Wednesday, March 30, 2022

Missa Solemnis and Fidelity to the Score

 


So here's a discursion on score fidelity...
And before I begin I want to be clear here, I understand the vital importance of fidelity to the score, so much so that at times, like literally all of us in classical music, I have been guilty of overestimating its importance, so this is not in any sense whatsoever meant as a slap on anybody's wrist - though there's a guy on the conductor listserve who's incredibly obnoxious about score fidelity and seems unable to listen to any conductor who isn't Toscanini or Levine. How's that working out for him these days?...
I was discussing with a very good friend about the Missa Solemnis and what it takes to get the printed page into the concert hall. The problem with the Missa Solemnis is, it's almost literally impossible to realize Beethoven's vision: it's just too hard. Look at the markings in the Gloria.
Lots of conductors make a giant showboat of the 'In Gloria Dei Patris' fugue, and make their choruses strut their stuff. The problem with that is threefold:
  1. The choir has to keep something in the tank for the Credo, which is a mammoth showpiece, and after the Gloria they're mostly exhausted.
  2. There's no sense in having fast choral counterpoint in two movements, by the Credo fugue, the chorus would have already proven that's what they can do, and the shock is gone.
  3. So... in the Gloria fugue, Beethoven writes Allegro ma non troppo e ben marcato. It's clearly supposed to be in a march tempo. Perhaps a parade just like the Turkish section of Beethoven 9, but whatever it is, it's not supposed to be nearly so fast as many, MANY conductors take it.
The problem is that the next section is probably supposed to be a showboat section for soloists. Beethoven is a notorious inferno for vocal soloists. Beethoven writes both poco piu Allegro and in cut time. It's possible that Beethovne meant only a little faster, as the score clearly states, but given that Beethoven's clearly trying to build wild excitement, the only other possibility is to look at the time signature. He writes Poco Piu Allegro but also 2/2, cut time. In other words, MORE THAN TWICE AS FAST. The final change to Presto, in context, is not nearly as dramatic as the change from choral to solo.
It should be obvious, this is a nearly impossible marking to realize, and has always been, but very few performances realize both sections in the markings. In just about every performance, nobody tries. It's either Maestoso the whole way through the In Gloria Dei Patris, or it's Molto Allegro the whole way through, and even the Molto Allegro performances are never as fast as Beethoven seems to want the solo section.
On the other hand, in the Credo, the beginning is Allegro ma non troppo, and nearly half the performances are much too fast for that marking (though some are also quite a bit slower). But then, you get to the big moment when the chorus ascends: Et Ascendit. Once again, the tempo goes alla breve, and it's almost impossible. Gardiner, who steamrolls through every slow marking, comes closest, Bernstein comes fairly close too, and is at least much better about following Beethoven's tempi.
But there's no question, THIS is the moment when the chorus is demanded to step on the gas. But then... once again, the et vitam virturis is supposed to be relatively slow and subdued, and many, many performances are much too fast, and already showing off. It's only when we get to the second fugue that the chorus is supposed to do a series of virtuoso runs and from which Beethoven demands equivalent coloratura techniques to any trained Baroque opera singer. It is almost impossible to realize, but Beethoven clearly wants one and ONLY one moment when the entire chorus goes berserk, because he knew that 50% of choral rehearsal must go into exactly that passage.
This is not how nearly everybody plays it. They either keep things at a comfortable speed, or they do virtuosity everywhere. Neither is what Beethovne wanted, and neither captures nearly so much diversity of expression as his own idea. But... such is the world, and just about everybody who sells themselves a personally in touch with the composer's vision is wrong about it. My interpretation could certainly be wrong, but that's OK, because I've reconciled myself to it.
A score is, quite literally, a theory. Like a mathematical proof, it is a schematic that does not give information on any practical, real life application. And like legalistic originalism, a reading of the law itself means nothing without stare decisis - the practical wisdom of precedent, where the same law runs through decades of interpretations that are tailored to the specifics of that performer's capabilities.
As a listener, I see the concept of score fidelity as a temptation that, when viewed in only two dimensions, can ruin music appreciation and robs music of its ability to increase a listener's quality of life. But at the same time, without the score, classical music is nothing. A score is both the basic fact of classical music, and the millstone that squelches individuality in performers, alienates thousands of musicians from classical music and tens of millions of listeners who can't tell any difference between one performer and the next.
I've come to look to insistence to score faithfulness more forgivingly than I did even five years ago; just like in every other genre of music, not every sway to the winds of fashion is worthwhile, without a grounded conception, we get cult-like devotion to insipidity - and whether that insipidity is Teodor Currentzis, Taylor Swift, or President Trump, that is a sad state of affairs where people look to the cult leader to shut their brains off, not turn them on.
A compromise HAS to be reached, so one of the ultimate qualities I look for in performance is musicians who, while not necessarily following the score letter by letter, are clearly engaging deeply with it - taking the markings into consideration, interpolating them into their own interpretation that neatly tucks away the limitations of human fallibility.
One example: Bluebeard's Castle is a work that's meant an enormous amount to me since I was a teenager who thought himself quite literally unlovable. When I began to follow the score, I realized the only person who truly followed the score is Dohnanyi - who is an evolutionary miracle of music who's able to follow the most complicated markings as though there's no trouble at all. But I also noticed that some of my favorite conductors who directed very famous versions of Bluebeard: Kubelik, Fricsay, Kertesz, were not even considering the markings, and to me, it sounded that way: their readings were flat on the page (there are many other performances where Kubelik and Fricsay come closer than nearly anybody, try Tchaikovsky 5...). On the other hand: Sawallisch, Dorati, Solti, Rattle, Ivan Fischer, they all clearly kept the markings in mind, and while they didn't follow them totally, they clearly tried their best to direct fallible forces to something that approximated the printed page, and in each case the results were incredibly exciting.
There are certain things which under no circumstances can be captured by markings on the page. The metronome marking for the Hammerklavier Sonata's opening is notoriously impossible, literally unplayable until today's human computers. Unless you are a human automaton, squelching any human feeling at all, a performance of the opening in Beethoven's conception has to allow for danger, wrong notes, dropped notes, lots of rubato, and lack of rhythmic coordination. A Beethoven score cannot possibly tell you which technical sloppiness is permissible and which isn't, but in any performance, some things are never meant to be controlled. To control them is to play God, to view music as no different than automation and clocks. No musician may do that without it ceasing to be music, and no musician has the moral right to even try. Anybody who believes they do is asking to be exploited by charlatans. 

