{"id":102895,"date":"2023-03-21T17:05:53","date_gmt":"2023-03-21T15:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=102895"},"modified":"2023-03-15T12:02:21","modified_gmt":"2023-03-15T10:02:21","slug":"21-05-87","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=102895","title":{"rendered":"Regina Spektor\u2019s Howl"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Regina Spektor\u2019s Howl<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n


\nJAKE MARMER<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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At a recent concert in Los Angeles, Spektor\u2019s Soviet Jewishness took center stage.<\/strong><\/span>
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\n\u2018She\u2019s the leader of my people,\u2019 Fran Drescher once quipped about Barbra Streisand. I feel that way about Regina Spektor.ORIGINAL PHOTO: LLOYD BISHOP\/NBC VIA GETTY IMAGES<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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This is a nice way to be \u2026 surrounded,\u201d quipped Regina Spektor as she walked out on stage of the Walt Disney auditorium in Los Angeles last week. The auditorium\u2019s stage is ensconced inside a large oval, with seating on all sides, and Spektor\u2019s trademark bit of dark humor\u2014a mixture of claustrophobia and warmth turned into a joke\u2014was the perfect opening for this concert, which, as it unraveled, felt increasingly cathartic and ritualistic.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The concert took place on the evening after Purim, with the holiday\u2019s afterglow and daze still in the air, and it was the holiday\u2019s carnivalesque fusion of trauma and merriment that provided Spektor with an opportunity to communicate, with deep artistry and clarity, the quintessence of the Russian-speaking Jewish experience\u2014her own heritage, which is also the heritage of some 500,000 others living in the U.S. today\u2014myself included.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIf you think about it, Purim is a lot like Halloween,\u201d she said at some point midconcert, and after a beat added: \u201cThat is, if Halloween involved the attempted genocide of Jewish people.\u201d And again, there was that dark humor, the kind that both makes you laugh and sends shivers down your spine.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Spektor went on to recount a morning from long ago, when she was living in her \u201crent-controlled New York apartment,\u201d and was listening to an NPR program, in which she first learned the concept of Holocaust denial. She recounted being shocked: \u201cI knew so many survivors growing up,\u201d she said, with wistfulness, and went on to perform her song \u201cInk Stains<\/a>.\u201d This song was never formally released on any album, and she does not perform it often. Its refrain is plaintive: \u201cI wish they\u2019d cure the friendly neighbors \/ Of the disease which makes them haters,\u201d but on the whole, it is a harsh and angry song with a narrative that reveals her wish for the Holocaust deniers in clear terms: \u201cAll the Holocaust deniers \/ To a bathhouse warm and quiet \/ Complimentary soap, complimentary haircut \/ And gas \u2019em up until they know that \/ All the ink stains on their wrists mean business \/ And God is the almighty witness.\u201d The anger she unleashes is undisguised, as ugly as it is relatable. The song culminates in a final stretch of wordless, singing-shouting across the melody, with emotion laid bare in all of its unspeakable pain.<\/span><\/p>\n

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It makes sense that \u201cInk Stains\u201d was never formally recorded. It is the kind of song one would not want to commit to the stasis of a record: In order to be understood, it is meant to be experienced wholly, live, in the moment, and with others. Such is its power. What made this performance unique was that the wordless segment contained a direct reference to the \u201cJewish\u201d musical scale\u2014the melodic riff in a minor key that is found in cantorial music. It was as if Spektor felt compelled to draw an explicit connection between Jewish liturgy and her own art.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When the song was over, Spektor herself seemed shaken: \u201cI would like to sing a few more songs, but I don\u2019t know how to just do it after a song like that.\u201d After a moment\u2019s contemplation she pointed out that it was a full moon night. \u201cSo how about we just howl?\u201d she offered. This was not a joke: She started counting off, then interrupted herself: \u201cSeems wrong to count off the howl.\u201d Just then, someone in the audience went for it, and then others joined, and more yet, and before long, the whole of Walt Disney Hall was merged into a single, polyvocal, incredibly loud howl. It felt both ridiculous and profound, whimsical and utterly necessary, primal and of the moment. And, reader, I, too howled: at the moon, at her song, at the holiday, at the fancy Disney Hall, at the ancestral trauma, at the still lingering pandemic, and the unending war.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Russia\u2019s brutal invasion into Ukraine received a grim acknowledgment from Spektor, along with the invitation to donate to a cause that supports Ukrainian refugees. I\u2019ve heard endless variations on this invitation dozens of times over the past year, but what made Spektor\u2019s appeal different was the tone of lucid, personal urgency. This war has been the center in the life of many, many Russian-speaking Jews, no matter how long ago they\u2019ve left the old country, and whether they were born in Russia, like Spektor, or in Ukraine, as I was. Immigrants tend to either assimilate or resist assimilation by reembracing the culture of their origin. I know I belong to the former group, but in the weeks and months of the war, I\u2019ve felt increasingly isolated from my American peers and friends. There is a sense that those around me cannot understand what I am going through, every day, worrying about my family, mourning the destruction of the world where I grew up. In such moments, years of assimilation seem to fall apart.