Thomas Pynchon piece on sloth. I like assignments that have to do with the seven deadly sins. They seem to be tremendously fruitful and inspirational topics.

summer fun

2007-10-31T11:48:00.001-04:00

After all these serious posts, and now that it's (finally) starting to get cold, I thought I'd put up some pics from the summer. That's Christopher balancing on the guardrail on the beutiful road to our house in the Catskills. The tubing shot is from the farm belonging to the family of our friends Peter and David (shown, so classy with the glass of wine!), near Oneonta. And the lovely blonde angels in the blue crab and on the boat are my nieces Samantha and Haley. They have an amazing trampoline.

Jewish-Christian dialog about Israel

2007-10-31T10:16:00.000-04:00

I started writing this in response to a posting by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on the National Havurah Committee listserve. But once it started getting a bit lengthy for an email, I decided to put it up here so I wouldn't clog folks' inboxes.
Rabbi Waskow wrote about being invited to speak at a conference at Boston's Old South Church titled "The Apartheid Paradigm: Issues of Justice and Equality." The title is obviously problematic for the Jewish community, and especially Jewish officialdom. Waskow is clear about the differences between the two! Anyway, he was invited to speak after two other "representatives of Jewish officialdom" pulled out in protest. They were objecting to the presence of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who has compared the Middle-East conflict to South African Apartheid, and the involvement of Sabeel, a Palestinian human rights group that calls itself an "ecumenical grassroots liberation theology movement among Palestinian Christians."
(***Right now I'm reading Tracy Kidder's "Mountains Beyond Mountains" about the amazing, super-hero Doctor Paul Farmer, and his work with impoverished communities in Haiti and elsewhere. Farmer is inspired by liberation theology, and I've become inspired myself, albeit not in a Christian way! Check out the helpful Wikipedia definition of the philosophy.***)
Anyway, if you like, you can read Rabbi Waskow's full account here. The following is my response.

When I think of American Christian relations with Israel, it's usually the Right-wing/Evangelical devotion, financial and otherwise. It's problematic, especially when I heard that a lot of the money for Nefesh B'Nefesh, which helped fund my Aliyah, came from such Evangelical groups. I can't understand why the Boston Jewish "officialdom" would reject the opportunity to engage a large and progressive Protestant congregation on this issue, especially when the conference in question (and its problematic title) demands a Jewish response. Just what is so controversial about Sabeel? Their call for refugee return? It seems like a perfectly understandable position for a Palestinian human rights group to take, even if it may not be tenable if-- I mean, when!!-- a treaty or agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is forged. I've been aware of the difficulty of Israel's "Right of Return" for Jews since I befriended a Palestinian German many years ago at a music festival. Both his grandmothers lived in the Palestinian territories, yet he had never been himself. "You can go anytime you like," he said to me, not unkindly, but with a kind of wistful smile. In that context, I can understand this statement of Sabeel's on their website:
"Israel's 'Law of Return' which allows any Jewish person to immigrate to Israel while denying Palestinians the right of return to their homeland is immoral and discriminatory."

My only disagreement with Rabbi Waskow is with the statement he suggests Boston's Jewish officialdom should have made in response to the conference:
"And we think it important to point out that applying liberation theology and all the vivid rhetoric about Jesus' crucifixion raises deep dangers in the Israel-Palestine context, strikes a deep nerve of Jewish pain from centuries when Christian charges that the Jews killed Christ, killed God, led to rivers of shed Jewish blood."
I have to say, I don't quite get this. From the little I've read about liberation theology, it seems like a perfect jumping-off point for dialog between Christians and Jews. For me, social justice is one of the defining ideals of Judaism. I don't see anything about liberation theology that suggests the charges that the Jews killed Christ. Is there something I'm missing?

Living in Israel didn't do anything to simplify my feelings about the conflict. I heard the boom of a suicide bomb not far away from me, and the resulting symphony of sirens. I understand the Israeli reliance on the military, and the instinct to keep as far away from "those people" as possible. I rarely saw on Israeli news what life was like on the other side of the Wall (oops, sorry. I mean, the Fence!) even though it was going on less than 15 miles away from where I was living. But American Jews can't keep being so afraid to criticize Israel, and can't keep going on pretending Palestinians brought this upon themselves. Israelis criticize Israel all the time!! Honestly, I feel like our fear of real engagement with the problems of the Occupation and Settlements actually divides the two communities (American Jewish and Israeli) more than if we spoke freely about our concerns. Also, it makes us look hypocritical if we take stands on human rights issues all over the world, and look the other way instead of facing the reality and repercussions of Israel's policies.
Families stage interventions to help each other. I'm not saying we should, or can, do anything like that. What would an intervention look like anyway, especially if we don't believe in military solutions to human rights issues? But criticism is healthy. And admitting to "outsiders," i.e. Christians or- gasp!- Muslims that we, too, see these issues, which are so clear to everyone else in the world, does not mean we aren't committed to Israel's future.

In memoriam Rudolph Hazucha

2007-10-18T01:26:00.000-04:00

The transition's hit me. I feel like I'm going through jet lag now, after having been back for more than four months. I remember that number, because right after I got back, I was a sucker and bought one of those salon package specials a guy tried to sell me outside the subway. Haircut, manicure, "hand massage" blah blah blah. I went for the haircut, but of course, after she tried to sell me a fortune's worth of crap and get me to dye my hair, and after she only very reluctantly, rolling her eyes, cut the bangs I was asking for (which I like very much, thank you) I thought, maybe I wouldn't get such a good hand massage here. Anyway, the thing was valid for four months, and I kept trying to use it as incentive to stop biting my nails: that I could get a manicure. But I didn't. And four months are up.
Come to think of it, that story sounds like something that could have happened in Tel Aviv.
Anyway, I don't know why I expected that with a new teaching job- where I've somehow convinced people I could lead orchestra! (Gosh, I hope none of my students are reading this. If so, um, hi! Go practice!) and with being back in the freelance pool, and starting to try- I mean trying to start- my own non-profit... that I could STOP biting my nails.
Things are really good, though. So much has happened and passed that I wanted to write about. Discovering the "Freaks and Geeks" DVDs (it's embarrassing that's the first thing that came to mind), getting really into practicing solo stuff again... Our trip to California for Christopher's brother Bryan's wedding was incredible. I got to spend good time with Christopher's friends and family, and met some wild, super interesting people. He and our niece and nephew and I went out for an 8:30 AM canoe trip our first morning there. Christopher and Riley were rowing in the front and back, Chloe and I were passengers in the middle, all of us in a straight line. Chloe wanted to paddle, so Riley handed her his oar. A few seconds later we were all in the water, and the canoe was upside-down. That's all we know. We tried digging for answers, but there seemed to be none, just shrugs. The wedding was at Lake Zaca, north of Santa Barbara, which is, we were told, the only natural lake in California besides Lake Tahoe. Is that true? And, we were told, no one has ever found the bottom, it's so deep. AND Al Capone "disappeared" some slot machines there in the 30's, or alcohol during Prohibition, or something. AND Keith Richards swam in it. So you can imagine, we were nervous having taken Riley and Chloe out and dunked them into the middle of the bottomless lake, and their grandparents were on the shore, watching. Luckily, the water was warm, and their Dad and Grandpa rowed another canoe out to rescue us. Chloe held on to one side of it, and Riley and I on the other, me trying not to freak out that Riley was starting to shiver all over. Their grandpa and I started singing to boost the morale. I started "Hokey Pokey," which got Riley singing, and "Always look on the Bright Side of Life," whistling and all. David sang "Old Man River." He had a beautiful voice! Poor Christopher stayed in the middle and made sure our canoe didn't sink. They went back and got him after they dropped us at the shore. Since our cabins didn't have hot water (they later turned it on) Olya ran a bath for me an Chloe in her cabin, and Bryan ran a bath for Riley and Christopher in his. So Chloe and I got a sneak peek at the 3 red linen dresses, a traditional Russian wedding gown in pieces I guessed, that would be worn in layers by Olya, later at the ceremony. Bryan, for his part, wore a Scottish dress outfit, with white lace spilling all over the place, and big funny wool socks.
Something about that story just made me think of this great title one of Christopher's students gave to an essay about her summer. It was called "I Was Swimming."
I love that.
I'm dropping off, and there's a gorgeous heavy rain coming down outside that's distracting me. I just had to put this link in for an interesting article about musical blogs in the New Yorker. The best part about it was that it led me to a beautiful http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifdescription of the experience of playing Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" by the pianist Jeremy Denk. That's one of those pieces, like Beethoven piano trios, that makes me angry at the composer for not writing a viola part.
AND I had to pay my respects to a great man. The man who founded "Rudy Hazucha's Suzuki Kazoo School." He also did a lot of other great things, like starting the Suzuki camp I went to in Virginia for nine (!) years. But what I remember best is how at every final concert, there would be a performance by Rudy Hazucha's Suzuki Kazoo School. We all had to play a Suzuki song on kazoo. The faculty got so into it, that was the best part. That camp was so so so so so so fun. It's far away, so I don't get to give it props the way I do Third Street all the time. But I want to get Suzuki-certified, or have a baby quick and make it play Suzuki, just so I have an excuse to go back there. The institute was only a week, but it took several days (or what felt like it to me at the time) to get there. My mom and dad and I would drive through Pennsylvania Dutch country, or down the Maryland coast, and through the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah Park to get there. And then the week would feel like a month, so much would happen, but it also would be over before you knew it. We'd always do fiddling. One year MR. Hazucha brought Jay Ungar down, and we played "Ashokan Farewell" (which was later the theme song to the PBS Civil War documentary).
I feel funny eulogizing someone I didn't know very well. I was one of (what felt to me like) thousands of other kids there. And Mr. Hazucha definitely scared me; he was a disciplinarian, and we all had violins so we just wanted to make noise all the time. Boy, do I feel his pain now! It's Karma, or something, that now I'm the one saying "you practice at home. Here we play together." But Mr. Hazucha also had a charismatic and warm sense of humor. And that place, that institute, was his baby, and he brought the most wonderful teachers, teachers I still remember with a lot of love. It's good to be reminded of how much there is to aim for, how much you can maybe do from the front of the room.
There's a nice profile of Rudolph Hazucha here.

editorial

2007-10-15T23:53:00.000-04:00

I often put links to NYTimes articles, and then they expire and you have to pay to read them. I think the paper has changed its policy, but just in case I'm going to paste in a pretty incredible Editorial. Definitely stuff I struggle with as an over-apologetic person who feels funny and sometimes wrong for keeping a blog.

Politeness and Authority at a Hilltop College in Minnesota

By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Published: October 15, 2007

Last week I spent a couple of days in western Minnesota, giving a talk and visiting some classes at Gustavus Adolphus College. ...
I sat in on four classes, which were marred only by politeness — the deep-keeled Minnesotan politeness that states, as a life proposition, that you should not put yourself forward, not even to the raising of a hand in class.

Things always warmed up, but those first lingering notes of hesitation were something to behold. I tried to think of it as modesty, consideration for others and reluctance in the presence of a guest — from New York nonetheless. And yet I kept wondering just how such bright, personable students had become acculturated to their own silence. I had grown up in a similar place and knew a little how they felt, but that was a long time ago.

Midway through lunch one day a young woman asked me if I noticed a difference between the writing of men and the writing of women. The answer is no, but it’s a good question. A writer’s fundamental problem, once her prose is under control, is shaping and understanding her own authority. I’ve often noticed a habit of polite self-negation among my female students, a self-deprecatory way of talking that is meant, I suppose, to help create a sense of shared space, a shared social connection. It sounds like the language of constant apology, and the form I often hear is the sentence that begins, “My problem is ...”

Even though this way of talking is conventional, and perhaps socially placating, it has a way of defining a young writer — a young woman — in negative terms, as if she were basically incapable and always giving offense. You simply cannot pretend that the words you use about yourself have no meaning. Why not, I asked, be as smart and perceptive as you really are? Why not accept what you’re capable of? Why not believe that what you notice matters?

Another young woman at the table asked — this is a bald translation — won’t that make us seem too tough, too masculine? I could see the subtext in her face: who will love us if we’re like that? I’ve heard other young women, with more experience, ask this question in a way that means, Won’t the world punish us for being too sure of ourselves? This is the kind of thing that happens when you talk about writing. You always end up talking about life.

These are poignant questions, and they always give me pause, because they allow me to see, as nothing else does, the cultural frame these young women have grown up in. I can hear them questioning the very nature of their perceptions, doubting the evidence of their senses, distrusting the clarity of their thoughts.

And yet that is the writer’s work — to notice and question the act of noticing, to clarify again and again, to sift one’s perceptions. I’m always struck by how well fitted these young women are to be writers, if only there weren’t also something within them saying, Who cares what you notice? Who authorized you? Don’t you owe someone an apology?

Every young writer, male or female, Minnesotan or otherwise, faces questions like these at first. It’s a delicate thing, coming to the moment when you realize that your perceptions do count and that your writing can encompass them. You begin to understand how quiet, how subtle the writer’s authority really is, how little it has to do with “authority” as we usually use the word.

Young men have a way of coasting right past that point of realization without even noticing it, which is one of the reasons the world is full of male writers. But for young women, it often means a real transposition of self, a new knowledge of who they are and, in some cases, a forbidding understanding of whom they’ve been taught to be.

Perhaps the world will punish them for this confidence. Perhaps their self-possession will chase away everyone who can’t accept it for what it is, which may not be a terrible thing. But whenever I see this transformation — a young woman suddenly understanding the power of her perceptions, ready to look at the world unapologetically — I realize how much has been lost because of the culture of polite, self-negating silence in which they were raised.

Mann-Hindemith

2007-09-16T00:32:00.000-04:00

There's such an apt description of a Schubert lied in "Magic Mountain" (this book has been occupying my brain this entire summer. I read that when Thomas Mann was asked what the book "meant," if all its implied symbolism was literal, his reply was a suggestion to read it again. that scares me, considering how long this first run is taking me). It comes just after the main character has been introduced to a record player for the first time, and becomes obsessed with it, "letting the fullness of harmony spill over him." Doesn't that make you want to sit and listen to records all day? The song in question is "Der Lindenbaum," and after reading the lyrics, I'm inclined to continue with my hunch that the symbolism is indeed all literal. But anyway, Mann's main character Hans discovers that the magic of this song is in Schubert's tweaking of a familiar folk melody, moving it back and forth between major and minor. Hans learns to love the song more as he devotes more thought to it. Since the beginning of the book, he has become more thoughtful,
"an intuitive critic of this world, of this absolutely admirable image of it (Schubert's song), of his love for it-- (he had become) capable, that is, of observing all three with the scruples of conscience.
Anyone who would claim that such scruples are detrimental to love surely understands absolutely nothing about love. On the contrary, they are its very roots. They are what first add the pinch (the word in my translation is prick, but let's try and be grown-ups here) of passion to love, so that one could define passion as scrupulous love."
As I type this I see just how difficult this book has been for me. Even these phrases and paragraphs that stick in my mind, when I go back to them they elude me. I mean, yes, it's clear he's saying something along the lines of "the unexamined life is not worth living" albeit in much thornier and more elegant prose. But what comes next after this aphorism? Mann basically says that what is underlying the main character's love for this song is love for death. He follows this surprising switch with incredulous questions his readers might ask. Maybe that's what's so time consuming about this book: it often portrays the assumed reader's assumed responses, so that the real reader has all these other points of view, outside of the narrative, to contend with.
Anyway.
I started to write about Mann because I had this little revelation about Hindemith tonight. I decided to play through one of my all time top-10-list favorite pieces to play: his "Der Schwanendreher" (isn't this the post for the germanophiles?) Which was written in 1935, after Hindemith had already been denounced as a degenerate by the Nazis. The piece is a viola concerto based on German folk melodies, but is at turns angular and militaristic, free and improvisatory, and so deeply nostalgic, it's easy to forget what's at the heart of it until one of those folksongs comes back, all humorous and even corny. As I played I started thinking about Mann's assessment of German culture and history in both "Doktor Faustus" and "Magic Mountain": it's cold and harsh, but also clearly nostalgic for something he's almost afraid to admit to because of how it's been transformed by the nationalists of his time. Hindemith seems to not have taken himself so seriously, saying early in his career that he wrote music to be played and then thrown away. Still, thinking about his music as a message from his time, it's almost more meaningful to play it or listen to it than to read Mann. The melodies, the medieval characters, are just as real as ever, as is the sadness and nostalgia for the country he eventually left for good.
So, little non-sequitur, though just as nerdy. I just listened to that amazing recording of Schubert's 15th quartet by the apparently one-night-stand-only group of Gidon Kremer, Daniel Phillips, Kim Kashkashian and Yo Yo Ma. It's a live recording, with coughs in the audience, totally unedited, and sounds like the most compelling concert you could ever be at. The tension is tangible, almost beyond audible. I just thought how sad it was that two of my all time top-10-list favorite string quartets are this group, and the group that Sascha Schneider put together. My Dad loves telling me about how after Schneider left the Budapest Quartet, with whom he'd played second violin for years, he immediately booked some concert halls to play the complete Bach music for solo violin. Then he formed his own quartet, playing first violin this time, with Isidore Cohen, Karen Tuttle and Madeleine Foley. First of all, that he hired two women in the band, in the early 50's, that's just cool. Second of all, the records are out of print. I don't know how lucky I was to be born to a Dad who had those records. The Schneider Quartet recorded all the Haydn quartets, and then split. Schneider went back to the Budapest, Isidore Cohen joined the Juilliard, Karen Tuttle went back to being a bad-ass viola goddess, and Madeleine Foley went back to, I don't know, being a bad-ass in her own way I guess. If SNL were made by music dorks, they'd have a sketch someday about this supergroup meeting up in heaven, with Val Kilmer playing Sascha, Kirsten Dunst as Tuttle, and Tracy Morgan as Izzy. I'm copyrighting that idea, by the way.

