Category Archives: community

Sharing

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I want to share your orange, my 4-year-old grandson, Manu, insists, at a point when I’ve already broken off most of the pieces, handing them to him one by one, while plopping a few others in my mouth.

I have two pieces left, I hold each out in a palm. What should we do?

Both for me! He reaches out to grab them. But I give him one and eat the other, as a shadow crosses his face. I can tell he’s trying not to show his disappointment.

We’re sharing… remember?

I’ve been struck how sharing is anything but innate, as much as we pedestalize it. Despite all the efforts of well-meaning parents and Mr. Rogers, when we want something, we want something. And while as adults, we may have learned the social nicety of curbing that urge, I’ll certainly admit to sometimes wishing I could have the whole cookie or the whole slice of cake I’m reluctantly sharing with my partner. If it’s that delicious, our inner id is hard to tame.

But while most of us eventually become socialized about sharing food and other small things, the impulse to share is clearly not wired into our brains. And while that flaw may have originated as a survivalist necessity, I’m wondering how much of our world’s troubles would be averted if sharing were innate rather than a learned human response.

Take wars, nearly all of which can find their impetus in the desire for resources: land, minerals, oil, etc. And take the corporate mindset, which makes no secret that no matter how much or how little socially responsible good they might do, their highest priority and bottom line is to attain profits for their shareholders. And not just any profits, but the maximum amount of profits possible. It’s why the political position of limited taxes is so popular and why social programs are often derided. Why should I “share” my wealth so some poor person I don’t even know can have food on the table? Or, as Garrison Keillor so neatly put it, He didn’t want his taxes to go toward building a road that went to North Dakota because he never went to North Dakota. 

Back when my daughter was young I remember sitting by the sandbox in the playground when another kid who was bigger and older grabbed her pail. I took it away from him. You need to ask her to share it with you, I said. The other mother, whom I didn’t know, gave me a nasty look. I usually let them work it out, she said.

And what would either of them learn from that? If you’re bigger than someone you can take what you want, and if you’re smaller you just need to suck it up? On many levels, this is already true, but I wasn’t yet ready to wrest my 2-year-old away from her fantasy that the world is a good place and its inner workings are fair. If my daughter grabbed your kid’s pail, I’d do the same thing, I told the woman. Because perhaps there’s a small piece of me that hasn’t latched onto the idea that the world could be fair, if we all tried harder and leaned against our socialization into sharing.

It’s why I didn’t give Manu both remaining pieces of the orange. And guess what? Five minutes later he forgot all about it and was onto playing Tickle Tunnel. I hope he didn’t forget the sharing lesson, even though he may have, and in either case, there’s no guarantee it will stick. We’re all just humans, after all. But I’m thinking that no matter how old we are, we all can lean more into sharing our resources–and calling out (or gently calling in) behavior that makes sharing a lower priority than accumulating resources for our own use.

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A Memoir of Music and Transformation

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Can art change our lives? Why does creative expression matter so much?

And to whom does it matter? Should “great art” be confined to those who’ve achieved some recognized level of skill/talent/recognition in a world where we don’t define value as the impact it makes on others, but on its ability to be commoditized. Or should we equally appreciate all attempts of creative expression (even if some may touch us more than others) as an offering from one soul to another, and perhaps a mutual healing?

These are questions I’ve been thinking about ever since I returned to piano and stuffed all the baggage about my musical family, creativity, and judgment (by both self and others) into Imperfect Pitch, a memoir, I’ve yet to publish. But recently, my good friend, Lanette Sweeney, (whose blog, Paying Attention: A New Mindfulness Method, I highly recommend) told me about Vijay Gupta’s Restrung: A Memoir of Music and Transformation.

Like me, Gupta had perfect pitch. And like my younger child, he started Suzuki violin lessons at four years old and figured out in a couple of weeks how to play all of Book 1 when he was supposed to be standing on a pizza box and learning how to bow. But unlike either of us, Gupta was, perhaps, a child prodigy, or perhaps pushed into that box. His very scary, overachieving parents, who hit him when he wasn’t practicing enough or to their liking, and several years later shamed him for only coming in second in a prestigious concerto competition, brought him 90 miles into New York City several times a week, so he could train with highly ranked teachers. By the time he was nine, he was touring as a soloist. At the age of 19 he became the youngest player to ever gain an orchestra position with the LA Philharmonic–the dream dangled before many conservatory students who labor and train for years to try to “win” a job with a reputed orchestra.

