A little levity before linking to a disturbing Newsweek piece about the increasing presence of 'religious-Zionists' in the Israeli army. In the past, we heard resentful complaints by secular Israelis that the Hasidim got all the government perks without having to serve in the army. Suddenly, there's worry that more and more officers are wearing knitted yarmulkes and sympathetic to the settler movement. The author asks, will these soldiers obey their commanders or their rabbis? File under: Be careful what you wish for.
Reducing "people" to "users" and "consumers" through profiles designed to define them as such. (Zuckerberg: "A lot of the information people produce is inherently commercial. And if you look at someone's profile, almost all the fields that define them are in some way commercial - music, movies, books, products, games. It's a part of our identity as people that we like something, but it also has commercial value.")...What made social networking such a big deal was the fact that people liked being used. Anything was better than the loneliness and boredom of the Internet and the derangements brought on by blogger psychosis. And so social networking became a drug. Early on, Facebook executives called the effect their product had "the trance," understanding that what they were doing was essentially pushing a narcotic (not coincidentally, their first big advertiser would be a gambling site). Read the entire review here.
How to reduce a twenty page film treatment into fourteen lines - and rhyming, iambic pentameter to boot! A battle of wills to be sure. Shakespeare himself would be impressed.
All too often, reading contemporary poetry, what I feel is, So many dishonest lines! Lines that sound beautiful but that aren’t meant. If you aren’t really paying attention, you can be seduced by them. But if you’re listening closely, they don’t ring true. They have the sound of trying too hard, or of trying to put something over. They sound as though they are listening to themselves, admiringly, rather than speaking from a real place inside the poet. The words may be gorgeous, they may be clever, they may have dazzle or flash, but they aren’t speaking in a real voice.Robyn Sarah again on telling the truth in poetry. What she says about poetry is equally true in fiction. I wonder if she would agree with my contention that what she calls writers listening to themselves, admiringly, rather than speaking from a real place may be the result of the 'academization' of writing ie. more writing coming out of university creative writing programs. And bonus; she quotes Joseph Epstein, one of my favourite writers.
For writers who use language as an artistic medium, a tension goes with this dichotomy: the process of creation is intensely private, yet the creation will not be complete, will not have fulfilled its purpose, without an audience. Thinking too much about “audience” during the creative process can inhibit the process and distort the creation, but thinking too little about it can do the same. Soon enough one needs to ask, “Who am I writing this for?”, because it is the sense of audience that gives writing its voice. Voice, style, tone, are how a piece of writing treats its reader. Robyn Sarah on the writer's challenge to find the perfect public/private balance.
Not your Bubbie's klezmer says Bev Akerman over at Rover riffing on the recent Shabbat Shira sold-out shindig at our shul. But anyone who knows a little about klezmer knows that it's taken many forms over the last few decades, particularly in the US, ranging from groups like Boston's The Klezmer Conservatory to New York's Klezmatics, not to mention John Zorn's Klezmer-inspired Jazz-infused musical experiments. Being an island of Jews in a lake of Quebecois in an sea of Anglos has made the Montreal Jewish community uniquely conservative in character and consequently late to catch a ride on the upcoming cultural waves. But I'm proud to say that our little shtibel (the only Reconstructionist synagogue in a city of eighty or so Orthodox minyans) is trying to do its part to open a few doors and windows a crack, let some cultural fresh air in to the stagnant atmosphere. A culture is vibrant when artists (be they writers, painters, sculptors, actors, musicians, poets, whomever) feel they have the license to combine their own personal traditions with a myriad of other influences. Today is the 102nd anniversary of the birth of A.M. Klein, a Montreal Jewish writer and one of Canada's greatest poets. A writer who left his mark by combining Hebrew liturgy, Yiddish idiom, a mastery of English literary forms, a fluency in French and profound sensibility for Quebecois culture. So you ask, Jewish bluegrass from Montreal? I say you're darn tootin! And mazel tov to Bev on her new collection of short fiction. Strength to strength!