4 seasons

2007-09-15T05:44:00.000-04:00

I have to admit I've had a block when it comes to writing here lately. I think part of it is that I've joined the 2 other corners of this internet triumvirate: Facebook and MySpace (or as my friend Julia put it last night, MyFace), and those things will suck you in. I was caught on National Public Radio even giving those two places endorsements, or practically anyway. I was put on air the other day when I called into the Brian Lehrer show-- and was so nervous about it I turned into a teenage girl. I called in to volunteer for a "Democracy Club," and Brian (I can't type that friggin name, it always comes out Brain. It kind of is the Brain Lehrer show, though) asked me where, besides the home, did the people I knew talk about the election. My mind literally went, "duuhhhhhh." And then I said Facebook and Myspace. When they're putting those Democracy Clubs together, they're going to be like, "Let's get the 13-year-old's perspective again" every time they call me.
Here's the link anyway. It's the last segment of the show.
More important stuff has been happening than me calling into a radio show. We just had our third Con Vivo concert last night!! They have been going so incredibly well, and I can't even imagine how it's all come together so quickly. It's exhausting- though the other night, Jose, one of our violinists, asked me what I do and once I started listing it all out it didn't seem that bad. I guess it's just the combination of CV and the school year starting. I'm leading the orchestra and teaching strings at City and Country- did I write that in the last post? I forget. Oh, the Last Post (a song from the Juliet Letters- ICSQ's last big project before I left)!! I miss my quartet. I think all this, like, speed-dating chamber music, with a different (albeit extraordinary) bunch of players each time has made me long for those daily 9-1 rehearsals. And the fun bike ride through Tel Aviv too- you can't get around NYC like that. At the same time, I can't even believe how lucky I am to get to play chamber music with all these amazing people, many of whom I didn't know before this summer. After last night's concert, the 4 Seasons with each solo played by a different violinist, we went to a restaurant where a big group of folks from our audience was also eating. I went over to say hi, and they asked me, "Where did you get those violinists?" It was such a cute question, like "where did you get your shoes?" And the answer, of course, was the same: "New York City."
I wonder if part of my selfish mission with Con Vivo is not only to make these chamber music opportunities, but also to try and lure these awesome musicians to live in JC?!

Shaq, LeBron, Dwight Howard All-Star Dance-Off

2007-09-06T12:15:00.001-04:00

eating and drinking music

2007-07-17T11:11:00.000-04:00

About that good news link from a little while ago. Well, now, the NYT article is only available for those who pay, so I'll just let yall know. The piece was about a movie about composers, including my friend Judd! What was I saying about how the mainstream media's gotta hip itself to the mass-market potential feeding frenzy that is classical music? Just kidding, it's a documentary. I'm embarrassed I didn't get to see it, but meanwhile super-psyched about all the attention these concerts in bars and local hangs are getting. A number of years ago, I witnessed a progenitor of this phenomenon in (of course) Berlin. A bar called Cookies, which apparently at other times is an exclusive, members-only place, puts on chamber music or solo concerts on the first Monday of every month. When I was there, the awesome and intense Kuss Quartet played, while a light VJ (LJ?) spun amazing atmospheres to accompany their Mendelssohn, Mozart, and Webern. Yes, Webern, and the coolest thing was, that was the stuff that suited the bar most. You could just feel the nervous energy of the too-cool-for-school young audience being perfectly captured and fed back to them in the Webern and its accompanying moody and swaying light.
This is what I've found: kids like new music. All this boo-hooing about the greying of the classical audience-- well, yeah, if you're going to keep putting shows on at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, even Miller Theater, which is on a college campus, only people "in the know" come. Yes, there should be money for bringing it into the schools, outreach is super important. But one of the things that bothers me about outreach is this condescending attitude, like, "We have something so splendid and holy and important, and aren't you lucky we're bringing it to you?!"
In Israel, I was lucky to witness a rehearsal led by Sergio Azzolini, who was leading Tel Aviv Soloists from the bassoon(!). He was playing a bassoon concerto, and going on about its composer, Vivaldi, and the musicians for whom he'd written his hundreds of works: orphan girls. "Vivaldi was their only connection to the outside world," Azzolini said, "and everything they learned about love and pain-- and the weather!-- they learned from him and his music!" I know that's kind of outlandish, but I was totally captivated.
What if today a composer was to write all his/her music in that kind of setting? Not for the court, like Haydn, or, metaphorically, like a lot of "commissioned" traditional composers ever since, whose music is enjoyed by subscription-holders?
I'm getting on my own high horse now, I realize. I'm a little panicked about my series out here in Jersey City. What with teaching the last two weeks at the phenomenally fun chamber music camp at Third Street School, and writing the section on Civil War music for a standardized test, I've been lazy with the planning and I'm now in crisis mode. I just see it so clearly as the low-frills embodiment of what I believe about music: that it should be available, and easy to get to, and fun. Right now my big project is to get the Italian Festival to put on our "4 Seasons." Cause what could be a better combo than Vivaldi + cannolis?

two jokes

2007-07-17T11:03:00.000-04:00

I was just put on hold when I called my OB-GYN's office. Guess what the waiting music is? "It's Raining Men."
Also, around the corner from my house is an acupuncture place, decorated with videos of people being massaged, or close-ups of needles being stuck into skin. On their sign listing ailments these treatments can cure: Man Dysfunction.
I love how open they leave that to interpretation.

awesome awesome awesome

2007-07-05T07:04:00.000-04:00

good news

what's in a name

2007-06-24T22:21:00.000-04:00

One of my summer jobs is booking a chamber concert series for Jersey City. I'm on the payroll of City Hall! There's something about it that's very... I want to say Mr. Chips goes to Washington, but I know that's not right. Anyway, the series I had started a few years ago was called Music From Blue Hill, a name I liked for its graphic possibilities: posters had a little row of mountains sitting behind a skyscrapered city, with the name cascading down from one to the other. I called it that because the starting point was Blue Hill, Maine, where I'd met most of the folksI was playing with at Kneisel Hall. Well,I can't call it that anymore. For one thing, there's a restaurant called Blue Hill that seems to have gotten much more famous since I lived in Israel. For another, it seems like the name should be more site-specific. I want this thing to eventually turn into a non-profit foundation providing free concerts for Jersey City. And City Hall wants me to put these shows on all over the town. Not to be lacking in civic pride, but having Jersey City in the title is kind of unappealing to me. I'm thinking "Gazebo Music" since we've been playing in the gazebo in my park, and I think every park in town has one.I looked it up and it has a strange,possibly bastardized etymology, which is cool. Any other suggestions?
And speaking of what do we call it, check out this article from today's NY Times. Actually it's one of those "duh" pieces they periodically put out on the shrinking/changing audience of classical music. This time it's on chamber music, and I can sum up the piece for you with its last two sentences: "Chamber music is dead. Long live chamber music." Zinger. I'm sorry, but it's always seemed a no-brainer to me that improv or jazz groups are also chamber music. Who cares about the purists? Anyway, here's the link. Enjoy. Or don't.

p.s. This morning I saw another NYT article relating to this whole audience issue: about the Welsh tenor who won "Britain's Got Talent." I always thought what the classical world needed was a big teen romantic comedy movie. Isn't a music camp or youth orchestra so perfect for that? All the gossip and dating mixed in with talent and competition? Instead we get Hilary and Jackie, Shine, The Pianist... I have to admit I've only seen the last one of those 3, and I love it. But these movies seem to portray the choice to be a professional musician as a choice to remove oneself from the company of everyone and everything "normal" in the world. So to see a tenor on reality television, where "normal" people can compete to show they're extraordinary, and hear the audience applaud in the middle- gasp!- of an aria, like it's a jazz solo, and then to hear Puccini absolutely bring the house down. It's like, yes, this is the medium to bring it out there. I don't pay attention to those shows at all- until I watched "Dancing with the Stars" with my Great Aunt Dot last month, and had a blast! It was awesome. Before that, were there ballroom dancing critics bemoaning the decline of the art, or audience? Are there any amazing cellists or clarinetists or harpists trying out for America's Got Talent? Am I cheapening the art form by asking?

hope?

2007-06-19T09:49:00.000-04:00

I just wanted to correct my former ignorance about Mr. Botstein's amazing Bard prison initiative. Check out what's up on that site, and if you were feeling sort of down that activism isn't having any dynamic effects any longer, maybe this will brighten your day. It was started by someone I went to high school with, which makes me super proud.
Speaking of activism, and the Palestinian/Israeli situation, I had some amazing discussions the last few days on that topic. In Kennebunk, Christopher's hometown, last week, his stepfather John asked me directly what I thought of the future of Israel. I had to admit, that while once I had been somewhat blindly optimistic about it- I felt that it just had to work out someday- now, after living there, and seeing the relative pessimism of Israelis themselves, among other things, I was much more pessimistic myself. I said that the only way I could see progress was if the government revolutionized itself and freed itself of the grip of the fundamentalists: the Zionist settlers and expansionists who refuse to see the effects of their spreading and building. It's well known that former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said "There is no such thing as a Palestinian People." Can you imagine the reputation of an American president in the late 20th century surviving after saying something like "There is no such thing as a Native American people"??? What frustrates me so much is the complacency of the Israeli and Jewish people, when for me a Jewish government means not a Jewish majority, but government guided by ideals of social justice and "Tikkun Olam," that is, fixing the world. So now, my instinct is to throw up my hands, say I don't know, I'm back in the states, who knows what will happen from now on... Did you know that Israel doesn't have absentee ballots!? A tiny country with a huge percentage of its citizens living abroad!? I wonder if the government would look different if those Israelis could vote. Then again, maybe it's because it's so easy for people like me to become citizens and then a year or two later to return to their home country, my vote shouldn't count. Anyway, the other day I was talking to my Mom about this whole thought process that John's question inspired. We came to the conclusion that no matter how frustrating the situation, we can't give up on Israel, because too many other people with lots and lots of money, are fighting for a country that looks very different from the one we'd like to see. What would happen if all the liberal or secular (slightly or otherwise) Jews in Israel and around the world gave up? If we left Israel to the fundamentalists? If the only Americans I knew who were going over there were on Birthright- instead of my amazing and inspiring friends going over there to work for the Israeli Coalition Against Housing Demolition, or to start programs of witnessing and dialog like Encounter... then I would be hopeless! If you're interested in any of this, check out these links and follow them to more and see how much hope and optimism there is in action. And tell me what you find.

few more

2007-06-19T09:29:00.000-04:00

just a reminder, we have hundreds more at www.flickr.com/photos/hollerames

blogs need pictures too

2007-06-19T09:19:00.000-04:00

With everything that's falling apart for the Palestinians right now, I wanted to upload some pictures from Christopher's trip to the West Bank. It was after I'd already left Israel; I was in San Diego with the Quartet. I think these children were in Jericho, perhaps the dude in the shades was in Bethlehem. Things are a little easier there.
It's so incredibly ironic that things for folks in the West Bank will get better somehow from all this, that in a way they will benefit while Gazans are starving and terrified. It's horrible for all Palestinians, the division of their country into two parts, and has been these many years since the Intifada and Israel's response has shut so many doors. I hope there will be a solution out of this, somehow, someday, so that Gazans can also receive international help again, and that all Palestinians can acheive some sort of self-determination, peace, and comfort.
The other pics are from my last night in Israel. Mr. Ben Gurion guards his airport with his enormous wings of hair. It's the safest piece of land on earth. And that ridiculously cute baby pulling my hair belongs to our good friends in Tel Aviv, Sonja and Daniel.

Oviedo

2007-06-12T08:40:00.000-04:00

I'm blaming this latest silence on Leon Botstein. Christopher's first day back in the US, in my second week back here or so, we drove up to Bard College. It's my Dad's alma mater, and he was attending a memorial service, alumni brunch and board of directors meeting. We went to the brunch with him. I've known my Dad's college friends my whole life, and they're fun to talk to and hang out with both for being so convivial and merry, and for all being so smart. I sort of felt like I was at the wedding of one of their kids or something, the mood and food were both so rich and festive- maybe it was just that it was super nice to get to introduce Christopher to them. Anyway, of course, inevitably the speeches started. And Leon, the head of Bard for the last milennium or so, was entertaining and random, seeming to address every issue But whatever had been asked of him. At one point he went off on blogging and e-mail culture, in that curmudgeonly faux-Luddite tone we all love so much in our college presidents. No, of course, everything he said was right on, but of course I couldn't help but take it personally. Tho when you're sitting in a crowded room like that, and the speaker blasts people who write blogs, you can't help but look around and think, how many others? Twelve? Twenty? Who else is spilling their guts in their pajamas? Leon called blogs "the detritus and cuttings from a publishing house floor" because of their lack of editorial oversight. I got a little satisfaction a few weeks later when he showed up on the Colbert Report and seemed nervous. Ha, Mr Big-Shot International Orchestra Conductor, Prison-Education Initiative Defender, Youngest Ever College President! You got served by a fake conservative on a fake news show!
I have to add to this, on the subject of politically progressive orchestra leaders, big snaps go to Leonard Bernstein. The other night I heard my Dad sing Chichester Psalms with a big group of Jewish choruses. That piece is incredible. I can't believe I never heard it before! In the car on the way home, Mozart's Prague Symphony was on the radio, which meant that I couldn't hold the slightest shred of conversation since I had to sing along with it from beginning to end. I realized the reason there are so many important pieces I have no familiarity with is that I spent all my time listening to the same few pieces over and over. I was the coolest kid in fourth grade.
One story I've been meaning to share: bringing Spinoza to the US. With the officials on either side, remarkably, unbelievably easy. I filled in the circle on my entry form that I was bringing in an animal- which is the same circle that says you're bringing in food. Leaving the last gate of customs in JFK, the guy noticed it was filled in (the first checkpoint noone had noticed!) and asked what food I was bringing. I said, well, I have a cat in here, and some kitty treats for him. The guy glanced at Spin, then asked to look at the package of Friskies treats. The two of us spent a few minutes discussing the ingredients, both of us finding it interesting that while the flavor was "Whitefish-Tuna" the main ingredients were chicken and corn, before I noticed it said "Made in USA," and he passed me off to someone else to look at Spinoza. I showed this guy the paperwork, he took a look inside Spinny's box, saw how cute he looked all knocked out and drugged up, and said, Ok, go ahead. That was it. No physical, he didn't even pick him up.
On the flight, I was given a middle seat, even though I'd asked for an aisle. I was flustered and grumpy about this, and asked the lady to my right if she would switch with me. She didn't understand me and said something about sleeping, and we had a very odd little back-and-forth. I thought she was saying to me she was going to be sleeping very well, and I said, obnoxiously (I'm ashamed of what a brat I was) "Yeah, it's comfortable to be on the end!" Luckily, she realy didn't seem to understand me at all, and after a moment of silence, she asked, "Would you like to switch? You have a cat!" I thanked her profusely and resolved to make up my obnoxiousness somehow in the course of the flight. She was the sweetest, sweetest lady. I could tell she was Asian by her accent, but her face was so wrinkled, it was like the generic mask of a sweet old grandmother. I asked her where she was from after we'd made some more small talk, and she said Florida. Later on, out of the blue, she started telling me about her childhood during World War 2. We had no electricity, no fire, she said. Some soldier would come from the base with a cigarette, and turn his hat (she meant helmet) upside down and we would cook our food in it. I realized she must have been Japanese. I told her how my Mom grew up hearing sirens, which she didn't remember until 9-11 happened. This lady said, "We didn't hate you. All the people, they are the same. War is made by a few people, but the rest, they don't hate each other." She seemed to be worried that somehow I would have some anti-Japanese feeling because of World War 2!! I didn't go into my almost ridiculous love of all things Japanese, from sushi to origami to gardens, but I did tell her how my friend Mayuko had given me a few lessons on the Koto and how much I loved it. Turns out she also plays Koto! And her friend stole her Koto! It got her a little worked up to tell me about it. In case you don't know, a Koto is about 5- 9 feet long. For someone to steal it, especially another little old lady, is incredibly funny.
I'm embarrassed I can't remember her name. I think it was Ayako.
She was so wonderful to Spinoza, and went on about how smart cats are. "If you love them, they love you- and they protect you!" We talked about how much we both love shows on Animal Planet and Discovery Channel (really, that's what TV was made for- pet blooper shows.) She told me she had also flown with her pet, a dachshund, from Japan to the Philippines, to the US. That seemed to put the drama of Spin's and my trip into perspective.
Anyway, when we got near JFK, I helped her fill in the entry form, so I felt at least a little better for my earlier rudeness. The town she was from in Florida was Oviedo, which I'd never heard of before. We landed early in the morning, and she joined up with the rest of her church group with whom she had traveled to Israel. I didn't get to properly say good-by or thank her. But later that day I was walking through Jersey City, and I saw a bronze model of a church in front of City Hall. I looked closer to check it out, and it was from JC's new partner city: Oviedo, Spain.

which cities

2007-05-04T01:48:00.000-04:00

I was thinking about why it would be that things in NYC are both so difficult now, with so many good clubs closing or on the brink, and things so apparently bright and fruitful among creative musicians.

I was reminded of a revelation I had a number of years ago. Warning: it's a pretty pathetic, obvious revelation. I was in the back seat with my parents somewhere in Connecticut or New Jersey, and we drove by some projects. I thought, this is the last frontier of the civil rights movement: housing. Having just watched my friend Sara Booth's documentary about Newark "Urban Renewal is People Removal" I am even more convinced. Unfortunately, it seems like in NYC, real estate is the last frontier of all these kinds of "more meaningful" battles. I went to Tonic a bunch of times, for amazing shows it seems like it would be hard to replicate anywhere else. I also went, long ago, to the Wetlands, for their cheap ska and hardcore shows, to Tramps, for 3 + hour (I couldn't take anymore) Ween and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion sets. There was such energy to the audience, it wasn't like the interest was lacking in any respect. But how could we, mere fans, mere musicians, do anything when it comes to facing the machine that is NYC real estate. It was slightly more convenient than, say, Pianos, that Tonic was just off Delancey. It had a big space. It was inevitable that some developer, getting fat off the Lower East Side's gentrification, would be hungry for it.

