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Music

Herbst

Last night was the beginning of Sukkoth, the Jewish celebration of the harvest and commemoration of endless years of wandering in the desert. It marks the beginning of fall – where non-Jewish Germans celebrate the harvest as well, decorating their yards and churches.

 

 

It let me to thinking: what else was shared? Beyond citizenship, language, service in the military (an estimated 100000 Jewish men served in WW I, of whom approximately 12.000 were killed,) schools, hospitals, volunteer work, neighborhoods, worries about the kids, worries about the economy, you name it, in those years before the Nazis’ rise?

 

The arts. The arts were equally beloved, by those who produced them and those who consumed them irrespective of racial or religious background.

So for today, a day that should be spent grateful for the bounty of the earth, but instead is spent think about the past being too close to the present, I chose songs about fall by Jewish composers Felix Mendelssohn and Fanny Hensel, songs sung in all German households.

I am also adding a contemporary German Klezmer piece about Sukkoth. The video accompanying the music is clippings from The Golem, a 1920 movie made by Paul Wegener, who was born in the late 1800s in Prussia and studied with Max Reinhardt. The guy is something to behold and not just as one of the greats of expressionist cinema. In the 1930s he appeared in Nazi propaganda films such as Mein Leben für Irland in 1941 and Kolberg, a 1944–45 propaganda film epic about the Napoleonic Wars. At the same time, in real life, he expressed his disdain for the Nazis by donating money to resistance groups, hiding vulnerable people in his apartment and writing anti-Hitler slogans on walls. He also found time to get married 6 times…..  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wegener

Photographs are of German landscapes in fall.

 

 

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Doc Pomus

One thing I always thought Americans excelled at was volunteerism. I have never seen the same quality and quantity of people helping other people in the European countries I lived in. When I discuss this with my friends over there I often hear words along the lines of: why enable the State to ditch its responsibility by picking up the slack? Thought through that means in essence that those in need will be shortchanged as long as we are riding on principle (even if we would all agree on what the State’s function should be.)

A recent encounter with a volunteer at a Jewish Retirement facility confirmed my impression yet again – there are some terrific people out there serving their communities. The person in question was a guy who gives monthly lectures on music to a highly educated population in their 80s and 90s. For the life of me I cannot remember his name. But the lecture was so intriguing that I remember the names of those he talked about – in a fashion that brought the history of music in this country to life, engaged the listeners by playing them music of their time, and intermittently introducing lesser known but far more interesting musical figures into the picture.

And thus I learned about Jerome Felder, aka Doc Pomus. Just imagine: a young Jewish kid from NYC in the 1930s gets sent to summer camp, comes home with polio, confined to crutches, later a wheelchair. Escapes the confines of the worried Jewish mother to hang out in Harlem nightclubs where he eventually starts singing the blues. In the 1950s he turns to full time song-writing as a lyricist. You know his songs, even I know his songs, of course without any attribution to him. His music was taken up by Ray Charles, Phil Spector, the Drifters, Willy DeVille, B.B. King, Irma Thomas, Marianne Faithfull, Charlie Rich, Ruth Brown, Dr. John, James Booker, and Johnny Adams.

In the middle of all this, he marries a blond, mid-western, aspiring actress, has children, gets divorced in no time and turns to professional gambling, until the Mafia hits on him. Save the last dance for me is among his most famous work (written for his wife who danced with everyone but him, confined to the wheelchair. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-XQ26KePUQ  Lung cancer got him in 1991 – consequences of a smoking life spent in nightclubs.  I am recounting the details of this story because it struck me as an amazing testimony to pluck, the willingness to go on and tackle life with full force in times of adversity. To talk about this in front of an audience that is not exactly facing easy times either, given the stage of life and health for many present, is glorious teaching. He lectured, tapping his toes, snapping his fingers, swaying with the music when he played bits and pieces, with an enthusiasm and positivity that was infectious, not artificial and never condescending.

