{"id":1074,"date":"2011-01-18T14:45:01","date_gmt":"2011-01-18T22:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/216.92.17.21\/?p=1074"},"modified":"2011-03-23T16:15:31","modified_gmt":"2011-03-23T23:15:31","slug":"draft-set-recordings-feel-free-join","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/?p=1074","title":{"rendered":"recent kaddishim"},"content":{"rendered":"

Victoria’s fiddle teacher, Michelle Levy, joined us for dinner after their lesson, and she agreed to join me in the “Kaddish” recording. She asked to hear it once, and then we started ProTools rolling and she joined in with her improv on kaddish_2010.12.20_fiddlerWithoutRoof<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Tuesday morning when I woke up way too early, I reread Mira’s post “we dying dogs<\/a>” along with a bunch of others including “a kaddish for eichmann<\/a>,” where Mira speculated that nobody had ever said a Kaddish for Eichmann \u2014 a kaddish Kaddish, not just mourned him.\u00a0 Surely he was mourned.<\/p>\n

I had a reaction that wasn’t much different from my \u00a0first reading of “we dying dogs,” seen in the beginning of the comments I wrote that day. Feelings of wanting to strangle the guy had stuck with me all day, so when it was time to record a Kaddish, I decided I’d play one for him (kaddish_2010.12.20_m’sBiofather.mp3<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

[Okay \u2014 I’m gonna say this, and hope I don’t regret it.\u00a0 It may well be Pandora’s Box for me. But if that Box opens, I’m gonna slam it back down really hard, lock it up tight and throw away the key.\u00a0 Here’s the key to “we dying dogs” \u2014 the reason I can’t feel it.\u00a0 The reason I can write it, describe it, look at it \u2014 and feel nothing<\/em>.\u00a0 Is that this was only one incident.\u00a0 Just one.\u00a0 One that I wasn’t raised with knowing or hearing over and over again.\u00a0 And by the time I heard it I think I was old enough to have the tools to hold myself together.\u00a0 He was, after all, dying at the time.\u00a0 And this was among his milder<\/em> acts…\u00a0 But what I think of is that question I did not have the guts to ask him.\u00a0 The answer to which I did not want to receive.\u00a0 For now I realize that he would have answered my question, and the answer would have been in the affirmative.\u00a0 The thing I both wanted and did not want to know.\u00a0 I think, for me, “we dying dogs” is a relief.\u00a0 A relief that I didn’t hear what I didn’t want to hear \u2014 something that was infinitely worse than the piece Erin has somehow managed not only to read, but reread more than once.\u00a0 I couldn’t do that.\u00a0 \u2014mira]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, I don’t know what else happened in that guy’s life, but somehow I got it into my head that maybe nobody ever said a Kaddish for him, either. I must be wrong about that, but that’s where my head was. I thought playing “Kaddish” for him might be just about as hard as it was playing “Kaddish” for Eichmann back at the beginning of this project. His crimes are far smaller than Eichmann’s, sure, but what I read in that story is the only thing\u2014the \u00a0only<\/em> thing\u2014I know about the guy. And I still want to strangle him. So I decided to try to play him his “Kaddish.”<\/p>\n

[No, I think you’re right.\u00a0 I don’t even remember a kaddish at the funeral.\u00a0 Yours, I do believe, is it.\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 At the funeral, the one speech someone gave talked about what a horror show he was.\u00a0 After that, even I had nothing left to say and left it all unsaid.]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It was hard.\u00a0No, not as hard as Eichmann’s (kaddish_2010.11.08_eichmann<\/strong>)\u2014where do you even start with the rage, the outrage, the despondency that has to come to mind when you think of Eichmann? Relistening to that one now, I can hear the effort it took, the anger that shook me and propelled me through.<\/p>\n

