We lived a half hour from Manhattan, and theatre tickets were cheap in those days - less than a movie costs now!
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The second the music began, it was transcendent.
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Brubeck

Over the years I’ve seen many memorable performances, early on as a teenager hearing Ella Fitzgerald at the Danbury Fair  (See The Camper-Waitress Goes to the Fair) ; and since dramas and musicals on Broadway, Off Broadway,  and at regional theater (See On the Aisle);  and wonderful  performances at cabarets, concert halls, and stadiums  – Rosemary Clooney at the Blue Note and wherever else we could catch her;   Frank Sinatra celebrating his 70th birthday at Giant Stadium;   the great stride pianist Judy Carmichael at Hanratty’s;   master guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli at the 92nd St Y;   Cyndi Lauper singing the Blues at the Palace Theatre in Waterbury;  my gal Bonnie Raitt at Manhattan’s Beacon Theatre;  Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga together at Tanglewood;  and altho we’re not opera buffs,  we‘ve seen memorable productions of Carmen at the Met,  at Glimmerglass,  and even at La Scala!   And wonderful modern dance –  Pilobolus and Ballet Hispanica at the Joyce;  Paul Taylor’s company at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington;   and Alvin Ailey’s at City Center.   (See Revelations)  And of course The Grateful Dead at Madison Square Garden. (See Rolling Stoned at the Garden)

Yet the most memorable performance in memory may be Dave Brubeck on piano opening the Kent, CT jazz fest a few years before his death at age 92.   We waited for Time Out and not surprisingly he saved it for last.  And as the festival was held out-of-doors with no house for Brubeck to bring down,  it seemed when he hit that last note he brought down the summer sky and all the stars.

But thinking back,  I can remember another Dave Brubeck memorable performance 35 years earlier when we saw a young Brubeck jazzing it up on piano at a New York cabaret.   I don’t remember the venue but I can tell you the date as we had been celebrating our anniversary,  and I remember we were both a bit tipsy when we got home.

Nine months later – almost to the day – our son was born,  and so I guess you can pin that memorable performance on Brubeck too.

Jazz great Dave Brubeck

– Dana Susan Lehrman

My cousin Annette and I took our grandparents to see Fiddler on the Roof performed at Detroit’s beautiful Fisher Theater. The Google machine tells me this happened prior to the show’s Broadway debut, so it was either in 1963 or early 1964. We were lucky to see Zero Mostel in the role of Tevya. In retrospect, I wonder how much of the show my grandparents understood and wish we had been able to take them to the Yiddish version. Even though they were familiar with its source material, the Yiddish stories of Sholem-Aleichem, their command of English wasn’t great.

Despite the language barrier, our grandmother Alice was delighted with the performance, even if she didn’t understand all of it. She came from a family of klezmer musicians and her family name Klavir most likely came from the German word for piano, klavier. Music, singing, and dancing were in her soul, right up to the end of her life at age 93. I vividly remember her smiling and tapping her feet to the music throughout the show.

Our grandfather Philip, on the other hand, was a sweet, kind, and quiet man who had been dealt a tough hand in childhood. His mother died when he was young, and his father remarried soon after. Because the family was poor, at age ten he was sent away on his own to Riga to be apprenticed to a tailor. Eventually, he and his older brother and younger sisters came to America. He didn’t really know his half-siblings, some of whom likely were killed in the Holocaust. There was no singing, dancing, and celebrating in his life — only hard work. Thus, he sat stoically through the show and proclaimed when it ended, “It vasn’t like dat.”

I have seen several productions of Fiddler since that one, including our son’s fifth grade play in which he played Motel the Tailor and sang “Wonder of Wonders” to a cute little girl without making eye contact. I have always loved the show, even though I know it glamorizes the life in the shtetl my grandparents knew. But when I think of that original production with the amazing Zero Mostel, it is with a tinge of nostalgia and sadness, remembering how I shared this experience with my grandparents and cousin. With my grandparents’ passing, much of the tradition that Tevya sang about during the musical is lost, as faded from history as the pictures below.

As my grandfather would have said, it was more like this:

 

 

 

 

 

When Dave returned to the phone and told me the call had been from a “John Steptoe,” I thought my roommates were playing a practical joke.
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I’ll never have plastic surgery. I always say it’s because I’m determined to age gracefully, naturally, but mostly it’s because I can’t afford it, and I’m afraid of pain and/or a bad result. But each morning I Photoshop my mouth, turn it up at the corners for a sweet smile instead of the gash I have instead, and when exactly did that happen. And while I’m at it, a little healing brush (removes spots and blemishes) between my eyes so I don’t look like I’m frowning even when I’m not. I skip the smudge tool (softens or smudges colors) for daytime, though it’s great for evenings out. And believe it or not, I leave the wrinkles alone…I’m not a fan of faces with obvious work, especially when compared to the accompanying hands. Please. Jowls is another story for another time…because it’s complicated.

