a postacrd from musicland

Continued recording my new CD today with the multi (multi) talented Bohdan Turok behind the consoles. Bohdan is a percussionist, recording engineer, photographer and he has a plum day job, too, as a shrink. Excellent trumpet work was provided by Ian Monro who patiently deciphered my charts and played even my bad notes well.



A good afternoon - and now I'm on my way to a gig with yet another young wizzard, violinist Drew Jurecka (check this out for some virtuosic samples), who at the age of 23 has the technique and, more importantly, the focus and maturity of any player twice his age...It's a joy making music with such talented colleagues.

shoah remembrance

I once wrote a short story called "Second Hand Survivor". The theme was the transference of feelings from a Holocaust survivor on to the next generation and the ramifications of this transference. The feelings are, in the main, guilt ("why did I survive when so many millions did not"), fear ("they said it would never happen again but it might") and over-protective, smothering worry. My mother is a survivor of Auschwitz. She arrived there with the first transport of Slovak girls in June of 1942 and was there till the very end, holding on by the skin of her teeth, through typhoid fever, TB and the murder of her sister. (although it is now accepted linguistic currency to speak of the "six million who died in the Holocaust", I think this should consistently be corrected to the "six million murdered in the Holocaust")

As a child of a survivor, I naturally harbour all the feelings of guilt, fear and worry in large measure. I hope I have not transferred them on to my own daughters but I'm not so sure. If I did, I may have managed to create a generation of "Third Hand Survivors". But, naturally, neither I nor my daughters were actually there and so it would amount to moral theft to try to own the experience - even if that were possible. Suffice it to say that persistent feelings of anxiety reverberate through my life, which in some measure, at least, have to do with my mother's experience.

Yesterday, I spent a few hours in front of the TV, watching the coverage of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The first thing that struck me immediately was how the miserably cold, snowy weather somehow perfectly fit the commemorative occasion. The bone chilling cold and wind signifying the utter desolation of the killing field and the burial ground of millions; and the white, driving snow symbolizing the innocence of the victims. Then there was the shockingly poignant speech of the woman who spoke in Polish about her horrible losses and indescribable suffering - unlike the politicians, her speech was without platitudes and without rehearsed pathos. It was as raw as the wind. Then there were of course the solemn faces of the TV anchors - right across the spectrum from CNN to CBC - men and women who were born and raised after the war in North America and to whom Auschwitz only has distant resonance, if any. Finally, there were the railway tracks, fires lit on each side, burning in the white expanse, illuminating the mocking, horrible sign atop the main entrance to the camp - "Arbeit Macht Frei" ("Work liberates"). The nausea inducing fear, the sound of the cattle cars rattling down the track, the screeching brakes, the yelping German Sheppard dogs, the barked orders of the SS officers....all of these were evoked in me yet again by watching Auschwitz in the snow.

Sixty years on. Sixty years since Soviet soldiers liberated the camp and found only a few thousand living skeletons. Sixty years since that other snowy day in January 1945 when the chimneys stopped billowing human smoke. Have we glimpsed at least a fraction of the fear and depredation, the sorrow, the devastation and destruction of the Jews murdered in the name of an ideology? I don't think we have. We march on, stepping to the beat of other ideologies (communism managed to murder even more people than fascism did - unimaginable as it seems). We have not learned that freedom is worth fighting for - we still crawl before and appease tyrants. We have not learned that individuals are more important than ideologies - we still blather on about -isms of all kinds (post-modernism, feminism, relativism, imperialism) Above all, we have not learnt that indifference kills. Tragedies since Auschwitz - Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur - as well as before Auschwitz (the Armenian holocaust) have not taught us the lessons that need to be learned. And we are not likely to learn them from the beautiful speeches of politicians or the solemn commentaries of TV anchors. We may glimpse them from the heart-felt, soul-rending speeches such as the one by the Polish woman yesterday. But we will only learn the lesson when we collectively realize that evil must be identified, called by its correct name and opposed with all our might. This century, so far, despite the best efforts of a few nations, seems to be going in the opposite direction!

birthright

I was born in Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia, in 1953. I immigrated to Canada in 1980 after a lengthy sojourn through other territories. I obtained my Canadian citizenship in 1985 and for the past twenty years have proudly travelled with my Canadian passport. Naturally, the place of my birth in the passport is designated as "Prague, CZE". Czechoslovakia no longer exists and I believe the official designation of the Czech Republic is CR. Thus people born after 1993 probably have "Prague, CR" in their passports. I may be wrong but what is relevant here is that both the city AND the country are listed.

