Blog Posts

Feel all the things. Really.

7/10/2019

Sorry, kids. No happy-joy-joy memes this morning.

As some of you know, I live with chronic mental illness, in the form of Depression and Seasonal Affective Disorder. These are conditions I've likely lived with all my life, though they were not properly diagnosed until several years ago. Coming to terms with that, and with the challenges and benefits of living this way, has been a big part of my artistic and spiritual journey over the last four or five years.

So when I read this article, I was instantly bowled-over, triggered like a piano falling on me from a great height.
And after I calmed down from that initial burst of intense feeling, I felt immense gratitude for the blinding clarity that this article triggered in me. So go and read the article before you continue here.

(Pause)

Done? Good. Let's continue.

One does not have to "monetize joy," but then if one does not, there may not be enough employment elsewhere to pay the bills, stay housed and fed. Even if you're partnered with someone who is working and earning more than you are. Because things have gotten so lopsided in favor of the wealthy few that the rest of us are forced to struggle and to compete with each other for increasingly scare resources -- jobs, housing, etc.
I believe that scarcity has been created and sustained by the wealthy few and economic systems they control, in order to keep the rest of us distracted by our own fear.

I also know -- believe with all my heart, actually -- that my creative gifts provide a window into some really big truths about the world I live in, truths that I would be distracted from seeing and feeling if I worked a low-wage job for someone else. Because that is the way the system is set up. And I guess that on some level I've known this truth, this lack of personal control on a large scale, since I was young.

I have had a long personal history with powerlessness in my life.

And at some point, recognizing that I was not born under the right start, the one that would set me up for a lifetime of security and good health and comfort, I would come to understand that there is power OVER, and power TO, and choose accordingly. I would have to do this for my own sanity, if for no other reason.

So if I have to choose between working at Walmart and monetizing my joy, you had better believe I'm gonna choose the latter. In both cases I'll still be poor, but in the latter I'm my own boss and I get to do something I care about (and perhaps on my best days can still love).

Still with me? Good.

In order to change the system, we must first give ourselves the downtime to FEEL -- to FEEL PAIN, AND LOVE, and then ANGER. When we really feel all of those things alongside each other, we may find our way to the paths we're really meant to be on. And if I have to make my life a little bit of a hustle while I'm at it, well, that's the world we live in.

My mental and physical challenges now prevent me from working full-time (currently believed to be 40 hours a week, but do NOT get me started on that bad math today, seriously). This idea of "full-time" work is so ingrained in all of us that we struggle to know how to rest when we're not working.
Now that more and more of us are required to work multiple part-time jobs simply to stay housed and fed -- or worse, to hustle for every tiny gig we can wrest a few dollars of because there aren't enough traditional jobs for everyone to live on anymore -- it has become even harder to separate work from rest in our lives.

THIS IS NOT AN ACCIDENT.

Because busyness -- that nagging feeling that creeps in to torture us whenever we take a break from our labors -- is a part of a socioeconomic system designed to distract us from our anger and from potential action which may follow. What's more, we've been historically herded away from craft-based work, which requires a certain degree of creative thought and individual autonomy, towards quantity-based work, where hordes of wage slaves move large quantities of inventory (including both retail products and data) around for the benefit of corporate owners, with little or no individual autonomy left. (See: Amazon)

(Don't believe me? Read this excellent book on the nature of work, workplace systems and worker control. It changed my life and made me feel reassured about my life-work choices and I cannot recommend it enough. It's a fast read and may warm your heart as much as it did mine.)

Until we can wrest power away from the corporations and wealthy one percent currently in possession of that power, we will be forced to make ridiculous personal and ethical choices in an equally ridiculous landscape.
So before I can reduce global warming, quash racism (including the racism which exists in myself, because it exists in all of us who enjoy even the littlest bit of white privilege), and make healthcare and quality education human rights again, I have to do something else first.

I MUST WORK LESS IN ORDER TO FEEL MORE.

Yes, I'll be even poorer than I was before -- though at my current earning level it's a fuzzy line -- but maybe I'll be angrier too. Maybe I'll be angry enough to burn down a little piece of the system that keep so many of us stuck and miserable for no good reason except to help secure someone else's obscene wealth.

So maybe the adage should read something like: do what you love, work less, learn to live with less and feel every single thing.
This will not be easy. There is immense social pressure to stay busy, even -- and perhaps especially -- in the Jewish community. People who work less than full-time, whether by choice or by default (retirement or illness), are suspect in our society. There is no strong social support for those of us who let ourselves feel more, and suffer the intense pain of those feelings.
We have to make an active effort towards change. We have to seek out others who have made similar choices. We have to create small systems of mutual care and support. Those systems may not exist within Jewish spaces, and may be especially difficult to establish in traditional Jewish spaces. This is hard work, radical work.
I cannot imagine doing anything else that's more compelling, with my gifts, my skills and my energy, and above all with my time.