But for Gupta, this was not the dream. As passionate as he was about the music he played (which is obvious in the memoir from his descriptions of pieces he performed) he felt empty. Still reeling from his parents’ abuse and subsequent estrangement, he turned to overeating and alcohol to numb his pain. Until he found himself with a small group of players giving a “charity performance” on Skid Row in LA, where the audience, not adhering to the classical concert etiquette of deathly quiet listening to the point of doing everything you can to suppress a cough, freely emoted whatever they were feeling as the musicians played.

As Gupta listened to the stories of the audience members sharing their lives and their pain, he began to see the reactions of people in Skid Row as a sort of reciprocal music, a mutual gift. He realized that the musicians weren’t there in the role of experts or to change or heal people. In fact, through the experience, they were the ones being healed. Without knowing it, Gupta says, every time I walked into a shelter or clinic with my violin, I was loosening the grip of my own story, rewriting my relationship to my instrument, to my music, and to myself. 

Gupta founded Street Symphony, an organization where professional musicians and community members engage in musical collaborations and perform in homeless shelters, prisons, transitional housing and other spaces that are often deprived of the ability to create and engage in artistic collaboration. Its core programs include a songwriting and mentorship series led by survivors of homelessness and trauma and a project inside the Los Angeles County jails that brings together professional musicians and incarcerated artists for shared rehearsals and performances.” Gupta explains in this three-minute video why these kind of collaborations matter so much (and also gives us a taste of his juicy playing).

What I loved most about this book was Gupta’s humility and honesty. So many “music memoirs” I’ve read sound snotty, making me feel (as much as I might want to be) like I’m not really “a member of the club,” but this book focuses on the flaws of being human–Gupta’s, his parents, (whom he describes with admirable understanding, despite the way they treated him) and the many people the Skid Row community he encounters in his work with Street Symphony. Highly recommended as a story of #artforchange and why music–or any creative pursuit–absolutely matters.

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Beware Your Darlings!

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Last Tuesday, as we were walking in the woods, my partner said to me. How come you don’t show me so many of your poems any more? There are some I don’t even know until I see them published. 

He was referring to a poem I’d published the day before in Second Coming, a poem-a-day protest against the current administration’s fascist regime, which we both subscribe to on Substack. I’d mentioned how surprised I was that the poem got so many likes. I’ve published there before and usually only received only one or two reactions. This poem had already gotten 13! And they were mostly from people I didn’t even know.

I was touched that he wanted to see more of my poems. Not that I thought he wouldn’t want to–after all, we met at an open poetry reading in Greenwich Village, and love of poetry has always been a connector for us. But he doesn’t write many poems any more and I have strong connections with other writers, so I don’t generally make him the first stop for feedback. Also, these days, I’m more centered in my writing process and don’t usually share my work with people until I’ve given it a chance to simmer and revised it myself. I also have less of a need for validation for the many things I might jot down in a fit of emotional angst, some of which might end up being publishable poems, but many of which will not.

So, I explained that all to him, gaining my own clarity as we talked about it. And then he told me he had made peace with the idea that he’d likely never be more than a mediocre poet. You’re more of a journalist who occasionally writes in poetic form. You have some great images, but I think what’s often missing is that oomph, I told him.

Our conversation morphed into an exploration of the crevices of mediocrity, and how I also had finally made peace with accepting that I would never be more than a mediocre pianist, though I still feel that as a writer, I can rise above mediocrity by touching people, even if I likely will never make it to the “big leagues.” Then we happily reminisced about our days involved in that Village reading, and the poets we knew there, one of whom had made the jump into national recognition.

It was only after we got home and were in the kitchen trying to declutter the abundance of cucumbers and zucchini, that I asked, So, did you like the poem?

He hesitated. Well… I don’t think it was one of your strongest. 

