When Malkah (an incarnation of the Shekhinah herself — and why not?) was a little girl, the tzaddik used to tell her ‘Bobo Stories’ (of all things) at bedtime to calm her to sleep. And this was long before his journeys with Rav Gavriel rescuing artifacts in India. As the tzaddik told it, the Prince…
Category: essays
Mira and Erin writing on themes of death, dying, grief, ritual, music, listening, Kaddish, Lev Kogan’s “Kaddish,” and so on.
a kaddish for perfection
When I lived in the foster home, before being rescued by the tzaddik’s intercession, there was more than one uncomfortable moment. I suppress them as best I can, but every once in a while one of them pops back up without permission and without apology for the intrusion. Like a jack-in-the-box wound way too tight,…
on emotions in performance
It’s time to make an attempt at unraveling the conundrum of emotions and musical performance.
a kaddish for self-evident truths
A good friend jogged my memory a week or two ago at the tail end of a post on his blog. Well, it was more like a jolt than a jog. It was something about the Declaration of Independence. Which I suppose we’ve all been taught nothing but respect, awe and reverence in the face…
kaddishim for preemption, el akarib, & monotony
recent kaddishim address questions of musical expression, tragic events in El Akarib, and the cold solitude of musical labor
death and the evil eye
George Foster long ago wrote a delightful article on envy and the evil eye. He spelled out exactly how the phenomenon works, particularly in Tzintzuntzan, but he claimed it extended throughout peasant society worldwide. The critics, primarily Marxists, claimed that he was wrong — but claimed it in such a way the affirmed his essential…
recent kaddishim
descriptions of kaddish recordings from 18-26 November 2010
two shape-shifters, one bed — and a kaddish for the undead
You probably know shape-shifters of your own, or you’re a shape-shifter yourself. T would say that of course you are. That you shape-shift every time you switch consciousness from say, your corporate self to your personal self. Your social self to your lover self. Your talking-to-mom on the phone self. To… Well, you get…
optimism in the face of reason, or: another kaddish for new orleans
Mira wrote about having a grudge against optimism in a recent essay that has left me wandering lost in my own mind. See, I agree with just about everything she wrote. I largely agree with her worldview. But I am a persistent optimist. I am an optimist in the face of considerable clear evidence that optimism is irrational.
epitaph for a tzaddik
New Orleans. With the voudon priest. Again. He gives me a reading. And one of the things he says is: “Don’t go to the cemetery. He’s not there. Go to the place where he still resides. The place where he still lives.” And all I can think of is well, where is that? Where is…