My wish for myself and all I love: May our feelings lead us to action rather than distraction. May our realizations lead us to each other, to the people with whom we can effect meaningful change. And somewhere in that, may we find and be the blessing each of us was really meant to be.

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July 07th, 2019

7/7/2019

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WE ARE LIVE!
I have thirty days to raise $2,500 so I can record
The Watchman's Chair --
My fourth collection of original Jewish acoustic folk.
To learn more and to participate in this crowdfunding campaign, check out:
https://igg.me/at/WatchmansChair
Thanks for supporting Jewish Music Made By Hand!

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ONE.

7/5/2019

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I play a Jumbo so I can feel bigger.

By now, if you've followed along this far, you know that I've given you five days' worth of countdown, so that I can unveil something really cool.
The announcement will happen tomorrow night after Shabbat is over.
But for now, let's talk about why I do what I do.

Contemporary Jewish music has come a long way since Debbie Friedman (z'l) first pulled out a guitar at summer camp and began creating folk settings of Jewish liturgy. That was almost fifty years ago. Think about that for a moment. What we now know as contemporary Jewish music, Jewish music with pop and folk sensibilities, began happening almost a HALF CENTURY ago.

Since then, the landscape has exploded with literally hundreds of contemporary Jewish artists recording and distributing their music at camps, community centers and synagogues across North America. Debbie's songs are sung in synagogues of every stripe around the world, and a new generation of Jewish songwriters is taking the world by storm with new music and lyrics and a technologically-adept sensibility about music production and distribution.

So with all the new ways to get music created, recorded, produced and distributed, you would think that I might want to change things up a little whenever I'm ready to make another album.

A little bit, yes.
But mostly, no.

From where I stand, the wheel isn't really broken and I feel no need to reinvent it.

I admit part of that is just plain stubbornness. Some of it is living with the fatigue of two autoimmune issues and needing to parcel out my energy carefully. Some of it is that I'm a digital tourist, rather than a digital native. (Please, DO NOT ask me about Garage Band. Easy for everyone else, apparently; but I lost so many hours of my life trying unsuccessfully to learn how to use it that I gave up, and deleted the program from my computer in a fit of pique. Eight months later, I still feel no regrets.)
And most of it is because, for better or worse, I remain a solo act.

I write what I think and feel about what I see around me, as someone who lives in the world as a Jew, a woman, a dyke, a low-income American and a human being who works very hard every day not to be an ass.
All of that pours into my music in some way.

My music speaks about life at the margins, and life in the center of things.
And I am just one person, trying to be a good human in the world.

There are days, especially now, when the world feels complicated and huge and overwhelming, and all I want to do is hide under the covers. There are days when making myself get out of bed to just function is harder than anyone can imagine, but when I finally do I almost always feel better for having done so.
And at the end of the day, I am just one person trying to get the message across, To be heard, and if I'm lucky, to be understood.

That's why I'm counting down and that's why I'm moving forward. Please join me tomorrow night on FACEBOOK LIVE at 9:30 Pacific Time, when I'll finish my countdown and let you all know exactly WHAT is going on. And if you're staying up late to check in from the East Coast, I may even take a request or two before it's over. Because anyone checking in after midnight deserves a little extra love.

Thanks for hanging in here with me!
Happy Friday and Shabbat Shalom.

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TWO.

7/4/2019

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Teaching at Camp Solomon Schechter

I read a story many years ago about a man in the late 19th century who had been born with three functioning legs.
He figured out how to use all three legs, and for awhile was a sideshow performer, wowing audiences with his ability to play with a soccer ball, kicking it with one foot while walking with the other two.
By all accounts he had an imperfect but pretty decent life, got married and had kids, and lived into his late seventies.

I was blessed with two functioning hands. From an early age it was clear that I had been blessed with a high level of dexterity. I've been fortunate in that I've been able to earn a living with my hands, as a bicycle mechanic and as a musician.

Being blessed with great facility has made me stubbornly independent, often to a fault.
I admit it, and I own it.
Do I want to change it?
I don't know. By now, I'm not sure my attempt to change this personality quirk would be successful; and honestly, what would be the point?
My two good hands have gotten me pretty far, at times because of, and other times in spite of, whatever other resources were available at the time.
When I look at my hands, I note that they are now the exact same size and shape as my mother's, another blessing, and a sweet reminder of which parent I inherited my dexterity from.

