and a head full of songs

maggid

2010-04-01T23:54:00.001-07:00

grandpa will go to bed with those stories

in his whistling earlobes

stretched, long, squishy.

grandpa will not share the load

no matter how fiercely we beg

he will go to bed and so will the ships

their cracking wooden floorboards.

the ships and the trolleys, the coal

and the wooden crates. really there are three

only three stories he gives us

wrapped delicately, humorously in cheese cloth--

the wooden crates, the cherry tomatoes,

the stutters. the rest are under

grandpa's tongue, the edge peeking out

only when, open-mouthed in his recliner,

head tilted back, he snores.

so grandpa's snores are the farms

of East New York, a violent crash

to the depths of ocean water,

grandpa's snores are churning windmill,

a whole pizza pie across from the office,

manicured lawns, empty lots,

hat factories, angry wooden spoons,

suicidal sons, the pouches under a wife's eyelids,

gun in the dresser drawer, side of the freeway,

nachos with canned mushrooms.

sha, shtill--

grandpa, grandpa what will you give me?

how much is in your open palm

the softness of aged fingers

and if your hand is empty

but it is still a hand, is it enough?

new year

2010-03-05T00:04:00.000-08:00

when the covers are tucked

under the bed frame

so tight ankles stiffen

toes only point

to the end

cannot sleep like this

chunks of something

at the back of my throat

to start a new decade

friends, their bodies

weigh down the covers

on either side

of my body

hold me when it shakes

bring liquids

speak what they truly want

across my hairline

put me to sleep

when i am with child

there is only a moment

for my body

its shaking and

upheaval

no privacy with her

calling my name

beyond the door

my own hand and head

against porcelain

only for a moment

if i was a child

someone would always

touch me

when things hurt

lay hands on forehead

and chest, cheek on belly

stay with me

until deep breaths

women with cars

2010-03-02T13:55:00.000-08:00

i could have driven her somewhere

from the corner of my block

car stopped for a moment

red light, radio blaring the news

she pounds on my window

begging, words i barely hear

only his reassurance, to me

but i'm her husband

her husband- yes

that's what i was afraid of

Ariana told me- in the women's group

most if them have jumped

from moving cars

some on the highway

to escape men

i could have driven her somewhere

the sick dance happened so fast

two bodies circling my car

my own arms, reaching and retracting

to pull up the lock, find my cellphone

neither motions i could commit to

Tracy's voice haunted me as a child-

won't do no good to call

the police

always come late

if they come at all

and when they arrive...

i could have driven her somewhere

to a sister or a cousin

across a state border

yes of course i will help you

yes we are both women

Audre begins Zami with dedications

i read only yesterday

one for a small white girl

screaming for help on a dark street

and when the car door opens to her

girl runs, terrified by her rescuer's color

back towards that man, white

his boots rounding the corner

she, Audre says, will die stupid

i could have driven her somewhere

but if anyone in the bus stop crowd

judged me, i do not know

they stood, silent greek chorus

as if this is what happens

every time we wait for the B11,

a red light

Zach says they could be con-artists

trying to get in my car

i did the right thing

yes, i say but i don't think so

and to him, to all the boys

that is the end

but i am bent over

in the guise of touching my toes

to cry, unseen, steady this shaking

this churning stomach

i could have driven her somewhere

circled back around the block

picked her up out of sight

away from the man, the bus stop

but don't think of it

until i'm fifteen blocks too late

too late- it happened too fast

drive on, try to clear my vision

see the road behind my wheel

and later, i lie in bed

window open a crack

(radiator too high) and the cars

on the BQE are a part-time waterfall

my own car parked underneath

sheltered from snow and

i can drive anywhere, anytime

my day, fades behind me

the disturbing way these things become

stories we tell later

rock star! a rambling musical manifesto to wrap up summer

2009-09-13T14:23:00.000-07:00

introduction

when i was a kid i absolutely idolized the 60s and 70s, including rock-n-roll from the time (mostly Janis Joplin.) and when i was 10 or so i bought my first CDs-- nirvana and tracy bonham. i also remember having nine inch nails on cassette tape and a kurt cobain poster on my wall in 5th grade! but my attention to rock as a genre was relatively short-lived. and when, at 16 or so, i started to consider the idea of myself as a real musician, it was because of the jazz albums that spoke to me: ella fitzgerald, thelonious monk, oscar peterson, coleman hawkins... it has been mostly jazz musicians that i've continued to turn to in shaping my identity as a musician, and in seeking out musical communities.

now i'm not into genres and categories, and by no means do i only listen to jazz. i recognize that jazz and rock have similar roots, and continue to influence each other. but up until recently, "rock" scenes have felt personally uninviting. what i want to write about here is my participation in some self-identifying "rock" spaces this summer. in particular my summer involved 3 sexy things: willie mae rock camp for girls, afro-punk, and the black rock coalition. each of these could easily be a post in itself, so you should check out those links to learn more. rather than explain in great detail what each organization is all about, i want to write about my experience of the work they do, and what it's making me think about performance in general, and my own identity as a performer.

willie mae rock camp for girls

this is my 3rd year working with the 8-18 year-old girls at rock camp, alongside the other fabulous women and trans folks who volunteer. rock camp was the first place where i played with other women instrumentalists! i've found that gender alone is not an indicator of musical compatibility, but it's certainly an interesting experience to play with other women and to share stories of our experiences. i now play in a jazz trio with two women i met at rock camp. so certainly, rock camp has been important for me as a source of networking with other women.

but maybe more importantly, rock camp has pushed me up against notions of skill mastery. i come from a world of formalized music study. in this world, to play well, you have to know your scales and shit! rock camp, on the other hand, emerges from the riot grrrl movement. teaching at rock camp means telling the girls that every sound they make is great. if they are happy with it, we are happy with it. some of the campers may have never played an instrument before the week of camp, and yet we call them "rock stars" and place them on a real stage at the end of a week. and we are thrilled with the music they make- even if some of them are only going to strum the open strings of a guitar. i love this. what spaces exist where we truly feel like our every creative endeavor is worthy of being heard? how much do we, as artists (and especially women artists), censor and judge our own work? i love the idea that whatever the girls do is enough. this is something i struggle with-- i never feel like what i'm doing is enough.

sometimes, however, rock camp can suffer from a fairly rigid asthetic among volunteer tastes. i don't love the riot grrrl music. i respect what the movement represents but i think the music is boring. it might be shocking to say this out loud at camp! in fact, i had a private conversation with 2 other volunteers and we were so relieved to find, in private, that we all agreed on this point! i think the fact that the riot grrrl music sounds boring has something to do with the lack of skill that it requires. i don't want to come off as a music snob and, again, i can learn a lot from the DIY attitude. but i know it is not sufficient, for me to see women holding instruments and making noise. i think our presence and our message can only be more powerful if we have some fierce chops with which to deliver it. i do not want to hand young women the pressure that that statement can hold (and that i often experience as debilitating,) but the excitement of the power and opportunity for self-expression that comes with skill. in bass classes, i do teach the more experienced students how to play their scales and other more technical skills. but we'll only work on it if they're into it. (and some of them are really into it.) rock camp works best when it pushes the girls to honor all the sounds they attempt, but to also push themselves to take music seriously as a skill that can be developed.

the other gift that rock camp gives me is being reminded over and over again that music theory is not simply something you study in school. it's natural-- in our ears without us knowing it. for example, i watched this scenario: a 15 year-old girl who never played keyboard before. she has only been shown how to play a C major triad. in band practice at camp, she and her band write a song together, and there is a part in it where she plays the chord, repeatedly. but one day in practice, she moves to F and G triads, and then back to C (the IV and the V chord, back to the I chord!) no one has shown her this and she could never explain what she has done. but she has, totally instinctually, played the blues. the other band coach and i are stunned. we did not need to teach this girl the blues-- she went right for it; it was in her instincts, her ears and fingertips!

