THE SIGNAL from David Katznelson
“World, they have taken the small children like butterflies and thrown them, beating their wings, into the fire.” ― Nelly Sachs
We are getting ready to light the first menorah candle tonight. Hanukkah is here. Hanukkah is here and I have been given the countdown to this moment by my children for the past two weeks. They are waiting for the sun to drop, for the shamash to be lit…for the presents to be passed and the gelt to be eaten.
Yes, I know that this is a relatively minor holiday in the big scheme of things. But given the moment we are in right now, it feels good to get some extra spirit around the house, and to dig into this festival of lights and miracles.
The organization I run, Reboot, has put together 2-4 minute pieces for each of the eight nights for our campaign we call GIVE LIGHT. The videos feature a wide variety of creatives including Laurie Anderson, Luther Dickinson, Roger Bennet, Sasha Segan and her Cosmos mom Ann Druyan, chef Anthony Mint and Zero Footprint founder Karen Liebowitz, Shakespearean Dr. James Allen Jones and many others. Each brings a fresh, different spirit to the holiday (go here to get access) and a little inspiration for us while we are sheltered home.
There are no big Hanukkah parties this year; just another brick in the covid wall between us and you and everyone else. Yet this being a holiday where miracles occur, here is a toast, in between singing rock of ages without knowing the words and eating the first latke: Damn, it is good to have this year coming to a close…and fuck, we still have a long way to go before we can stop worrying about our loved ones getting sick….being able to see live music again and to go bar hopping with our friends. But lighting a candle is an action, an action to create light in the darkness…a light that sparks a feeling of possibilities, possibilities that we can get through these times and look forward to the new world to come. The possibility of overcoming what oppressiveness lurks in front of us.
Bring on the first night.
The best way to hear the story of Altamont is to read Joel Selvin’s incredible book about the concert (my fav Selvin concern along with Here Comes The Night). And, the doc that Bibb produced way back when is an excellent viewing and its sweet to read his reflections.
The Poet and the Reader: Nobel Lecture 2020 by Louise Glück
A powerful, essential waxing about poetry from the laureate, when accepting her prize: “The poems to which I have, all my life, been most ardently drawn are…poems of intimate selection or collusion, poems to which the listener or reader makes an essential contribution, as recipient of a confidence or an outcry, sometimes as co-conspirator.”
One of my favorite films of all time is The Dybbuk, a haunting beautifully shot story with some of the eeriest moments in film history. Yiddish cinema in general had a dark, dreamy feeling to it, representing to our eyes a world that was completely destroyed. The films have an almost unreal quality, ghostly.
Super A Explores Pop Contradictions
Super A’s work reminds me of Anthony Ausgang’s paintings. Very psychedelic, often playing off of heroic images, with a vibrancy and kineticism that makes the images seem alive, breathing in an alien-like way.
I'M NOBODY! WHO ARE YOU?
By Emily Dickinson (a poem discussed in the above speech by Louise Glück, printed here on the day of Dickinson’s birth)
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you—Nobody—Too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise—you know!
How dreary—to be—Somebody!
How public—like a Frog—
To tell one's name—the livelong June—
To an admiring Bog!