Really? What didn’t you like?

He hesitated again. Actually, I don’t really remember it. Let me read it again. 

He disappeared and returned a few minutes later. It’s kind of like journalism. I mean I already know about the MAGA fortress on our corner. 

It is true that a lot of the images in this particular poem come from our shared experience. But that didn’t seem like a helpful comment. Maybe he was getting back at me for my comments about his journalistic poetry, but he’d agreed with my assessment. And it’s not his style to be passive-aggressive.

I just don’t think it’s your strongest poem, he repeated, cramming his foot farther into his mouth. I did like the image of the girl in the pink dress dancing. 

I write this not to garner sympathy. Truth be told, I was more inclined to laugh at my partner’s floundering than cry about his lack of support, because I knew he was genuinely trying to be supportive, even though this poem clearly didn’t grab him. He even deliberately went to back to Substack to give the poem a like and make a comment, as he makes a point of doing on many of my posts. However, it is a cautionary tale. Be careful about what you ask for from those you love and whose opinions have extra weight. In other words–beware of your darlings. (This is different from the phrase, kill your darlings, a standard trope of writer advice that warns you not to let something something stay if it doesn’t belong in a particular piece, no matter how precious you might find your crafting of a particular phrase.)

This is why I don’t often share my writing–especially writing that is more raw and still-in-progress–with close friends and family. Instead, I depend on my writing communities, where feedback structures have been specifically designed to provide support and all members share mutual goals and a common understanding, coated in respect without other interfering baggage.

But once something is published, it belongs to everyone. That’s what publishing means–making public. All cards on the table. All comments allowed. From anyone who happens to see it. I’m just happy I haven’t gotten very much hate mail.

So have at it. Would love to hear your stories–the good, the bad, and the ugly–about sharing work with those you love. Or if you want to read the poem in question, it’s here. And BTW, I did share this with my partner before posting to get his okay, out of respect and the deep love we have for each other.

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Grabbing the Stage

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A big part of who I am stems from the blessing and curse of coming from a musical family.

On my mother’s side, my grandfather, Pop-Pop, was a symphony violinist. He lived next door to us when I was a child and I spent many hours watching him frown at the full length mirror as he practiced, carefully positioning the bow and playing each note over and over until he got it exactly how he wanted it. From him, I learned the importance of striving for perfection, even though reaching for it might seem impossible.

My father’s mother’s family, the Glicksteins, were just as passionate in their love of music and equally accomplished in their ability to play from the heart. My great-grandfather Abe Glickstein, a clarinet player, was known for giving Sunday afternoon living room concerts featuring his seven talented children for his immigrant neighbors at the turn of the 20th century, and for offering the services of a three-man klezmer combo (him and his two sons) to the community if music was needed for a wedding or other simcha. These great uncles, Max and Dave, went on to have notable musical careers, while their sister, my Grandma Jeanne, made her living teaching piano and recorder, and running summer music programs to spread the joy that fueled her life.

The curse of this story, as I wrote about extensively in my yet-to-be published memoir, Imperfect Pitch, was feeling that I had some sort of impossible musical bar to live up to, and I didn’t have either the patience or or the desire that Pop-Pop had to spend agonizing hour after hour at my instrument to achieve it.

But the blessing, which I think comes at least in part from my family constellation, is a love of the stage. Not so much for musical performance, since I’m still not as confident as I might want to be in that area. But give me a podium, and I’m in my happy place, whether I’m reading my poems or stories, talking on a panel about some aspect of writing craft, recounting my witness trips to the border and the Homestead Detention Center, standing up impromptu in front of a group of protesters on the street, or teaching the basics of classical argument theory to a room of bored college students.

There is something so magical about being listened to.

So, I get how disappointed my three-year-old grandson Manu felt when his parents told him they were going to take him to see the Tokyo Paradise Ska Band, which he has been totally obsessed with for a year, but, no, he was going to be on the stage with them, as he enacts when he listens to the videos, donning his sunglasses and strutting around his stage set of stacked mats, toy saxophone in one hand, mic in the other.