and speaking of the blues... one the most thrilling moments of camp this summer was a lunch-time performance by Beverly "Guitar" Watkins. this lady is the fiercest of the fierce. check out her story, watch her do her thing below, but you will only get a glimmer of what it was like to see her perform and to watch the campers take her in. they were already really into it, and then partway through the show this 69-year-old blues lady bent down on one knee, put the guitar up behind her head, and took a killer solo. say what!? the girls freaked out-- screaming and cheering. yes, yes! the blues is the roots. the kids dug it so much, i could only say, "the blues is alive and well!" Beverly may have been the least classifiably "rock" of the two weeks worth of performers, but if she's not a rock star, who is?

afropunk

"Afro-punk is a platform for the other Black experience, the one we don't see in our media. D.I.Y (Do It Yourself) is the foundation." (from afropunk.com) i went to a bunch of concerts at the afro punk music festival held in a parking lot outside of BAM. the lot is transformed-- a stage, a bmx ramp, space to skate, and walls for spray paint. the whole event is amazing, but i'll just mention a few things here.

first of all: Tamar Kali. i've heard her stuff before, and seen her videos, but i had never seen her live. her voice, her presence, the way she moves... at one point she asked the audience how our vaginas were doing! and i had to admit, i wished i'd brought a change of underwear! for real though. i don't want to over-analyze her brilliance (as i am wont to do) but definitely check her out yourself.

i also saw Saul Williams tear it up. this piece in particular stayed with me:

at the game rebellion show, the band facilitated some crowd surfing. the lead singer/ rapper was asking people to pack tightly up front and at first, only some people moved. but it was when he asked us to move up in the name of community organizing that myself, and many more folks followed suit! and it truly did feel like a community. all kinds of folks jumped off the stage and into the crowd-- big muscly men, women in tube tops that miraculously stayed on, small children. we reached our hands up high to hold them, passing them along, gracefully panicked under their weight. there was also a mosh pit that was beautiful to watch. two firsts for me.

black rock coalition

the BRC is "A collective of artists, writers, producers, publicists, activists and music fans assembled to maximize exposure and provide resources for Black artists who defy convention." (from blackrockcoalition.org) the BRC helps make rock camp happen and also runs other fabulous events. i attended 2 this summer.

the first event was a tribute to abbey lincoln, eartha kitt, miriam makeba, and odetta, held outdoors at lincoln center. i learned that tamar kali is not only a hardcore goddess; at this event, tamar was among the incredible singers showcased and she sang "c'est si bon," making the strength and versatility of her voice that much clearer. i love that groups like afro punk and the BRC are not concerned with genres. the 4 women they paid tribute to have got to be some of the biggest rock stars, even if folks wouldn't usually call them that! i was particularly pleased because they did one of my all time favorite miriam makeba songs. here is makeba herself doing "amampondo." i pretty much fainted the first time i saw this video.

the second BRC event i went to was a concert at a club in manhattan. out of character for me on several fronts- i went to a rock show at a rock venue, and i went by myself. i was having a kind of rough time personally which made me nervous about going out alone and to a place that is not usually my scene. but i had this instinct, even though i didn't know any of the bands, that somehow it would be exactly the right thing to do. and i waited for the last band because i knew, somehow, that she would give me just what i needed. i was so right. sophia ramos has an insanely powerful voice and performance. she has janis-esque control and grit and madness. i stood up front and danced like crazy. she sang originals and even a blues, at which point she walked through the audience. her set ended and i left immediately. my two trains came right away even though it was late at night. i got home feeling so fed by time with myself, some nyc luck, apt instincts, and the music i wanted so bad.

can i be a rock star? reflection and desire beyond genre

i'm making this confession: i want to be a rock star. maybe most musicians do? i don't mean that we want to be famous or make music that gets filed in record stores under "rock." what i'm learning is this: truly being a rock star means making music and performance that can be unapologetically loud, flashy, sexy, danceable, current, personal, messy and angry. in my fantasies, my music is all of these things, (though not necessarily all at once!) why is it a fantasy? why do these descriptors feel intimidating? in general, they have certainly not felt accessible to me in the communities where i make music. why not?

sometimes, when i am a bandleader i am afraid. as a bass player so often i stand on the side of the band, hold up the bottom, play the supporting role. i love this. but in certain bands i also sing, write the music, and stand in front. i am not a shy person but the idea of taking up so much space sometimes feels overwhelming. here i am: a woman, with short hair, hairy armpits, a huge and amplified instrument resting against my belly and breasts, a microphone in front of my face, and now there is an audience watching me. sometimes it feels almost like too much.

i usually have anxiety getting dressed before these gigs where i am up in front. i am no fashionista, but sometimes i enjoy getting creative with clothes. yet usually for these gigs i try on several outfits and opt for the least flashy of the bunch-- something not too bright, not too revealing, not to feminine. in the preparation for these gigs i am hyper aware of how my body may be perceived and it feels stifling. (once i play, of course, i pretty much forget all this.)

i am writing this here so i can let it go. i want to take a page from my rock star sisters. it doesn't mean i necessarily need to whip out my tits like sophia ramos (did you watch that video?!) but i want to be real about the ways that my whole self, body included, are a part of my performance. i can never control the way others perceive me- they can make it about my body whether it's hidden or exposed. but i want to decide, on my own terms, what my presentation means to me. this means- what does my music sound like? what does it say? who is in my band? how do we sound and how do we look? how are we presenting our bodies and our image? how do we interact (or not) with the audience?

i am a constant a defender of jazz. i believe in the inspiration of much of its history. i believe in the power of improvisation- hallelujah! and i know that folks who play "jazz" reinvent, cross-pollinate and push the genre in many directions today. jazz is so much more than what many folks think of with that word. but there are ways, i think, it has not served me to identify as a jazz musician as i've shaped my musical identity thus far; ways that it limits my access to some of the power of music-making. i think this is because some of the crucial questions i list in the previous paragraph are often unasked in the jazz community at large.

ultimately, it's a question of what does it mean to be a performer. and this is something that jazz these days seems to either have a very limited perception of (ie. young lions style, read: wear suits and honor a revisionist history;) or does not concern itself with at all (ie. dress like you would at home, barely address the audience, and do not worry if your music is only accessible to musicians and music students.) this second model has been most prominent in my life and it is based on an ideal of making an academic music that is just about the music, that only concerns itself with the sounds. it is true, rock's lights and costumes and such can be all gimmick and no substance, a cover for music that means nothing. but this other extreme- music as purely intellectual practice- is compartmentalizing in a way that only privilege allows.

ultimately, this has little to do with jazz versus rock-n-roll. i'm realizing this as i write. i hope i have not framed the argument that way. the three organizations i talked about are not typical of rock. they exist because of the lack of space for women and people of color in music. they are on the margins which is why they provide satisfying spaces for me and other rock spaces do not. i can be most critical of jazz because it is what i know most about and because it is so much of what i love. but there isn't any genre (that i know of) which exists outside of the systems of oppression in society as a whole. these same systems that limit our ease to live as we desire, limit or challenge our ease to fully express our whole selves creatively.

for me, performing can never just be about sound. there are moments when i am more or less conscious of it, but all aspects of my identity are fully present when i present my music. jazz these days (especially the creative/ improvised music scene i know and love in nyc) is dominated by straight white men. and in this culture, white men have the privilege of being neutral. and so, for better or worse, they often only concern themselves with their sounds and leave their selves out of the ways they think through performance. i cannot, will not do this.

i am sick of many things. i am sick of spaces where taking in music is a silent, sit-down endeavor of musicians and college-educated folks who judge based on asthetics, references other music "we" have as common experience, and skillful manipulation of learned structures and theories.

i am also excited about many things. i am excited about music that creates diverse and accessible community of participants who are whole people (and not just extensions of their instruments,) who have things to say, see technical skill primarily as a vehicle for self expression, and honor a vast history of musical ancestors.