I write this because at first I disagreed with Judd. I think there is a very similar problem in a lot of cities. It's hard to be a musician and do what you want creatively. The world is messed up and wrong that way. In Tel Aviv, there's one free jazz collective that reminded me of the great stuff I saw in Boston while in school, and it's unpaid and disorganized. That being said, I was much more aware and involved in the cultural life of Boston and Rochester than I am in Tel Aviv. Those are my 3 non-NYC examples, from first-hand experience. At NEC there was a panel discussion with 3 Jazz and Contemporary Improv faculty members, about the music business. I don't remember so many specific questions, but I do remember feeling frustrated that it seemed like everyone was preparing to fight for gigs at the same few clubs. So when I say it's about getting out of the cities, I was thinking sort of about that. About getting out of the same places. But we have to make it pay, obviously. That's the hard part everywhere. Judd and I see NYC from a similar perspective, having grown up here and coming back. And on top of that, like 99% of the folks I went to school with in Boston and Rochester have moved to New York, which makes things very nice and convenient for me when I come home to visit. But it means, again, we're all competing for the same gigs in a city that, as Judd pointed out, isn't interested enough in feeding (literally, not figuratively) its artists. Now that chamber music foundations are funding classical music in bars around town, jazz vs. classical gigs become less of an issue.

I don't know where to take this to make it change. We need radio stations like in Germany, where each one has its own resident ensembles. We need unorthodox philanthropists like the lady who left millions to Poetry magazine. We need to make friends with Larry Silverstein. Ok, I'm not going that far! I was going to mention the good old days when Bernstein and folks were put on the cover of Life magazine, but there's not even Life anymore, let alone (sigh) Bernstein. I guess the point is I have to stop being nostalgic. For my college years, for the 50's, which I never actually experienced... Right now I think the solution is to make a big hit teenage romantic comedy with Hilary Duff and, um, some guy (I don't know the names of any teenage superstars) playing a cellist (everybody loves hot girl cellists) and, say, a clarinetist who meet at an international youth orchestra, and fall in love after lots of snafus and misunderstandings. The movie fades with them playing Brahms together, accompanied by the sarcastic, gay, Asian pianist friend. That will get everybody back in.

Rostropovich

2007-05-01T08:45:00.000-04:00

I was just reading my friend Judd's blog, and his writing about the sad closing of Tonic got me thinking. It clearly got him thinking too!
(quick little time-out here- this is what I was talking about in the last post about what's going to be so nice when I get home: to talk to Judd about this in person instead of this weird blogversation...)
I'll quote the big questions Judd got to:

The news of Tonic's closing really has me down these days. I've also heard rumors that the Knitting Factory and Galapagos are facing similarly dire straits. Where are we supposed to play?... The free-market approach is simply going to drive out of the city the people who make it an interesting and exciting place to live. Or will it? Certainly, people like me will have to leave, but will the people who are moving here actually care? I see artists as the Dark Matter that keeps the city going - not financially, but spiritually... Will the 20-somethings who move to New York actually stay here to raise a family? I don't know that they plan to. Will they want an active cultural life? For those who stay, I would think that they would. Does the city want to cultivate that type of long-term relationship with those people? I am certain that it does, but right now, the powers-that-be are relying on the big-ticket venues and establishments to provide that cultural backbone, and I don't think that it's working.

really good points. Christopher and I are moving back because we don't want to raise our family in Israel, for various reasons, and whether that goal will be fulfilled in the city or in the Catskills, or by a Maine beach, only time will tell. It's both the best and worst university town anywhere, but as a destination for grown-up-hood, it is scary. Every day I'm looking for new music education postings online. It doesn't feel safe to move somewhere expecting freelancing to feed you. But I do believe there's so many good initiatives happening. Creative endeavors at least, if not solutions, to the problems Judd writes about, and sees much more clearly than lil ol idealistic me can from way out here. And, then again, maybe it is time for all of us to get over the big cities as the centers of our universe. Maybe if public transportation improves, we can start getting out for cultural events like it's a more normal thing, the way my friend Amalia wanted to take me on a traintrip to Leipzig from her homebase of Berlin, to hear some amazing boys' choir. Still kicking myself for not making that happen. My teacher Joe Morris set up a recording studio in his living room. He lives in rural Connecticut. I could see a whole cool scene springing up around his place, if only we could get out of our NYC-Boston fixation. Actually, I don't know many people with Boston fixations these days! Except Mark Wahlberg. We just watched the Basketball Diaries. How does he always get cast as a New Yorker? Are those people deaf? We love him anyway. Or, because.

Big jump. Two nights before I heard the news of Rostropovich's passing, I had a dream about him. I was in his house with Christopher and two of his best friends, Sid (whom I've never met) and Banjo. We were scoping out the place and his routine for our friend Sol, who was going to make a documentary about Slava. The rooms were all huge, and orange and pink, with fireplaces in each one, reminding me of hearts. Slava would teach all day and late into the night, slumped over in a chair by the fire. I don't know, it's not that exciting a dream. I've just been thinking about that, the weird timing of it. He was such a hero. I played under him twice. Once, at Schleswig Holstein, he was a revelation, an inspiration, and absolutely drop-dead hilarious. He would stay up till almost morning playing cards with the Russian-speakers in the orchestra. He conducted us in Shostakovich 5th Symphony and 2nd cello concerto, and then he played the Dvorak concerto, I think the only piece he kept up till the end, or almost the end. Some idiots in the orchestra made comments about his wobbly playing, which made me furious. We were so incredibly lucky to be in the same room with him, let alone actually putting horsehair to string at the same moment!! And there's something about those old folks who keep playing... I remember my teacher Kathy Murdock coaching us on Bartok, encouraging us to try to get "old-man vibrato" as she called it, a vibrato of the bow. It's so human, like the breaking corner of a voice.

I'm tired of writing so I won't get to the second time I played under Rostropovich's baton. Suffice it to say, it was much less positive. It was, unfortunately, like a different person. I live with that first experience as the real one, also because he actually played.
One line I remember him telling us: "Shostakovich was my master in everything- except! for drinking vodka."
In this little reminiscence in the New Yorker, his capital S Soul is alluded to perfectly.

Speaking of missing cellists. I recently inherited a huge collection of sheet music from a cellist, Alida Winokur, mother to one of my Dad's best friends from high school. I hope to play as much of it as possible, and to dedicate concerts to her. I could never imagine a more fortunate windfall, and I am so, so grateful to her.

future remembering

2007-04-23T02:15:00.000-04:00

Let your capital be simplicity and contentment. -Henry David Thoreau
just got that quote in a word-a-day email. Liked it and thought I'd start out with it.
I wish I could say I lived that way! With this decision to leave Israel, I'm faced with the various ways my life is about to get at once simpler, and way more complicated. On the simpler side, taxes. The fact that I won't be running to the tax office to file paperwork I may never see again, every time for the least lowly gig-- that's going to be nice. Being able to actually SEE or HEAR friends and family in the place of this endlessly silent internet connection... I saw an article somewhere recently that said some scientists are thinking of dumping the internet and starting over from scratch. I think we could all use a couple weeks break from being wired in. Definitely makes me cheat way too much on crossword puzzles, which were not invented with Google in mind.

then I think about how life is going to get more complicated, and what I'm going to miss here. My friend Daniel asked me yesterday, "So how do you and Christopher feel about hooking up with that big city machine again?" It reminded me of how on an application I recently filled out for a Music Teacher position at a school in Brooklyn, there was a blank for "how many years experience teaching in an urban setting." and I had to stop and think if Jerusalem counts! Even Tel Aviv- I mean, they're the biggest cities in the country, yet when your vegetable stand guy, Bodega guy, health food store guy, and butcher guy all know you, it does not feel like a city. Or maybe this is how cities used to be. Maybe this is how it will be when we go back to Jersey City. One of my friends from high school (in Brooklyn!), totally randomly, is now living 2 doors down from my parents. There are certain friendly, neighborly things I know I won't find back home, though. You can just talk to people's babies here. And the parents will stop the strollers for you to get some quality face time in. And forget about the puppies. Tel Aviv is a world-class dog city. It will be a nice change to not see sad, scraggly stray cats everywhere, tho I'm sure in a way I'll miss them too.

And then there's the quartet. I moved here to fulfill a dream, to play in a professional string quartet. It's not just because of Christopher's job that it's time for me to go home. There are some clear signs that maybe the quartet and I weren't on the same path... but that's hard for me to even write. I made the decision to leave really for reasons that had nothing to do with the 3 of them. I've invited them many times to come live with us! Either in Jersey City or in the Catskills, where my parents have a house, that now Christopher and I will take over the care of. Ever since I moved here I've joked that scientists have got to get to work on making the distance between Israel and New York smaller. Now I know I'm going to be feeling that same thing, but from the other side of the ocean.
I don't know if I'll ever get such an incredible musical experience handed to me like that again. From now on, back in the crazy scene that is NYC, I'm going to have to make it happen much more, that's how it goes there. I still have my dream of bringing music to my hometown, and that, along with the thought of Christopher and I actually having our own house, makes my heart beat faster. Then there's also the thought of seeing my nieces grow up, and not just in emailed photos. Getting to hear my friends' and my cousin's bands play live. Making dinner for my parents, or for our friends in the neighborhood. Going grocery shopping on Saturday...

today is Yom HaZikaron, the day of remembrance for people who died creating and defending Israel. Last week was Yom HaShoah, the day of mourning for the Holocaust. Both "Erevs" or nights before, stores closed early and the streets were quiet. Last night there was also a siren. There will be one again at 10 AM today, as there was at 10 AM on Yom HaShoah. I walked out to the highway to see all the cars stop, and the people get out of them, standing with their heads bowed on the black asphalt of the Ayalon, Tel Aviv's central artery. It was so intense. The only sound you could hear besides the sirens, were birds singing, and cats fighting. Nothing else human-made. I had this tremendous feeling of vertigo, maybe because I was standing on a bridge overlooking the highway. But I felt like I didn't know where I ended and everyone else in the country began. One of the few moments here when I've felt Israeli. It's getting quiet now;I can tell people are preparing for this next siren. I feel like this day is even more personally felt for more of Israel, since it's pretty evenly divided between Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews, and while World War 2 affected the lives of people in the Middle East and North Africa, it was a very different experience for the Jews there than for the Jews of Europe. Meanwhile, everyone knows someone who was lost, or injured, or who lost a family member, to the violence that has engulfed this country since the beginning.
I'm going to go stand on the bridge again.

languages of animals

2007-04-04T10:56:00.000-04:00

Just got back the other day from a tour with Tel Aviv Soloists to Switzerland and Austria. mostly Austria, actually, only spent the last few days of the tour in Interlaken. It got funner and funner. Started out kind of ok, kind of a drag. The orchestra has this incredibly tightknit social vibe. I specify social because it doesn't always manifest itself musically! Maybe it was the stress of the tour, a city a day, a concert a city, a lot of time in the same bus. All the social stuff, it tends to feel a little bit like high school when you're not super comfortable with the language. But I got less and less stressed about that aspect as I felt more comfortable with more and more folks. I think it was the mid-tour break I took to go visit with Peter and Wendy Moes, my viola family, at their farmhouse outside of Munich. I was only there for a night, but it chilled me out as much as a week at a spa. Good healthy food, good conversation, purring cats and a midday rainbow sprouting out of the middle of a field will do that.
A nice thing for me was being put in the "married" hotel for our first couple nights- the 9 wedded members of the group (none to each other) were put in this adorable little inn outside of Villach. It was nice to get a little bit of air, an early break from the crowd. Hadas and Tali were in that hotel with me, so we had an opportunity to just hang out despite all the weirdness of my impending departure. The hotel was a bit too adorable, in fact: no phones in the rooms. But I did get to use their ancient computer in their office for email. At one point a man with a giGANtic handlebar moustache in traditional south-Austrian costumer stopped by to check that I knew how to use the computer just fine. Later that night I channelsurfed the TV stations and found Full House and the Cosby Show dubbed in German, as well as a comedy about a man in lederhosen and his dachshund. The dachshund had it in for is master and peed on his leg.
Why am I writing about the TV?? Well, I did have one enlightening TV experience (in English). Christopher gave me an amazing book to read on the tour: "A Language Older than Words" by Derrick Jensen. It's hard to describe in even a few sentences what it's about. Basically the author sees his abused childhood through the same lens he sees the abuse of the whole natural and native human world, and charts the destruction Western European society has wrought all across the planet. He ascribes part of the reason this has happened to the fact that humans long ago stopped believing they could communicate with the natural world. He writes about making deals with the coyotes who've been stealing his chickens and finding mouse poop in his sink after he'd destroyed the mice's nests in his garage... Anyway, at one of our little Austrian town stops, I found a movie in English, which made me happy (Germany doesn't subtitle, just dubs, so usually the only English TV is CNN) I don't know the name of it, but it's computer-animated, and about a deer and a bear running away from an evil hunter. I think one of the voices is Ashton Kutcher maybe? The movie felt like a manifestation of this book, about the possibilities of interspecies communication, and how much we miss when we assume we're the only beings on this earth with a language.
I think the book's turning me into a hippie.
Or--- back into a hippie.
I tried asking Spinoza nicely to please stop gnawing on my leg, but we haven't yet found a mutual language.
The best thing of the tour, aside from this book, and the views, and the lovely time with the Moes',-- was getting to know the people in the orchestra. First time in a while I feel I have really good new friends in Israel. And I'm leaving in a month and a half. It's sad I guess. But I've learned over the years, many times, that there is no goodbye in the tiny world of classical music.
I put up tons of pictures of the trip on the flickr site, www.flickr.com/photos/hollerames

slam-bang

2007-03-02T15:52:00.000-05:00

I'm randomly moved to write right now because I just remembered this really funny thing that happened while we were in New York in December. It was after the last of the quartet's five concerts (in 6 days!). The show was at noon, in this increidble theater in Rockefeller University. I'd never even heard of the school before we were asked to play there, but it's very cool, tucked away in the very far East Side. The theater is this fifties-ish space-age white bubble, with awesome acoustics. Only thing is, no backstage, just this kind of screened-off corner of the stage that most of the audience can see over anyway. After we'd finished the encore, we awkwardly retired to that "backstage" to grab glasses of water and let the audience leave before they saw us going offstage and out the same way they were. A smiling elderly man with a heavy lisp came to the "backstage" to say how much he'd enjoyed the concert. He was so sweet and complimentary, it took me a second to realize he was Harris Goldsmith, who had coached my piano quartet sophomore year at Mannes! Mr. Goldsmith is brilliant about music, but more than your typical absent-minded professor. I said, "Mr. Goldsmith!" and told him how I knew him, and how honored I was that he'd come to our concert. He stared at me a little, but I could tell he had no idea what I was talking about.
We got offstage finally, after thanking the rest of the folks who kind of trapped us in that corner of the stage to say nice things. I think it was just me and Hadas waiting for the little elevator that would take us to our dressingroom. "Brahms A Major piano quartet!" Mr. Goldsmith exclaimed as soon as the elevator doors opened to reveal him standing there alone, as if he'd expected to see us. "And Mei Ting was the pianist!" I almost burst out laughing, but told him he was correct. That made my day- I remember that little exchange better than anything we played.

But I also should write with the news. Christopher and I will be moving back to the states as of the end of May.
I'm not really moved to write anything more than that now. It's hard to process all the different emotions involved. I should say, just to be clear, that it has nothing to do with my relationship with the girls of the quartet, all of whom I love dearly, and all of whom I hope I will be friends with for a long, long time. But it does have to do with time, and a wonderful opportunity, and homesickness... And needing to get our poor kitten some more space. This apartment's too small for him- North America is more his size.

new CD on Tzadik!

2007-02-10T11:29:00.000-05:00

Hey, a project we did with this amazing bayan (kinda like an accordion) player Boris Malkovsky was just released on Tzadik. The album is called "Time Petah Tikva" and it's on Tzadik's website.
sorry to have been reticent recently. big changes afoot, and I promise to chronicle it all soon.