Tales from the Old New Land - Scene 2 first half Middle Draft

(Hard cut to Scene 2)


(4 of Reb Yaakov's sons smoking cigarettes in the Jewish cemetary)

Gad: (imitating his father) They do the mitzvahs, they go to shul, they work so hard, they help their Mameh, they help your Mamehs...

Asher: Oh we help their Mamehs... (they all laugh)

Dan: Hey, roll me one too. 

Naphtali: You sure? Every time I roll you a papiros sound like you're gonna huss out Rabbi Schkop! 

Asher: How do you know we didn't ground der Rebbe into tabacco?

Gad: His headstone's right there! Why don't you ask him? 

Asher: Why don't I? 

(hear a fly unzip, Asher pishes on the Rebbe's headstone)

Dan: Oh don't fucking pish on the Rebbe!

Gad: Don't curse in the cemetery! 

Naphtali: Who's gonna hear us?

Gad: You don't wanna tempt the evil eye. 

Asher: What evil eye? You ever see it?

Gad: Mameh's in labor! Just don't do it today, wait to do drek like this tomorrow! 

Asher: I'm not shitting I'm pishing! 

Gad: Alright take a shit in the fucking ocean. 

Asher: (proud) Ha! There's my tzaddik. 

Dan: You still haven't rolled me a papiros. 

Asher: You still haven't told us what this schlock is with that kadokhes Dreyfus. 

Dan: You can read it for yourself!

Naphtali: Asher doesn't read. 

Asher: Shtup ir, of course I read, I just don't like to. 

Naphtali: He says the words look backwards. 

Dan: Wow, we're worried about tempting the evil eye but Asher is the evil eye. 

Asher: And you're gonna get it in your evil eye if you don't tell us what that newspaper says. 

Dan: It's just more drek about that nochschlepper Dreyfus. 

Asher: What's happening to him?

Dan: Bupkes! Like always happens! He's sitting in jail, his rich brother's giving money for him...

Asher: (interrupting) Are we sending him money?

Dan: What money?! 

Asher: We have money!

Naphtali: We had money. Uncle Ezra sends less every year. You know this! 

Gad: It's that apikores wife of his. She always hated Tateh. 

Dan: And Uncle Ezra always hated her!

Naphtali: He did?

Dan: You heard what Shimon said. Apparently he goes to bed with a different shiksa from the factory every night. 

Gad: Levi told me that when he went to help Uncle Ezra he saw kielbasa in the kitchen. 

Naphtali: (sighs, stunned) What the shtup....

Dan: Did you really think Ezra was a Yiddisher kop?

Naphtali: I thought he was like any of us, only rich. 

Dan: We did pretty well for a while there. 

Gad: Yeh, cuz we have a reicher for an uncle! 

Naphtali: Doesn't Tateh have anything saved away?

Dan: He had eleven children! 

Naphtali: Well, I guess we mazel'd out. Uncle Ezra cut the funds just as we got Bar Mitzvah'd and could go work. 

Gad: Some work we're doin' here.

Dan: This is arbeit! We're here trimming the grass cemetery. 

Gad: This is bupkes! We should have been home two hours ago! 

Dan: What does it matter? Who's hiring right now? When you have eleven brothers there are only jobs for sev...

Asher: (interrupting) Who's this picture of? (holds up newspaper to Dan)

Dan: That? That's Dreyfus! 

Asher: That meeskait is Dreyfus? 

Dan: Ye, that's... who Tateh's been talking about every day since we were in Kheyder. 

Asher: Look at the shmattehs on him! 

Dan: Yeah, he... looks like a shaygetz. 

Gad: That guy's as Jewish as the shtupping Pope! 