i cannot leave myself, my story, my body, identity out of my music. sometimes this feels like a curse. sometimes this is why i can't bring myself to practice or compose. i can't be with my instrument and i can't be with myself. but sometimes this is what pushes me. this is the place where ideas come from, where melodies and concepts and projects begin.

my first ever blog post was a rambling manifesto about my frustrations, hopes and experiences as a female musician. i think, in a way, this is the echo, almost 2 years later, of that first post. i am having lots of fantasies these days. what if i took a page (so to speak) from the DIY culture and made a zine about some of these thoughts to sell at shows? what if there was a jazz camp for girls? or a retreat for female jazz musicians? what if i wear something outrageous to my next big show? what if i wrote a series of compositions devoted to different body parts? if you are reading, maybe you have your own ideas or want to help with any of these. maybe some of these things already exist and i just don't know about them. if so, please tell me! even if no one's reading, it feels like a huge first step just to put my scheming out there, new and undeveloped.

i leave you with this: a humble solo performance by me. a tiny rock star moment? this particular video is appropriate for this post because it's my take on the tracy bonham song "the real" (from that first cd i bought way back in my short-lived rock stage in the late '90s!) my recent explorations of solo performance feel like just the kind of self-indulgence that i need to nurture in myself to truly be a rock star!

in the third generation the daughters are free

2009-07-21T18:40:00.000-07:00

i have a cd out. since March in fact, and i'm not sure why i haven't posted about it until now. maybe a strange desire to still separate out parts of my life- which is this anti-thesis of this blog, right? so here are the facts:

you can buy my cd, in the third generation the daughters are free on itunes.

the album is, essentially, about family history. and you can read my published artist statement in the literary magazine Shaking Like a Mountain.

there is a press release/ review on all about jazz's website.

there is a lovely review in chronogram magazine.

and below is a video of part of the cd release concert- the whole thing, in fact, is on youtube.

this is what has happened. now- how to keep moving?

prompt: masturbation

2009-07-21T18:33:00.000-07:00

there is a game

i play with myself

look with eyes not implanted in this body

darkened window, mirror, lid of the piano-

any reflective surface. then move away

strap in and sit in

the cold with no covers

i am hot in the core, just taken

from the boiling pot

summon the image- not a rippling

view from above the neck, but straight ahead-

just as before. then unbuckle, inspect

i do not know for how long

get-give no relief, shifting my weight

adjusting my very atoms

imagine the little old lady

sleeping beside the kitchen wall

i would carry on that way but for her

she must be a light sleeper

tossing, out of time with Sidney Bechet

who's strangely, fittingly begun to play

muskrat blues. please, don't pull out, keep me

tangled in elastic netting, fingers dangling

limp in the gaps of flexible cloth-

almost a holding on. in the last moments

there was no old lady, no 1930s

you were a thermal wave in the sky

a firm gelatinous tendril curled in on itself

she came in and out of being, but

i was always there.

in the presence of Adrienne Rich

2009-05-06T19:39:00.000-07:00

i heard Adrienne Rich read tonight at the Grand Army Plaza Brooklyn Public Library. she was frail, fierce, and fiery (ha! taught my 2nd graders about alliteration today, guess it wore off on me.) i was tired but i dragged myself out because how could i turn down the opportunity to be in the presence of such a powerful woman? and let me say, she was not perfect. it may be sacrilege, but i did not love the new work she read. the new poems were less urgent, less sensual than her older work that i am familiar with. but in a way, it does not matter. it's hard to see that heroines are not infallible super-heroines. but it's also incredibly relieving. and i was in no way disappointed-- her presence, her history was huge and tangible. wow.

i bought a new book of her's to read, but in the meantime, below are two classic and favorite Adrienne Rich poems. the first one, i have read many times and yet reading it just now i feel an ache in my core, my eyes get watery. lines from this poem echo in my head and resurface at times. and the second one, well you can hear the author read part of here.

The Burning of Paper Instead of Children

by Adrienne Rich

I was in danger of verbalizing my moral impulses out of existence. --Daniel Berrigan, on trial in Baltimore

1. My neighbor, a scientist and art-collector, telephones me in a state of violent emotion. He tells me that my son and his, aged eleven and twelve, have on the last day of school burned a mathematics textbook in the backyard. He has forbidden my son to come to his house for a week, and has forbidden his own son to leave the house during that time. "The burning of a book," he says, "arouses terrible sensations in me, memories of Hitler; there are few things that upset me so much as the idea of burning a book."

Back there: the library, walled
with green Britannicas
Looking again
in Durer's Complete Works
for MELANCOLIA, the baffled woman

the crocodiles in Herodotus
the Book of the Dead
the Trial of Jeanne d'Arc, so blue
I think, It is her color

and they take the book away
because I dream of her too often
love and fear in a house
knowledge of the oppressor
I know it hurts to burn

2. To imagine a time of silence
or few words
a time of chemistry and music

the hollows above your buttocks
traced by my hand
or, hair is like flesh, you said

an age of long silence

relief

from this tongue this slab of limestone
or reinforced concrete
fanatics and traders
dumped on this coast wildgreen clayred
that breathed once
in signals of smoke
sweep of the wind

knowledge of the oppressor
this is the oppressor's language

yet I need it to talk to you

3. People suffer highly in poverty and it takes dignity and intelligence to overcome this suffering. Some of the suffering are: a child did not had dinner last night: a child steal because he did not have money to buy it: to hear a mother say she do not have money to buy food for her children and to see a child without cloth it will make tears in your eyes.

(the fracture of order
the repair of speech
to overcome this suffering)

4. We lie under the sheet
after making love, speaking
of loneliness
relieved in a book
relived in a book
so on that page
the clot and fissure
of it appears
words of a man
in pain
a naked word
entering the clot
a hand grasping
through bars:

deliverance

What happens between us
has happened for centuries
we know it from literature

still it happens

sexual jealousy
outflung hand
beating bed

dryness of mouth
after panting

there are books that describe all this
and they are useless

You walk into the woods behind a house
there in that country
you find a temple
built eighteen hundred years ago
you enter without knowing
what it is you enter

so it is with us

no one knows what may happen
though the books tell everything

burn the texts said Artaud

5. I am composing on the typewriter late at night, thinking of today. How well we all spoke. A language is a map of our failures. Frederick Douglass wrote an English purer than Milton's. People suffer highly in poverty. There are methods but we do not use them. Joan, who could not read, spoke some peasant form of French. Some of the suffering are: it is hard to tell the truth; this is America; I cannot touch you now. In America we have only the present tense. I am in danger. You are in danger. The burning of a book arouses no sensation in me. I know it hurts to burn. There are flames of napalm in Catonsville, Maryland. I know it hurts to burn. The typewriter is overheated, my mouth is burning. I cannot touch you and this is the oppressor's language.

21 Love Poems by Adrienne Rich

The Dream of A Common Language

Whenever in this city, screens flicker

with pornography, with science-fiction vampires,

victimized hirelings bending to the lash,

we also have to walk...if simply as we walk

through the rainsoaked garbage, the tabloid cruelties

of our own neighborhoods.

We need to grasp our lives inseparable

from those rancid dreams, that blurt of metal, those disgraces,

and the red begonia perilously flashing

from a tenement still six stories high,

or the long-legged young girls playing ball

in the junior highschool playground.

No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees,

sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air,

dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding,

our animal passion rooted in the city.

I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming.

Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other,

You've been at your desk for hours. I know what I dreamed:

our friend the poet comes into my room

where I've been writing for days,

drafts, carbons, poems are scattered everywhere,

and I want to show her one poem

which is the poem of my life. But I hesitate,

and wake. You've kissed my hair

to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem,

I say, a poem I wanted to show someone...

and I laugh and fall dreaming again

of the desire to show you to everyone I love,

to move openly together

in the pull of gravity, which is not simple,

which carries the feathered grass a long way down the upbreathing air.

spring can really hang you up the most

2009-05-03T11:56:00.000-07:00

a new idea i'm working on with this standard. (even though it's not april anymore!) you may want to listen with headphones to really hear the bass. a continuation of my new attempt to turn off the self-edit mode by putting stuff out there, even if it's not fully formed.

every poem is you, brooklyn

2009-04-28T18:55:00.000-07:00

i swear this platform shakes

as wind blows over Mcdonald Ave

we wait, spitting into space,

level with tops of brick apartments, warehouses

selling wooden doors and tombstones.

here someone has written

Hiroshima ain't nothing compared

--never finished or maybe obscured

by illegible tags, making this line's neat print

all the more glaring.

i reentered this city on my own,

a shrinking circle of daily listening,

expanding net of unknowns--

a best friend crying beside me

on a bench on a street near childhood.

we are grown and i don't know if she wants

to be held (i always do.)

the bodies around us keep moving

talking of how it smells like rain,

getting in and out of cars, carrying groceries,

talking loudly, adjusting their clothes.

i swear i have been here most my life--

eaten various flat breads, chickpeas and lentils.

in some shops, barbers, sign-painters, cooks, musicians

know my name and want me to join them for tea--

this is no secret city, not the first time

i've seen you- sang along

you look like a city but you feel like religion to me

oh! i want to be able to leave you

and there is nowhere else to go.

i want you inside me,

whispering through my pores as i sleep.

i walked home talking loudly, holding my pants in place,

past curses and kisses, and it never did rain.

woke in a pool of sweat, an unseasonably hot morning.

today, the subway like so many times,

waiting above ground, swooshing around phlegm

in our cheeks before letting it go,

launching it into quivering space.

today like so many times

i want to know just what you did to me,

but i cannot see everything.

stay with me

2009-04-26T14:47:00.000-07:00

my take on "stay with me" by sparlha swa.

trying to build up some solo bass/ voice pieces these days.

might be easier to hear the bass if you listen with headphones.

good shit

2009-04-25T13:16:00.000-07:00

i feel a bit bipolar lately, up and down about just about everything. but today it is 80 degrees! and so, a quickie-post, in honor of the gorgeous weather. as the title suggests here is a list of some good shit that i've seen/ heard recently:

"the business of being born"- a film about the birthing industry in the US with some incredible footage of home-births. it made me disgusted with US hospital birthing policies, and more than that it made me want to deliver and/ or have babies immediately!

i have been reading "White Teeth" by Zadie Smith. just wanted to say that i cannot put it down. the novel takes place in London and follows 3 generations of families from different backgrounds (white, Bangladeshi, and Jamaican.) this was Smith's debut novel in 2000 and the writing is incredible. she moves seamlessly from skillful plot that weaves between characters and years, hilarious and poignant character development, and spot-on critical study of identity politics (often without being clear which is which.) i am impressed and enamored!

check out this organization: Young Women's Empowerment Project (YWEP) based in Chicago. i heard a woman from YWEP speak and i was blown away by the depth and breadth of what they do and the fearlessly radical way that they do it. the woman who spoke actually said that her job is being phased out because the organization is in the process of becoming entirely youth run and operated! it's overwhelmingly exciting to hear of a group that seems so grassroots, sustainable, and solution-oriented.

i heard Irene Aebi sing, in person! if you don't know, Irene was Steve Lacy's wife and muse. her energy and presence were unbelievable. i'm not always into all that woo-woo stuff but you know sometimes you're in someone's presence and you can just feel the beauty of their spirit? being near Irene was like that. the group "ideal bread" performed some Lacy tunes, and then Irene sang some of Lacy's art songs with a soprano saxophonist and pianist. gorgeous. Steve Lacy's writing is humorous and painful, composed and messy. i was so happy to hear a few tunes i knew and a lot of new ones. one thing i love about Lacy's work is that his pieces are about something. always. he puts thought into his titles, dedications, text-settings. a true artist. sometimes i think jazz musicians are afraid of language. we should all take a tip from Lacy and partner with words, worship the world of letters while simultaneously using music- those sounds that get at what we could never speak or write. okay, enough. watch this:

satisfy this hungriness

2009-04-12T20:42:00.000-07:00

after listening repeatedly to both nina simone and cat power take on this song, i decided to see what would happen if i tried. it's rough around the edges but honestly, so was i in this moment. posting this video in an effort to spill my creative juices a little more indeterminately these days.

staggering

2009-04-12T20:37:00.000-07:00

blood hardened inside me.

here it is-- a clump, staggering

to the depths of toilet bowl.

almost went in after it, to know

how it clings to flesh between fingers,

slides off palms, but let it disappear.

enough. this is what my body gives.

you can hear the sadness and wanting

in my voice but i am not afraid

or embarrassed. this is how i came into the world.

a bloody mass. so listen!

some songs just come out this way,

lapping at your heels and disposing of their own mess.

feed my body so much good food but

not exactly what it wants. you cannot

hold anything in rubber between flesh

forever. and when i let it all go, each drop

doesn't matter-- slithers and staggers

and stops, somewhere beyond my vision.

where's the fight?! complacency versus realism

2009-01-18T20:17:00.000-08:00

it is cold now. we are already longing for summer. we are holed up in our apartments with so much of our own thoughts and potential for productivity. and i am never quite productive enough for my own desires. i have nothing coherent to write and yet i am desperate for some form of creative output. the winter is shriveling my creative fertility. or something like that.

tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day. tuesday is Obama's inauguration. i am on the couch reading children's books about MLK, deciding what to read to my students. and i am reading a magazine that sketchily says little about who put it out, but contains moving pictures and articles related to Obama. flipping through it yesterday i had something like a body memory of election night. and flipping through it today i started crying again.

and i cannot bring myself to watch the video of Oscar Grant being murdered. (sign this petition.) and i cannot bring myself to look at any more pictures of Palestine. and i am reading eulogies written for a girl i sort of knew, a girl who went to my summer camp, was a year older than me, had the same name as me, and who recently took her own life. she was a photographer, a writer, a feminist.

it is a new year and i feel heavy. i want to re-educate myself on how to be fearless. when i was 13 i argued with everyone and i think it was because i was invested in everyone, was an incredibly idealistic person. i've tried, as i've grown, to hone my confrontational nature into something a little more tactful. but now i'm afraid i don't know the line between complacency and realism.

here's what i mean- i did not go to a single march against the Israeli attacks on Gaza. i was too busy. i did not make any phone calls about it. i did sign a few online petitions. but i sat at home reading the news and feeling angry and ashamed to be an American Jew, to live in a country where we cannot call a massacre a massacre.

i did not campaign for Obama. i was too busy. i tried to keep my cool through the whole election. i think deep down, i was afraid he would lose and i didn't want to invest too much. and then when he won, i lost it- could not stop sobbing. and i thanked the couple of friends i was with who had done a lot of work for the campaign. i truly felt grateful to them and to so many others who proved my cynicism wrong.

and the other week i saw an inspiring photography show by Catherine Opie that left me swimming in thoughts about identity, art, architecture, place, queerness (self portrait nursing pictured above)... i left the museum eager to talk about the exhibit. my friend's friend spoke immediately, writing off the entirety of the show as "banal" (though he complemented the "composition" of only one photograph) in a self-confident and absolutely dismissive way that only well-schooled white men can speak. i simply tried to let it slide off and not ruin my own art-induced high. but later i thought, who am i? i would never have let someone get away with such a comment without an argument in the past!

when i was an adolescent i argued with everyone- sometimes i came out thrilled at changing someone's mind or at least holding my own in debate, sometimes i was stubborn, loud, and self-righteous and simply got myself in trouble (as was the case with too many teachers in middle and high school.) when i was an adolescent i marched in protests- some of them were uplifting and sustaining gatherings, some felt like unfocused, unproductive, left-wing masturbation. (to be honest!) i went to meetings of social action groups but quickly became disillusioned by all the talk and concern with self-image that can go with young activists.