 

Here is a link to a 2012 documentary trailer about Doc Pomus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7QQoIGzH9E

And speaking about music I have to mention one other, regular encounter: the music sharing platform Spotify allows people to connect to other listeners and partake in their musical choices. I am, on a weekly basis, impatiently waiting for Barry Johnson, a Portland man I have only once met in person, to post his newest listening pleasures. The reason: I am invariably  thrilled to hear something new that always resonates, as if my very own, quirky musical tastes were catered to. If anyone would wait for my blog with the same curious anticipation I’d die a happy woman on the spot. While listening to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qmjG7i4jfU

 

Photographs are of volunteers I met over the years – they prove that age is no obstacle to service.

 

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May Bloom

Yesterday I read that a landmark-protected German cathedral – a rather small one that really should be called a church – is going to be razed this week. Immerath cathedral happened to stand in a neighborhood that has been forcibly emptied since 2013 to make way to open-pit brown-coal mining; a dirty business, an insanely destructive but seemingly lucrative one.

The reason the news caught my attention was that the church is located in a region where I went to school when I was ten years old. I know the neighborhood. I knew some of the people who had to leave their homes and schools and churches behind, moving away from Erkelenz for good into isolation and an uncertain future.

For some reason it floored me.  The article, in a progressive German news outlet, talked about the fact that the building would have been saved with protests and determination if it was a mosque, and that the replacement church, a village or two further away was a building of such ugliness that it would have pleased Trump.  It seems such a strange chain of associations by an author who was clearly despairing over the final loss of a landmark, usurped by greed.

And then I learned that Republican Multnomah County Chair Buchal wants to hire right-wing militia groups to protect Republicans going to the streets for Trump. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/29/portland-attack-republican-james-buchal-militia-groups

So, I insist on an antidote to the news of the world this week – otherwise I am going to loose my mind.

For the next couple of days it’s going to be the beauty of flowers, coupled with some uplifting music to start the day on a semblance of optimism. I assume you don’t mind joining me in such an endeavor however futile it may turn out to be in the long run….

We start with the prettiest PINK, and Beethoven’s Spring Sonata.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRyzOVLq2BE

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Idiosyncrasy

“We can’t always choose what life brings, but we can choose how to respond.”

I look at this quote of one of the most idiosyncratic people I’ve ever read about on days when I feel like I’m 103 and not coping well.

Emahoy Guebrou is a 93-year old nun who has had an extraordinary life and to this day continues to respond in constructive ways to obstacles in her way.

She came from an upperclass Ethiopian family, was sent to boarding school in Switzerland at the ripe age of 6. Discovered music, got a great musical education in Europe and Africa, partied with Haile Selassie in the 30s, fought for gender equality, and eventually, at age 23, was set to go to London for a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music. Unclear what happened next to prevent her from going, but she dropped life in the fast lane and self-exiled into the religious life of a nun, running around barefoot in the hills of Ethiopia.

Which did not prevent her from fostering her extraordinary musical talents – she composes and edits to this day. Hope your day improves just like mine does by reading about her quirky life and listening to her jazz-infused music.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/apr/17/ethiopia-93-year-old-singing-nun-emahoy-tsegue-maryam-guebrou

Song of the Sea, one of her best know compositions, inspired choice of photographs.

Here is the homeless wonderer – yes, with an o not an a……..

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Prickly Things

· Für S. ·

“I had to get out of Los Angeles,” said Quinn, a poetic songwriter who describes his sound as a cowboy waltz vibe meshing with tinklings of sci-fi. I had to choose this musician to accompany today’s photographs for the description of his music alone. You tell me if his assessment is accurate….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RhMnmovEKg

And where did he go? To Joshua Tree National Park, a haven for fringe and not so fringe musicians, stoner rock mostly, made most (in)famous by the Eagles of Death Metal, who lost band members in the terror attacks at Bataclan, the Paris night club.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-desert-music-joshua-tree-20151205-story.html

The title of the article above describes the park as drawing artists, musicians and the pure of heart. None of those were present when my oldest friend and I explored it in 2015 – we had the entire place practically to ourselves in the early morning. She has a passion for cacti – no clue where it originated. Perhaps comforting visits with grandparents – cacti collections were not unknown to be decorating German window sills.

I certainly know that my passion for birds was instilled by walks through the forests and heaths of Lower-Saxony with my Opa, the thin, short man playing the huge stand-up bass in a small Orchestra called Fidelio. He’d whistle bird calls with the joy of a musician and taught me the rudiments about bird species. Here is a hummer in memory of Opa Eduard.