Naphtali: Look at the stripes on his fucking hoot!

Gad: And what the shtup is that mustache?

Naphtali: How can a Yid who dresses like that not be guilty?

Dan: And what's with the fucking knepls on his shirt? 

Asher: Dan. Is there any way of telling from the picture what colors his uniform are?

Dan: Well, you're not gonna believe this but I once saw the French uniform on a stamp. It was red, white and blue. 

Asher: Ret, veis, un bleu?! How the fuck do these zelners go into the field without other soldiers knowing where to shoot them a hectare away? 

Naphtali: Even a feinschmeker like this guy shouldn't go to a barber and say "Make my mustache look like the hair over my putz!' 

Asher: Seriously, why the fuck do all these alter trombeyniks give a dreck about some French faygaleh?









Tales from the Old New Land - Opening Monologue - Final Draft

 


Rebbe Yaakov Charlap: (opening until explosion should be as dull as possible)
(in Talmudic leyning chant, first half in Aramaic, then in Yiddish, then the whole thing in English)
מיתיבי כל עשרים וארבעה חדש דש מבפנים וזורה מבחוץ דברי ר' אליעזר א"ל הללו אינו אלא כמעשה ער ואונן כמעשה ער ואונן ולא כמעשה ער ואונן כמעשה ער ואונן דכתיב והיה אם בא
vi der nuhg fun er aun aunn, aun dakh nisht [dvka] vi der firung fun er aun aunn: 'khdrkh er aun aunn', varim es shteyt geshribn in khsubim, aun es iz geven, ven er iz areyn. tsu zayn bruders vayb, az er hot es aoysgegosn aoyf der erd; "du zalst nisht lakhn bite." aun 'la [bdiuk] khdrkh er aun aunn', veyl dart iz es geven an aumnatirlekher meshh, da vert es getun aoyf dem tbei.
(then in English)
An objection was raised: During all the twenty-four months {after a birth, when a mother is nursing} one may thresh within and winnow without; these are the words of Rov Eliezer. The others said to him: Such actions are only like the practice of Er and Onan! -Like the practice of Er and Onan, and yet not [exactly] like the practice of Er and Onan: ‘Like the practice of Er and Onan’, for it is written in Scripture, And it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilt it on the ground; (kids start laughing) "Don't laugh please." and ‘not [exactly] like the practice of Er and Onan’, for whereas there it was an unnatural act, here it is done in the natural way.
.......And so for today's dawf yeymi we get to Parashas Vayeshev... You must know the story by now... it's the story of Onan, Tamar, Yehudah, and Er. Tamar, the beautiful bride, that a series of husbands won't make her pregnant so she can keep her nice figure, so Onan and Er always spilled their seed on the ground during schtupzeit.
(one kid laughs)
Don't laugh...