yes, i am cynical now. but i am trying to be a grown-up living in the complicated real world. it is a world where biracial former-community-organizers can become president. but it is also a world where Sean Bell and Oscar Grant no longer live. i get so caught up in my own inane shit-- it is cold out and i have too many jobs and i should be grateful for all my jobs but i am tired and being a musician is so hard and i'm so busy...!

i know i could never be complacent. i am far too emotional. i want to live in the real-world but i also want space for some of my younger-self's idealism. as the inauguration approaches i want to grasp onto some of the Obama "hope" rhetoric. i want to read this beautiful book called Martin's Big Words (illustration pictured above) to my 4th and 5th graders in the Bronx on the day that we get a president who looks like he could be related to my students. i want to help them believe that they too can make significant change happen. because lord knows, we need it. i want to enjoy my snowy weekend inside for what it is; use this time to gather up some of my former fire!

another new yorker's rant on the g-word

2008-10-08T00:15:00.000-07:00

GENTRIFICATION

an out-of-town friend who was visiting me in brooklyn recently noted that i use the g-word too many times a day. and, meeting with 2 friends from high school, i noticed that they do this too. but don't we new yorkers have good reason to be obsessed? leave your neighborhood for a few months and upon return, you may not recognize it.

when my mom moved to park slope in the '70s, she moved there because it was affordable and she was a poor artist, putting herself through brooklyn college on the small funds from her dad's child-support checks. like me, she was a brooklyn girl born and raised (i am 3rd generation), but unlike me, she had no idea of what gentrification can do. it was just beginning and she was unknowingly part of the process. the yuppie haven that is now park slope, and that my mother and i now complain wildly about, was partially her own creation. it's the now typical story-- when she moved in, it was a working-class neighborhood and folks like her were moving in- college students and artists (she was both.) we now know that those folks make an area more desirable and trendy, increasing the rents so that soon the families who lived there are forced to leave and the young folks can't afford to live there anymore either. this is the very simplified narrative anyway. but what responsibility do i have as a recent college grad, artist, and whitey? i cannot claim the ignorance that my mother has a right to.

i started this post many months ago. i've been ranting about this for years. but now, for the first time, i am looking for my own brooklyn apartment. i am not looking in park slope (couldn't afford to even if i wanted.) i am not looking in williamsburg. or bushwick. or bedstuy. i do not want to join the hoards of recent graduates from my college who are moving there-- the many hipsters who are trying on brooklyn for size along with their tight pants. at an event for graduating seniors at my college, a dean made a comment about students moving to san francisco, portland, chicago, and brooklyn. as if brooklyn was a city too, and certainly a major destination.

there are many articles about gentrification dotting new york papers these days. but most focus on older yuppies, the white families with fancy strollers who block off park slope's street corners. but what about us 20-somethings? park slope is long gone to this great gentrifying process. what about the renters on the outskirts of these neighborhoods, moving into neighborhoods where their young, single, whiteness is even more visually obvious?

what terrifies me is that we know what we're doing. last summer i met a woman who had just graduated from brandeis and was doing teach for america in a tough brooklyn school. she had grown up on the upper west side, gone to private schools her whole life. and now she was living in what used to be called sunset park and is now "south slope". she said the block she was living on was "violently gentrifying" with tangible anger from long-time hispanic residents. she knew her presence there wasn't helping. she seemed to feel bad about it. but, "what can i do?" she said. and i have heard this so many times. us recent college grads, we've studied gentrification in classes. we know how to talk about, problematize, identify oppression. and we can sometimes even recognize our part in it. we know the language but we know no action. we feel powerless to stop the systems we criticize, to extricate ourselves from them. we nestle into academicized white guilt. or maybe we just don't care? call me corny, or un-hip, but i do care. and i grew up in brooklyn. but does that matter? maybe i'm just as confused, just as helpless, white, just as much of a gentrifier as the next kid.

i told you some of the neighborhoods i'm not moving to. so where can i move? today i looked at an apartment in flatbush, not far from where i grew up and where my father still lives. a chasidic man named joe showed me the place. walking to the apartment building, he sang the praises of the neighborhood, the building. he told me about the dunkin' donuts as if it was a draw to live there. i remember when that opened and how pissed i was. "i don't like dunkin donuts," i said. he bragged about how safe the apartment building is, pointed out the security cameras multiple times. "the building is changing," he said. "we're getting rid of all the irresponsible people. people like you are moving in. i just sold a 3 bedroom to a woman just like you." (now who is people like me? how does he know what i'm like?) and when we got in the elevator, a black man got in with us. i said hi to him, and he said goodbye when he got off on the 3rd floor. as soon as the elevator door closed, joe repeated that his management company was really cleaning up the building. they want tenants like me. "so you're evicting people?" i asked. "yes," he said proudly. and when i told him i'm starting a new job, i don't have the 3 pay stubs i supposedly need for the place- "no problem," he said. so accommodating for people like me. and it was a nice apartment too.

there's so much more that can be said. for now, a small selection of some articles i've collected:

gag-inducing article on brooklyn's changing real estate
fascinating article about the chasids and williamsburg
article from the viewpoint of a park slope parent
article about youth-led anti-gentrification movements
guitarist Mark Ribot's article on the lack of financial support for new music (an expansion of how gentrification effects nyc)

sonnet

2008-09-25T23:26:00.000-07:00

androgynous child with gorgeous hands

man-child with no regard for dirt,

snuggles with the 9 PM downtown 2 express.

his hands, things that could makes sense

inside you. today you are wanted deeply,

a dark yellow earnestness, a possibility

of opening wide enough for all five fingers.

your history of wanting-- over breakfast, between

songs, in the middle of the block, looking

in the mirror, the river, waiting for a ride.

wanting too much and then

getting what you want.

her light all about, her thighs on your mother's couch,

her raw scent, scaly on the skin of your hands.

this young boy is your woman so she is here

in every part of your skin as before--

a loving so complete in leaves you woozy,

begging for stillness as you remember to inhale.

Pete Seeger: The Power of Song

2008-01-30T10:42:00.000-08:00

so it's been a minute. i've written many a blog entry in my head but haven't had a moment to do the typing. if anybody was checking, i apologize for the absence and yes, i have missed you.

what i really want to write about here is a documentary i saw, Pete Seeger: The Power of Song. (review here.) I went to see it with two camp friends. (i've written about growing up at a communist jewish summer camp, right?) we sat in the back and sang along. i hadn't realized how many pete seeger songs i knew. when i list my musical influences, the folk music kind of gets slighted. because "goodnight irene" and "this little light of mine" are songs i sang, but never listened to on my own time. (though i did listen to some phil ochs in high school, and always join mitchell, though she delves into mutiple genres.) and let's be real, they're not the hippest of tunes. i mean, folk music has got a reputation for hokiness; an outdated, nostalgic, overly-earnest music of my parents' generation...

but i want to testify! i want to remember. there was a time when music was part of a movement, and everyone sang along. (perhaps this is the main difference between seeger's generation of folk/protest music and hip hop, my generation's take on populous music-- it's as much about people singing together.)