My anger on this one wasn’t like that, but it was noticeable, and troublesome, causing lots of wrong notes and little problems. And I think what was hard about it is that I realized that even I am conflicted about the guy, the hateful character in that story, because suddenly I realized that for all that, he did at least contribute some darned good genetic matter, and if that’s the only good thing he ever did in his life\u2014I must be wrong, that can’t be possible\u2014then he did do at least one darned good thing in his life.<\/p>\n

[This is exactly the Tzaddik’s point of view \u2014 on everything.]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So now what am I supposed to think of him?<\/p>\n

[Well.\u00a0 You brought this up.\u00a0 So here goes.\u00a0 It was not<\/em> good genetic matter.\u00a0 It was so damaged \u2014 radioactive, to tell the truth,\u00a0 from one of the accidents in the lab (Manhattan Project) \u2014 that he was sterile.\u00a0 Or was supposed to be.\u00a0 I have no idea how I managed to come through relatively undamaged given that massive dose of radiation.\u00a0 He demanded an abortion \u2014 which was not legal at the time…\u00a0 I don’t know what I could have been thinking to want to survive.\u00a0 The man was a bomb maker.\u00a0 He really<\/em> loved his bombs…]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[Do you see what I did there in that message quoted above?\u00a0 I made the abortion thing <\/em>rational.\u00a0 Who knows what the ‘real’ story was…\u00a0 See ‘The Paintbrush’]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The performance was a mess.<\/p>\n

[With good reason.\u00a0 And yet, your playing made me feel warm and protected, somehow.\u00a0 I don’t know how you did that \u2014 and yet you conveyed the rest as well, at the same time]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Prompted by a remark from Mira about my doing less self-disclosure, I summarized for her my life’s collection of sob stories and concluded that they’re not much to whine about in the grand scheme of things. On the whole, my life has been pretty easy, and I’ve had the luxury of being well-equipped to handle the storms. But it does seem as though we all measure our traumas on our own personal sliding scale, so I decided to play a Kaddish for all our own particular crap\u2014our personal set of baggage that we schlepp around with us: kaddish_2010.12.22_allThoseStories<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

just a mournful tune
\nwith misgivings
\nI like it tonight…
\noops, kicking up some dust \/ a bit frantic
\nbut then you calm down again
\ndesir\u2014
\nshit \u2014 can’t we just skip this part? change the recipe? substitute real butter instead of echo thing?
\nstrong again<\/p>\n

I didn’t feel impatient with it tonight at all
\nand I think I got a taste of kitty… a special treat<\/p>\n

I’ve stopped seeing.
\nbut maybe you’ve stopped seeing
\nand that’s why I can’t see?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I didn’t know what I was doing here, basically. Out of sense of obligation to self-disclose, I wrote my little list, and I just didn’t see the point in doing anything but drag it to the trash. So I decided to leave it in drafts, play a kaddish, and then come back to finish my list.<\/p>\n

So. I started with the plan of doing a kaddish for all our particular crap, thinking we have it, why not say it a Kaddish and move on for a change.<\/p>\n

But while I was playing I thought, why not just try to play the tune decently? And then I thought, why am I playing a kaddish for petty disappointments when we’re here to mourn our losses, and I have yet to play a single kaddish for Nanc, the second great love of my love who died<\/em>, and I’m whining about this crap. And I think, no, I need to really play a kaddish for her, and then a bunch more. I can’t just toss that off, I need to dig in on what it is that her loss represents, and I just haven’t done that work. And I really can’t have this distracted mess be my first kaddish for her.<\/p>\n

Or can’t I just play the damned music and be a musician with some professional integrity, instead of trying to play and process all at once, which I know<\/em> (“know”… well, okay, we seem to be learning otherwise\u2026) is not the way to play well.<\/p>\n

And then I was back to thinking, this is about people dying<\/em>, and I’ve been playing kaddishim to these abstractions, disappointments, incidents, and Nanc is dead, and Mira’s had crap like bioFather dying to figure out, maybe I should just play the music, be the cantor, try to be a source of comfort, do my job, move on.<\/p>\n