2 new links

2007-01-18T02:14:00.000-05:00

I just wanted to call attention to them here before I stick them in that list over there:
one is my friend Carolyn's lovely blog about about the life of a musician in the city.
and the other is for news about my friend William's incredible Music for the People project. A recent post mentions how he read a government paper of cultural diplomacy that had him turning pages like it was a Harry Potter book.

snooze cruise (i'm on it)

2007-01-15T17:56:00.000-05:00

It's almost 1 in the morning, and I'm sitting on the floor with a runny nose and bowl of (instant) chicken soup. I never can go straight to sleep after I get home from a concert. Last night I fell asleep hours after the concert and still woke up in the middle of the night with tunes from the program running through my head.
The concerts were with Tel Aviv Soloists, and we were the backup band for this incredible counter-tenor, Andreas Scholl. I'd never been in the presence of a real live counter-tenor, that I know of, certainly wasn't prepared for this big burly German guy to come to the first rehearsal, clear his throat with a deep gutteral growl, and then let loose notes that , ok, enough of the fancy language, are high! Way high. I almost started laughing. Most of the other players were big fans of Mr. Scholl, so I felt very gauche and ignorant. I got used to it, and the performances went well. Maybe the biggest audiences I've seen for this group. Shows the power of opera fans. I thought it would be hard to get big crowds for something this... esoteric. But whatever folks' reaction to a grown man singing in boy soprano territory, the music (Handel and Vivaldi) speaks for itself. And we're very lucky to have gotten to work with him.
I'm just raw, though, worn down from this cold I haven't been able to shake for a week, and stress about my recital, which is coming up in 10 days. So to play this particular music on gut strings with a Baroque bow all felt pretty out of the way for me. This morning the quartet started off rehearsal with our instruments upside down (well, not the cello, the cello's always upside down) to work on the parts of George Crumb's "Black Angels" where we have to play behind our left hands, our bows way up next to the scrolls. Such a cool effect. So disgusting when I can barely play it at all, let alone even close to in tune. The others memorized this piece as their first project as a quartet, and my first time playing it with them will be at another first for me: my first competition. We're playing at the Gaudeamus in Amsterdam, which is just for new music. It's in April. Anyway, after that and work on some sections in the piece in which we imitate insects (musically, not behaviorily) we played through Steve Reich's "Different Trains," another piece the girls put on their first, legendary concert, that I'm doing for the first time. Not for the competition, but at a Kibbutz concert. Playing it through is so intense. It really is a journey, and the viola more than any other instrument plays with the voices on the tape track, all the people telling their stories of where they were during WW2. It's only tiny fragments that are caught ("1941 I guess it must have been," "No more school," and the creepiest one for me to play with, "They shaved us.") and Reich writes out for us his approximation of the voices' rhythms. Speech patterns become melodies that somehow are incredibly, annoyingly catchy. We'll play it with a beautiful video piece, and we'll sit in a row like we're on a train. There are pictures of the quartet's performance of it on the website.
After that, taught. Suzuki, Twinkle, Humoresque. I'm spent now. I'd meant for this to be a musing on the variety of music my day saw. But, really, that's not so remarkable these days. We all are involved in crazy stuff. My friend Judd told me he got a commission from a choir in Rome for a piece involving the Hebrew alphabet. I've gotta hear that one (this is how tired I am- I just typed I gotta here, than I gotta heart) maybe it'll help me actually remember the order.
good night.

2007

2007-01-01T10:44:00.002-05:00

In honor of the new year, I have to tell about two of my students' adorable responses to it. Yesterday as I flipped through 9-year-old Dor's notebook to find the next blank page to write his homework, I came to an explosively illustrated "Happy New Year" in pen waiting for me on that very page. So so cute. Dor doesn't speak English is the thing. As I exclaimed at how great that was that he wrote it, he said "In Australia it's already over." And then he proceeded to tell me all about the crazy celebrations in Australia. I understood not a word until he got to "Opera House" and "bridge." So I said something acknowledging I knew he was talking about Sydney, which just encouraged him so he talked even faster about those crazy Australians. I asked if he'd ever been there, and he said, "No, I've never been outside of the country." In Israel, there's a compound word for that: Khool, standing for "Khootz" (outside) La'aretz (of The Land- Aretz is a very important word here). It's often spoken in almost reverent tones. At any rate, Dor was very, very embarrassed he hadn't been to "Khool." I said, don't worry, when I was 9 I hadn't been either. Then I remembered I'd been to Canada. But that's practically the U.S. anyway (I know I'm going to catch some flak for that!) It just made me think again how crazy it is to be living here. Christopher and I have been to Jordan and Egypt, and it's no problem for us with our passports. Israelies can't even go to Jordan without a special visa, forget about the rest besides the Sinai part of Egypt. And this country's the size of New Jersey!
I know I'm stating the obvious, and repeating what's been said many times before. I find myself becoming more Israeli not just as I get more fluent in Hebrew and start to slip slang phrases from it into my English ("I'm dead from that!" = I love it) but more so in terms of distances. I used to have no problem with the back-and-forth to Jerusalem. It's the same as, like somewhere in Long Island or even parts of Brooklyn, into Downtown Manhattan. But now I'm finding it more and more draining. Maybe I'm just tired!
Back to my other student. Reut is my only violist now that Evyotar not only quit viola for violin (shame on me!!) but moved to Zurich. She's also 9, and one of triplets- and her brothers play violin and cello! How cute is that?! IT's a religious family, and Reut is always in long skirt and sleeves, in the brightest, loudest color combinations. She attends a religious school, and laughs whenever I date her homework page in her notebook. "I don't know what that is" she says. She only knows the Hebrew calendar! Isnt that incredible? I don't know why I get such a kick out of it. The idea of people living in the middle of this metropolis, on their own schedule. Anyway, yesterday I asked her, by any chance did she know what today was? "Oh, it's a fast day!" I was shocked. "For what?" I asked her. Again, I didnt quite understand her explanation. Something about one of the temples being destroyed, on top of it being a special Yom HaShoah (day commemorating the HOlocaust) only for the Haredim (that is, ultra-Orthodox). Just confirming my suspicion that every day on the Jewish calendar is a fast-day for something!!
Just want to wish everyone a very happy 2007, full of abundance, explorations, good health, love, and good conversation. Keep in touch.

home is where...

2006-12-19T12:12:00.000-05:00

where you make it, where the heart is, where the heart of the one you love is, where your viola is...
I returned yesterday from a trip home, to many homes. To Jersey City and NYC, to Maryland, where my sister and brother-in-law and their fabulous twins live, to Florida, where my grandmother and aunt and uncle and cousins and their fabulous kids live... I wish to Maine, where my husband's fabulous family lives, but it was not to be on this trip. I return to our new apartment in Givatayim, the first neighborhood I lived in when I moved to Israel almost 2 years ago. I lived with the sweetest woman named Bracha, and certainly she was a blessing. She'd tell me what it was like when she moved to ISrael from Poland in 1935. "I built this country," she said at least 20 times while I lived with her. When it was hot I'd come home and find her in her stockings and bra, laid out on her white leather couch, feet up on the glass coffee table. "It's ok," she said, "as long as it's just you and me."
Now Christopher and I live in a completely renovated shoebox of a place, paying almost 3 times what I paid to share Bracha's lovely, lived-in flat. It's the way of all things, what's going on with apartments in every urban area in the world I guess. Our landlords bought an apartment and split it in two, adding a wall to what used to be a big living room so we have a narrow living room and a narrow bedroom- a studio disguised as a one-bedroom. On this trip I saw that along with the dizzying numbers of high rises and fancy condo buildings going up all over Jersey City, and even Bayonne (when that place gets gentrified... well, you never know. Everyone used to say Jersey City was a slum and look at it now!) two of my three (!) nursery schools are being turned into condos, one of them being Washington Square Church! How weird is it to live in a church, knowing it was ripped apart inside for the likes of the yuppiest people ever?
Anyway, there's much more I could tell of the trip than just to report on the gentrification of the tri-state area. Oh, but on that subject- Red Hook Brooklyn! Wow. I'd never even been there before. My last night in town I drove out with my friend Ed to see the incredible Heather and the Barbarians. (Look them up on myspace for the most gorgeous singer ever, in ever sense of the word). Ed grew up in Brooklyn Heights, and remarked as we drove deeper and deeper into the hood that he used to be afraid to even go near Red Hook because of the wild dogs. Well, now it's all cozy taverns and upscale MExican joints. The show was so so good. I miss that family of mine so much, the Boston crowd. Almost all of whom live in or around NYC now! Really makes it easy for me when I get home. Or, easier anyway. I barely had time to see my friends at all on this trip. It was the second time this year the 4tet had a little US tour, and we played some of our best concerts ever. I had such an awesome time with them. Christopher and I try to take advantage of these tours to see our family and friends since one ticket is paid for, but when it's not a real vacation it makes everything hard. I can't believe the amount I squeezed into the time- a litte over 2 weeks. It was made even shorter by the awfully inconvenient strike, which started an hour before our flight was to leave. I feel bad even complaining about it, even though it was a royal pain in the tush. It was the first time I'd ever even been anywhere during a strike, one that affected me anyway, and I agreed it was necessary... but can't they just strike in a way that doesn't make my plane late?
Anyway, we're playing a project now with Tel Aviv Soloists with one of my all-time heroes, Tabea Zimmermann, leading the orchestra from the principal viola chair. So I need to practice! I'll try to be more... regular in this space. Please keep in touch if you're reading this! I miss everyone back home.

2006-11-07T01:44:00.000-05:00

Morning after the last of three concerts in as many days (two on Saturday, one last night)... enjoying a little time off, sad that Christopher has to work all day... tooling around on the internet, found this great interview with Jeffrey Sebelia, who won Project Runway. I miss that show.
I promise more than just links, but my brain isn't at full capacity these days.

2006-11-06T01:35:00.000-05:00

Great article on the new wave of old-time bands, featuring the awesome Crooked Still.

Israel's friends

2006-10-27T03:51:00.000-04:00

Just saw this piece on yahoo news, about right-wing Christian evangelicals who sailed a boat from Louisiana to Israel. "We had to be nice to these people," port spokesman Yigal Ben-Zikry said. "They're more Zionist than any Israelis I know." Been hearing about these evangelical Israel-lovers (like our President) for a while. In particular, heard that they were some of the biggest donors of the money I got for moving here. I made Aliyah with the help of an Israeli foundation called Nefesh B'Nefesh (soul with soul), but rumor has it the money they gave me came from people who want all the Jews to move to ISrael so the apocalypse will come. Or something like that. Obviously I'm not extremely well-informed on their beliefs here! I do know that some Americans and Canadians who've made Aliyah with Nefesh B'NEfesh's help have donated the money they got to Palestinian right-of-return causes.
I donated my money to my college-loan collectors, and to a trip to Mexico last year. The latter expenditure turned out to have an effect they would have liked. I brought another soul to Israel!

photos, grammar, and farts

2006-10-26T09:54:00.000-04:00

You may have noticed I've stopped putting photos up here. My computer hates me, and takes hours eating the photos I try to upload to this. If you want to look at pictures, scroll down to earlier posts. OR check out Christopher's and my* flickr page.
*By the way, any grammar nerds out there know how to deal with this? I remember from English class, if you want to talk about something that belongs to two people, you would say, for example: Molly and Jenn's adventure. If you want to talk about Molly's and Jenn's individual books (which I know each will write some day- though they may do it together too!), you'd say Molly's and Jenn's books. If i'm talking about, say, Christopher and my demonic hellkitten Spinoza, doesn't that sound weird?
Also, another appeal for advice: anyone out there have the experience of the little kids you're teaching (in private lessons) farting all the time? I usually just pretend nothing happened, and maybe, on some pretext like looking for my pencil, take a couple steps back. I wish I could high-five them or make a stupid joke. I don't want them to feel embarrassed, but I was never very comfortable with that whole functioning of the body in public thing. When I was their age I was a champ at holding it in. Then again, I always had awful stomach problems! The whole thing of it being embarrassing is so dumb. Anyone read the BFG? In it, the giants believe it's polite to fart and rude to burp. I could never make it there.

amazing news

2006-10-26T09:45:00.000-04:00

I just saw the headline: New Jersey Court Backs Full Rights for Gay Couples. (full article)
Some friends of our family just got married in Massachusetts, and my parents told me that the Rabbi said some moving words about how much it means to be married in the one state where gay couples are allowed to as well. Another friend of mine, after I'd told him about Christopher's and my marriage, shared some of his thoughts on the subject, mentioning that friends of his had opted out because of its not being allowed for everyone. I can't say we had given it so much thought! Or maybe that's not right- we made the choice we wanted to make. But New Jersey is proving, once again, that it's the awesomest state in the nation. It was so meaningful to make our commitment legal at the crazy, crooked-facing City Hall building I walked past every day I lived in Jersey City, for tons of reasons. And now there's another one. I hope the legislature now does what it should and calls a spade a spade. That word is so ---what's the word? I'm wanting to say tantalizing (marriage, not spade. Yikes!) or paralyzing but I mean dividing. Oh, polarizing!! I can't say I have much faith that the elected branch of government can be as brave and forward-thinking as our courts. Guess I'm an elitist.

brilliance

2006-10-15T03:10:00.000-04:00

you may have noticed the change in my profile. That's because I did, actually, clean my viola with cough syrup last night. We got back from Masada and the Dead Sea in the afternoon, collapsed for a long nap, I woke up, took out the axe, and saw it needed cleaning. Reaching for the rubbing alcohol bottle, I grabbed another of similar size. And that's the story. I scrubbed away at the fingerboard and strings, thinking the alcohol must have aged and that's why it had changed color. The fingerboard was very shiny, but the rosin at the end by the bridge wasn't coming off. Turns out I was caking it on even more.
Kids, don't clean your viola with sugar-based substances!!!
Luckily, the alcohol got it all off. But there's still a faint smell.
So, that's my news. We went to Petra, Aqaba, MAsada and the Dead Sea since I last wrote, but that's what I felt needed to be shared.
Oh yeah, and that I fell off a skateboard the other day. Christopher was teaching me the basics of going downhill, and when I finally felt I'd mastered them I started for a long run from the top of a very, very shallow hill to go the length of a parking lot. C videoed me on our little camera- I wish I could post video here, because I have to say it's pretty funny. I go by him all smiles then almost at the bottom I "start to go all squirrelly" (C's words) and fall on my face. Or my knee, to be more precise. It hurt. I was worried we couldn't go ahead with our whirlwind Masada trip. But it was fine, and by the time we were climbing I was barely aware of it.
We left Tel Aviv at 3 AM and were at the base of the fortress at 5, the sun just starting to come up. I felt like a true ISraeli, climbing Masada for my third time. My first time, with Birthright, we met a bunch of high school kids at the youth hostel, some of whom were climbing it for their 9th time! We got up quicker than the other two times I'd gone. My second time was with my friend Sara and we took our time, chatting and resting to enjoy the view. Climbing with Christopher, I strangely remembered all the stories Sara had told me on our trip. One was about a documentary she'd seen about a WW2 ghetto in which the women all wore the same dress to get married in. And the dress is still around apparently.
So, random interjection here: Christopher and I were married last March. We had done it for practical as well as emotional reasons. And had been quiet about it because we didn't want any confusion with the "big" wedding.
Figured I needed to write that here sometime.
We will still have a big celebration. More a renewal of vows. But something so I can wear the amazing dress from MY past: my grandmother's dress from the 30's, which my aunt Susan also wore, and preserved so perfectly, you'd think it was just made. So beautiful.
Also, getting back to my "story," had to write that news now so you'd understand when I wrote that I've married a mountain goat. I knew of C's climbing tendencies on the vertical wall. But he left me scrambling behind him going up Masada. It was great to be so challenged- quoting my yoga CD "we often give up before fulfilling our true potential." I definitely didn't think I could get up there that fast, but it was fun. I found the only way I could do it was talking. If I let him get too far away from me so that he couldn't hear my ramble anymore, I would just start focusing on how weak I felt. So I'd chase after him to keep the steady stream of nonsense carrying me.
After we explored the top, yelled into the echo canyon, ate sandwiched and drank bug juice just like a good school group, descended- by the end we had "Elvis leg" from the stress of straight-down on the knees- we went to check out the Ein Gedi Spa, where Sara and I had gone on my last trip. Massages, mud dips, hot springs. All perfect after a crazy early-morning mountain climb and no sleep. But, instead, we slept. In the spa parking lot. And then went to swim in the Dead Sea for free at the local public beach. The water was the most beautiful emerald green. It didn't sting at all on my skateboard scrapes, but hurt like hell on my many scars from Spinoza. He's a beast to us. On our way back, we stopped for Moroccan "harira" soup and salads at this bedouin-tent-style restaurant. MAde it back home in less than 12 hours.
just enough time to clean my instrument.

save the Mexican garter snake!!!