When I was twelve, I blew up a pot in the kitchen. I had tried to boil water and forgot about it. Th pot had a small hole burned in the bottom, the lid had banged against the ceiling and left a dent in the sheetrock, and smoke left a big black spot up there as well.
My mother was furious; this was the fourth or fifth pot I had destroyed in this manner, and between the black spot on the ceiling ("Dammit, we won't get our deposit back now!") and the destroyed pot ("OH NO! My Farberware!") I was chased out of the kitchen and ordered not to return even to make a peanut butter sandwich. Humiliated, I cried in my room, until my father came in and calmed me down. He took a pad and pen from my desk, and suggested we make a list of all the things I knew how to do. When it was done, we had filled three sheets of notebook paper.
"Darling," he said, "Let the world cook for you. You won't starve."

And yet, there are things I cannot do with only my two good hands.
I have to ask for expertise and assistance from others for all sorts of things that I don't know how to do.
And that is the beauty of life. We are given gifts, things we're astonishingly good at; and at the same time we don't get to be experts at everything because asking for help is part of the point.

It is hard, damned hard, to ask for help sometimes. This is especially so in America, where individuals are exhorted to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. But that vision of independence is false. Even the people who settled the farm and ranch lands of the West needed help, and they helped each other. None of them would have survived if they'd had to go it alone.

So here I am with my two good hands, and a heart full of humility at what I'm getting ready to do.
I'm fiercely independent about my vision.
But I need help from others to realize it.
It's a balancing act, a duality we all have to deal with throughout our lives.
Independence and interdependence go hand in hand.

Where does your fiercest independence lie? Where do you need the most help?
Discuss.
And stay tuned.

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THREE.

7/3/2019

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"Three is a magic number..."
(Anyone remember this from the original Schoolhouse Rock TV shorts in the 1970s?)

Every person represents the intersection between herself and the parents who brought her into the world and/or raised her.
Siblings, count, of course; they give us our first and deepest peer relationships and they have their own special influence in our lives.
But the primary intersection between a child and her parents is a very specific threesome that plays out in all sorts of ways, and which is not always predictable.

In my case, the magic of three resulted in my being a very creative person. From a young age, I learned how to make things from other things (pretend knight's armor from cardboard; doll clothing from my mom's sewing scraps; a tree fort with ladder from construction site leftovers); and I learned how to entertain myself with stories and songs when other kids weren't around to play with.
I also learned how to play with the elements of music, thanks to a combination of DNA and the proximity of my parents' fake books.
My parents were my very first music teachers, which was a no-brainer because they were also musicians themselves. I grew up in a home filled with music. It was in the oxygen I breathed.

My mom was a talented visual artist who studied fashion design, first at the High School of Industrial Art in New York City, and then briefly at Pratt Institute. She could also sing. Somewhere along the way, she realized it would be easier -- and better -- to get paid for creating beauty than to pay for the privilege, so she quit Pratt after a year and started singing in nightclubs in Greenwich Village and elsewhere, as a solo act with a trio and later as a band singer.

My dad was a child prodigy who picked out popular tunes on a neighbor's piano at age three. By age four he was taking lessons and by nine he had outpaced his teacher and was playing radio shows for money. As a teen he was awarded a scholarship to study piano and voice at Philadelphia's Academy of Music, which was basically a sort of feeder school for Curtis. By the time he was sixteen, he had a union card and was playing piano bar in nightclubs on the weekends while still in high school.

In short, I came from some pretty serious musical stock.
So when I began singing songs from the radio and matching pitch in kindergarten, and making up drum beats on a friend's giant rubber ball in second grade, my parents began paying attention. I didn't like singing in front of people in those days -- yikes! too vulnerable! -- but I loved making up rhythms on any handy surface. When I was nine we moved to the West Coast and my dad bought me a little set of toy bongo drums, which I proceeded to pound daily as I played along to every record in the house. (Six months later, my mom found another set of toy bongos at a yard sale the replace the set I'd destroyed. Perhaps hoping to make this set last longer, she introduced me to the idea of dynamics in music.)
The following year I joined the school band and learned how to play drums. By age fourteen I was being hired to play drums and percussion in local pit orchestras -- and the rest, as they say, was history.

Along the way, the magic of that intersection would be supportive, never pushy. My parents allowed me the time and space to be a kid, and almost never bugged me about practice. Instead, they allowed me to explore music and all sorts of other interests -- geology, history, poetry, drawing and more -- in the ways that inspired me at the time. (My parents were basically the opposite of helicopter parents. I suppose that if the Sudbury school model had existed back then, I would've been an ideal candidate.)