Pete Seeger, is a moralistic, hard-working figure. he quit the music group The Weavers when they wanted to sing in a tv commercial; he was black-listed off of tv for years; he and his wife built their own home in the woods; he was largely responsible for the cleaning up of the hudson river, he was largely responsible for popularizing "we shall overcome" during the civil rights movement; he still stands by the side of the road with his fingers in a peace sign and a banner urging the u.s. to get out of iraq; he still performs for kids in classrooms... this is not just about Pete Seeger, this is about musician as activist and community member. i feel a constant tension to let these things coexist in my own life. how inspiring to see folks who do this.

though Seeger is portrayed largely in the movie as almost inhumanly moralistic, it also points out (and i take great note of) the complications of having a white, male leader-- let's not turn him into an unerring hero. the film shows how his wife, Toshi, has had to make numerous sacrifices to raise their family and to support her husband's vision of their life. (and by the way, they have a huge, beautiful, multi-racial family, filled with new young musicians! this movie strangely makes me want to settle down in the hudson valley and start a family. yikes!) and to this end, i was also appreciative to see images of other important musical activists, especially Paul Robeson and Bernice Johnson-Reagon. (check out this amazing footage of Johnson-Reagon on Seeger's show.) Seeger is an amazing living figure, but he is also part of a tradition and a community that we musicians must study, honor, and learn from.

Steve Lacy

2007-12-18T10:29:00.000-08:00

"I feel that music can be comprehended from many different levels. It can be regarded as excited speech, imitation of the sounds of nature, an abstract set of symbols, a baring of emotions, an illustration of interpersonal relationships, an intellectual game, a device for inducing reverie, a mating call, a series of dramatic events, an articulation of time and/or space, an athletic contest, or all of these things at once. A jazz musician is a combination orator, dialectitian, mathematician, athlete, entertainer, poet, singer, dancer, diplomat, educator, student, comedian, artist, seducer, public masturbator, and general all-around good fellow."

-Steve Lacy, from Sept. 1959 Jazz Review
(he's only 25-years-old!)

i'm reading Steve Lacy: Conversations edited by Jason Weiss

Mingus

2007-12-11T22:59:00.000-08:00

comically escorted to the police car
his instrument abandoned beside two mattresses
at the curb with the garbage,
the reporters, his wife. if i were her
i would not rescue that wooden bass.

in his space with his
small, white daughter. feeding her
wine, rants...
'in this country they'd call me
a nymphomaniac.' erect
for three days, minimum. he teaches her
how to rip thick rope,
split it into pieces with her bare hands.
speaks to a five-year-old
like a grown woman. and if i looked back
would my childhood be much different.

father teaches her how to enjoy
dark beer and piano players.
'and when you grow up, how many men
will you love... say it again.'
one man. speech that is all

poetry, all contradictions, all
up on that soap box. i want
to hear these same words from someone else.

waving around an ancient rifle.
(his son will wail 'too many bullets
not enough soul.')
with a camera in his face
'i hope you all get blown up by the communists.'
when they come for him

a brassy bass sound
by fat fingers pulling like falling.
used gravity in his favor.
audience that doesn't know when to clap,
when to shut up and listen.

listen to that man with cameras
in his face. says he speaks for all negroes.
a temper turns revelation to lunacy.
'no education,' he says. a big, angry, sexed-up, black
jazz musician man. small, white girl.
large, black rifle. large, brown bass.
it's hard to hear when you're white. it's hard
to know what to say when you're an example.
all instinct, no discipline in the mouth.

and why should he be different
than the rest of us. sinking
in my chair. hope for compassion behind
the audiences' laughter. oh, the comedy! the tragedy!
the cops are the two to his third stooge.
the bass-- the greek chorus. 'the victims,'
he says, 'which they call citizens...'
they are going to throw out his instrument.

PART 2 of artistic bravery and claiming (family) history

2007-12-08T19:02:00.000-08:00

"i'm such a schlemiel, my wife went to America to send money for me to join her!
instead, she found a rich goyishe banker. now she's an e-Pinsk-opalian!
so i needed a new job, thought maybe i'd be a moyl... but i just couldn't cut it!
so i went door to door, thinking i'd be a schnorer. turns out, everyone in this city is looking for the same job!"

there it was, the ridiculous yiddish humor i know and love. Kleynkunst!, a tribute to "Warsaw's brave and brilliant cabaret" was that fabulous jewish combination of music, humor, social commentary and satire; that place where crude bawdiness and religiosity meet when working class folks make art.

(and a few days after i posted this, a short review of the show in the NYTimes.)

and i felt such a connection. there was even a song "Krokhmalne Gas" (which translates to Krokhmalne Street). i am fairly certain this is the name of the street where my great-great-grandmother lived! the song was beautiful. it ended with the lyric:

the street is my mother
the dust is my brother
the cobblestones--my sister

it made me think again about someday going to poland. maybe that street remains?

but then something happened in the show. they got to the song "Oy, Madagaskar!" which was poking fun at the Polish government's 'solution' to ship all their jews to madagascar. and as soon as the song was introduced, the female actress grabbed a djembe and began foolishly hitting it and chanting nonsense, and the male actor began to sing about joining the "black goyim" who run around in their underwear. my father and i shook our heads in disapproval. of course, i thought, the jewish legacy-- humor, dissent, dance, song, leftism, debauchery, and racism!? i wanted to sit there feeling unquestionably connected to my ancestors. but a blind sense of pride is not reality.

after the show, i sat in the JCC lobby. my dad struck up a conversation with the pianist from the show. before i knew it, he was beckoning me over asking me to explain why we were offended. the pianist was receptive, said "we haven't gotten bad feedback before but we're open to changing the show." but he didn't get it. and i couldn't really explain myself. why am i inarticulate precisely when someone is saying they want to hear my opinion? he tried to explain the song. it's ironic, he said, it says to the polish government 'you're stereotyping me? you're racist? we'll show you racist stereotypes!'

"it's a slippery slope..." i said. and i still felt uneasy. i don't want to be the pc-police. i understand the need for ridiculous extremes and reference to stereotype in satire. but it seemed to me that the irony was focused on the polish government, and the racist imagery of Africa was presented with humor, but not irony. the comedic imagery of this song was no different than portrayals of Africa coming out of Hollywood at the same time. is racism different coming out of the mouths of eastern-european jews? does our own oppression give us free access to belittle anyone else's oppression? and though the songs are mostly from the '30s, the production was put together now, and we cannot ignore the history and present reality of tension between blacks and jews. why be so careless? are we still trying to escape our own whiteness? deny our present reality? or maybe to say 'don't worry. this is just art.'

the last event i want to mention happened in the same night. i headed over to the BlueNote (that awful tourist-trap of a club... uh, did i say that?) to see saxophonist Matana Roberts. i have been meaning to check her out for a while. she's someone who's name just kept coming up in my life. and i kept just missing her. but recently, i found her on the web-- her website and her blog. i'm so interested in the work she's doing because, well, it relates to the work i want to do. (have you noticed that trend? i write about other things but really i'm just writing about myself. am i egotistical or just human?) she has been working on a piece called "COIN COIN" which is a suite of written and improvised music and text exploring seven generations of family history. i have recently begun a similar (yet much smaller scale) project doing some family interviewing and digging as fodder for composition. Matana's blog is related to this project, and her combination of personal anecdote, family history, political question, and musical musing was what really inspired me to start this blog.

so the show that i saw was one piece of COIN COIN about her black, southern, traveling preacher roots. it featured Jason Palmer (trumpet), Shoko Nagai (piano), Hill Greene (bass), Tomas Fujiwara (drums), and John Garner III (operatic tenor). the group navigated composed sections, open sections with some out-er moments, bits of the blues and gospel songs, words read by Matana from an interview with her grandmother, and even a section where the whole band supported her own singing, joining in as a congregation with "ah-mm"s.

she stood, in silver heels and a wild black dress, playing her horn like Albert Ayler's sister, speaking her grandmother's words like they too were avant horn lines, and conducting the entire group, moving from 'in' to 'out', through sections of a fast-moving suite of her own conception. need i say i was a bit awestruck? and it wasn't perfect. in fact, it felt a bit like she was still workshopping the piece, examining the kinks. but her lack of need for seamlessness made me all the more enthralled.

and then i sat in. and what is important is that i felt comfortable. is there less searching and more intention in my improvising these days? more execution of an idea even if it is not the idea? (do i belive in the idea?) or am i just comfortable with this searching so that instead of feeling lost i simply feel present?

a lot to take in. and, walking to the train with a friend after the show, as i fumbled for words to explain what we had just seen, the thing i said that felt the most true was "she is so brave."

artistic bravery and claiming (family) history

2007-11-27T10:28:00.000-08:00

a post in two parts...

this past week was that bizarre and creepy holiday of thanksgiving. and i sucked up my vacation time in the city, filling my week with family, friends, movies, and trips to see music, theater, and an art exhibit.