2006-09-28T12:50:00.000-04:00

just saw on my yahoo page that they're facing extinction. How sad. Cause they're not cute and cuddly, so you know there's no big international movement to keep them from harm.
Isn't it crazy how many things are going extinct in our lifetimes? The ever faster motion of evolution.
Anyway, we're going to Jordan tonight. And I'm so excited for this little vacation, I've put on this girly disco-dancing music even though I'm all done packing. Now I'm sort of just typing so I can keep listening to this old Stereolab song my high-school idol and queen bee Shannon Hughes put on a mix for me waaaaaaaaayyyyyyy back in the day. When mix meant tape. Where is Shannon Hughes now? Can anyone tell me? I'm so much of who I am because of her. She's probably why I always think at first that the people who end up being my best friends hate me. And why I'm scared of people. But I love her!!! If anyone has any knowledge of her whereabouts please tell me.
We're going to see Petra, of Indiana Jones fame. I can't wait. I'll post pictures (if you're lucky).

it's a new year

2006-09-24T05:59:00.000-04:00

So the year has changed. It's like 557890 now. I have no idea actually. I made a dumb joke to Christopher the other day about how lucky Jewish Chinese people living in America are. Three new years.
On Thursday the quartet recorded some songs for a pop singer here, Daphna Dekel. Hilla told us that she's Itamar's(her five-year old) favorite singer. During the war, she made a song for kids about how soon everyone will be hugging each other and we'll all live in peace. Hilla said the video was on TV three times a day, and every time, Itamar dragged her in front of it and told her she had to watch it again because it was such a beautiful song. When you're recording string tracks, usually the singer isn't even there, but Daphna stayed through the whole session, and kept offering to bring us coffee. She was probably the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, and I secretly made a plan to go over to Hilla's so I could sit on the couch and watch with Itamar. Every time she'd stick her head in, I'd nudge Hilla, like, "get her autograph for Itamar!!" How happy would you be if you found out you were a five-year old's favorite? I guess when you get to a certain level of fame, you just know you're popular with a lot of kids. But it's got to always feel good.
One of my students in Jerusalem has, well the only way I've found to put it is a "little-girl crush" on me. Whenever she plays, even if she should be looking at the music, she's looking up at me to see my expression. It makes me giggle, and when I giggle she giggles, and it's a very funny vibe for a lesson. Both of us like, awww, she likes me. She's 8, and practices everything I give her. I've never had a studio before, I've only subbed for friends. That feeling, when the kids comes in and has practiced? Priceless. Now I understand everything! And on the other hand, when you have a kid who clearly doesn't want to play at all, it's torture. Luckily, my one student who was like that decided she wanted to play guitar. I tried to find music at her level that was fun to play, to draw her in. I tried playing for her. I tried simple duets we could play together. And I liked her a lot, she was sweet and funny. But I'm not doing this for the money, you know? I wish I could make someone want to play who doesn't, cause we should have little kids everywhere playing. There should be orchestras in every school. But classical music is so irrelevant to most little kids' lives now. It's super sad to say, but true. That New Yorker article I mentioned before is great because it talks about a program that's introducing music to kids in an awesome way- through ensemble playing. It's so classic, the kid who can't play with his friends cause he has to practice. Alone. There's this self-fulfilling culture of isolation in classical music. The other program mentioned was a school big band in Newark, where the teacher encourages kids to arrange music they listen to, stuff on the radio, to play in school. I will never forget Lenny Smith, who taught me to play "Boom Boom Boom Let's Go Back to my Room" on my violin while we were on a Synagogue retreat in the Poconos. I was 8. When I played a bit of Dvorak's "Humoreske" for my 10-year old viola student, telling her it was the next piece I was going to give her, she exclaimed, "That's a cell phone ring!"

wire interviews

2006-09-10T07:34:00.000-04:00

I just discovered a little treasure-trove archive of interviews with heroes of mine. I can say I've been in the same room as all these people except for Le Tigre, but I have faith that will happen someday. I want to choreograph dances for them to do at our quartet concerts
Anthony Braxton
"I feel very grateful that I discovered early the role models that will allow me to work for the rest of my life - and still be frustrated."
Steve Lacy
"I don't care whether it's Dixieland, Flixieland, Pixieland, or a private or public joke or no joke at all - if it's alive, I'm for it."
Lee Perry
"I introduced dub because I knew it was the roots of the heartbeat. The drum represent your heartbeat, the bass represent your mind and brain. I'm a heart and brain protector, and I'm a projector. I'm also an inspector, a director and imitator. The liquidator and Exterminator."
Le Tigre
"Right when I was figuring out I had a voice I was told I had to speak in tongues."

"who took the bomp from the bompalompalomp?/who took the ram from the ramalama dingdong?"

links and run-on sentences

2006-09-03T05:42:00.000-04:00

I've taken on something that's going to be very hard for me. I agreed to teach 4 violinists and 2 violists at the Hasadna Conservatory in Jerusalem. I'll be teaching little kids who most likely speak no English. Since I haven't been at Ulpan (Hebrew class) for more than a year, and speak English with almost everyone I know here, I'm throwing myself into the fire. Also, I've never taught on a regular basis before. I couldn't believe they were willing to hire me with the experience I've had, subbing for friends here and there, teaching at a couple of chamber/orchestra camps, and giving comments in my viola professors' studio classes at school- which everyone has to do anyway! The most difficult part of it all will be the twice a week commute to Jerusalem and back, effectively taking away two whole afternoons.
It feels like a turning point because I've always paid my rent as a freelancer. Even after joining this quartet it's been the same; we live gig-to-gig. I have friends who have tons of students, enough to know that it could be a lot worse than 6! I'm looking forward to building relationships with these kids and learning from teaching them. The thing that most convinced me to take this job was the school itself. It reminded me a lot of Third Street, the little community music school in the East Village that I went to from age 5 till high school graduation. On the way to the office where my interviews were I stepped over kids building wooden and cardboard sets, and saw flyers for dance and theater performances. In the room where I met with the director of the school, tons of rental violins leaned against each other in the corner, each with a nametag on the case. The school occupies part of the second floor of a large old school building on Emek Refaim, the main street of the "German Colony" neighborhood, which should be renamed the American Colony (that already is a very different neighborhood on the other side of Jlem). Almost all the Americans I knew who stayed in Israel this past year lived in apartments there or very close-by. I'd actually been in the outer room of Hasadna's office before, when my friend Miki led the Saturday-morning service for an egalitarian (aka men and women have equalrights in leading the service and can sit together) minyan (congregation, at least 10 people big). I think that swayed my decision. I'd already witnessed a warm and friendly community in that space.
Speaking of community music, my Mom's been telling me about a New Yorker article this week by their brilliant critic Alex Ross about community chamber music initiatives all around the country. I haven't read it yet (it's not online sadly) but it sounds awesome. Everyone go out and rent a storefront and put on chamber music recitals.
The most amazing moment of the short run of "Music from Blue Hill" concerts I put on in the park near my house in Jersey City was when two kids rode up on bikes in the middle of one of the early movements, and stayed till the end of the piece. I can't remember which piece it was now, maybe the Mozart C-major quintet, but it was so amazing. We were up in the round, open gazebo, and the kids' heads were, like, on the level of our feet. They stayed exactly where they were the whole piece, right next to the gazebo, not moving to where the audience's chairs were set up for a better, more head-on view.
Checking out the New Yorker website for that article, I found a great 1964 profile of Bob Dylan by Nat Hentoff, one of my old heroes. I got into him for the jazz liner notes and stayed with him for the politics. His were the only columns in the Village Voice I consistently read besides the La Dolce Musto (occasionally!!) and Free Will Astrology. Googling him I found out he's become a pro-life activist! It seems like some people are so radical, they want to be radical to the radicals. Or, that's the only way I can explain it, maybe just the ornery-ness of a crotchety old dude. OR maybe it's just what he believes, but that's the hardest of all for me to swallow.
"I love you so much Freddy . . . even if you are stinky sometimes." That's definitely not from the New Yorker. pet fashion week.
today is the end of my vacation which means it's the end of this kind of unchecked web wandering.
If anyone reading happens to be a music educator themselves, please post. I'd love to get a dialogue going about teaching music to kids, or at least get advice from the experts!!

some fun

2006-08-28T07:03:00.000-04:00

pictures from around Tel Aviv, the top two from when my Dad was visiting and we took him to the local park where we often hang out. The kids there are super cute. Also Christopher skating at the Motorola building near our house. I was sitting on the steps writing letters while he was skating, in view of the security cameras, and a cop drove up to tell me I couldn't sit there. Didn't say anything to C about the skateboard.
That other one, well, that's just to make your day.

beautiful things

2006-08-28T04:59:00.000-04:00

I have a story about my dear friend Matana that has become legend in my own anthology. Years ago, while we were both still in Boston, she showed up one day with her saxophone case absolutely covered in a collage of billions of bits of paper. It was beautiful. Still is, she still has that, and it's faded into this kind of radiant, glue-soaked antique yellow. Anyway, when I commented on it that day, she told me it had taken her 6 hours to do. Now, Matana was, like BORN busy! I'd never heard of her spending 6 hours doing anything that wasn't playing her saxophone, and I exclaimed as such. She replied that it's important to her that everything in her life be beautiful, so it was worth however long it took.
That story has inspired me so much.
I often stop myself from daydreaming, or doing things like origami or drawing my hands, because it's not productive. And now I have to fight with an even more "waste-of-time" addiction: Project Runway. Christopher and I have been watching it on Itunes (he says he downloads it for me, but I know he's super into it, too!!) It's the first show, ever, that I've felt connects with my life. I know, it's fake, it's a fake competition, but the way everyone's in this little bubble, with nothing but each other and their creative impulses and their insecurities... Seeing how each reacts to the pressure, how different some people's creations become compared to what they show at the beginning, the things they made before they were put in a petrie dish.
Plus, um, I love clothes.
When the quartet was in Singapore, we were grabbed by a palm-reader while strolling in touristy Chinatown. He said he'd show us his gifts with free "previews." From my hand he told me that I will be happiest in front of many people, "thousands of people, millions of people." I was a little embarrassed about that, it's like I'm embarrassed that he basically said I'm a performer! That's the thing about performing. I've always loved it, and I guess it was obvious to everyone but me. Like, when my mom and I went to see the Joffrey Ballet Nutcracker when I was 5, I brought my tutu and shoes so I could do a little after-performance show on the stage. It seemed completely natural to me at the time- hey, we were paying for classes at Joffrey anyway, so I deserved to be on that stage as much as anyone. Or the time we went to some kids' show, by a clown or something, and I just had to wear my new... nightgown. With cabbage patch kids on it. And then, of course, when the clown or whoever was searching the audience for volunteers, I waved my hands crazily, and my mom got to witness her daughter onstage in front of a whole bunch of people, in her pyjamas.
And then again, I wonder if these stories that have become legends to me, if they're not apocryphal and built up by my own imagination combined with need for a remarkable life or something. I've been known to do that before. For years I had it in my head that my parents met hitchhiking, that my mom picked my dad up on a road in or around Chicago. Totally not true. Or the memory I've always considered to be my first- of Mt Ranier in Washington from the backpack baby-holder, looking over my Dad's head- maybe that was just an early product of seeing a photo of those rainforests, being told I was there when only a year and a half old, and fabricating my own narrative for it.
At any rate, I have all these stories, I have all this proof that I was quite the performer when I was little. And then years and years of performance anxiety to make me doubt that. So much so that I'd judge what I was meant to do by how not-scared I felt doing it. Which is why when I got into improvising at NEC I thought that was it, I wouldn't return to classical music, because I got so much less nervous in the bands I was playing in. And then, when I did the audition with the quartet, it was such a fun and relaxed experience, I was overwhelmed. Pretty much every single audition I'd done before that I'd nearly had a heart attack, or gone "blind" so that I had no idea how I'd played or behaved.
I recently re-read an article by viola goddess (there's really no other word for her) Karen Tuttle called "'Staying Open' = Projection= Musical Excitement" about opening the capacity to projection in viola students, or more generally, any students. "When we are born we communicate directly," she writes. "If we can retain this directness, we can project. A healthy person insists from infancy, 'If it does not feel good, it is wrong.'" (sounds like I make decisions on the opposite supposition- "if it doesn't scare the crap out of me, it's ok") "He allows his body to flow with love, anger, joy or sorrow wholeheartedly and shamelessly as it did in infancy..." OK, I could type this whole article here, it's so inspiring. It's from a 1985 issue of "American String Teacher," that I copied from Karen Ritscher, my teacher at Mannes who studied with Tuttle (by the way, having a name that starts with K, or a hard C for that matter, seems to help one's viola career enormously!!)
I went to this article after Christopher was telling me about some of the methods he's being taught in his training at Berlitz, where he was hired to teach English. One thing they said is that body language and tone of voice are vastly more important than content. That bothered me, until I started thinking about it. You can't really "teach" anybody anything, I mean, you can't force it into their brain. But if you present it to them in a way where they feel open and respected and nurtured, that's huge.
I realize this is insanely messy, this train of thought I've been following. Hmm, let me see if I can sum up. I like beautiful things? I've been on vacation so I've had more time to think about these things and satisfy my hunger for them. I'm on the path to maybe someday actually being creative with the origami, making my own folds as opposed to just following patterns. I've gotten mad into watercolor. Yesterday I completely rearranged our living space, so it feels much more warmer and home-like. Christopher and I have mused on how cool it would be to, someday, take a pattern- and clothes-making class at a community college or something so we can act on all our discussions on creativity and design that have been going on since long before we started watching this silly reality show.
By the way, I was just checking my Oaxaca pics on this to make sure I put that great one of Christopher doing a handstand on the beach, and I can't believe I put two of the stray dogs there. I gotten bitten in the butt by a dog on that trip! What can I say, I'm such a sucker.

In memoriam

2006-08-03T06:27:00.000-04:00

Yesterday morning I went online to get the address of the recording studio I had to go to from my email. There was a message from the New England Conservatory Alumni Association mourning "the loss of Andrew Starr Kyte." Andy Kyte and I were at NEC at the same time. We were friends, but more like we had good mutual friends. We never were close. When you lose someone you didn't know very well and all of a sudden find yourself really missing them... the temptation to poetics and melodrama is big. I always liked him, always found him interesting and smart and funny. The thing is, though, I think I always worried about Andy, even though I never got the story from him about what he was going through. He loved a lot of things and involved himself in them, but he also had something distant about him. He could be like a lamb in wolf's clothing- scathing, funny, sarcastic, but there was a quietness, a kindness in the way he listened. For my graduation recital I got an orchestra together to play Hindemith's "Der Schwanendreher" a viola concerto. I asked Andy to play first horn, and he also got together most of the rest of the brass. True to form, the brass players all had the best time in rehearsals, joking about everything, laughing at the back of the orchestra. I remember having some issues with the conductor, who had very different ideas about the piece than I did, and often times Andy would speak out in my defense, in his own way, like "Dude, it's her recital!"
I don't know. this is all very random and stream of consciousness, I know, and I feel like I almost don't have a right to speak about him since we weren't close. Like, what do I know, what did I ever do for him? I guess this is that feeling you get when you lose your chance to get to know someone better. And I'm also feeling so much for my friends who I DO know well, who did know him well, and are now mourning and feeling the loss so acutely.
Meanwhile, there's all this going on here. I feel even less of a right to speak about it. It's shown me what a tenuous connection I have to this country. I feel more shame about this war going on than anything. I understand the necessity of defense, of attack even. But why so much death?
Some people Christopher and I have talked to have said they didn't continue to go to the reserves because they knew they wouldn't be put into combat units. Like the only reason to be part of the Army is to kill people. From a different generation of ISraelis you hear about how their friends from the Army are their friends for life, how it's a necessary part of being an Israeli. I've heard this quote from someone: "If the Arabs put down their guns there would be no more war. If the Israelis put down their guns there would be no more ISrael" HAve I put that up here before? I used to believe it, but now I don't know. I feel like the guns could bring about the end of this country much faster than diplomacy would.
Meanwhile Christopher and I have fun as much as we can. We play frisbee, basketball and chess, go rock climbing, and read books to each other. We paint, and I've been doing origami again. Right now The Goonies is on in the other room. I'm going to go watch it and try to just enjoy the day, try to resist the constant urge to put on the news as much as possible.

squid and the whale

2006-07-15T06:33:00.000-04:00

Oh yeah, in response to Judd about this movie: I thought it had such potential, but all it showed was the disfunctional side of every relationship in the movie. I felt about it the opposite of what I felt about Munich. In that, I thought Spielberg's editor did nothing about all the unnecessary scenes and storylines, and the movie was way too long for it. It would have been really good otherwise. Squid and the Whale felt way too short, and not funny when it was meant to be but rather disturbing. that being said, I also super appreciated the Museum of Natural History's Blue Whale playing such a pivotal role. That thing used to scare the daylights out of me! I was afraid to go out from under the overhangs by the wall in the sea creatures hall because I was afraid it would fall on me. Sort of like how I would hide under the little desk at the ticket window at the center of the Great Hall at Grand Central Station because I was afraid of high ceilings: afraid my shoulders would grow wings which would be out of my control and fly me to the ceiling and leave me there. For real. That fear lasted a very long time.

tomorrow tomorrow

2006-07-15T06:10:00.000-04:00

I've been biting my nails more than ever. And at first it wasn't about what's been going on this week. Tomorrow morning is Christopher and my big meeting at the Ministry of Interior, to get him working papers and health insurance- just some of the benefits of citizenship. If you're not Jewish, this country makes you wait 4 and a half years with an orange "Temporary Resident" ID (the same ID Palestinians who are allowed to work here get) before you get the "full" rights I got upon landing at Ben Gurion last year when I made Aliyah. Of course, even then, I doubt he'd get the 76% discount on a new car or the check in his bank account every month... Right now what we're really interested in is that work permit and health insurance. And they make it hard. We have a stack of papers 3 inches thick to bring in. And still it's not certain, even though we have (seemingly) everything they've asked for- a list that differs depending on whom you talk to and which color paper they give you.
So that's been stressful. But this new offensive up north. Christopher asked me this morning if I didn't think something like this would happen when I moved here. I knew about the suicide bombings, but on our Livnot trip, when I first was here, I heard about the highest tourism rate in 20 years, about the new calm, and the Disengagement seemed to lead towards that as well. I remember a few years ago I played a gig in New Hampshire, and the orchestra put me up with this absolutely lovely couple who had an incredible house on a lake (and the best in-house art collection I've ever seen!). The husband was British and the wife German. One night after a dinner of swordfish, we sat up talking till 1 or 2 in the morning. They told me how they'd each come to the states, and how the US represented the best possible place they could be. Somehow we started talking about Judaism, and they were surprised that a Jew could show so little interest in Israel. Really, before I ended up here, it meant almost nothing to me. A symbol, a source of a lot of names in the prayerbook, but a problem in its decisions and treatment of its neighbors. And anyway, I'd had enough positive Jewish experiences at Havurah and Kol Zimrah and Jews in the Woods to feel like the spiritual home is where the heart is. Simple as that. But then the couple started into how they felt like nothing would end well in the conflict here. "How can it?" the wife asked. "There's no solution." I felt, and very fervently, the opposite. "It has to end well," I said. "There's no other choice."
Hmm. Maybe the first strong feeling I ever had about this place? And now. I'm reading for the very first time all the news text messages my cell phone company sends me (in Hebrew). Christopher and I have watched news clips from the international press, as well as videos from all kinds of points of view put up on youtube.com. Wow, if you want to see some disturbing stuff, read the comments people put up on the videos of Israeli settler violence. One person wrote that seeing that, he understood why Hitler would want to kill all these people. On the other side, there were all sorts of "F*ck Arabs" and throw them in the sea sort of stuff. People feel so strongly about this all over the world, while right in the country it takes a lot to get people to really listen to the news. That's happening now. Thursday night, my quartet rehearsal was punctuated by lots of discussions among ourselves about the escalation. Our roommate Shai is not only watching the news all the time, he's on the phone to friends at the same time, discussing it. He and most of his friends are from the Kiryot, a group of small towns north of Haifa, at least one of which has already been hit (and where my father famously got lost driving at night while he was here visiting with us! The towns are so small and off the beaten path I guess, they stop putting English on the road signs) so you can understand why they're keeping touch so well.
As with my whole connection to this country, I'm reserving judgment until tomorrow. If they don't let my love stay here and work here and contibute all he has to offer to their people, I can't imagine why I would want to stay. On top of that, I don't know if how bad I want to let things get before I get on a plane. I do feel a tremendous, albeit confusing connection to this country. I am smitten, wholeheartedly in love with my quartet more than anything. I am so lucky to get to play with them. I am also so unbelievably lucky that the man I love came all the way from across the world to be with me, and he did think about these things happening before he came! But my family and spiritual center are elsewhere.

diatribes

2006-07-08T03:59:00.000-04:00

The other day an old friend of mine sent these questions. I'm putting them up here along with what I wrote back to him because I found them thought-provoking. Anyone reading this, feel free to post opinions or questions.
(Ed:) Hearing constant criticism of Israel here in NY makes me wonder about what the young people in tel-aviv are thinking these days. I know there was that show that parodied Sharon, with a guy in a fat suit, it was supposed be very popular. But are people pissed off at the government? At Abbas? Europe? Everyone? No-one? Have you met any arabs living in tel-aviv? If so are they totally alienated? Or do they feel they are treated fairly? (or are there even any there??)