So God punished Onan and Er by killing them. (slightly annoyed) And make no mistake Gimpeleh, that's evil and Hashem might decide to punish you for it if you spill your seed anywhere but your wives.
(more kids laugh)
Please don't laugh, this is important! The Torah teaches a valuable lesson here.... like it always does....
(kids calm down)
You don't have very long till your married, you all know what spilling your seed is, you just need not to do it until you're married and can make geschlect in your wives.
(a bunch of kids laugh)
(Rebbe Yaakov hits one of the kids with a switch)
NIBZEH L'AZAZEL KHALERIYA! LIGN IN DRERD UND BAKN BEYGL! HINDERT HAYSN ZOL ZU HABEN, IN YEDER HEYS A HUNDERD TSIMERN, IN YEDER TSIMER TZVANZIK BETN UN KADOKHES ZOL IM VARFN FIN EYN BET IN DER TSVEYTER!
(keeps hitting the kid)
Farshtunkener Jewish hillbillies!....
Worthless numbskulls!....
No better than wild animals are any of you!... Is Dreyfus going through all this so you mamzerim can dishonor his sacrifice?!
(Kid says distant from microphone): Rebbe Yaakov, Gimpeleh's finger looks crooked...
Zay shtil you naarisher pischer!... Alright! Put your hands on the table! Everybody put your hands on the table!
(Hits kids hands with switch between most sentences)
Laughing at the Torah! Laughing at women! Generation to generation of light-mindedness and ingratitude to your mothers! While you're busy not learning Torah they're making sure you don't starve and freeze! One day all of your wives'll be sick of your disrespect to women and demand all the things men have, and then where'll the world be?....
Feh! You're all just meat with eyes!...
How did I, how did my family, end up teaching generations of zhlubs like you?! We all needed you like a hole in the head! Fifty years teaching this stinking Kheyder, just like my Tateh un Zaydie un Elter Zaydie before me. It was the death of all of them. I'm the only one who lived past fifty and now I'm almost seventy and still stuck with you khamers!...
Teaching all your Tatehs and Zaydies who had cowsheads just like you! Waiting for Rebbe Schkop to retire so I might get a few years as town Rabbi and a decent pension pay for my eleven kinder instead of the bupkes your parents give me, and we said to him 'may you live to a hundred twenty' so many times, he lived to a hundred and would issue rulings from his bed! ...Ach...
Alright. May Rebbe Schkop's memory be a blessing... But then your parents, more naarishkeit! They get a new Rabbi! God forbid a Kharlap be a Rabbi for them for a few years before he plotzes into the ground too! Another generation of Kharlap rebbes passed over for a pischer straight from the Yeshiva barely older than you who doesn't know life from the lamed vav. Schmeggeges, all of you!
(one of the kids is crying from the beatings)
Oy, I'm so sorry Gimpeleh, I didn't mean all that. Kum tzu mir mein kint
(takes crying kid in his arms)
Ikh hob dich lieb
(kisses him).
You know I have love for all kinderlach, you know I have love for your parents who I taught when they was smaller than you. Tevyeleh I even taught your grandfathers, both of them! Du veyst, you kinder are my life, I just need you to learn so you can be a light to the goyim just like your parents have always been. I promise.
Let's all sing a song: let's sing Tumbalalaika.
(everybody sings a verse of Tumbalalaika)
You all sound beautiful tatelehs.
Listen kindz, I know this stuff is hard and boring, but you need to pay attention to it.
(pause)
He's up there, He's watching. He knows which of you are leyning good and which are leyning bad, but when you have trouble, you talk to Him, right during the Shomeh Esrei when we're all going Maaaanehmanehmanehmanehmanehmanehmanehoyriboimnosheloylamesistsoschverunsoshvachunoymein
tzurismeintatehisaschnorrermeinmamehisabalebusunmeinbriderisabeheymeunmeinbubbehisamekhasheyfehunikhveysvos
(the kids laugh hard),
just between you and me... and Him,... you don't have to do it.
What good is it to do the Shmoneh Esrai twice? Hashem didn't hear you the first time? Use that time to say to Hashem, geb a kook, I know I'm a bad leyner, but I'll try to be good. Just try harder to be good and he'll give you as many chances as you need till you become good because you are good. You're kinder and you're good, because all kinder are good, and you don't have time yet to become the rashas. You know he'll listen, and I know he'll listen....
I know I've told you this story but I know he'll listen. Hashem came to me in a dream. It's true! Your eltern probably say Oy, Reb Yaakov, he's so meshuggeh. That's what they say isn't it?
But today, I'm gonna tell it again, because I know you'll understand it, and today's the best day to tell it. An angel came to me in a dream just like he came to Awv Yaakov in ancient Israel, and he blessed me just like he blessed Yaakov. He told me, Reb Yaakov, I know you and your beautiful wife, and I know everybody thinks she's a mekhasheyfeh now, but she was beautiful before you all were born,...
(starts tearing up)
Reb Yaakov, I know you and your wife have tzuris having babies for 25 years, but you're going to have twelve babies, all of them sons, and they're all gonna grow up. You need to name them after the twelve sons of Jacob: Reuven, Shimun, Levi, Yehuda, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Yissachar, Z'vulin, Yosef and Binyamin.
And then, in four years, five sets of sons: Reuven and Shimun, then Levi and Yehuda, then Dan and Naphtali, then Gad and Asher, then three! Yissachar and Z'vulun and Yosif. And then, nothing, fourteen years, no more kinder. (chortles between a laugh and an oy) Eleven's enough. But then today, today, five minutes just before I got here, Reuven tells me mein weib's in labor, and I know we're gonna have twelfth son.
(class claps)
DON'T CLAP! (spits) Don't tempt the evil eye. After the birth you can sing me Mazel Tov and tonight you'll all come over with your parents and we'll do a l'Chaim and in a week we'll do the bris.
But here's the reason I'm telling you the story. My sons, Reuven, Shimon, Levi, Yehuda, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Yissachar, Z'vulin, Yosef, and soon, one more... I raised them to be Yiddisher Kops. You know them! Reuven, Shimon, Levi, Yehuda, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Yissachar, Z'vulin, Yosef... every one of them is a Tzaddik. You know them! They all love God, and God loves them. They do the mitzvahs, they go to shul, they work so hard, they help their Mameh, they help your Mamehs, they help everybody in the Shtetl, and that's what Hashem gives you if you believe He will.
(Hard cut to Scene 2)
(4 of Reb Yaakov's sons smoking cigarettes in the Jewish cemetary)
Dan: (imitating his father) They do the mitzvahs, they go to shul, they work so hard, they help their Mameh, they help your Mamehs...
Naphtali: Oh we help their Mamehs... (they all laugh)

Tuesday, March 29, 2022

Cantelli Cosi and the problems of performing Mozart

This is.... by some distance, the only recording I've ever heard that does complete justice to Cosi Fan Tutte. Of the three great Da Ponte operas, Cosi is the stupidest, but it's also Mozart's most beautiful operatic score. It's an impossible work: it's a celebration of the nihilism of love, simultaneously trivial and profound, beautiful and cynical, hateful and loving, exploitative and forgiving. In the face of an emotional burden that large, how does sitting through any performance not become a chore?