But I digress. Cacti it shall be today, in all their comforting beauty. And their bloom in the wild.

Photographs from Joshua Tree National Park and the region surrounding Palm Desert. The park’s trees, rarely found any where else in the continental US, look like some sort of cactus themselves.

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Swan Song

After a particularly trying episode of whooping cough my sister and I were dragged to the Black Forest to “take the air.” Walks through rainy meadows and dark forests, populated by dwarfs and witches in my vivid imagination, did nothing to improve the mood. My mother’s bedside reading, however, did. She had brought Walter Slezak’s biography of his father, Leo Slezak, What time’s the next swan?, and laughed out loud ever so often under our bulging feather beds. Slezak was a Wagnerian Heldentenor, larger than life, with a wicked sense of humor. When singing Lohengrin, the opera technicians sent the swan-like boat, meant for his entrance onto the stage, full force ahead without him in it. He is reported to have drily inquired” Wann, bitte, geht der nächste Schwan?”

https://www.amazon.de/What-Times-Next-Swan-Slezak/dp/B0007DL03Q/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1487961603&sr=1-1&keywords=what+time%27s+the+next+swan%3F

Having no clue what the opera was about, I was subsequently treated to my mother’s re-enactment of the basic story of Lohengrin, fueled, no doubt, by her enjoyment of the local specialty of pear brandy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWg2UD5kzjA

Decades later I had a similarly wonderful experience, when a bunch of hippies re-enacted, singing and all, another tale unknown to me: The Wizard of Oz. I had tried to mend a broken heart on a Caribbean Island and here I was marveling at flying monkeys and songs of tin men (now, I wonder, why would heartless, hollow men come to mind..)  – all of us, this time, stoned out of our minds. Life can be pretty amazing.

In any case, this next week is the swan song (a metaphorical phrase for a final gesture, effort, or performance given just before death or retirement) for my current exhibit at Cameraworks Gallery. If you have not yet visited, I’d be honored if you did. Here is a review that might help you make up your mind. Today, Saturday, the gallery is open, on Sunday it is closed, and I am taking the whole series down on Friday afternoon….

http://www.orartswatch.org/well-worn-oregon-refugee-dreams/

I photographed these swans last weekend in pouring rain through a car window at Ridgefield, WA – the blurry quality is the distortions from the sheets of rain….

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Andantino

One of the most beautiful pieces of music I know is Schubert’s posthumously published Sonata D 959 – 2nd part of a trilogy, all three goosebump-producing. They came to mind when I heard yesterday that the new administration undermined the application of a hard-fought law that protects transgender rights. It was serendipity that my search for Brendel’s version of the Sonata produced a cover image of a bathroom…..although I hear someone say it is as little about bathrooms as it was about water fountains…

For today’s literary bit I refer back to an old short story by Willa Cather – Paul’s Case – A Study in Temperament (1905). It is a poignant exposition of someone who does not fit in, runs away from home after an act of defiance, has a day to explore his (subtly insinuated) homosexuality before he commits suicide for shame. The most heartbreaking aspect of it is the fact that he regrets that step when it’s too late.

The audio book version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL_tnkGOwdA

And here is a 4 minute encapsulation of the story in pictures…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FRJGGZfNms

So now we have Blacks, Muslims, Jews, Queers, Mexicans and the poor as targeted populations – who will be next?

I insist on ending on an upbeat note: you all know Andersen’s Fairy Tale of the Ugly Duckling? The “misfit” is a lone outsider – but s/he holds a promise that nature fulfills. May everyone figure out who they are and take wings, ducks, swans, geese and anyone in-between!

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2nd Act

 

One of my favorite voices these days is British: George Monbiot writes for the Guardian, when he doesn’t write books. (Regarding the latter I recommend his thrilling read for anyone who loves nature: Feral. 

http://www.monbiot.com/2013/05/24/feral-searching-for-enchantment-on-the-frontiers-of-rewilding/

For today’s topic, though, I’ll attach 2 of his columns. One is a scathing take-down of neoliberalism, providing an analysis that helped me understand more about where we are now and why. Here is an excerpt:

“It was inevitable that the blazing, insurrectionary confidence of neoliberalism would exert a stronger gravitational pull than the dying star of social democracy……. the result is first disempowerment then disenfranchisement. If the dominant ideology stops governments from changing social outcomes, they can no longer respond to the needs of the electorate. Politics becomes irrelevant to people’s lives; debate is reduced to the jabber of a remote elite. The disenfranchised turn instead to a virulent anti-politics in which facts and arguments are replaced by slogans, symbols and sensation. The man who sank Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency was not Donald Trump. It was her husband.”