(me:) People here view the world media as being very pro-Palestinian and anti- Israeli. Israelis are always quick to say that no one criticizes the Israeli government more than they do. Which may be true, but when it comes to actually doing anything about it, there's so much bickering nothing gets done. But also it's really hard, because the media shows them literally nothing of what's on the other side of the fence. They have no idea what it's like to be Palestinian. So when all they see is rockets and bombs and kidnappings, they get all super supportive of the army even though the culture of it seems to be fading. It's easier now to get out of it. In my quartet only one of them served, and she was in the army string quartet and fired a gun once in basic training. People love Sharon, especially since he went into a coma! It's like Rabin all over again, they think they lost the one person who could do the job. What they don't see is that even Sharon wasn't willing to go the rest of the way after Disengagement, to make the rest of the sacrifices necessary, and if anything Olmert was doing better. Now I don't know. The whole thing going on now makes me so angry at both sides- whatever, nothing new. What pisses me off is that it's been all about the kidnapped soldier and the killed settler was like nothing big, because he was a settler so everyone in the world media and in ISraeli media has this attitude like he was asking for it.
And in terms of Arabs in Tel Aviv, I've met none, but I've seen a few, mostly at the University actually. Every time I see them I get happy. This city is so segregated. Or, just Jewish, barely anything to segregate!
In terms of the show with the actor in the fat suit, I think Ed is referring to "Eretz Nehederet," or "Gorgeous Country," which is a really funny fake-news/sketch-comedy show. On my last El Al flight, from Bangkok, they had a little video on the lady who does makeup for it, and showed the brilliant transformations she was able to effect.

By the way, a couple of things. The other day I was at my friends Hilla and Alex's house, and noticed all their clocks were much faster than my cell phone clock. I like to have a couple of clocks set fast to get my butt in gear, but I usually keep that at what I think is "Tel Aviv Mean Time" or whatever just so I know what's real. But more and more it's seemed that that one's been slower than all the other clocks. Now the phone could just be getting slow, or I could have messed up in setting it, but it made me think of how in classical music, A keeps getting higher. When I was a kid we learned A was 440. Now it's almost always 442, and the summers I spent in Germany it was 443, 444, sometimes even 445! It's like the clocks of the world are following that higher-tension pitch trend, and everyone's trying to get there faster.
Also, one of the homesick-type feelings I've felt since I got here was that I was missing out on all the big movies of the last year, since they come out earlier in the states, and I never have time anyway to see them. Well, Christopher and I have been watching a bunch of movies, including some of the big hyped ones. They're all so bad it makes me angry! Like, how's everyone been duped all this time! King Kong sucked. Million Dollar Baby sucked. The Squid and the Whale, which was supposed to be this great independent film made by a guy who normally works with Wes Anderson, one of my favorites, sucked. There are more, but those are the ones that made me most indignant. I'm going to stop reading movie reviews because there must be something in the water that's making people desperate, and liking movies they'd obviously hate if they had any sense. (Now I know I'm being very mean. It's my way or the highway!)

Spinoza

2006-06-12T03:25:00.000-04:00

We got a kitten. (I just typed "We got a mitten") His name is Spinoza. Also, my Dad's been visiting for the last 3 weeks. And tonight I'm flying to Singapore with the quartet. I promise to write a proper thingy from there, but here's some shots of the star of our home.

rushed

2006-05-10T05:26:00.000-04:00

This is going to be rushed and have a lot of typos. I'm on break from rehearsal at Hilla's house. WE're learning Quartettsatz, and I couldn\t be happier after literally a month of nothing but Elvis Costello. Who's amazing, don't get me wrong, but you know... I needed a little Schubert to wake me up. A Little Schubert. The title of an adorable kids book I grew up with that I'm planning on translating into Hebrew for Itamar, Hilla's 5-year old. We premiered this theater piece of Costello's "Juliet Letters" last week, and after a pretty hellish couple of weeks of rehearsals, it came together somehow, and the audiences were all over it! Which is a blessing and a curse, cause I want to move onto other things, play more thorny, difficult contemporary music. But if there's demand for it, we'll be playing this a lot, maybe even on tour, which I'm not so psyched about.
speaking of touring, tomorrow Christopher and I board a bus to Eilat, Israel's Atlantic City, along with the rest of the Solanei Tel Aviv chamber orchestra. And their significant others- the whole reason we're all doing this concert is the 3 nights hotel stay, and being fed, and being near the beach. And hopefully getting to scuba dive again in the red sea. I did it for the first time in Dahab, Sinai, last month, and it was so amazing, every time I close my eyes I'm still underwater above the reef, the surface a glimmering roof over my head, oddly shaped and brilliantly colored fish everywhere around and below me. So sad about Dahab. We had such a great time there and truly felt it was the safest, coziest, happiest place. I'll put up pictures of our 3 hour camel ride soon.
Now it's back to Schubert.
love to everyone back home!!!

two days later

2006-04-19T13:17:00.000-04:00

The other day I heard a man blow himself up.
I didn't want that to be what I wrote about first thing in more than a month on this. I was planning on writing about how I voted in the Israeli election. Then I was planning on writing about Christopher and my trip to Sinai. But I just hadn't gotten around to it. Then there was the bombing at the Old Central Bus Station. Nine people killed, not including the 18-year old suicide bomber. His final pictures were set in front of a peaceful, autumnal New England landscape, the type of landscape I get more homesick for than I do for the streets of Jersey City. C and I watched "Paradise Now," the Palestinian-made movie about two suicide bombers, some weeks ago. We were thinking about it the other night when we walked up to the park at the top of our street, where Christopher likes to skateboard and we sometimes throw the frisbee around, to watch the sun set over Tel Aviv. We can see the whole city from there, glittering in its disco lights. It's quite a different view from what the two men see, their town of Nablus in the West Bank. The most affecting moment of the movie is when they get dropped off in Tel Aviv and look at the super-modern white-stone architecture, the women in bikinis rollerblading at the beach, the happy families with their dogs. This place is so small, it's hard to believe how many people can't and don't ever leave their hometowns, or home refugee camps, and never see this metropolis maybe 15 miles away.
Anyway, the bombing happened right as I ran out of the New Central Bus Station, where we've been having rehearsals, to meet Christopher for lunch. He was inside looking for me. I heard a loud, clumsy-sounding, as in, it had a couple parts to it, boom. Now, whenever I hear a boom here my first thought is, bomb. This time, after less than a minute, sirens filled the air and ambulances and all sorts of police vehicles filled the streets. C and I went to get sushi at a place in our neighborhood we'd never been before. My cell phone, which I'd had on silent for the rehearsal, was full of calls and messages from the girls in the quartet, who'd heard about the bombing while they were still in our rehearsal room. They knew that where it happened is on the way to my place, and that I was biking home as usual, and wanted to know I was safe. So that was when I heard what happened.
I miss baseball. I miss my cats, all the comforts of my parents' house. I miss the subway and the people I love to see in New York. I miss not having to worry about the people I love being hurt.
Nightmarish visions of the future make every city like this. Maybe this is an escalation, and maybe soon many more places will be. It's not all of Israel that you feel this immediacy of danger, that you feel yourself always at the middle of someone's bulls-eye. I'd say a majority of it, you still feel that magic of a just-discovered Eden. It's easy to forget here that it was settled through colonization. I'm not saying -AT ALL- that I agree or even sympathize with people who blow themselves up to hurt Israel, or with people who say this place shouldn't be here. Everybody needs a homeland, that should be the lesson of this place, and the history that led to its founding.
I'm probably not making any sense. It was an interesting experience leading up to voting. There are a lot more choices here than in the states. I wanted to vote for Hadash, the only party in Israel that is both Arab and Jewish. It's a communist party, at that. Ultimately, though, it was like choosing Gore over Nader. the coalition government means that smaller parties have almost no voice, even though their appeal is so great to us idealists. The pensioners' party, founded and peopled by all retirement-age people, ended up doing well among young, artsy people like me, and doing far better than expected. They benefited in a way from the low turnout. A lot of people who hadn't planned on voting, when they heard late in the day that Avoda, the Labor Party, had secured a strong place in the coalition, decided they could afford to vote idealistically, and threw their support behind this admirable cause: raising the average pension from Israel's current abysmally low 1,500 shekels a month- about $300. But I didn't think that far ahead, or wait that long, and decided to vote Avoda, both to support their frontman Amir Peretz, whom I like, and to make sure there was a strong left next to Sharon's Kadima, which was certain to win the most seats. The voting place, a school, was surrounded by banners and flags, with people for all the right-wing and religious parties like Shas, Likud, and the new ones, Israel Beiteinu ("Israel Our Home") and Zazim Yemina ("Moving Right"), many of them blasting dance music from boomboxes. It was a very funny scene for me and C, a circus to Americans used to the dignified silence that surrounds voting stations in the states. Inside, I gave my Tehudat Ze'ut, my national ID, to some people at the front desk, and they told me to which room I'd been assigned. They asked why Christopher wasn't voting, and I said, "Next year! He hasn't made Aliyah yet." He waited with his book as I went to my assigned room, where a row of four people sat at schooldesks, checked off my name, and held on to my Tehudat Ze'ut, I guess as collateral that I would vote correctly. I sat behind a desk with a large posterboard blocking me from their view. In front of me on the desk were about thirty stacks of pieces of paper, each emblazoned with a powerful, short word. On the posterboard was a key to what each word stood for: Power for Likud, Yes for Kadima, Truth for Avoda... That was easy, since Truth starts with an Aleph and they were arranged alphabetically. I put the paper in the blue envelope the folks at the desks had given me, sealed it, left my little hidden desk, and in front of the four of them, put the envelope into a big cardboard box. I felt like I was acting in a classroom play about the democratic process.
As Christopher and I rode our bikes away from the school, people still tried to give us fliers convincing us to vote for whatever. One religious man, a Dosi in the Israeli-Yiddish parlance, shouted at me, "Return to the Answer!" (the Hebrew naming of people who've become religious, like borne-again for Christians) "Stop wearing pants! Stop riding a bicycle! Observe the Shabbat!" I laughed as I pushed by him, thinking about how C and I had bought candlesticks at the Flea Market in Jaffo just the week before for our own Friday night observance. He probably wouldn't believe me.

the news

2006-03-15T08:07:00.000-05:00

So. I haven't written in a while. And here I am, sitting in Ben Gurion airport, surrounded by stressed people with luggage, and this is the most time I've had to type in my computer since... since the last post I think! Definitely since before Christopher came to Israel. The quartet was gearing up in preparation for this trip we've been working towards for months now, and meanwhile I had my love here, first time in the country, doesn't speak Hebrew (then again, neither do I, almost) and so so exciting. He loves it here, and for the first time, the place feels like home to me! Well, he was here for a month. And during that time, it's hard to write about since now we're on to a new phase- but it was pretty incredible the level of connection. I mean, that was already clear in Mexico, when we met. Anyway, I'll get to the point: we're engaged! I've been looking forward to finding a way to break the news up here, but this stream of consciousness ramble will have to do for the time being. On top of having my Quartet in my Home, and the whirlwind of concerts and auditions, meetings and lessons we had, the real impression from this 2-week (!!) jaunt is the amazing love our parents and families showed me and Christopher. There's nothing I can compare to meeting someone and knowing they are GOING to be your father-in-law! Or brother in law, etc etc. I'm returning to Israel a new person, strengthened by all this new family. Also by all the love our friends have shown us, too, but unfortunately we barely got to see any friends on this trip, since meeting the families was the priority.
sigh. Living so far away really sucks sometimes.
Maybe I'll be able to give more specifics when I next write. For now I'll just include some pictures from our wonderful little trip up north. These of us were by the falls in the Yehudiyah Forest, in the Golan Heights, easily (by my lights) the most beautiful corner of Israel. The Landmines sign was not far from there, outside a field that seemed to be swallowing, or drowning, some old rusty farm trucks. The sunset was the night before, when we drove up to the extreme north to check out Mount Hermon, the only place in Israel where people ski and ice-skate.
I'll put up some more pictures soon. It's been a whirlwind back here in Israel, too, since two good friends came and stayed with me during the time before and after Christopher came. I'm dying for an Afooch, though, Hebrew (or, in this case, maybe I should say Israeli) for cappucino. Means literally "Upside-down." Sort of describes my state of mind right now! In a good way.

Oaxaca pics, 3

2006-01-15T04:38:00.000-05:00

shots of Elisa and Christopher with adorable stray dogs. We were suckers, even after a (domesticated) dog, saw me as a walking T-bone steak.
The beautiful and singular John Altieri. So glad to catch up with such a dear Eastman friend on this trip...
Christopher's stupendous one-hand-stand.
me+ elisa.

Oaxaca pics, 2

2006-01-15T04:23:00.000-05:00

These are from the beach and New Years' Celebration.
Notice I forgot my camera for all the "important" moments: the wedding. Visiting Monte Alban, this amazing flattened mountaintop that's home to incredible ancient Mixtec ruins. The New Years Eve dinner. The little town we stayed in, Puerto Angel's city-wide dance party, which began at 2AM on New Years Eve and featured about 3 stories worth of speakers blasting Mexican dance music... but I still managed some entertaining shots. Impossible not to considering the landscape and the phenomenal people I met. Up top is me and Rebecca. That cactus-topped house overlooked the cove we all swam in- where some of the guys got stung by black Urchins when they tried to climb onto the rock ruled by Rebecca, Elisa and myself. The punishment of Sirens Rock, we figured. Then you see the bride and groom in all their blinding hotness. The beautiful Banjo performed handstands and other yoga moves on the beach (I didn't just take this shot cause of his cute bottom! I swear). And those crazy partiers are all from the magical land of Kennebunk, which both Rebecca and Sol call home.