Last night I listened to Fritz Busch's '51 Cosi, and bad sound aside, it was extraordinary in a way I'd never heard Cosi be. It was not all that well sung except by Jurniac and Bruscantini, but it was suffused by grace, a thing of pure divinity that floated down a river of pure music. Of course, there are other Mozart recordings suffused by that delightful transcendence, but I'm not sure there is a Cosi that is quite like that.
The real music is not stuff we hear. Real music is made in the overtones, from which our amygdala responds physiologically on a level at which our ears are not really aware. The lower brain is where our emotional response is processed. You can't explain why the Busch/Jurniac Cosi is amazing, but you can feel it.
But even in the bad sound of the Cantelli, you can HEAR the upper octaves. Forget the precision here, which is breathtaking. Just listen to the blend between singers and orchestra. On the stage of La Scala where every major conductor from Toscanini to Abbado has tried to rein in singer egos, a singer as egotistical as Elisabeth Schwarzkopf matches perfectly to blend with the timbres of instruments, and the singers even go to great pains to blend their vibratos with each other. This is the 'gesamtkunstwerk' opera is always said to be, but never is. How different might opera be today if Cantelli took a different plane?
From Busch, it's as though we're listening to pure divine grace, but from Cantelli, it's as though we're experiencing divine revelation, as though the music is revealing to us the true world behind the world from which music originates. I don't know if we mortals are supposed to hear music on a level this deep without going mad, it's like eating from the Tree of Knowledge, but I do know that it's an unforgettable experience.
But my general problem with Mozart performance is still that, for all the change, we still think of him as Mr. powdered wig when he wanted to storm the Bastille. The real Mozart is one step from Beethoven, and most of his soul is what music was soon to become. While Mozart is not hypomanic like Beethoven, he is so much more than exquisite. His music is as vulgar, and cynical, and as disturbing as the personality in his letters. There's a place for the exquisite in Mozart, but ONLY when he writes 'mp' or 'p' or 'pp,' and then he shocks you, again and again, with giant fortes. He is the master ironist, and particularly in his greatest masterpieces, whatever Mozart sounds like he's expressing, he is usually expressing the opposite. He's Rousseau in music: you think he's completely comfortable in the world of rococo courts, but the truth is he wants to blow the whole society up. The WHOLE POINT of such exquisite beauty is that he views the world of powdered wigs with withering contempt. The slow music is usually taken 50% or more slower than Mozart's scores, the fast music 50% or more faster, and the dynamic contrasts... 200% smaller. The proper tempi change the entire pacing of works. The way he's played, you'd think that Mozart took a look at court life and thought everything was just fine.
Viva la liberta! 

Old New Land Podcast Play 1 - Scene 1 - First Half - Final Draft



Rebbe Yaakov Charlap: (opening until explosion should be as dull as possible)

(in Talmudic leyning chant, first half in Aramaic, then in Yiddish, then the whole thing in English)



מיתיבי כל עשרים וארבעה חדש דש מבפנים וזורה מבחוץ דברי ר' אליעזר א"ל הללו אינו אלא כמעשה ער ואונן כמעשה ער ואונן ולא כמעשה ער ואונן כמעשה ער ואונן דכתיב והיה אם בא


vi der nuhg fun er aun aunn, aun dakh nisht [dvka] vi der firung fun er aun aunn: 'khdrkh er aun aunn', varim es shteyt geshribn in khsubim, aun es iz geven, ven er iz areyn. tsu zayn bruders vayb, az er hot es aoysgegosn aoyf der erd; "du zalst nisht lakhn bite." aun 'la [bdiuk] khdrkh er aun aunn', veyl dart iz es geven an aumnatirlekher meshh, da vert es getun aoyf dem tbei.

(then in English) An objection was raised: During all the twenty-four months {after a birth, when a mother is nursing} one may thresh within and winnow withou; these are the words of R. Eliezer. The others said to him: Such actions are only like the practice of Er and Onan! -Like the practice of Er and Onan, and yet not [exactly] like the practice of Er and Onan: ‘Like the practice of Er and Onan’, for it is written in Scripture, And it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilt it on the ground; (kids start laughing) "Don't laugh please." and ‘not [exactly] like the practice of Er and Onan’, for whereas there it was an unnatural act, here it is done in the natural way.

And so for today's dawf yoymi we get to Parashas Vayeshev... You must know the story by now it's the story of Onan, Tamar, Yehudah, and Er. Tamar, the beautiful bride, that a series of husbands won't make her pregnant so she can keep her nice figure, so Onan and Er always spilled their seed on the ground during schtupzeit. (one kid laughs) Don't laugh (slightly annoyed). So God punished Onan and Er by killing them. And make no mistake Gimpeleh, when you spill your seed anywhere but your wives, that's evil and Hashem might decide to punish you for it. (more kids laugh)

Please don't laugh, this is important! The Torah teaches a valuable lesson here.... like it always does.... (kids calm down)

You don't have very long till your married, you all know what spilling your seed is, you just need not to do it until you're married and can make geschlect in your wives.