There was an item in the paper today about a young Israeli man who immigrated to Canada with his parents a few years ago. He has obtained his Canadian citizenship but his place of birth is listed as "Jerusalem" - no country mentioned. Had he been born in Haifa or Tel Aviv, the Canadian authorities, in their profound wisdom would have allowed the letters "ISR" after the name of the city. But they will not confer this honour on "Jerusalem". Why? Because "the status of the city is disputed"

These officials, whoever they are and whatever undisputed places they come from - Winnipeg, Trois Rivieres or Lethbridge - are full of it. The western part of Jerusalem has been the official capital of Israel since the country's inception in 1948. The eastern part was officially annexed by Israel a few years after it was won from Jordan. (some people say "liberated" - my own prefered term is "won" because it is territory Israel won fair and square in an unprovoked war) It is this part, Eastern Jerusalem, that is "in dispute" by the international community. If the boy in question is Jewish (the fact was not mentioned in the newspaper article) there is a 99% likelihood he was born in West Jerusalem.

The boy wants to travel the world recognized as an Israeli. To an Israeli, Jerusalem is not only as much part of Israel as Lethbridge is a part of Canada - it is FAR, FAR more so. Jerusalem was Jewish thousands of years before Lethbridge was on the map - when native tribes roamed the prairies. I don't think that anyone would omit the letters "CDN" after "Lethbridge" in any Canadian passport. To deny the birthright of an individual by omitting the country of his birth on his travel document is a travesty and outright discrimination.

heeeeer's Johnny

It is said that each death diminishes us a little bit. I can honestly say that the death of Johnny Carson has diminished me. There was something profoundly appealing about Johnny's show - an appeal that neither Leno nor Letterman nor the legion of others that have tried has been able to capture.

Johnny Carson was my introduction to North American culture. I arrived in Canada in 1980 and the place seemed a real backwater; also rather confusing. I tuned into Johnny every single night and slowly began to understand and get connected to the American scene. Johnny always made me long to be in the States, L.A. specifically...he was a friend of the stars but none of the fake glamour rubbed off on him. He was just a great comic with a superb sense of timing and it always seemed to me that the stars were in awe of him rather than the other way around. And not just the young comedians whose careers he ignited. Even the old established stars were brought to a more 'human level' in their contact with Johnny. He respected them and listened to them but never wanted to 'be' them. His own man, in short.

I was lucky back in 1986 to visit his Burbank studios and get a behind-the-scenes look, even sit behind his desk. A friend of mine worked as assistant to Fred DeCorodba, the producer of the Tonight show and she took me around the whole lot (including the cafeteria - a frequent butt of Carson's jokes). We looked at Carson's parking spot, shook hands with Fred, walked around the soundstage and, like I said, even sat behind Johnny's desk. The next day we got tickets to his show but there was no favouritism there, even if I knew someone on the production team. We had to line up for two hours with everybody else. I don't recall much from that particular taping. I remember that Joe Jackson was the musical guest. I also remember that Johnny didn't talk to the guests during the commercial breaks. He just sat there, puffing on his cigarette, waited for the break to be over....the lights came back on, as did the "applause" sign and Johnny's face lit up again in a big smile and he resumed the conversation. It was a little strange - but now I understand it. He was not there to pal around with the guests - (though I am certain there were exceptions, such as Bob Newhart or Don Rickles) - he was there to do a job. No one will ever do the job as well as he did...

Even though I live on the other side of the border, Johnny "let me in" every night for an hour and made me hip to a culture that was new to me. Last night, as I heard Larry King and Bob Newhart and others reminisce about Carson, I strongly felt a part of the culture. He helped me grow up in it and grow with it.

He said he would wish for his epitaph to be: "I'll be right back"...what a zinger! Unfortunately, that won't happen. But thank you Johnny for a personal welcome to North America and for countless nights of fun. Heeeeeeeeeer's to Johnny!

uncle SAM

The animus that the United States seems to engender among my colleagues, friends and acquaintances never ceases to amaze me. So many people I know are stirred to oratory flourishes when it comes to badmouthing the United States. Many of them carefully add that they really only dislike the U.S. government, some don't even bother with that small qualification, boldly stating that all Americans are idiots.