Oaxaca pics, 1

2006-01-15T03:52:00.000-05:00

(out of order! but oh well)
to bottom:
view from the backseat.
An Xmas angel who caught my eye on Av. Indepencia.
truck-riding champions, hanging on like it was nothing through the craziest roads I've ever been on.
(We went to the beach 2 days after the wedding. 6 hours through the mountains. I took these 2 shots from the car Sol- groom extraordinaire and debonair- drove like a Formula 1 pro through the hairpins, steep up and downs, sudden stops and one-lane surprises. I was pretty doped up on Dramamine. It was a blast.
from after the ladies breakfast, my first morning in Mexico. Can you believe I got to spend it with these beauties? The stunner in yellow scaling the building is my bestest girl Erica. The brunette in shades is Rebecca, the most ravishing, brilliant bride.
Christopher. You'll be seeing more of him.

woken up

2006-01-15T02:57:00.000-05:00

Love that delicious long moment, turning the corner from sleep to awakeness. My pillowcase and blanket are yellow, and my bottom-sheet white, so I emerge into the illusion of sunlight, or the middle of an egg.
I thought we had rehearsal this morning, but turns out it was moved to the evening, and since I left my planner in Jersey City I missed it. But nice to wake up so early to a free day. I have a nutty, messy collage I made in a quasi-ecstatic, exhausted, homesick fit last Thursday, hung next to my bed, so it was the first non-egg-colored thing I put my eyes on this morning. Immediately made me hungry to look at Marianne Brandt and Hannah Höch, the two collage-artists who most directly (as in, if you were to look at my collage, you'd think, "This girl likes those ladies a LOT") inspire me. I googled them, and here are some works of theirs I have to show you.
from the top, those pics are:"Me" by Marianne Brandt, collage by Hannah Höch, a poster for "Ce Qu'il en Reste" ("What Remains") choreographed by Louise Bedard, and based on Höch's collages, and two untitleds by Brandt, from 1924
Also in the googling, came up a very cool blog/website of a gallerist and artist living in Portland, Or. Check it out for beautiful visuals and thought-provoking words on looking and meaning.
I realize I never wrote anything about my time in Mexico. It's hardest to write about the things you feel strongest about, isn't it? Especially in a public place. It was the most beautiful wedding. I'm so lucky to have witnessed these celebrations of truly awe-inspiring love. Tali and Daniel's last June on the beach in Jaffo- so much love exploding everywhere, at some point (midnight?) a big group of us couldn't hold ourselves back from running straight from the dancefloor into the ocean, where we gambolled (is that a real word? Or Louis Carroll creation?) in the waves like we were golden retrievers.
Rebecca and Sol had the presence of mind to realize that everyone would need days of wave-playing to feel sated in our celebration of their marriage. And the New Year. And the fact that we were all together in *Mexico*!!!
Oaxaca is the most richly colored, pungent-everything, corner of the world I've seen since India. Actually, I kept thinking of India during my time in Mexico. Something in the richness of life, the direct and tangible line of thousands of years connected to this moment, the poverty, but also this potential I could feel for continued and accelerated movement forward. Oaxaca's not a "tourist town" at the same time that it's been colonized by tourists. It almost feels like people come there to be colonized by the town instead. You want it to stamp itself into you permanently like you're a piece of soft tin, ready to have the birds and hearts and skulls of Oaxaca pressed into you.
you know what? I'm stumbling on this. Maybe I should have written about it right when I came back, when the lack of sequence of my memories would be redeemed by the vividness of the colors, which would have bled inexorably into my language. Now it's all tainted by my week back here. I'll paste some pictures from the trip and give you the two most important facts you need to know, aside from the perfect union of Rebecca and Sol, and that their Catholic ceremony was done in Spanish, next to the largest (in circumference) tree in the world: the 3,000 year-old el Tule just outside the city of Oaxaca:
1. I got bitten in the ass by a dog.
2. I fell in love.

eeeeeeeeee

2005-12-25T09:52:00.000-05:00

that's the sound of my giddiness
tonight is our second concert, Tel Aviv Soloists lead by Tabea Zimmermann from the principal viola chair- or, in the case of these two incredible elegies, Britten's Lachrymae and Odeon Partos' Yizkor (Remembrance), as a soloist up front, conducting with her scroll dipping up and down even as she plays the most flawless, flowing lines. Since so many violists wanted to be in this concert, Barak, the conductor, rotated us, so I don't play in those two. I appreciate that- it's much more fun to get to play in a section with her, even play solos just the two of us, in the case of Veress' (mid-20th century Hungarian) 4 Transylvanian Dances. The section is divided most of the time, and there's only 4 of us so a good amount of time, it's just me and her on the 1st part. Terrifying at first, and now just a total blast. That piece was a bit shaky last night, in Haifa, but we've all decided it's going to be incredible tonight.
so many other things to be giddy about. The guilty, evil, intense pleasure I get out of Johnny Damon being a Yankee. Amazing going-away party for my "caparra" and soul-sister Melissa, for which all the bright lights of Jerusalem showed up and turned on. Such a good party, I completely forgot it was for such a sad reason! Hannuka tonight, I'm going to light red and green candles in the menora my folks gave me a couple years back. Then I'll pack said menora into my bag, cause tomorrow night, after our last concert, in Jerusalem, I'm flying to Oaxaca!!!!
But most immediately, and most wonderfully, I just got this year's Hannukah present from my Dad in the mail: Urtext editions of Beethoven's quartets Opp 127, and the 59's, 74 and 95. Along with them, these words from him:

DESTINATION OP. 127
The sun is down when I get back. Sometimes
It sits tomatolike athwart my rear-
View mirror on the Bruckner, or it climbs
The Empire State, Bridgewards throwing a flare.
It rises when I leave- it's red behind
Me when I take the Turnpike south, but weak,
Trembling and listless, hungover and blind:
"Don't kid yourself," it says, "the future's bleak."
It leaves no light to check tomatoes by,
Or green beans, but attacks me when I drive
The Garden State, morningwise against my eye,
And night surrounds the house when I arrive.
No matter- I light the stove, put upon the set
The evening's pleasure, Nature's Light, the 12th Quartet.

Charles Hollander
October 1974, Old Greenwich, Ct.

and...
Op. 59, #1, the lyrics:
Pack my suitcase tight,
I'll be going home tomorrow night,
I won't have to wait,
Cause the train I take is never late.

see you on the other side. Happy everything, and let's all enjoy 2006 when it gets here.

in the studio

2005-12-19T17:19:00.000-05:00

We just finished our second day of recording. Finished Death and the Maiden, which simply blows my mind. Three weeks ago I hadn't done more than sightread through the first and second movements at music camp- years ago. Today, on some umpteenth run of one of the variations in the second movment I almost had a breakdown of the frustration from not really knowing the piece yet, while having to devote so much extreme concentration to it. concentration. It's been numbing and exhausting, but after these two days I feel like I've just seen, learned another aspect of string quartet playing. And I love it. Almost as much, or maybe as much, but in a different way, as performing. I'm lucky, though, that we all get along so well, because any tension- interpersonal, or arising out of not being able to express my surprises and frustrations at this process- would have been the straw that broke me. Instead, we kept cracking each other up, and I'm telling you, I have no idea how I would have survived it without that laughter.
I guess there wasn't anything really that surprising to it. I've recorded before, and for days at a time like this, too. Never in a quartet, though, and never a piece I've had this practically lifetime attachment to. If I ever show signs of thinking myself worthy of playing Death and the Maiden, promptly bite me, pinch me, smack me. Wake me up. Despite the frustration with myself, I could have done with days more of that in-detail focus on that piece and still not get bored, and still find things to play differently.
In order to have use of this great space to record for free, the conservatory where the hall is asked us to do a short kids' concert the other day. Small price, huh? We prepared the first and last movements, and Hilla did all the talking. Or, really, the kids did all the talking. We would play, literally, two bars at a time, then Hilla would ask them for some responses to the music. She couldn't get to half of the kids who had their hands up each time, and we ended up scratching the last movement, and doing an impromptu cut of the first, they all had so much to say. I understood bits and pieces, but didn't need specifics to get that the kids each had completely different reactions. It was so much fun! made me want to treat every concert as a kids' concert. Not in this outreach-"condescend to the audience" kind of way that's so big now. In the way that we weren't going into it hoping to have more fans at the end of it, to come to our next show, or whatever. Hilla forgot to even tell them our names, and it barely registered when she remembered at the very end. They asked us questions like "why do you move like that while you play?" and "how come you don't take a time-out in the middle? we do that in basketball." they were so psyched to see how into it we were, and how music this great is so *worth" being into, gives so much back. There's something about Schubert; his music can be angry, furious even, but even then everyone still wants to give him a hug, to empathize with him. (reminds me of a little story: I was upset with an ex of mine, but didn't want to tell him right then cause we were with his friends, so he took me to the bathrooms of the club we were at, grabbed my shoulders, and said, "You can talk to me! I have empathy!" like it was a new addition to a detergent. Now with empathy!) Anyway. yeah. I'm tired. I had other smartypants things to say about Schubert, but.. . All that time in the studio, and then when I came home my roommate and his friend were about to watch "The Longest Yard" so I joined them, which killed an innumerable amount of braincells. Adam Sandler, Burt Reynolds, Tracy Morgan in a skirt doing cheers, and lots of guys hitting their heads against each other. I never thought I'd ever sit through that much American football, much less in Israel.
On top of the days in the studio this week, we're also playing with the Tel Aviv Soloists Ensemble, the chamber orchestra we play with every time they have projects, about once a month or two. This is by far the best. Tabea Zimmermann, the violist, has come from Berlin to lead us from the principal viola chair! I'm going to write more about this at the end of the week, because I'm about to be late for our 3rd rehearsal and I can imagine if the rehearsals have been this amazing, the concerts will be huge fun. But if you haven't heard of her, or don't own, like everything she's ever recorded, look her up now and buy everything!

peaces

2005-12-15T17:41:00.000-05:00

Wow,
living here I've become a connoisseur of glimpses. There are so many stories that you couldn't hear anywhere else. They become disembodied in my head from whoever it was who told me them. The latest to become a free-floating mental picture is this (I have absolutely no clue who told me this!): Three Russian men, obviously drunk, were accosting a window on Allenby St, one of Tel Aviv's more commercial thoroughfares. Behind the glass was one of those dancing Santas we're so used to seeing in the states around Christmas- looks like he's doing an invisible hula-hoop to inaudible music. Apparently they were trying to get it to stop. To the point where they looked ready to break into the shop.
I love that. I want to hang out with them.
Sigh. I don't even have time for a glimpse of Christmas. I have Christmas envy. I always have, always asked my parents for a tree. In high school, freshman year, a friend of mine, Eli, who'd just come back from some years living with her family in Japan, invited me to their annual tree-decorating celebration. This year it was different because of all the amazing ornaments (not necessarily xmas-themed) they'd brought back from Japan. In their beautiful Park Slope townhouse, all of us framed by the big old windows that faced President Street, we took turns climbing high up to find the perfect place for this origami or that gilded angel. I'm connecting these two fixations of mine right now: Christmas and things Japanese. I can't go to Bethelehem to witness what sounds like the most beautiful holiday in the world; Christian Palestinians and tourists parading slowly down the sunset-lit slope with candles and songs. It's warm here. It would be a Christmas I couldn't imagine. I've always thought of it as a pagan holiday, or at least national like Thanksgiving. And the story of Eli's tree came to mind because I just caught the end of "The Last Samurai" and was reminded of the glimpse of Japan I got last year on the Verbier tour, when our last stop was Tokyo. There's a wonderful couple who rent an apartment in my parents' house: Mayuko and Takaji. Mayuko is this beautiful embodiment of fascination with Japanese tradition, even so far from her home. I mean, she's traveled as widely as anyone, and as independently, but now that she's settled down, you can see she's found this amazing dedication to where she comes from. She plays Koto, and we've given each other lessons on our respective instruments and talked a lot about some form of collaboration. She also studies the traditional Tea Ceremony, even devoted a room in the house (which was my first bedroom in the house!) for the practice of it. Last year, for my birthday, she gave me two sets of the most beautiful origami paper I've ever seen. I spent every night at Kneisel (the music festival I was at last summer) practicing difficult folds- clumsily- instead of reading myself to sleep.
Takaji's a wood-sculptor, and likes to tell me of all his adventures from his time as a student at Pratt in Brooklyn. I think he thinks that because he and Mayuko are so beautifully.. Japanese.. to such ignorant and fetishizing eyes as mine, he wants to make sure I know that he's lived a vagrant's life among the motley crew. He tells me about his best friend from Pratt, a graffiti artist, and all the adventures he went on when he first came to NYC.
When I told them I was moving to Israel. Mayuko and Takaji asked me to send them Halva! When I asked them how they knew about this Middle Eastern sweet, they just shrugged and said, "It's our favorite!"

Listening to Reflection Eternal. I know one of these days I'll learn to listen to the music I love from home without identifying to it in this very patriotic way, but more as just, like, this is good music. I could be from anywhere and love this. But for now... reminds me of home. All those friends from high school who lived in "Dark" Slope, how when I walked to the 7th Avenue Q train from their houses I'd walk by Inkiru Books, which I'd heard was saved and bought by Mos Def and Talib Kweli (from Reflection) and feel this shiver of recognition and love. Oh my goodness, I totally forgot to write about what I did last Thursday!! I saw De La Soul- alone! It was expensive and I couldn't find anyone into it enough to go with me. But I mean, De La, I've been into them since, like, 8th grade. There was no WAY I could miss that show. They opened!!- for Lee "Scratch" Perry. Completely fell in love with De La all over again. I told my (male) friend Eli the next day when I saw him in Jerusalem about the show. He loves them, too, and said the sweetest things about them- "They're family men, you can tell!" so true. Even though they brought tons of cute, mini-skirt-clad girls on the stage (sadly I was not called up. but you know, I'm a pants girl) they barely looked at them as they kept up the amazing connection they had to the HUGE audience. I got love from my favorite of the group, Trugoy, aka Dave, as I sang along, and he blew me a kiss and even leaned over from the stage to sing "with" me. I lasted through about half the Scratch Perry set, enough to get love from his guitarist, too- that's the great thing about being alone, you can be totally shameless about wanting to be right next to the stage and the performers and just yell right out to them- till I figured I'd gotten a glimpse enough, gotten my money's worth.
"I'm a peace-loving decoy ready for retaliation." (my favorite line from the rap by Booty Brown, from the Pharcyde, in the Gorillaz song Dirty Harry)
You can take the girl from the Street but you can't take the Street from the girl.

Barbara Kingsolver and Cameron Crowe

2005-12-05T07:50:00.000-05:00

... and Johnny Cash, and Martin Scorcese, and Alfred Kazin, and Ralph Ellison, and Albert Murray, and Elliott Smith, and the White Stripes, and my friend Jared Horowitz's songs, and the dear departed Dusky Silo...
whenever I'm away from home for a long time I get so attached to sincerely American art. My rehearsal ended early today so I went to an 11:30 AM showing of Elizabethtown. By technical standards a pretty bad movie, but everyone in it is so likeable, and the music's so good (headline from The Onion: "Cameron Crowe to release only soundtracks from now on") and it has the BEST roadtrip idea ever in it, and it's such a satisfying girl flick. sigh. Whenever I see Kirsten Dunst in a movie I don't want to be here so much as have her wardrobe. Why is she always the best costumed actress?? Wanted to run immediately and get her magenta sandals. Or maybe it was just the super-girly feeling the movie gave me. Cameron Crowe movies always make me feel afterwards like I could be a heroine in a Cameron Crowe movie. As i rode my bike home, viola on my back, huge grocery-store crate teeter-tottering on the back, with my Kirsten-inspired purchase in a plastic bag below my music stand (they were on sale! undies with pictures of mopeds all over them and the words "My Vespa!" on the front) I imagined making mix CD's for all the guys I've ever had crushes on.
There's not enough time in the world for that!!
I should amend the sentence "our rehearsal ended early." Actually we decided this morning to postpone the premier of our Elvis Costello "Juliet Letters" project from January till April. We've been running ourselves ragged accomodating the needs of the director, a famous fringe-theater dude and professor here, and the singer, a TV comedian famous for the Israeli version of "Whose Line is it Anyway?" And we were just getting sick of the music. We've done more than 30 (!!!!) rehearsals since July, and they started demanding even more time leading up to the premier. And kept using my trip to Mexico at the end of the month against us, even though I told them about it in August. It's such good music, and we've done some really amazing things with it, but if we were going to do it in January, I'd be hating it, we all would in the quartet, and Tomer, the singer, wouldn't be ready. Anyway, it's good news cause we're getting Death and the Maiden ready to record for auditions for residencies in the states, and I've never played it before.. enough complaining.
I'm listening to Johnny Cash's version of "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" and I feel like I'm in the movie White Christmas, it's so warm here, I feel like I can't even remember what snow feels like. It's a million miles away.
Oh, I titled this also with Barbara Kingsolver's name cause last year when I left school to try out living with my friend Aurelie in Bruxelles (you'll have to ask for that story another time) and everything sort of went wrong really quickly, I fell deeply in love with Kingsolver's book "Prodigal Summer" and eastern Appalachia along with it. I would read for hours at a time, listening to the CD by Dusky Silo, country-ish music by guys from NEC which I'd never even gone to hear while I was in school there. I started writing Mike, DS's lead singer and songwriter, and we had a fun, short-lived very talkative email friendship. The twang of Dusky Silo's guitars, Mike's mellow voice, and Kingsolver's green lushness... she describes beautiful women like noone I know, and there's no doubt about her sexuality, she just gets what makes some women amazing.
Earlier this year, when I first got to Israel, the equivalent obsession of the DS-BK combination was Scorcese's "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore." I even met someone in Tel Aviv by seeing on Friendster who else in Israel liked that movie! I figured anyone who was into it was worth knowing. Turned out to not be so exactly true.

Talking Heads

2005-12-01T14:58:00.000-05:00

So I was waxing my legs today (I always wanted to start a book with that!) listening to the Talking Heads' "More Songs About Buildings and Food," which I listened to in another uncomfortable aesthetic procedure years ago: when I got braces in the summer before third grade. Before going to the orthodontist, my mom and I stopped at a little music store and she bought me a Walkman- remember when those were the coolest ever??!- and that tape. That was before the gorgeous era of Auto-Reverse, and the only moments of pain I remember were when the music would end and I'd have to flip the tape, barely able to see my hands and the machine beyond the orthodontist- whom I called the Dragon Lady for her ferociously painted long fingernails, which of course you could feel clearly through those nothing latex gloves! Sometime in late high school or early college I found that tape, and it was in perfect condition. The good thing about our madcap house, where nothing ever leaves, but that doesn't mean you can find it when you want it necessarily. When I moved to Israel I didn't miss my car so much as the tapes that were fixtures on the stereo's rotation, and more than anything "MSABAF" so I downloaded it from Itunes. I recommend it highly for the next time you're trimming your nosehair or bleaching your stache or doing anything more or less uncomfortable or embarrassing and need some light bubbly music with lyrics about things nobody else ever sings about.

More Bethlehem pics

2005-11-27T16:46:00.000-05:00

pictures from Bethlehem

2005-11-27T09:00:00.000-05:00

here are some shots from the Bethlehem trip: an example of some of the devastated looking shacks we saw on the side of the road; a group shot of me and Olivia with our wonderful host-mamma Linda and her son Basel, and a couple of the house that was our last stop: a peace center built on the site of a home that has been demolished four times by the Israeli army. the man who built it talked to us about his trials, trying to build a home for his large family and having it repeatedly knocked down, once a year after it was built but only a night after he finally moved into it. His courage is amazing, as is the compassion of a number of Israelis who've joined him in fighting the unjust policies of their own military, and in helping him to build the house over and over again. I'm embarrassed I'm forgetting his name. Anyway, the place was beautiful in spite of the abject poverty all around it, in the edge-of-Jerusalem neighborhood Anata. Just across the deserted, rocky valley, the main view is of a large prison which houses Palestinian men- another place, by the way that had been made forbidden for Palestinians to build on for it's being "environmentally protected," like a national park, only to see Israel building something monstrous on it...
anyway. sort of out of the mood of all these Thanksgiving pics, huh? that's life here, I guess, but I think things are- slowly, slowly- moving in a good direction. Amir Peretz and Labor, Sharon leaving Likud, Europeans condemning the annexation of lands in East Jerusalem (came out in yesterday's NY Times). We just all have to have patience and compassion for this process.

me and Itush

2005-11-27T08:55:00.000-05:00

Mommy, Hadas, Baby, Yosefa

2005-11-27T08:49:00.000-05:00

I've decided I'm not having a party without a baby present ever again. Omri and Itamar just made everyone so happy!
The funny thing is that Hadas makes that face at all of us many times during rehearsal. Today she stuck her violin scroll almost entirely in her mouth. And she always finds just the right time to do it, too! I was almost crying this morning, I felt so homesick (seems to always happen in our Juliet Letters rehearsals! I don't know why, the music is so good... maybe it's cus of all the jokes in Hebrew getting tossed around. anyway...) but Hadas just opens her eyes like that and goes "la la la!!" or sticks her bow in Tali's ear... and I lose it. I like imagining us teaching a class full of conservatory freshmen, being like, "you know what would make that measure in the Haydn so much better? If you just went like THIS at the second violin," making a face like a 4-year old about to eat a piece of chocolate cake.

father or baby?