(a bunch of kids laugh)

NIBZEH L'AZAZEL KHALERIYA! LIGN IN DRERD UND BAKN BEYGL! HINDERT HAYSN ZOL ZU HABEN, IN YEDER HEYS A HUNDERD TSIMERN, IN YEDER TSIMER TZVANZIK BETN UN KADOKHES ZOL IM VARFN FIN EYN BET IN DER TSVEYTER! Farshtunkener Jewish hillbillies!....

Worthless numbskulls! No better than wild animals are any of you!... Is Dreyfus going through all this so you mamzerim can dishonor his sacrifice?!

Kid says distant from microphone: Rebbe Yaakov, Bontsheleh's finger looks crooked... 

Zay shtil you naarisher pischer!... Put your hands on the table! Alright! Everybody put your hands on the table!

(Hits kids hands with switch between most sentences)

Laughing at the Torah! Laughing at women! Generation to generation of light-mindedness and ingratitude to your mothers! While you're busy not learning Torah they're making sure you don't starve and freeze! One day all of your wives'll be sick of your disrespect to women and rebel against you. And then where'll the world be?....

Feh! You're all just meat with eyes!... 

How did I, how did my family, end up teaching generations of zhlubs like you?! We all needed you like a hole in the head! Fifty years teaching this stinking Kheyder, just like my Tateh un Zaydie un Elter Zaydie before me. It was the death of all of them. I'm the only one who lived past fifty and now I'm stuck with you khamers!... 

Teaching all your Tatehs and Zaydies who had cowsheads just like you! Waiting for Rebbe Schkop to retire so I might get a few years as town Rabbi and a decent pension pay for my thirteen kinder instead of the bupkes your parents give me, and then he lived to hundred and would issue rulings from his bed! ...Ach... 

Alright. May Rebbe Schkop's memory be a blessing... But then your parents, more naarishkeit! They get a new Rabbi! God forbid a Kharlap be a Rabbi for them for a few years before he plotzes into the ground too! Another generation of Kharlap rebbes passed over for a pischer straight from the Yeshiva barely older than you who doesn't know life from the lamed vav. Schmeggeges, all of you!

(pause full five seconds and catches his breath)

Alright, I'm sorry kinder, I didn't mean all that. You know I have love for you all, you kinder are my life, and I just need you to learn so you can be a light to the goyim. 

Sunday, March 27, 2022

Tales from the Old New Land - Podcast Play Version - Opening Monologue - Draft 1

 Rebbe Yaakov Charlap: (opening until explosion should be as dull as possible) 

And so today we get to Parashas Vayeshev... It's the story of Onan, Tamar, Yehudah, and Er. Tamar, the beautiful bride, that a series of husbands refuse to blemish by making her pregnant, so Onan and Er always spilled their seed on the ground during schtupzeit. (kid laughs) Don't laugh. So God punished Onan and Er by killing them. And make no mistake, when you spill your seed anywhere but your wives, that's evil and Hashem might decide to punish you for it. (more kids laugh)

Please don't laugh, this is important! The Torah teaches a valuable lesson here.... like it always does.... (kids calm down) 

You don't have very long till your married, you all know what spilling your seed is, you need to not do it until you're married and can make geschlect in your wives.

(a bunch of kids laugh) 

NIBZEH L'AZAZEL KHALERIYA! You numbskulls are no better than wild animals!...  Is Dreyfus going through all this so you mamzerim can dishonor his sacrifice?!

Kid says distant from microphone: But Rebbe Kharlap...

Zay shtil you naarisher schmucks!...

Alright. Put your hands on the table! Everybody put your hands on the table! 

(Hits kids hands with switch between most sentences)

Laughing at the Torah! Laughing at women! Generation to generation of light-mindedness and ingratitude to your mothers! While you're busy not learning Torah they're making sure you don't starve or freeze to death! One day all of your wives'll be sick of your disrespect to women and rebel against you, and then where'll the world be?

 You farshtunkener Jewish hillbillies! How did I, how did my family, end up teaching generations of schlubs like you?! Fifty years teaching this stupid Kheder, just like my Tateh and Zaydie and Elter Zaydie before me, stuck teaching all your Tatehs and Zaydies who were just as dumb as you, waiting for Rebbe Schkop to retire so I might get a few years as town Rabbi and a decent pension pay for my thirteen kinder, and then he lived to hundred and would issue rulings from his bed! ...May his memory be a blessing... And then your parents... They get a new Rabbi, God forbid a Kharlap be a Rabbi for them. Another generation of Kharlap rebbes passed over for a bright and shiny rabbi straight from the Yeshiva who doesn't know life from the lamed vav. Worthless people! All of you!

Kharlap used to mean something around here. Kharlap! Khet Resh Lamed Pay! Khiya-Rosh-L'Galut-b'Polin, Khiya-Head of the Exiles in Poland! How did the descendents of Khiya end up teaching a bunch of numbskulls like you in this town Hashem forgot about? 

This is why I raised my kinder to be mensches! All thirteen of them! None of you naarisher pischers come up to their ankles! Twenty-five years I lived with my wife, and while your parents all had worthless kids, every Friday night we do things, and nothing. She was the most beautiful girl in the shtetl, now she's a little meeskait from her worries but she's still the most beautiful woman in Bransk. Why? Because she's an eshes chayil, a woman of valor!