[I’m guilty of this as well \u2014 <\/em>kaddishim for abstractions \u2014 because it’s a lot easier.\u00a0 Because I’m an academic.\u00a0 Because I’d do anything rather than feel the loss.\u00a0 ‘Abandonment’ my ex-husband-the-psychoanalyst calls it.\u00a0 I mean, who wants to feel <\/em>that?]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes! Kitty joined in for the first time! That was Kaja Knekkebr\u00f8d, the youngest, Kjersti’s favorite. I loved her additions. I actually made time in one pause for her to finish.<\/p>\n

[It was very sweet.\u00a0 I loved it.]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So the next night I attempted my first Kaddish specifically for Nanc: kaddish_2010.12.23_nanc<\/strong>.
\nI used the real butter there\u2014all the same notes (except for my misfingering) but not the stopped bell. Wanting to figure out if it’s the notes themselves or the stopping that bugs Mira so much. Apparently it’s the stopping.<\/p>\n

I decided my first Kaddish for Nanc should remember the Nanc I first met. Alison and I had driven up to London, ON to spend Thanksgiving weekend with Glenn and Nancy. We cooked and ate and drank and played games all weekend. I remembered that night Nanc got home when we had pans flying in the kitchen. She said she was going up to change into something more black. She came back down in the promised black looking rumpled and cuddly and cracked us up with her comment that the bathroom counter looked like a contacts farm with our four sets of paraphernalia. We made honey braised rabbit and Canadian cheddar-ale soup. A big salad. All in Silver Palate New Basics<\/em>, if you’re hungry\u2026<\/p>\n

A word debate came up in dinner conversation, and she grabbed for the giant dictionary she kept right in the dining room for that purpose. During dessert she said, “Let’s make up a word game!” And so we did. It was like Calvin Ball\u2014the rules changed as fast as we could figure them out, and much of the play was drowned out by laughter. We collapsed in a puppy pile on the couch.<\/p>\n

If I hadn’t already fallen in love, I did that night.<\/p>\n

lovely and filled with life
\nand love
\nand mistakes
\nthat are forgiven \/ forgivable<\/p>\n

with a little woof<\/p>\n

and gee\u2014 that’s strange \u2014<\/p>\n

did you delete the bounce-me-out echoey bit?
\nI missed it completely and was never bounced out<\/p>\n

or maybe I was just carried away
\nwith your love
\nand imperfection
\nthat was perfect<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Deb led two funerals the next day, and kaddish_2010.12.24_rebDeb’s2<\/strong> was by her request for those two women; may they rest in peace.<\/p>\n

more resonant \u2014 literally
\nah. you have an audience
\nvery nice [audience must help \u2014 you KNOW people are listening, it sharpens your skills \u2014 this is strong and beautiful]
\na few elephants…
\nI don’t feel an intruder here
\nI like the company
\nCan see them sitting, some standing
\nA long table, light colored cloth. I want to say white, but nobody does white cloths, and maybe it’s not cloth but light wood? light something
\nfood\/ no leftover dishes not entirely cleared
\nso this must be afterwards. the afterwards of something
\nThe sound is lovely..
\nso-called echo very nicely done. [I want to say thank you, but it’s not for me, it’s for THEM…]
\nStill. I say
\nThank you!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Once again Mira’s perceptions were astonishing. I played this one in the sanctuary of Random Lutheran, about twenty-five minutes before a Christmas Eve service featuring Quadre horn quartet. After warming up and checking my music, etc., I turned on a recording app on my iPhone, set it on the front pew, and then took a few steps back to play the Kaddish.<\/p>\n

Most of the congregation was still in the fellowship hall sharing a potluck dinner\u2014yes, on long tables covered in white!\u2014but a handful of people were already waiting in the pews. I was tired from a long day after a short night and was needing to gear up for a long show (almost non-stop horn quartets). I knew that I would regret waiting to record it at home after the service, and as it turns out my family was already in bed by the time I got home, and I was fried. So beforehand it was, in a Lutheran church with a small audience. My head was filled with a combination of thoughts:<\/p>\n