This has bothered me for decades now. I simply don't get it. No other country - as far as I've been able to observe - is on the receiving end of so many worldwide protests. Not China, with its inhumane repression of basic freedoms, not Australia with its tough, no-nonsense treatment of refugees, not France which deals with its African "problems" in a far more brutal way than the U.S. has ever done. All these countries may merit an occasional demonstration but nothing as sustained and venomous as the United States receives for every infraction, real or percieved.

I have grappled with this problem ever since I was ten years old and saw posters all over Prague: "Cuba si, Yankee no" and the more juicy: "Yankees, get your imperialist hands off Cuba" Echoes of the same sentiment are now to be found in demonstrations from Sydney to Ottawa, where the world "imperialism" often figures promptly on placards, carried by screaming students, foaming at lip-pierced mouths.

I dug up my Oxford dictionary (didn't want to use Webster's for fear of it being contaminated by imperialist U.S. propaganda) and looked up the word "imperialism". Here is the definition:
"a policy of extending a country’s power and influence through colonization, use of military force, or other means"

Within the above definition, the U.S. has certainly exerted military force (though not much colonization) on other countries. But my question is - why is the United States singled out for so much protest when in fact it is far less imperialistic than powers such as France (in Africa), China (in Tibet), Indonesia, Russia, Turkey and many others - in fact, any country with a powerful military and geopolitical claims or ambitions. And unlike all the above mentioned countries - France excepted, sort of - the U.S. is a vibrant, robust democracy, extending its imperial reach in the name of freedom rather than ONLY for strategic ends (emphasis on ONLY - simply because every government on earth has strategic aims)

There must be something else at play here. There is something about the U.S. that just bugs the heck out of the rest of the world. My answer is old and maybe even cliched but I believe it's the only correct one: it's envy.

Simply stated, people everywhere vote with their feet. Ten of thousands in Mexico may demonstrate against the evil of U.S. expansionism but hundreds of thousands are lining up for U.S. visas or crossing the border illegally. The same is true for most other countries outside of Western Europe. The United States remains an incredibly powerful magnet for people the world over. The lip-pierced crowds and the elites and the artistes and the intelligentsia and the nattering classes may gather for demonstrations in icy Ottawa or sun-scorched Sydney, while millions try to get a piece of the American Pie.

The American Dream is real - it is the object of desire for millions and object of envy for millions of others. They heap scorn on it, they mock it, they deride its loudness and brashness and McDonalds and Hollywood movies but they see all around them that the world cannot get enough of it. That we all want to be a part of it. Because America is huge - not just physically but spiritually, too. It's a huge dream of becoming someone new, of a fresh start, of creating a new life, of carving a niche impossible anywhere else. Yes, it is crass and loud, sure, maybe even corrupt at times, certainly crime-ridden in many places but it still remains the shining beacon it was two hundred years ago. And the demonstrating elites and so many of the people I know just instinctively get their backs up and protest it. They want to find fault, they want to gloat with "shadenfreunde", they want to point out to our virtues as compared to American vices. But trust me, given half a chance of a decent paying job in Florida or Nevada - they're gone!

When I was a little kid in Prague, we used to play a game called "My uncle came from America..." A kid would say the sentence: "My uncle came from America and he brought me a motorcycle" Or a pair of jeans, or skates, or a box of bubble gum - whatever. And the other kids had to embelish the story and carry it further. The point was that "America" was the horn of plenty. America was everything we could never be: not just rich and free but also the land of dreams that could actually be fullfilled.

As long as that dream lives on (and for me and millions of others it does), I will never understand the slandering and the badmouthing and the small-minded insults hurled at America. The music I love came from America. America has always been there when the world was hurting (true, not always as speedily as it might have been; nevertheless it DID get there when needed) To pretend that the U.S. does not have its own political and strategic goals would be crazy. Of course it does! But above all, its main goal is to be the symbol and the beacon of freedom and possibility. Don't take my word for it - just see how many people the world over vote with their feet and run to the place that all those angry demonstrators spit on and condemn.