Kara Walker,
from The Emancipation Approximation,
1999 - 2000.

so this post will be a rambling of my thoughts on the movies "Amandla: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony" and "Everything is Illuminated", and the Kara Walker exhibit "My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love" at the Whitney Museum, the bilingual (english-yiddish) cabaret "Kleynkunst" at the manhattan JCC, and Matana Roberts' performance of her piece "Mississippi Moonchile" at the BlueNote. that's the order i saw them in so i will write in that order. and somehow they're all related to my thoughts on how we claim (or don't claim) histories. ready for a VERY LONG post?

"Amandla" is a documentary about South Africa's anti-apartheid music. i spent five weeks in Capetown, South Africa in july of 2005. this movie made me miss the place and mostly the people i met there. i was visiting on a human-rights academic program but by the second night together, the group of students was singing, dancing and teaching each other protest songs from our different countries (the students were mostly from the U.S., S.A., and Zimbabwe, but also other African countries.) i was thrilled-- i had in fact been set on traveling to SA someday when, several years before, i had the amazing opportunity to sing in my high school choir with Hugh Masekela. South Africa has a rich musical history and i was pleased to watch, dance to, and create so much music while there. the film's footage of people protesting and singing, and interviews with important musicians like Masekela and Miriam Makeba was inspiring and also brought back memories of my own experiences (like witnessing my friends and other people singing and dancing at a demonstration in Cape Town protesting high unemployment rates; this protest felt more powerful than any i had ever been to in the u.s.)

i could go on and on about these experiences but the bottom line is the way that they made me think about the power of music. and i began to compare the role of music in SA to music in this country. i can think of somewhat parallel american musical situations (music of the civil rights era and other "folk music" of the 60s perhaps), but what is the equivalent now? and where has this music gone now? who remembers it? when this group of american students and african students got together and started singing, we americans had a hard time finding songs of substance that we all knew. we could kind of remember the words to the early-90s Toni Braxton hit "unbreak my heart" but could we all sing "we shall overcome"? and here i was (having grown up at a socialist-jewish summer-camp) suggesting we sing "if you miss me at the back of the bus" and thinking, but not even bothering to suggest, some yiddish songs. no one knew them. i felt, well, culture-less. what is this evasive thing called "culture" and how's an american supposed to stake a claim to any of it!?

these comparisons between S.A. and the U.S. were not limited to musical histories. traveling and being "somewhere else" made me realize how little i know about my own country, state, or city. i was learning about housing issues, for example, but how much did i know about housing laws in america? i began to think about the common white college-student "adventure" of going abroad to "find myself". the point is, "Amandla" reminded me of this tension that exists for me; i am trying to learn about what is local, personal, immediate, part of my past, while feeling connected to cultures that are not "mine" while acknowledging my own subjectivity and the danger of idealizing and other-izing. and nothing is clear-cut. for example, south african protest music is influenced by jazz and other american musics. i may claim everything and nothing then?

and then, the next evening, i watched "Everything is Illuminated" which is based on a novel (which i have read) by Johnathan Safran-Foer. it is partially the story of an american man's journey to the ukraine to search for the woman who saved his grandfather from the nazis. my family is eastern-european jewish too (though i am mostly third generation brooklyn jew.) and i have thought that at some time in my life i might take a trip to poland to find the places that my ancestors (with some reluctance and fear due to antisemitism?) called home. but i haven't thought seriously about this in a while. and watching this movie i thought, what do i know of poland!? very very little. and while i have thought a fair bit about being jewish in the past, not so much lately.

i think it's because i only really realized i was white when i got to college. in the liberal communities where i was raised, i was taught to admire folks who struggled to fight their own oppressions. and i wanted to think of myself as part of these groups. so better to think of myself as a woman or a jew, but not a white person, understand? but in the world i live in, for the most part, jews are white folks. and college was my first experience in a private (rural) school and so my first time studying in such a white-occupied institution. when i watched how students of color, even if they grew up several blocks away from me, had a different experience than me at the same college, my own whiteness registered in a way it hadn't before. many conversations, readings, thinking, anti-racism meetings, musical experiences and a trip to south africa later, i've spent more time in the past few years contemplating my own whiteness than my jewishness (though certainly they are not mutually exclusive.) and i want to continue to think about this. because white privilege means that thinking about race is a choice.

and another thing, i have read so much, been exposed to so many images of the holocaust. they begin to lose impact. it's scary how desensitized we become. and i've been frustrated by how in my studies of history, the holocaust of world war II is often taught as the genocide, trivializing other peoples who have been massacred. (why do we rank oppressions?) and i've gained a certain amount of ambivalence about my jewish identity based on my grandmother's manipulative ploys to send me to israel. and my fear of and anger at the israeli government.

but losing your own culture is a violent thing. and for some reason, this movie reminded me that this violence is part of my own history as well. the literal violence of genocide, and the violence of re-writing history, and of assimilation. my folks made serious attempts to raise me with a sense of jewish identity. but what do i know of poland? what do i know of yiddish?-- a few words, a few stories, a few songs? how much is feeling truly connected to the past? how much is enough? what responsibility do i have to hold information about "my people" and our history? does this knowledge become lost if i do not seek it out?

history dissappears due to the very fact of it's own violence. and its own relevance to the present. who wants to remember these things? who can bear this collective memory? these questions are related to the Kara Walker exhibit i saw as well.

"The artist is best known for exploring the raw intersection of race, gender, and sexuality through her iconic, silhouetted figures. Walker unleashes the traditionally proper Victorian medium of the silhouette directly onto the walls of the gallery, creating a theatrical space in which her unruly cut-paper characters fornicate and inflict violence on one another." (this is a bit of her bio from the pbs website. also read a really interesting interview with her here.)

and what can i say about her work? it is engrossing, disturbing, violent, historical, fantastical... the provocative imagery is freeing-- it opens a conversation by making public what is usually shut away, but at the same time the sheer pain and violence of these images are debilitating and silencing. walking through the show was emotionally exhausting. Walker seems to be addressing some of my above questions about an individual's responsibility to give voice to pasts that is forgotten. she stretches the space between history and fantasy, public and private, personal and political. she forces viewers to watch the reality and the metaphor of race and gender relations as played out mostly through sex.

making this artwork seems a dangerous act. Kara Walker's work has been very controversial. and one piece in the exhibit was a series of framed pages spread across the width of a wall. they were journal entries of sorts; brief sketches and short writings. they were her own reactions to her critics. i was struck by the publicizing of her own fear and ambivalence about the work she makes and how her own racial identity relates to it. she seems unafraid to place herself in her work. her name appears in titles of pieces, you can see her hands and sometimes her face as she moves the silhouette puppets in her video work... and one get the sense she is overtaken by her own artwork and the manic perversion it illustrates. in several places, she writes about a dream she had were she and another black female friend seek vengeance by raping a KKK man. she has entered her work and her work has entered her deep down to her sleeping life.

or maybe it's not that her work has entered her life, but that her work, while on the surface it appears to be some combination of history and fantasy, is already about the real and the present. because racial power dynamics still act out in sexual and violent ways. and because the danger of forgetting the past of course, is that then we cannot address it's place in the present. the danger of seeing this artwork as pure history (read:fact) or pure personal experience (read: emotion) is that we, the viewers, do not see ourselves in it.