Eighteen years ago an angel came to me in a dream! I demanded a blessing from him and he told me I would have twelve sons, and I had to name them after the twelve tribes of Israel! And sure enough, five sets of twins and a triplet over five years! And ALL of them survive to their Bar Mitzvahs! And now, sixty years old, she's pregnant again! Who'd ever heard of it! She was blessed by god! I was blessed by god while the rest of your are cursed. My kinder are going to be the blessed of the earth while you're all cold in the ground from some war or political edict! 

I know this kind will be a boy, and he's already worth more than you all put together! Every one of mein sohns are worth more than all of you put together! They're the light of Judaism! They're the light of the world! You dont' follow their examples but they're the examples you all should be looking towards! 

(hard cut to scene 2) 

Friday, March 25, 2022

Losing at 40

....The last two days, my esophagus seems to have hit a new low/high, as it seems to have risen my heartrate to the point of dramatic shortness of breath. Yesterday, all it took was a bagel, a scone, and a cookie. Today, all it took was a bunch of tortilla chips last night at my first rock band rehearsal in seven years... It was a huge amount of fun, but I abstained from cigarettes, booze, salsa, guac, and weed. All it took was some chips and I felt like death for most of the next day. I know, I know, I should have eaten less of it both days, but compared to the happypill-induced fatty I was at 30 this is a triumph. And come on, nobody deserves it. 

....Two days ago I got a refill on my prescriptions, without which I'm a lot less bearable than an oversharing facebook ranter. The nice guy at the mom and pop pharmacy I now use told me he could refill everything except for one pill, and I may have to go without the one pill for three weeks. This, obviously, is not an option, but the spiel I'll have to go through with the insurance company is exactly the sort of situation that some of these medications are supposed to head off. My father found those extra pills which were somehow at his house, but in the meantime I had lost the two refilled pills, so now, instead of dealing with insurance to get two weeks of one pill, I may have to deal with the insurance company to beg for three months of two pills, one of which is the pill I particularly count upon to keep me the poster child of sanity you currently read. 

....For over a year, my ex-girlfriend who cut off all contact has been part of a friend messaging group I set up without my noticing. There's been no activity in the room since we were together, but a very close friend accidentally sent a message to that chatroom which briefly started it up again for the first time since we were dating and the 'chat flare-up' was over two days later. I'm sure it's the exact opposite of helpful for her to have her phone blow up with messages from my friends, but 30 friends seem to have gotten a notification yesterday that she left the room, and I find myself yet again sitting amid the remains of a wound I thought I'd finally begun to heal that's still clearly a bleeding sore.

....I had a car accident today. Not even a scratch on either car, but the lady in the other car got out and yelled at me, only for two other drivers to roll down their windows to cheer her. I literally broke down and cried, I'd already felt like an idiot but I couldn't help it. When she saw me break down her response was "Why are you crying?! I'm the one who should be crying!" I gave her my information without taking hers. I knew it was my fault, and why? I was looking beneath my seat for the medicine I'd lost, medicine without which I will likely be in trouble with a lot worse than an insurance company. I thought my foot was on the break as I searched underneath my seat - and of course, was too lost in my own thoughts to realize I was moving forward. How many moments much worse than this will I have over the course of my life?

....I sit in my car for two hours this evening, the first hour blubbering after the accident, the second hour, sitting immobile in my car, wondering if I'm capable of anything at all, if this is the moment I have to come to terms with the fact that this is what my life will always be, or if this is finally the moment I permanently lose contact with the sane world for a couple years at a time or more - and also wonder if that even matters ,because my health is clearly such that I often find it hard to believe I am long for this planet.
....At 40, life begins to take its ultimate trajectory. Unless we're all killed by war, the people who've 'launched' sail through the next 40 years with relatively little trouble. They write their tickets: their jobs, their families, their futures, with nary a thought to people they need never think about. Those who don't 'launch'; they go from one trouble to the next with no letup. And life would seem to show, more and more every year, that my life's trajectory is, at best, little more than an invalid. A lifelong remorseless joke in which the biggest smarty-pants anybody knows is in fact the dumbest man on the planet, incapable of being anything but a perpetual source of burden and fear.

Conservatives talk incessantly about a 'culture of victimhood,' but life doesn't need any help in making victims of its survivors. For a good 75% of the world's citizens, life is a perpetual earthquake lived upon a faultline. No doubt, some of the imperiled deal with it better than others, but the tremors are every day, and  severe enough that every one of them threatens to collapse the walls in which we live. 

If you want to understand how millions of people come to believe things you find loathsome, it's no secret. Life is so much easier to bear with something to blame for the fact that it's disappointing.  Lots of people turn to violently radical politics, lots of people turn to the most orthodox sorts of religion, lots of people turn to subcultures, lots of people turn to drugs, but the pain of living life without an explanation is so great that most people will do anything they can to make sense of their worst moments; even if it means subscribing to movements that kill millions, even if it means throwing away any chance for future happiness, even if it means believing in things that take away the chances for happiness of everyone you love, even if it means trying to end the earth itself, all that is better than living without an explanation for why life is so hard. 