Here is the whole essay: http://evonomics.com/ruthless-network-super-rich-ideologues-killed-choice-destroyed-peoples-faith-politics/

The other is one of his occasional musings on how effective resistance can happen, a helpful guide for the passive perplexed. http://www.monbiot.com/2017/02/09/all-together-now/

An opera that fits with the theme of money in politics is, of course, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Weill, who wrote the music, and Brecht, who wrote the libretto, parted ways after this collaboration. As someone once said, Weill wanted success while Brecht wanted revolution. Brecht urgently called for resistance to a social order that descended from some kind of feudal capitalism that rots the soul into Nazism. Weill, a plain liberal, wanted to reach a broader spectrum of people with his music; after Mahagonny he never wrote opera again, but rather succumbed to showbiz music. Second act is fun, but the best known song from this opera, which Hitler hated and regularly had interrupted by the brown shirt youth, is Alabama.

Here are some versions:

Lotte Lenya, Weill’s wife, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6orDcL0zt34  1930

David Bowie, in his Peter Pan outfit, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz1ypTjChcA, 1978

Marianne Faithful, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T59ej_TlXE

And yes, I did not care for the Doors version…..

 

 

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Intermezzo

Do you know those days when you wake up feeling like this?

And your immediate reaction to what greets you at the breakfast table is, “why does no one else share that sentiment?”

 

And  during your walk your inner chaos is echoed in nature?

 

And even the car in front of you mocks you?

Then all day you listen to Mahler/Rückert about turning your back to the world?

Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen….

trans. by Emily Ezust

I am lost to the world
with which I used to waste so much time,
It has heard nothing from me for so long
that it may very well believe that I am dead!

It is of no consequence to me
Whether it thinks me dead;
I cannot deny it,
for I really am dead to the world.

I am dead to the world’s tumult,
And I rest in a quiet realm!
I live alone in my heaven,
In my love and in my song.

 

Well, it’s time to

a) read about stoicism

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2017/01/stoicism-for-dark-days.html

 

and b) to ignore everything you just read, put on your read shoes, grit your teeth, blog and find your way back to your usual self.

 

 

 

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First (Class) Act

I have a few people who recommend books to me that invariably hit the spot. Those people are from different backgrounds and of different ages, and I agree with them 90 or so % of the time. I am grateful to them because they alert me to authors that I might otherwise never have encountered.

That does not hold for Naomie Klein – I have met her in several of the journalistic sources I read, among them the Guardian, the NYT and lately the Intercept. The book recommended by my handlers and still on my library reserve list is This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate (2014), but I am sharing here her acceptance speech at the Sydney Peace Prize.

https://www.thenation.com/article/intersectionality-is-the-only-path-forward-for-the-climate-movement/

I like Klein’s naming Trump “the grabber-in-chief,”but, more importantly, I am impressed with how she summarizes the looming climate disaster and its political antecedents.

Matching her theme of resistance to capitalistic ruthlessness that could, quite literally, kill us all, with operatic music was hard because of too many choices; Beethoven advanced revolutionary ideas in Fidelio.  Kurt Weill wrote  Die Bürgschaft — about a mythical land under a totalitarian, money-driven dictatorship. When it was criticized, he used words that could come from a contemporary composer. “I believe that the task of opera today is to move beyond the fate of private individuals toward universality,” he wrote. “Die Bürgschaft undertakes an attempt to adopt a position on matters that concern us all. Such an attempt must elicit discussions as a matter of course. That is part of its job.”

And then there is CO2, an opera by Giorgio Battista, commissioned by the Milan Scala and premiered there in 2015. Taking its focus from Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, it is a small modern masterpiece implicating us all in the destruction of the earth and suggesting potential remedies we could adopt.

Klein herself cites Leonard Cohen, so I’ll add her chosen song as well – all this music should motivate us!

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