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The song Spektor chose to sing after this invocation, \u201cApres Moi,\u201d was not randomly chosen. While normally, the French phrase\u00a0apres moi l\u2019deluge<\/em>, implies a cavalier, careless attitude toward the future, in the context of Spektor\u2019s refrain the line takes on a sense of existential threat: the sense that deluge\u2014of troubles and threats\u2014is literally after you. When she chants \u201cI (uh) must go on standing \/ I\u2019m not my own, it\u2019s not my choice,\u201d it seems to be, on the one hand, a universal gesture of resilience. On the other, though, there is something very specific to the Soviet and post-Soviet kind of Jewishness here. Spektor turns the volume up on Russian-sounding intonations within the song that resolve in the verse, borrowed from a poem by Boris Pasternak, which Spektor sings in Russian. In this performance, in the context of invocation of the war in Ukraine, Pasternak\u2019s verse became the emotional center of this song, and perhaps, of the whole concert.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Pasternak\u2019s original poem relies heavily on word music, and it is this music that permeates his lines, creating a more visceral meaning than the actual semantic signification of the words ever could. It is February, and the poet is moved to grab the ink and cry, via the poem, mourning February itself for a reason that is never explicitly stated. There is a dread of something coming to an end, some \u201cthundering muddle\u201d that ominously \u201cburns with a dark spring.\u201d The word Pasternak uses to describe the crying,\u00a0navzryd<\/em>, is the sort of uncontrollable, loud, all-consuming bawling punctuated with a deep sob and violence and gasping for air. It is the sort of a word the mere invocation of which brings tears to your eyes because it can remind you of the times you have experienced that sort of crying.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But what does Pasternak\u2019s weeping February have to do with the rest of Spektor\u2019s lyrics\u2014or with this war at hand? One cannot overstate the gravitas of Boris Pasternak in the minds and souls of many generations of people from the vast Soviet expanse. His words were treated with the reverence pious people reserve for their sacred texts. I still feel sacrilegious for even wanting to translate him. At the same time, there was also the unspoken matter of Pasternak\u2019s Jewishness, of which he was deeply self-conscious, having ultimately chosen to convert because that was the only way to be accepted, to be seen as a poet with a right to express himself in Russian. Knowing that, Spektor\u2019s lines, \u201cI\u2019m not my own, it\u2019s not my choice\u201d begin to cohere.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In Walt Disney Hall, this song and Pasternak\u2019s lines within it, felt prophetic, and she sang them as if channeling a message she received rather than composed. Such is the power of great poetry: For whatever Pasternak may have had in mind describing the February he beheld, for so many of us,\u00a0this<\/em>\u00a0February was the time when we marked the first anniversary of the war. February came and went, and the war continues, and it is impossible to not see this spring as tainted, or cursed with the war\u2019s weight.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Between Spektor\u2019s post-Purim howl and Pasternak\u2019s bawling, the moment\u2019s heaviness was front and center in this concert. And so was Spektor\u2019s attempt to summon this heaviness, to extract it and in that way, to gain some sort of a release. In that way, Spektor\u2019s performance was a reminder of the shared identity as a source of strength, and felt life-giving.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The concert, organized in support of Spektor\u2019s new album,\u00a0Home, Before and After<\/em>, featured many new songs, as well as a selection of her hits, and many moments of interaction with the audience. At one point, someone shouted out: \u201cI love your shoes,\u201d to which she immediately responded: \u201cI was kind of expecting this from LA.\u201d Turning around toward the section of the audience that were facing her back, she said: \u201cI always play with my eyes closed, so you\u2019re not missing anything. This is what it looks like,\u201d she said, closing her eyes and stretching her hands over imaginary piano, wobbling from side to side. It was a kind of an effortless vaudevillesque moment, and it occurred to me that the whole Russian-speaking Jewish experience revolves around three poles: our poetry, the war, and the jokes. Everything else, from eros to ethics, revolves around these and is suffused by them.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The concert hall was completely full\u2014I did not see a single empty seat. Who were all these people who seemed as deeply moved by her music as I was? It was a multigenerational, hip, nerdy, colorful crowd that howled and clapped and begged for an encore. \u201cShe\u2019s the leader of my people,\u201d Fran Drescher once quipped about Barbra Streisand. I feel that way about Regina Spektor, even if I am quite uncertain as to who these people of ours are.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Jake Marmer<\/strong> is Tablet\u2019s poetry critic. He is the author of\u00a0The Neighbor Out of Sound\u00a0(2018) and\u00a0Jazz Talmud\u00a0(2012). His jazz-klezmer-poetry record\u00a0Hermeneutic Stomp\u00a0was released by Blue Thread Music in 2013.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Regina Spektor\u2019s Howl JAKE MARMER At a recent concert in Los Angeles, Spektor\u2019s Soviet Jewishness took center stage. . \u2018She\u2019s the leader of my people,\u2019 Fran Drescher once quipped about Barbra Streisand. I feel that way about Regina Spektor.ORIGINAL PHOTO: LLOYD BISHOP\/NBC VIA GETTY IMAGES This is a nice way to be \u2026 surrounded,\u201d quipped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102895"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=102895"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103058,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102895\/revisions\/103058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=102895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=102895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=102895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}