If I had a question about something musical, I'd ask one of them and they'd answer if they could; or they'd steer me towards resources to explore on my own. My mom taught me about phrasing, how to shape a section of a melody so it had breath and forward movement, first by playing examples of her favorite jazz singers and later by singing examples herself. My dad taught me how to write manuscript in a clean hand, and encouraged my youthful attempts in composition and arranging.
By the time I was in high school, it was clear that I wanted some kind of career in music, without any prodding from my folks.

Today I am the musician I wanted to become.

I teach, I compose and I perform. I am the musician my parents -- both of blessed memory -- inspired me to become, albeit in a landscape that neither of them could have imagined for me. I wish they were here to see how far I've come; and I wish I could tell them they've been sitting my on shoulders the whole time, reminding me that I come from good and loving musical stock. I am so blessed by my parents in this regard, and grateful that they gave me the freedom to explore my gifts without judgment or pressure. That freedom may well have been the best musical gift they gave to me.
I'm so grateful today for that freedom, and I love them both more than the whole wide world's fair.

When it comes to the ways our parents can inhabit each of us, so individually and distinctly, three really is a magic number.
How do your parents inhabit you?
Discuss.
And stay tuned.

Anton Hamon, 1935-2003

Gloria K. Hamon, 1935-1996

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FOUR.

7/2/2019

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Yours Truly, playing beats on a fire hydrant at Honk!Fest West, May 2019

It has taken a turn of the calendar through FOUR seasons for me to figure out where I was headed with my next big project. Trying out different names, visuals and ways of creating and sharing the result with everyone.
Four seasons.
A whole year.
Sometimes you really need that much time to sort things out.
Sometimes a big push from outside your overactive brain helps, too. A creative moment that's really different from your normal creative space. New people to create with. Or one morning, a sudden awareness that time is short. A kick in the pants that tells you to stop farting around and just Get Busy.
Can anyone here relate?

So today I'm offering a crap metric ton of gratitude to the Universe, the Is-ness, for the swift kick in the pants that helped me to get off my butt and get busy already.

Today's food for thought: What is your motivation for getting out of your head and hitting the ground?
When you hit a stumbling block, how do you find that motivation? Where do you look for it? Or do you stop looking, and is that the moment when it shows up unbidden?
Discuss. And stay tuned.

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FIVE.

7/1/2019

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I'm asking for just FIVE minutes of your time right now.

Five minutes to tell you that on Friday morning I'm going to make a Very Large Announcement, about something I've been working on -- and agonizing over -- for literally months.
But after experimenting with at least a couple dozen permutations, I believe I've finally dialed everything in and I am ready to share.
Don't worry!
It's a good thing.
In fact, it's going to be really cool and fun and thoughtful and hopefully useful.
And YOU can participate.
Come back here tomorrow to find out more.
Thanks!

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Very Big Things

6/29/2019

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(This is a cross-post from my bikelovejones blog. I post it here at some risk to my long-term professional career, and in a spirit of inquiry into what our tradition might have to say about some Very Big Things.)

Having now watched both nights of Democratic Party debates, I am left thinking some Very Big Things, and just thinking of them simultaneously alarms and intrigues me:

1. Climate change seems to be the most important issue, at least to my thinking. Even as we fight over diminishing resources -- and the political and economic control of those resources -- all of the other issues, like gun control, states' rights, civil rights, economic disparity and homelessness seem far less pressing.
The specter of a rapidly warming planet should be scaring the crap out of every single one of us. And so it has been amazing to consider the lengths to which we distract ourselves from this reality in our homes, our personal and professional lives, our practice of any (or no) religion, and the way we conduct commerce.

2. While I continue to pursue as simple a life as I can here at home -- and last-night's Shabbat gathering was as simple and sweet and uncomplicated as any I've participated in, in a very long time -- the fact is that many of my fellow Jews are pursuing lives that are seemingly as complicated as possible. We follow dietary rules that compel us to buy food that has traveled across the country. We observe holy days that compel us to buy ritual objects made and transported from halfway around the globe. Our professionals travel often, to professional conferences and, if they’re able, back and forth between North America and Israel regularly. We live in Jewish bubbles of our own making, ensconced in comfortable suburbs that lie beyond the reach of public transit and equip our kids with the best things life can offer — both educationally and materially, and all at considerable cost, because life in those bubbles simultaneously requires and justifies that we do so.