Because even though a seat in the audience can be a safe place, a time to relax, reset, and feel comfortably anonymous, there is something about getting out there on stage that can add a bit of technicolor to our often muted sense of self. Even if the journey there might feel like you’re standing on a balance beam above a pot of boiling oil, as I know it does for many who experience very real stage fright.

If that’s your story, I recommend, as my co-facilitator and I taught for many years in a course we developed called Public Speaking for the Terrified, to start small: read your work, share your art, play a song, or speak your heart to a trusted group of friends in your living room, making them promise that they will give you only praise for what they liked and what resonated. At some point you may be ready for a combo of both praise–never forget the praise–and critical feedback, but make sure to have a notetaker to write both of these things down. Otherwise, all you’ll remember is the criticism.

Whether it’s genetic or environmental or some of both, I’m grateful to my forbears for modeling not only their love of their art, but their passion for sharing it. And grateful that, for the most part, stage fright is not an issue for me. Perhaps some day I’ll take a more terrifying step and sign up at some large, anonymous karaoke bar. Or not.

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Confessions of a Closet Sports Fan

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True confessions! I’ve been addictively following the NBA playoffs.

This doesn’t fit in with image I project to most who know me, or the words I might use to describe myself: writer, activist, gardener, nature-lover. And like most, I abhor the money that casts its dark shadow over this and other big sports events. $10,000 for a ticket to Madison Square Garden is obscene. Even $1,000 that Mayor Mamdani spent for standing room at the top of the arena is obscene. And unnecessary. Sports should be for the people. All the people. Not a commodity that can be manipulated to squeeze as much money out of hopeful hearts as possible.

Yet, every night of the playoffs, I’ve tuned in on my free-trial Youtube TV subscription (which I will cancel at the end of its 21 days) my heart with the hordes and multitudes at the watch parties in Central Park. I have not lived in New York for 46 years, yet, this doesn’t make many any less of a New Yorker. There’s a certain “Only in New York” way we have about how we relate that transcends our diverse backgrounds and brings us together. I still remember being on the subway in 1969 when the Mets were in the World Series. Everyone who had one had their transistor radios glued to their ears. When Tommie Agee homered in Game 3, the entire subway car erupted in cheers.

Photo by Mark Dixon from Pittsburgh, PA, CC BY 2.0

This is the kind of comeraderie I often long for, a swelling excitement and connection among strangers for a common goal. I hate to say that I’ve felt this more often at sports events than at peace demonstrations, but unfortunately that’s true. There have been occasional exceptions–The Women’s March in DC in 2017; March for Nuclear Disarmament in New York 44 years ago today on June 12, 1982. But I can often feel a more compelling swell of excitement huddled around a television with people rooting for a similar outcome, even if that outcome is random and doesn’t really matter in the wider world. Or maybe because the stakes are lower, it’s easier not to feel the thick of fear and disappointment one might feel in the wake of a devastating Supreme Court decision or a harmful act committed by our government or another country.

To put this all in a little more context, I grew up in a sports-dominated household. No one played, but the TV was always on: baseball, football, basketball, hockey…I don’t know if I would have survived my teenage years without the Mets and the Knicks to divert my attention from my own angst to something random that was totally outside of my control, yet–at the time–mattered deeply. Finding friends who shared that passion made it easier to stay away from experimenting with the wilder world of drugs and alcohol and sex. We could ground ourselves in the safer land of fandom. I guess we could have also been as passionate about other things that I might consider more in my bailiwick now, like music or art. But sports was what was offered in my house–and in my city–as a balm of connection.

There’s a lot more to my sports story, but even now, I’m self-conscious about nerding out on too many extraneous details people are unlikely to want to hear. In fact, due to some hard-to-shed embarrassment, I’ve been procrastinating about writing this since Wednesday (the day I usually blog). But I guess that’s a good thing, because then I wouldn’t have been able to end with the Knicks’ amazing comeback in Game 4.

playitusa.com

(And yes, I totally believe T jinxed Game 3. If only instead, he’d donated some of his billions to buy everyday New Yorkers some tickets–what a PR coup that would have been!)

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Why Can’t This Night Be Different From All Other Nights?

