links and run-on sentences

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(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

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

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

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

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

... 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

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.