I3. n my efforts to build some small semblance of a career as a Jewish professional, I have toured as a visiting artist and educator. While my travel is exclusively for work — my partner and I do not travel for vacations much farther weekend drive to the coast, simply because national or global travel is unaffordable for us — I still shudder at the carbon footprint of my choices. I wonder every day if my choices make sense anymore, in a world that is rapidly burning up. Friends and family tell me not to fret so much — even with all the recent air travel, my carbon footprint before my career change seldom, if ever, required automobile use (I rode to and from work daily by bicycle) and so my current choices still reflect an overall lifetime carbon footprint that’s considerably lower than most.

But this feels like a false paradigm to me, a legal fiction designed to allow me to do this holy work, an attempt to avoid the zero-sum game that climate change represents for the human species.

To calm my distress about the Very Big Things I’ve been wrestling with, I’ve spent my evening reading a number of online articles by Jews from across the spectrum of observance. All but the most radical of them suggest that we ought to be cautious about things like a Green New Deal, or any radical moves away from fossil fuel dependence and meat-based diets — after all, some argue, aren’t we each supposed to live a life based on Torah?

Well, sure. Okay. Torah is thousands of years old. It has provided guidance for our people for ages, and inspires me today.
But the earth is older than Torah by several million or billion years. The earth is older than Judaism. The earth is older than the human species.
And so, doesn’t it make sense that at some point, Judaism may actually become irrelevant? After all, if the earth really has been heated up beyond reversal, then humanity will one day be irrelevant — and nonexistent — as well.

Should we be turning to our tradition for insight on how to deal with the impermanence of things? Of life? Of the human species in its entirety? And can Torah properly prepare us for not only the end of the human species, but the end of our individual lives? What can we glean from Torah to help us come to terms with the death denial of our modern culture, the denial that urges us to distract ourselves with mass consumerism? Can Torah help us come to terms with the reality of human species extinction, which will surely come about as the earth adapts to a warming climate?

I want to figure this out. Because the truth is we’re all going to die someday, and pretending we won’t will only hurt each of us, and all of us, deeply and profoundly. Coming to terms with our eventual demise can only be healthy for all of us, and perhaps will give us insight on how to be better for the planet in the process.

Onward.
Tomorrow will be a good day for a bicycle ride.
And maybe I'll come up with some ideas along the way.

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After-tour letdown and looking ahead to hopeful things

6/24/2019

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I arrived home VERY late Friday night after two weeks on the road, exhausted but very gratified.

Highlights included: TWO wonderful teaching and learning opportunities at Temple Isaiah of Great Neck and online with students, alumni and faculty of Academy for Jewish Religion (non-denominational Jewish seminary);

Full houses at Malverne Jewish Center and the Funkhouse, where I shared my music with incredible, attentive and appreciative music-lovers;

A return to my second Women Cantors' Network conference, where I had joyful reunions with friends and colleagues in the most NON-Competitive setting imaginable, sang, prayed and led services (and became the de facto WCN House Drummer !!), and had a blast sharing my love of percussion, environmentalism and maker culture with folks in my Junk to Funk Workshop.

It was an amazing and rewarding time.

Home now, dealing with the predictable post-tour slump (it happens to most of us, and if we're aware of it we can take steps to make it shprter and easier to live with), planning for future tours and gigs, and puttering in our garden watching the tomatoes and garlic grow and become.
As I sit in the sunshine outside and woodshed on my guitar or on a drum practice pad, or repair bikes for refugees, or simply let the sun's rays warm my face, I am re-rooting in my place in the world and giving a tired, deep thanks for the Is-Ness of it all.

Later this summer I'll be doing other things! Check the opening page of my web site to catch up on my current schedule, and use the contact form to reach out to me and say hello! I would LOVE to hear from you about anything -- a song you liked, an inspiration you had, or whatever.

Thanks for supporting Jewish Music Made By Hand, and enjoy your summer!

2019 Women Cantors' Network conference - Morris Plains, NJ

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tour 2019 begins

6/9/2019

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Just got home from beautiful Bend, Oregon, where I served Temple Beth Tikvah as a cantorial soloist over this Shabbat.
I'm home for a day, doing laundry and last-minute catching up. Early Tuesday morning, I'm getting on an airplane and flying to New York. And thus begins eleven days of house concerts, a coffeehouse concert at a synagogue, text study, and a Shabbaton on Long Island; and a Jewish music conference in New Jersey. This will likely be my biggest tour of the year, and I'm looking forward to it.
I'll post updates on my Facebook MUSIC page, so be sure to check there regularly. If I can arrange for someone to video bits of live performances, I'll share those as well.

If you'll be coming to any of my Long Island shows, Please come up and introduce yourself to me!
(And be sure to bring a little cash in case you want to buy a CD!)

If you're heading out on adventures this summer, rubber side down out there and have fun!
Buckets of Shalom to all of you, and
thanks for supporting Jewish Music Made By Hand.

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