Ever since I started doing my own Jewish genealogy, I hear Simon and Garfunkel's The Sound of Silence very differently. I've finally put my thoughts into a video. I'll be interested to hear what others think.
I've looked into Paul Simon's genealogy and, no surprise, it shares a great deal in common with my own, from the horrors of the pogroms...
... and the general deprivation and systemic oppression of Jews in Lithuania and the larger Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe...
... that led so many Jews to leave Europe as refugees and try their luck in New York...
... to the overcrowded...
... impoverished, "tenement halls" of the Lower East Side of Manhattan (ie the Jewish ghetto) that Simon sings about in the song...
... to the "words of the prophets" written on the "subway walls"...
... to the "neon lights that split the night"...
... to the peaceful but difficult silence of the very Jewish, Forest Hills, Queens ...
... to Forest Hills High School...
... which Simon and Garfunkel attended...
... with my father...
... to the silence both my family and Paul Simon's kept to protect the youngsters from the pain of knowing their family's past and present suffering...
... and the alienation and anger about that silence that led my father, and Simon and Garfunkel to distance themselves from that silence... without knowing its cause.
Yes, Paul Simon's family story and my own share a great deal in common.
And so I felt I might be a bit qualified to take second look at The Sound of Silence, a song we all know and think we understand... a second look that takes the Jewish American experience as the song's starting place, even if its fresh faced writer didn't even know it.
Okay, now that I've got your attention... Let me introduce you to the first in what I hope will become a series of book review videos.
For the record, I actually do have some cred when it comes to doing book reviews. My Bachelor's degree is in Communications, English, and Women's Studies, and my Master's degree is in English literature and language. I taught college English courses for many years, until my disability became too severe and I was forced to retire. I also wrote many book reviews and interviewed many authors when I was a journalist.
Me at 19
I even have extra cred when it comes to doing a review of a lesbian pulp novel: I came out in 1989 at 18 years old, I wrote for gay and lesbian newspapers through the 90s and early 2000s, and I focused a lot on lesbian history in both my undergraduate and graduate degrees.
But mostly I just thought it would be fun to talk about the books I'm reading these days. Because: books!
What was lesbian pulp? Where could people get it? Who read it? Was any of it any good? What was it like to be a lesbian in the mid 1960s? Why does lesbian pulp have such loopy covers? Is there as much sex in lesbian pulp novels as their covers would suggest? What was a New York city gay bar like in 1965?
Whatever happened to the author, Paula Christian, herself?
And, most importantly, is The Other Side of Desire worth reading?
Why haven't I been writing my blog for a while? Because I've had the worst writers block. Honestly, I've never even had writers' block before. It's a horrible, dried up, feeling, a feeling of being useless and unproductive, no matter what else I've been doing that might actually be of value.
Beau keeps reminding me that I don't need to produce anything. I can just enjoy living. But I can't shake the feeling that, since I survived to 54 against so many odds, I have to do something with that survival, and that something is writing.
I've felt stuck.
Why haven't I been writing my blog for a while? Because I've had the worst writers block. Honestly, I've never even had writers' block before. It's a horrible, dried up, feeling, a feeling of being useless and unproductive, no matter what else I've been doing that might actually be of value.
Beau keeps reminding me that I don't need to produce anything. I can just enjoy living. But I can't shake the feeling that, since I survived to 54 against so many odds, I have to do something with that survival, and that something is writing.
I've felt stuck.
I know exactly why this is happening.
Covid. Or, more specifically, Covid denial. We're still in a global pandemic, folks, and it hurts like hell that most of you don't believe it, or, worse, don't care because "only the vulnerable" are still affected. It's not true that we're the only ones affected. The more times you get Covid, the higher the risk that you too will become seriously, permanently ill or disabled.
Or dead.
But even if it were just the vulnerable still affected by Covid, our lives actually do matter. That's me, folks, disabled and weak. That's my husband, finally diagnosed with Crohn's Disease and taking immunosuppressants as the only possible treatment. That's your grandmother. That's the little kid in the stroller beside you at the grocery store. That's disproportionately Black Americans and Indigenous people in North America.
That's people whose lives matter. Or they should matter - to you. But they don't. Not if you're not doing anything to protect us.
The vulnerable, whose lives actually do matter, are everywhere and the only way for you to protect them is to vaccinate and mask.
It's also the only way to protect yourself from becoming one of them. One of us. One of me.
But you don't. You don't mask. You don't vaccinate. Most of you don't.
And that reality is so utterly, abjectly alienating and demoralizing that I've been so deeply depressed, I've been unable to write.
All my life, I've needed a creative outlet. It's been as necessary as breathing. Life without it is like life without sunshine. And my depression has taken that away from me.
So now I'm trying videos, short and long. People are watching them and that's encouraging. I'm getting ideas for more videos and I'm feeling a bit more alive.
So far, my videos have been varied, like my blog, and include outfit videos...
... rant videos...
... advice videos...
... for those with lives like my own...
... crow videos, of course...
... funny videos, like this one of two GenXers with postgraduate degrees (me and Beau) trying to figure out how to take a photo...
... and victory videos.
(Yes, I'm using a wheelchair now, something I would have written about if I hadn't had writers block.)
Basically, like my blog, my videos are about whatever strikes my fancy - and might strike yours.
Let me know what you think. Let me know if you have ideas for more videos.
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