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Photo: D. Dina Friedman

Of all the Jewish holidays, Passover is my favorite,  I’ve always liked that the Passover Haggadah (the book that is read during the seder that tells the story of the Jews’ liberation from slavery in Egypt) has so many metaphors that are easily adaptable to modern times. Over the years, I’ve spent many hours adapting the text to whatever issue is plaguing (pun intended) me most at the moment, as well as enjoying the contributions of my family and community in making the text and the rituals it includes meaningful and relevant.

But this year, with all the conflict going on in the world and in our own country, it’s hard to get into the mindset for celebration, even with the holiday’s themes of liberation against oppression and hope for the future. The small group I celebrated with last night started the night by acknowledging our fear, anger, and unease at what’s going on in our country and in the wider world. And yet, I was also so glad to be in this circle of friends, most of whom I’ve known for decades. When it was my turn it speak, I said, To me, Passover is about community, more than it’s about God, or Egypt, or any of that. 

As I think about that comment a day later, I’m wondering whether it’s actually true, or if I was just thinking off the top of my head. I’m not saying there’s no truth in what I said. Community is definitely a big factor, and I really don’t care that much about most of the traditional Passover story. But Passover does comprise more than community. It even comprises more than the yearly menu-squabbling and “back-seat cooking” as my partner and kids and I all pile into the kitchen to grate and chop the vegetables. Or the reminiscences of all the goofy things we used to do to keep it light and entertaining: putting the dog on the porch so he could walk in when we opened the door for the prophet Elijah, or the years we told the story through improvisation games, or through parodies of songs from musicals, or raps.

But there’s serious stuff, too: I love the metaphor of the internal journey through “the narrow place” (Egypt) and the casting off of internal “chomaytz” (the leavened products you don’t eat during Passover) as a way of ridding yourself of excessive ego, pride, or unresolved emotions. I love some of the side stories: the midwives who helped the Jewish women hide their babies instead of following orders to kill them; Nachsun, whom I wrote about last year, who jumped into the Red Sea, before the waters parted an act of incredible hope when it seemed there was no hope to be had.

And, there are some troublesome parts: Like the ten plagues as collective punishment against an entire people for the actions of a tyrant. Or, really, any aspect of “us” and “them,” as two separate entires with a winner and loser. I’m not saying that oppression of the Israelites in Biblical Egypt didn’t exist, but I wish I could think we were past oppressing others, and celebrating victories where innocent people, like the first-born children of the Egyptians, lost their lives.

And, of course, the elephant in the room: the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza where 64,000 children were killed or injured in 23 months of war. And the current U.S./Israel war agains Iran whose victims include 168 elementary school girls whose school was bombed. Hard to say, “next year in Jerusalem,” (the closing words of the seder) after that. I’d like to think that after 3,000 years we’ve moved beyond killing children, I’d even like to think we’ve moved beyond war, or beyond tyrants, but I guess that’s too much to hope for.

So I can understand why our host last night opened the seder by expressing how hard it was to even sit down and celebrate Passover. Yet, it was the small community of like-minded people I celebrated with that helped me feel able to take a small step back into my Jewish identity. We still can use the metaphors and inspiring parts of the story to envision a better world. And after that, act on them to make that vision more of a reality.

Chag Sameach!

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Art Saves Lives

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Next week I’ve been invited to participate in Mission Belonging’s annual solstice reading, offering poems that “that invite us to reflect on light and darkness in our lives” and also to say something about how Art Saves Lives, the backbone idea of their mission of “building bridges between veterans and citizens using the language of creative expression to promote empathy, foster understanding, and build authentic community.”

So, I’ve been thinking about how art saves lives. Especially for the core population of the Mission Belonging community: “service members, veterans, military family members, caregivers, and healthcare workers who have been gifted opportunities to use the arts as a tool for narration, self-care and socialization to offset their struggles with emotional and physical injuries caused by trauma.”