but i do see myself in Walker's work, in literal and figurative ways. her pieces with projections are displayed in such a way that you cannot help but pass in front of the projectors and see your own shadow on the wall next to the painted silhouettes. taking in her work is more active than your average art exhibit because of the content. one cannot help but feel like a voyeur. and doesn't a voyeur gain some responsibility for what is seen? and the title of the exhibit "My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love" comes from a written address she makes to white folks. and so how can an audience not feel involved? but the museum is a strange space. and there were all these (mostly white) people milling around in silence. one man stood for a good five minutes in front of a projector, oblivious to his own shadow taking over the very wall he looked at.

i want to think more about re-contextualizing history. Kara Walker's use of historical documents, images, and even songs (in some video work) made me think about some recent experiences i've had combining music with images. in a music class we've been experimenting with improvising to film. and one day the teacher brought in "Birth of a Nation" and, with difficulty, we played along to it. the music we made was clearly very different from the original music and, well, much creepier. it made me wonder if this could be a musical equivalent to Kara Walker's artwork. what would it be like to compose music to accompany historical imagery? perhaps there is a commentary here that is of a different value than verbal or written commentary?

but again, how do we take this on? when imagery is so emotional and grotesque, creativity can be stifled. in the same class, we did some improvisations to work by a local video artist. a few of her pieces were about self-mutilation and there were images of her own scabbed wrists from where she had cut them and also images of her sewing thread directly into the skin on her hands. beyond being squeamish, these visuals triggered some disturbing memories for me. several of my close friends were "cutters" when we were in high school. i began looking at these images and thinking about my friends, thinking about our helplessness and our attempts to help each other anyway. and all the young women who cut themselves because they feel so out of control. and i couldn't play anything. i couldn't make any music. it was too much. so what do you do if you want to tap into these loaded, personal experiences? how do you make that into art; maintain the personal connection and be outside of it enough to be a commentator? how does Kara Walker do it?

shit-deflection and the erotic as power

2007-11-17T21:12:00.000-08:00

last week, i had a gig with a professor of mine. i was on bass, my friend and fellow student on drums, and the teacher on piano. we played his music, some improvisations, and the standard "autumn leaves" at a cafe. i was honored to be playing with him, even though the gig was weird-- we played following a rather horrible, pretentious poet, and then a belly dancer (the audience members with their mouths hanging out like they were in a strip club.) but the show went well. i think. i'm trying lately not to judge my own playing but just keep on.

but here's the point... afterwards i was throwing away my paper tea cup. there was a middle-aged white man, sitting on a couch in a black hat. he was beckoning towards me. so i went up to him and he said "you sounded great." "thanks," i said "i wasn't sure if you were motioning for me to come or not." "i wasn't," he said. "but not only did you sound great, you looked great with that instrument." i was shocked. i walked away mumbling to myself. then i was shocked for being shocked, pissed for being pissed.

this is not the first time i've gotten comments like this. it's part of the bag of people's reactions to female bassists, i suppose. a similar story: after a gig a few weeks ago, i struck up a conversation with some guy. he was singing along in russian with the recorded music between bands. i asked him about it. then he said "it's great to watch women playing music." (i was playing in a band with 3 women, one man. an unusual situation for me.) "to watch them, or to listen to them?" i asked. he didn't pick up on my offer for him to save his ass. he reiterated that the watching part came first. and i walked away again.

and yet i still don't know what to say back to these men. this guy at the cafe (who was old enough to be my father) and his insignificant comment struck a nerve. i felt helpless. retort-less. i glared at him as i carried music stands to the car. i wanted to expose him to the people that he sat with (his family, i assumed). expose him as what? i wanted to teach him a lesson, to let him know that women don't need approval for their physical appearance. i play for people to enjoy my music not my body. that i hope (perhaps naively?) that when i stepped onto the stage people will respond to me differently than when i walk down the street.

as we were packing up the car, i told my drummer-friend about what had happened. and that i was now in a bad mood. he was sympathetic, he's a good listener. but he told me that i need a better shit-deflector. later, talking to my mother on the phone, she agreed. "you're a performer," she said, "you're going to get this stuff all the time. people carry their shit everywhere and they are going to offer it to you. you can't take it from them."

and the fact is, there's bigger shit, right? there are more offensive things that have been said to me. there are more difficult decades i could have been born a female jazz musician. (what about Billy Tipton, born Dorothy Tipton-- a pianist who began presenting as male in the 1930s to avoid discrimination.... read more here)

and i'm just saying, i'm not easy target. i'm argumentative. i carry a big instrument, my head is shaved! i have been the only woman musician in the jazz department at my college. (aside from a fabulous teacher, thank the lord! more on her later.) and generally, no one messes with me. in fact, i feel very much a part of the jazz community here at school. after 4 years, we have a little sweet dysfunctional family.

but this is what it's like having a body. no one needs to say things really, just being in an all-male space makes my breasts feel bigger, makes skirts feel girlier. my thighs, my butt take on new meaning in these spaces. sometimes, bending over to unzip my bass case, i wonder if there's something provocative about this motion. i am even a bit embarrassed writing this here. because i'm not a self-conscious person and also, i love my curves! but this is having a body. men get to be neutral. sometimes i want that luxury.

and just a few days ago i had a fascinating and honest conversation with another male musician-friend of mine. he mentioned that when he first met me, he thought i was gay. this does not surprise me or bother me, but i was curious about where this idea came from. with further probing he explained that i had seemed non-sexual at the time (there was an implication that he feels differently now, and i've wondered at times if there is in fact sexual tension between us.) 0ver the course of the conversation about my place in the school jazz department, he also referred to me as "a big sister" and "one of the guys." are these my options? are these the limited ways i may be viewed as a woman?

what do i do with this knowledge? i am uncomfortable with being non-sexual (as may be implied by being a mother, sister, or "one of the guys") and i am also uncomfortable being sexualized (ie. having strangers comment on my appearance on stage.) do i see myself or others as fluctuating between similar extremes? am i too concerned with dichotomies? how can we be comfortable with the fact that our mothers and our sisters have sex? that our colleagues and creative collaborators may also be attractive?

improving my shit-deflector is the easier part. (though still difficult for a righteously indignant person like myself!) the harder part is allowing myself to be at once intellectual/ rational and creative/ emotional; honor both my body and my mind when there are so many forces that tell me they are mutually exclusive. i turn to Audre Lorde's essay "Uses of the Erotic as Power": (here are a few excerpts, but the whole essay gives me chills and you can find it here)

"There are many kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise. The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change. For women, this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives.

We have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused, and devalued within western society. On the one hand, the superficially erotic has been encouraged as a sign of female inferiority; on the other hand, women have been made to suffer and to feel both contemptible and suspect by virtue of its existence.

It is a short step from there to the false belief that only by the suppression of the erotic within our lives and consciousness can women be truly strong. But that strength is illusory, for it is fashioned within the context of male models of power..."

"The erotic is a measure between our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves..."

"Of course, women so empowered are dangerous. So we are taught to separate the erotic from most vital areas of our lives other than sex. And the lack of concern for the erotic root and satisfactions of our work is felt in our disaffection from so much of what we do. For instance, how often do we truly love our work even at its most difficult?..."

"The erotic functions for me in several ways, and the first is in providing the power which comes from sharing deeply any pursuit with another person. The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.

Another important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy, in the way my body stretches to music and opens into response, harkening to its deepest rhythms so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, or examining an idea..."

i regularly play music with the same guy who told me about his impressions of me in the department. and in the same conversation, we spoke of the band we play in and the openness of all the musicians in it. we spoke of the musical intimacy of this group, something you hope to reach when improvising with others. i want to honor this-- the love, emotion, and desire i put into the music i truly care about, into practicing, composing, and performing it; and that i hopefully share with the musicians i play with, and the audience i play for. and i want to possess the power of sensation on my own terms; more deeply and personally than anyone else's first impression of me.