A mugful of heavily leaded coffee later, I’m ready for the day, open the front door and oh my god where are my sunglasses and even those aren’t nearly enough. Back to the computer, open Photoshop, quickly now, Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast…ahhh, that’s better, that should do it. If not I can tweak the day later on my phone.

Jump into the car, onto the freeway, merge, and of course it’s one asshole after another bearing down on me. Easy enough to erase them, don’t even need an app for that…zap, zap, you’re out of here motherfucker. Smooth sailing now, I’ve pretty much got the road to myself, just like the good old days when you knew how long it would take to get to where you were going.

By the way, are you familiar with the history brush, and with layers? A lot of people don’t realize you can actually go back at any time to any stage and edit or even delete anything you’re not happy with, all without harming your original image!

What did we do before digital imaging? It’s hard to remember. Like not having our phone with us…how did we even leave the house? What if what if what if…anything could have happened and we would have been up shit’s creek. But here we are.

I’m not much for magic, although I love “believing” the magician, probably out of sympathy for the performer. I don’t try to figure out his or her tricks, and I don’t feel cheated. I tried to watch Guillermo Del Toro’s adaption of Nightmare Alley, an epic novel about the rise and fall from grace of a carnival grifter. But Del Toro’s take on Depression-Era exploitation, superstition, and ignorance proved too grotesque and vicious in its portrayal of carnival “magicians” for me to stomach.

Del Toro’s cinematic magic aside, augury, sorcery, and alchemy do hold a fascination for me. I extend my notion of magic to include the realms of performance, science, healing, and the spirit. Magicians are performers. And some performers are magicians. I think Tina Turner is a magician. Cate Blanchett is a magician. John Coltrane is a magician. Lady Gaga is a magician. Bob Dylan is a magician. They are transformative, shape shifters. They create their own reality.

Magicians are descendants of shamanism. Sha-men and sha-women were typically individuals in collective communities who were unable to fulfill useful roles in hunting or gathering societies. They were often physically or mentally deficient. They had to make themselves useful. Many learned how to become healers. Many learned how to journey to the spirit world. And that is where magic becomes real for me.

*

My mother was a health-conscious woman. Even back in the 1950s, we ate right to keep fit. I stole that line from a book by the nutritionist, Adele Davis. While everyone else brought peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwiches to school, I opened my Roy Rogers lunch box to lima bean and cottage-cheese sandwiches on brown bread. Humiliating.

My mother continued her healthy ways through two husbands and a seemingly limitless lineup of smitten gentlemen. At 80+ she gracefully radiated beauty and health and could out-hike me. But, after her second husband died, she moved out of her home in the Sierras to live in an ecologically designed cooperative housing development in Davis, California.

Davis, California is the proud host of U.C. Davis, an aggie school known for its adventurous work in agricultural and environmental sciences. The community surrounding the campus makes a governmental and collective effort towards sustainable living. But just a few miles north of this green, eco-dreamy paradise lies one of the largest tracts of agri-industrial land on the planet. The giant fields are constantly being dusted with fertilizers and pesticides.

My mother loved living in her sustainable condo surrounded by sustainable friends, flora, and fauna. But she began to develop throat problems and a speech difficulty. She was misdiagnosed with mini-strokes. She insisted the doctors were wrong.

The doctors were wrong. My mother was diagnosed with ALS, which stands for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, is a neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord and leads to a loss of muscular control.

We moved my mother to an assisted care facility in San Francisco where my brother and I could be close by. In her last years, she and I worked hard to resolve all differences. She could not speak so we both took to writing on yellow legal pads. With her throat paralyzed, she also lost the ability to eat. She gradually lost weight and finally, at 87, well ahead of any failing in the rest of her health, she went into hospice.

Fortunately, we had followed her demise closely, so, when the time came, all her children had gathered at her bedside. While the hospice gently counted off the lengthening times between inhale and exhale, she finally released her last breath.

Until then, I had never understood how much energy it took to maintain the life flow. With that final breath, my mother’s body collapsed, imploding upon itself. And in that moment, a lithe, blithe wisp of white, translucent mist danced upward from her body and disappeared through the ceiling. It was there; I saw it. I can still see it. And I heard the music.

I’ve seen Tina Turner, Lady Gaga, John Coltrane, Cate Blanchette, and Bob Dylan prove that “the magic’s in the music…” Because a shaman or woman uses tempo as a bridge between our world and the spirit world. Because tempo is the most essential element of music. Because that translucent wisp that had been my mother for 87 years danced to the music while it danced through the ceiling and out into the cosmos. So yes, I believe in magic.

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*Sebastian, John, “Do You Believe in Magic,” 1965

 

 

 

 

We circled and bobbed at his urging—arms, wings and paws in unison—as a giant red sun rose out of the water.
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