While I don’t check the box for any of these categories, I feel completely included as a civilian member of the Mission Belonging poetry workshop I attend every week, an absolute highlight I always look forward to. And I feel blessed and honored by the courage and vulnerability I consistently hear in the writing of my fellow workshop members. In so many ways, their art saves my life. It reminds me that being true to ourselves and then taking action from the core of these truths is one of our most powerful antidotes for dealing with these tumultuous times, whether they’re affecting us directly or indirectly as an individual, culture, country, and/or society. And writing–or any kind of art-making; writing just happens to be my main modality–can help us tunnel our way to this truth, which societal forces and life’s daily challenges tend to obscure.

I’m not sure whether art has directly saved my life. But when I think about the question, that tunnel image continues to come up. Maybe I can live some semblance of life in the darkness of the tunnel, but art is the way get to the truer, clearer, shining life of the light. Art also says that we matter: our stories, our ideas, the fluctuating weight of our feelings, the way we make sense of our often senseless world. And engaging in art with Mission Belonging (or in any supportive community context) assures us that whatever we need to express, there will be witnesses to hold it as the delicate, precious gift that it is. As is the creator of the art in question–also a delicate and precious gift.

Mission Belonging has continued to save many lives by opening more doors to the power of art, despite having lost a lot of government grant support this year. If you’re still working on year-end giving (or even if you’re not), I’d encourage you to consider a donation.

And my wish to you in this season of darkness: Find a way through the tunnel into the light.

Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light

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The day I arrived in New York to help deal with my father’s medical emergency, they were repairing the sewer pipe under my parents’ house.

The onslaught of noise was deafening as workers cut through an entire square of concrete then lowered themselves into the cavernous maze of underground pipes to search for the blockage. It took them two days to find the troubled spot, which had already plagued my parents for a week: no showers, no laundry, minimal dishwashing, and a directive to flush the toilet only when absolutely necessary. And after all that noise and digging, the blockage turned out to be not in the area where they’d dug at all. They found the problem in the sad little brick-enclosed square of dirt my parents call the “front yard”–under a rosebush that had already been reduced to small rootball and a few aspiring fronds.

The next day, when my father was officially referred to hospice and people rained all that “death is a passage” stuff on us, I thought about that sewer pipe–also a passage. And I also thought about the Dylan Thomas villanelle and its repeating haunting lines: Do not go gentle into that good night … Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

It isn’t that I want my father to fight against the reality of his dying. I feel grateful that he is not–and has never been–an angry or vengeful person. Even in his compromised state, while depressed about what is happening, he continues to exude kindness and express love and gratitude to those around him.

But I feel like raging. Not at the inevitability of my father’s death, but at the sadness of seeing him so frail and unable to do things for himself–the “dying” of my image of my 90+ year-old parents as timeless icons of longevity.

And I feel myself raging against the barely flickering “light” of my country. Yet this rage feels like a fruitless kick-the-floor-and-flail-my-arms temper tantrum. Pundits tell us to keep breathing and find joy. The sun is brilliant on the half-inch of freshly fallen snow today. But where is the balance between digging and doing what we can and totally abandoning ship, closing our doors and taking out whatever might constitute our modern-day “opium pipe” to lose ourselves in a stupor of disempowerment and apathy.

I’m forever grateful to Bishop Marianne Edgar Budde, who was able to channel her rage into a calm and quiet plea for mercy, focusing the whole time she spoke, toward whatever light might be left that’s still shining on who we could be–individually and collectively. And I’m wondering if that’s the kind of light that flashes before our eyes as we near the end of our lives in addition to reliving all of our life’s significant moments. I’m wondering what my father, an Emmy Award-winning journalist, is thinking as he sits hooked up to his oxygen machine with the New York Times spread on his lap, trying to stay awake long enough to get through more than a paragraph and make sense of all that’s happening around him.

Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

While we all have to accept death, as hard as it is, we mustn’t go gentle into this dark time, or accept the numerous attacks on our Constitution as the legitimate prerogative of a new leader. I feel grateful for the many in our community who are joining together and channeling their quiet rage into action. Death may be a lonely endeavor, but raging can be a community enterprise. I’m grateful to the many who are standing up to support immigrants, transgender people, the environment, and the many other important issues that are under attack.

In fact, what keeps me finding joy is knowing I have community–both to support me during this difficult personal time and to work together on keeping the light shining.

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