2005-11-27T08:28:00.000-05:00

That's Alex, Hilla's husband, with Omri's pacifier. Thinking this should be our official quartet headshot.

thanxxgiving madness

2005-11-27T08:18:00.000-05:00

These would be some Israeli crazy people who showed up at my house begging me to explain to them just who the pilgrims were, and why April showers lead to Mayflowers... well, anyway us americans made a brief attempt to act like it was thanksgiving, but really it was just a raucous fun party. with children!!! (That's Itamar, Hilla's 5-year-old) at least we all ate ourselves silly, like a real thanksgiving.

Catshow

2005-11-23T04:41:00.000-05:00

I tried to make a link to the Catshow Snapshots page on myspace, but I think blogger and myspace must be enemies, cause just like it did to me when I tried to make a link to Marc Riordan's trio page on myspace, no dice- won't take you there if you ask it to. So here they are, in case you want to see the band that made me so super happy in Boston, one of the toughest things about not being in the states:
www.myspace.com/catshowsnapshots
and while you're over there, check out the trio. Marc and I played together at NEC in Joe Morris' ensemble and in other groups, and he's a really awesome drummer:
www.myspace.com/marcriordantrio
I'm trying to start a page for the ICSQ but I put our birthday as Feb 14, 2005 and now it won't let me no matter how many times I try to tell it I'm older than 9 months! It keeps saying Myspace is for users 14 and over, and it thinks I'm trying to scam it. grrrrrr. Well, once I get through there will be a place you can listen to us until the website is finished (which I'm seeing being done in, oh, 2008 or so)

Bet Lechem 1 (Bethlehem- two days there)

2005-11-19T07:52:00.000-05:00

So far since making aliyah, I've had a real hard time feeling "Israeli," to the point of blowing off the question when people ask me how it feels. I'm american, a Jersey girl, a New Yorker, a musician, a traveler, anything but Israeli! I'm here for the work.
But.
I feel it now. I just spent two days in Bethlehem on an Encounter trip with 50-something other American Jews, and I see how Israeli I am. I live here, and there's so much work to be done, and me with my special privilege: and American passport, I'm perfectly situated to do something, any thing, even while I'm so frustrated that Israelis just don't see how much work there is, the gaping whole that needs to be filled in, completed and explained to their children. I'm devastated but I'm also ecstatic that I'm HERE! That I know people I want to spend time with on the other side of the wall, that I have family there who were almost waiting for me, and whom I'm dying to host in My home in Tel Aviv, to return the favor, but of course they're stuck there, with absolutely NO freedom of movement, and that's not going to change for a long time. so I have to go back.
We started off at the Hope Flowers school, in Area C (=Israel-controlled) part of Betlehem. Our bus drove on a bypass road, normally used by Israeli settlers, and we walked up a hill, over a huge dirt-pile roadblock, to get in via back way into the city. The school specializes in non-violence and conflict-resolution training. There are students- 4th graders!- trained to be counselors and mediators within their own class to resolve the fights that arise from tense, traumatized children who are not unused to soldiers waking them in the middle of the night. We heard plenty of stories about this kind of trauma. The head of the school, Ibrahim Issa, spoke to us about the hard going since the second Intifada began in 2000, how while they used to have sister cities in Israel, now Israeli children aren't even allowed anywhere near it, so their sister city is Frankfurt. We heard things along these lines many times- how Frankfurt (as an example, since they often have to fly through its huge airport, via Jordan and then via Egypt, to get BACK to places they want to visit, places like, oh, say.. Gaza!) is closer to tham than places 10 km away. Issa spoke to us about how much money they need, how none of the teachers have been paid in a while- but when he spoke numbers, we all were shocked at how small they were really. One woman said she paid more for 4 years of college than the school's operating budget.
We heard a lot of speakers on Thursday. The point of the trip was to listen. If it were to engage in discussion, it would have needed to be many days longer. A lot of the people had problems with what they heard, not on an emotional level, because you couldn't argue with the fact that their situations suck and they have plenty of horrible devastating stories to prove it. But with some of the speakers' use of Holocaust stories and terminology, as if that was the only thing we'd understand as Jews. Things like, "we're the victims of the victims," or "We're the indirect victims of WW2" or "Israel is building walled ghettoes of its own after Jews were made to build their own ghettos in Warsaw and elsewhere..." I didn't feel the same way as those who were offended by these statements, though. I mean, I'm sorry, but we tell these stories many, many times, and loudly, as defining moments for us. The Palestinians, if anything, I thought, were trying to show that THEY have compassion for what WE went through, not to throw it in our faces in an attempt to elicit guilt. The need for a safe place for Jews was clear long before 1939, as were Zionist efforts. The fact is that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced in 1948, and for them the Hagana (the freedom fighters, precursors to today's Israel Defense Forces, or IDF) isn't something to name a street in every town after. Our speaker after Ibrahim Issa was Zougby Zougby, at his Wiam Center for Conflict Resolution and Mediation on a main street in Betlehem, and he spoke to us about how whatever the history and the painful gaps in our respective narratives of the conflict, neither group is going anywhere, so resolution has to be inevitable. But he was the first to say what we would hear many times over on this trip: "The problem is the Occupation."
I saw firsthand, from looking out the window and from looking at maps, how right he was. On land that used to be the only forested part of Betlehem, which Palestinians had been kept from building on because it was "environmentally protected" rose the fortress-looking identical white buildings of Har Homa, an Israeli settlement. It was cleared during the famous Oslo peace accords in '93, and by looking at it, you could forgive Palestinians for accusing Israel of talking out of both corners of its mouth. All around Betlehem (and all of the West Bank) writhes the Partition Wall, usually hundreds of meters from any buildings, often cutting into land owned and harvested by members of the town in surrounds. "See? They want the land and they don't want us," Betlehem residents pointed out over and over. It's impossible, utterly impossible, not to see the blatant land-grab in the twist-turny path of this Wall, which when you stand near, you get a very, very different, yet almost as powerful energy from as when you stand near our beloved Kotel (Western Wall) in Jerusalem. Wow. It's ugly. I'll put some pictures up so you can see. Zougby Zougby rode with us for a little while after his speech to point out some of the newer areas. For example, on November 15- Palestinian "Independence Day," (really made me wonder, the optimism of that holiday!) the checkpoint through which we were planning on passing had been closed, forcing more and more people to use fewer and fewer cross-ways to get to work, family, school, or wherever. Next to this former checkpoint were huge fresco-like graffiti art, with slogans like "To exist is to resist!" which, Zougby told us, had been painted by a group of Mexicans from Chiapas!
The next panel of speakers we had included a woman named Teri, and we all fell in love with her. She was a smart, outspoken heroine out of any number of hard-scrabble movies we've seen, but she's been working tirelessly at her cause since she was 13, and her anger is real. Chairman of the board of the Palestinian Womens Organization, she outlined for us the personal affronts of this wall- how it helped in ruining her marriage, how she had to run after this event to pick up her daughters, whom her husband would have to pass through a small hole in the wall they found so she could get them to their music lesson on time (I asked her afterwards what they played: one plays violin, the other a- shoot I forget the word- a Palestinian instrument with lots of strings that you pluck I guess)...
I'm getting tired of writing. I'll skip to the end of Thursday, the most fresh and meaningful part of this Encounter for me. We drove to "The Tent" restaurant to meet the host families we'd be staying with. I was staying with another girl from Tel Aviv (yay!! we were the only ones- everyone else lives in Jerusalem or studies at Yeshiva), Olivia, a med student at TA University. Linda, our host momma, greeted us with huge, enveloping eyes, and an immediate eagerness and happiness that "we were hers." We sat at the table with her sister and her two sons, and chit-chatted. She loves to party, knew everyone in the Tent (which really looked from the inside like a real Bedouin tent)... when the waiter came to take drink orders, she looked at me conspiratorially and said, "you want a beer, right? I want a beer. Let's drink together!" And as he went away to retrieve them, she held her two index fingers together and said to me, "You and me, I can tell, we're like this... we're the same in here," and then she touched her heart. "We like to enjoy life." The only way I could answer was to hold up my hand, and say, "Linda, we really need to high five right now. Do you know what that is?" "Like what you do with little kids?" "Exactly," I said.
Linda's a nurse, and teaches health classes to schools all over Betlehem and Bet Sahur, the adjoining village where she lives in an apartment building (owned by the Greek Orthodox Church, she told me- I never asked which sect of Christianity she belonged to) with her two sons, Ouhad and Basel. Her mother's name was Amelia!- she was born in Santiago, Chile! Linda's sister, Lemya, sat to Olivia's right, and Linda to my left, so we were bookended by them, and on either side of them by their sons. At one point a drum started going around, and Lemya picked it up and just rocked out on it. It was.... a mazing!!!! Olivia and I were dancing in our seats, our booties moving as much as they could as we chowed down on a rainbow of salads. Linda and her sons chanted songs, and soon had our whole corner of the Tent singing too, then Linda herself took the drum from Lemya, and rocked my world even harder!! Noah and Yedidya, two guys from our group who were staying with Lemya and so were also sitting at our table, shouted to everyone from the group to come over and check it out, bragging, "We're staying with the rocking Bubbe's!! We've got the coolest families." the chanted songs everyone was singing reminded me of that great scene in Monsoon Wedding when all the women sit together having their hands painted with Henna, singing and chanting call-and-response hilarious tunes. After a while, I couldn't take it anymore and had to stand to dance. Linda shouted at me that when we got home she was going to teach me how to REALLY dance, that hip-shaking bellydancer thing that 8-year old Palestinian girls all around me were executing with house-bringin-down spirit and precision, and I felt like Mr Rogers trying to hula-hoop imitating!
When we got to her place, though, the mood was much more somber. Well, no, there was still dancing. Basel, who's eleven, whispered something to his mom, and she translated that he wanted to show us the four traditional Palestinian dances, which he did. At 12:30 at night in his kitchen. I was most definitely mentally photographing that moment! All over the apartment were huge paintings of a man with a mustache, most of them with Arabic at the bottom of them- clearly tributes. I haltingly asked, "Is that your husband?" (Later, Olivia and I shared with each other that we both were afraid that maybe he was a victim of the Conflict) Yes, it was: Elias Jeraysay. He died in 1999, but not in the Intifada or anything conflict-related. It was a flash flood that took him, and two Jewish friends he was hiking with in Ein Gedi, that beautiful oasis we visited on the Livnot trip. She pulled out a yellowed newspaper: and there, on the front page of "Le Monde," was the story. Olivia and I sat and read it, she helping me with the French I didn't understand. They all had been members of the Alternative Information Center. He'd been in government- and in jail. For seven years. She tells her sons stories about his life all the time. And as of this May, she's in government, too. She ran for "the municipality" (I think it's like City Council) and won.
I'm going to write more about Linda. I promise. She's deep in my heart and clear in my mind. But I'm written out now. I need a break. So... more to come.

Haley (also my niece!)

2005-11-16T17:03:00.000-05:00

And the other was "hotel dress." these were presents from my mom for the twins' fifth birthday last month. The sandals were from me (from Israel- yeah, I'm patting myself on the back!) and I'm just so psyched that my sister sent me these pics I had to put them up to show them off.

Samantha (my niece)

2005-11-16T16:43:00.000-05:00

One of these is "sparkly dress"

baby, aunties

2005-11-15T19:24:00.000-05:00

This is us with Hilla's little Omri, when he was seizing his second day of life full-force by... sleeping the entire day, it seemed! I didn't see his eyes open until his Brit-Mila, and even then he was oddly sleepy! Well, by now he's a big healthy, month-old. When I hold him he reminds me of Wallace Shawn in The Princess Bride, and I keep saying to him, "Incontheivable!!" trying to push that on him as his first word rather than some Hebrew gibberish. I can tell he's already starting to form the syllables.

Stuttgart

2005-11-15T18:58:00.000-05:00

I sometimes check in with the Village Voice horoscopes by Rob Brezsny at his site,www.freewillastrology.com. This week for Aries wasn't super encouraging, but definitely seemed to come true: "I doubt that you yourself will be the beneficiary of a windfall or a stroke of uncanny luck, but there's a chance that someone close to you will, and his or her good fortune will rub off on you," Brezsny wrote. When we got into our hotel room in Stuttgart Thursday night, O, the cellist subbing for Hilla, saw a fax on the desk. It was from her boyfriend here in Israel, and it was the first time he told her he loved her. She, as you can imagine, was ecstatic, speechless. I imagined that she didnt see another word of that page-long fax, was just reading those three words over and over. She apologized for dwelling on it in her surprise and happiness, but I told her to hush, I was just lucky to witness it! The next day D and S, two american friends of mine, came down from Berlin to spend the weekend with me. Forget that horoscope, I am the luckiest girl in the world!! That these amazing, fun, gorgeous friends of mine traveled so far, independently of each other, so we could have the funnest extended girls-night ever in Stuttgart gives me the warm fuzzies no end. They didn't know each other before coming, but because of my rehearsals and performances with the Opera, they had to basically babysit each other, and before I knew it, were acting as if they'd known each other forever! I was reminded of the windfall Brezsny mentioned as S recounted the adventures of the just-beginning love affair that may take her to Paris or some ski village in the Alps for the winter- after she spends two weeks in Nigeria for her friend's sister's wedding! She lives the life many of us dream of. And it's only when you live like that that these movie-worthy international romances. This guy is a photographer for National Geographic, but also a snowboarding instructor, and told S to either "get a European work permit, and pick a city" so they can live together, or to pick a town in the mountains for the winter so they can hole up together and he can make the bread on the slopes. What??? How do these kinds of offers get made? S, naturally, is having a hard time believing it could be real, but D and I, in full fairy-tale-belief mode, told her to call his bluff, name a place and see what happens...
why am I writing about friends' romances? I meant to tell about this weekend. I guess S was so wrapped up in it, and I was so wrapped up in seeing old friends that I let her carry me away with it, too. D and I read duets, the same we played almost ten years ago when we did a duo recital at SUNY Purchase. So amazing to use each other as our musical measuring-sticks. To enjoy the power and control and sweetness in each other's playing, and then realize we're musical sisters, and were keeping up with each other the whole time! I'm being cheesey, but it just meant so much to me to play with her again. We played in a quartet together in high school, and always sort of flirted with tthe idea of doing it professionally, and here I am! Taken. And she is, too, in Berlin, by the scene, by the city that was made for her... But, sigh. Seeing her schmooze with my quartet after the performance, I felt like I'd taken a boyfriend home to my parents.
I'll have to fill the rest in tomorrow. I'm drifting. Good night and good luck (really need to see that one!)

picture

2005-11-08T19:45:00.000-05:00

thought I should put up a pic of this site's namesakes

quartet dream

2005-11-08T19:16:00.000-05:00

I had this great dream last night, so good I woke up laughing.
There was a bar-b-que held by a bunch of string quartets in honor of two composer friends of mine, John and Judd. They both had written such great string quartets that we wanted to celebrate them for revivifying (or something) the form. It was my quartet, the Orion, the Pacifica, and the Colorado. Pacifica brought the beer, the Orions brought the meats (lots of big German-looking hot dogs) and we brought the good Mediterranean bread and condiments. The Colorados represented themselves with lots of jars of the smoked trout paste they had developed together as a quartet. The jars had white labels with all their smiling faces printed on the front in blue (Israeli flag, anyone?) and on the back little testimonials from each of them with individual pictures of them: the violinists as a couple. Their quote was how this smoked trout paste had brought them together as a group and also added romance to their relationship (I don't think they're actually a couple). The cellist, Diane, raved about how much her little kid students loved it, but the violist's was the funniest of all: how she'd had problems with depression, but this delicious smoked trout paste had put a new kind of joy into her life, and she recommended it for anyone suffering from mood disorders. Everywhere we went at this barbeque (it was in this big sprawling backyard that looked a lot like my Aunt Susan and Jay's place in Connecticut) there were open jars, but none of us had any idea what to put it on. Definitely not the hot dogs.

rainy season

2005-11-03T12:32:00.000-05:00

Trying this out. I'm sick of all the problems with the old site, as much as I loved the off-the-beaten path of its name. I had to resort to using my cats' names to title this one, for lack of anything else available that at all simply described me. Anyway, I'm off to a run-through with the dancers, last one before we go into the theater for the big opening... I get all these nice free clothes from the costume designer. Nice gig.
It's started raining here, finally, which means winter has begun in Israel. I keep thinking of the shots in the Michel Gondry for the Foo Fighters' Everlong: how the camera seems absolutely soaked, and every dream-sequences takes on a rainforest-y richness. At night I lie in my bed listening to the rain beat so hard against my window like an orchestra of drums. It's so nice and filling after all these months of dry. I understand why people pray for this.