To the surprising number of you readers rounding 40 who are 'winners', my congratulations. Your hard work mattered, but not nearly as much as the genetic lottery that permitted you to work hard. Your amiable personality mattered, but not nearly as much as the genetic lottery that made you agreeable. Your credentials mattered, but not nearly as much as the demographic lottery that gave you the advantages to reach for your achievements. 

The rest of us, the 'losers,' we are still here, me and billions of others. The more winners overestimate their ability to live lives free of those losers whose calls they screen, the more we losers are left to our own devices, and the more we fuck the world up for everybody. 


Wednesday, March 23, 2022

New Tale from the Old New Land: Memo To Col. Putin - First Third

Memo: 12/25/89: CONFIDENTIAL

To: Lt. Col. Vladimir V. Putin

From: Dr Aleksandr Jakubovitch Berman

This memo has five objectives:

1. Predicting the fall of the Soviet Union, its reasons, and the extremely unstable US hegemony which will follow. 

2. Predicting the retribution through extreme economic hardships, hyperinflation and personal humiliations to which the US will subject what will soon again be Russia in a hard transition to capitalism under the guise of humanitarian aid. 

3. Predicting and outlining the conditions of extreme instability of an American hegemonic empire. 

4. Outlining how to use ideological subversion to maximize Russia's retrenchment as a world power. 

......

The internet provides far greater means for connection, communication, and connection through miscommunication, and therefore greater means than ever for ideological subversion. Furthermore, both the right wing and left wing of the new era's ideological reorientations have no innoculation against ideas which used to be belong to the other side. Nationalism still has no experience of universal movements that find enormous common ground between people of different continents, and socialism still has no experience of viewing identities as particular, and therefore, upon both sides, the ideas of one side can be embraced to the other with the most revolutionary fervor because neither side has any experience of its trevails. 

Through the internet, we may disseminate old Marxist theories in a new adapted guise that sound like nationalism, but thereby create a new international, universalist nationalism that finds common cause between countries in the shared resentments of cosmopolitan progressive elites. Should the Soviet Union fall, this transnational movement must led by Russia. We could create a new nationalist mythology in the United States whose elemental whiteness is just barely implicit, and based upon Republican's loathing for all taxes and government regulation, and belief in states rights. In order to disguise its association with longing for the white pride which came with segregation and slavery, one could use the Boston Tea Party of 1773 as its principal ikon. 

Simultaneously, we must use the internet to disseminate old nationalist theories to create a new socialism in America based upon particulars of identity that used to be the basis of nationalism. But to create a new concept of socialism, it must take root in the United States of America, the transnational country which defeated both nationalism and socialism. And perhaps we could create a new American socialism based on old theories of nationalism - reinventing concepts of the workers paradise into a world of social justice, metamorphosing theories of class structure to a hierarchical structure of identity that gives preference to which demographics suffered most over the course of American history, thereby exploiting the resentments of the American marginalized.  

The imperative of class warfare would be metamorphosed into identity politics that would gradually introduce more revolutionary concepts into the American discourse year by year until this new nationalist social movement was receptive to arguments in favor of violent resistance. 

To instill the new right-wing nationalism, we can incorporate the 19th century media structure of new Marxian pamphlets written every week for the 21st century with a television network from which propagandists may transmit ideologically approved content 24 hours a day, with stories spun to seem more dramatic and provocative every week that gradually convince viewers that the world operates according to a conspiracy of affluent cosmopolitan liberals who mean to take everything from the rural lower middle class. 

Meanwhile, as the worldwide left-wing is no longer among the establishment, they will gravitate to the newest forms of communication. It is the view of this analyst that the internet's most effective means of communication will be through a vehicle still in its theoretical stage, referred to by developers and theorists as 'social media', hosting sites upon which people hold conversations  in public with both friends and enemies - as there is no physical reprecussion for such conversations, the chances for discourse to grow rancorous are nearly infinite. Many further objections have been made to the concept of social media, because citizens can easily be convinced to publicly declare their most private information in public, but it's precisely this feature which could be used to our advantage. Perhaps there would no longer be need for a KGB in such an era, because through falsely created identities created by our own soldiers and programmers, we can amplify any story we find destructive to the US's  self-belief."

Explain how Edward Said wrote Orientalism, which took the beliefs of Herder and Spengler in the inability of different nations to properly perceive the context of one another's ideas,.and how Said turned that bulwark of German nationalism into the powerful vision identitarian Socialism yet has. But Herder did not count upon that the great strength of American liberal Democrats, largely comprised by demographics as the children of once oppressed and marginalized, is their ability to assimilate ever new contributions and worldviews from an ever wider array of people. So therefore charges of cultural colonialism would flummox any further liberal attempt to uplift the marginalized through assimilation, and thereby stymy any further liberal efficacy to adapt the world to its worldview.  Perhaps we can supervise a series of millions of internet postings which people charging that any attempt to utilize the work of another culture is a colonization of that culture - though perhaps one could use a subtler word to hide our motive like 'appropriation.'