[as if in dreams] A newsletter from Joseph Zitt #026
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(That is, either this is the PDF edition or that is a link to it.)
12 March, 2021
This is issue number 26 of the newsletter.
I've decided to stop the daily posts. There's more about that in Wednesday's post. But I'll keep the newsletter going, at least for now.
As always, please pass on the newsletter to anyone that might enjoy it. If someone passed this on to you and you like it, please subscribe! (And there's a link to unsubcribe, if needed, at the end of the emails.)
I'd love to hear any comments you might have on the newsletter and how it might be better. You can find me via email, Twitter, and Facebook.
Onward (going analog?)!
This Week's Posts
Friday, March 5th, 2021
I hear music booming in the distance as I approach the city square. When I round the bend past the cafe, I see a DJ setup with massive speakers. It’s standing alone on the traffic island that I cross to the square itself. No one is near it. No one appears to be in charge. The music does a skillful segue between songs. It may be a prerecorded playlist. Someone may be mixing remotely. I don’t hear an announcer. The square and the main street are mobbed. The whole city seems to be shopping and hanging out there. The weather is perfect. Some of us are wearing sweatshirts. Many people are not. It isn’t raining. I make my usual stops in the supermarket and the bakery. I get a sabich in the shop a few doors down. Most of the tables in the square are taken. I find one near where I usually sit, a little further from the Friday backgammon players. I eat my lunch there. When I’m done, I get an espresso at the cafe. I stand and drink it off to the side. The music is still booming, with no one guarding it. In other cities where I’ve lived, the setup might have been stolen or smashed by now. As I throw my espresso cup away, I realize that I’ve forgotten one purchase. My imperious cleaning person should finally appear tomorrow after several lockdown delays. She has commanded me to get more floor cleaner. Yes, Ma’am. I stop into the tiny supermarket across from the cafe and get it. On my way home, three young men walking in front of me stop, put their packages down, climb a wall, and pick kumquats from a tree in someone’s yard. Apparently, the kumquats are delicious. Some fall to the ground. The cats enjoy them, too.
Saturday, March 6th, 2021
I drop in on family at the House of a Hundred Grandmothers at the usual time this afternoon. We talk about how we’re doing, the future of this Facebook project, getting my life organized financially, and other such things. I don’t stay as long as usual. The cleaner is coming after three months away. That’s good. The fruit flies in the kitchen have been complaining about conditions in there. I get a message that the Cinematheque is opening on Tuesday. They’re showing a film of a Nick Cave concert. I don’t know his music, though I’m told that I should. I immediately buy a ticket. I’ll be there. Looking further, I see that the dance center is opening up again. My favorite troupe will be there in April. Done. The ticket prices are higher than before, but I can handle that, It makes sense. The audience is limited, and they have to catch up on close to a year without revenue from shows. I have my Green Pass, showing that I’ve been vaccinated, right on the home screen of my phone. I’ll have to have that or the paper vaccination certificate to get into the theatre. I’m ready. I’m not about to binge on entertainment, but it will be good to get out among people again.
Sunday, March 7th, 2021
I haven’t eaten indoors at the sabbath cafe before. I also don’t think I’ve been there when it isn’t the Sabbath. I think I started going there when the House of Hundred Grandmothers first went on lockdown last year and I couldn’t visit family. The restaurants are open as of today. I’ve been craving shakshuka all afternoon. I head there straight from work. I stop in the doorway. A server sees me. “Do you want to eat inside? You’ll need your Green Pass.” I show it to her on my phone. I tell her that it’s the first time I’ve used it. She responds with a Hebrew word that doesn’t translate, sort of like “Bon Appetit” but usually used when you see someone wearing new clothes. I sit down at a table for one in the corner. A few parties are at other tables, which are spaced further from each other than before. I order the shakshuka. It’s as good as I remember and less expensive. It comes with a salad, two large rolls, a ramekin of tahini and one of olives. The order comes quickly. The server makes a mistake putting it down on the table. The handle of the burning-hot pan points right at my chest. That’s happened before. I use my fork and knife to rotate it gingerly to where it isn’t a danger. I eat everything. Later in the evening, I feel like I may have eaten too much. But it’s worth it.
Monday, March 8th, 2021
I invite someone on Facebook to our afternoon prayers. He has been looking for people doing them in the area. He doesn’t show. That’s OK. I think some of the other invitations were closer to him. During the Mourner’s Kaddish, a soldier walks through twice in the same direction. I guess that he’s lost and in a loop. Someone we don’t know shows up at the back at the same time. He hasn’t come for the prayers but doesn’t want to disrupt them. He knows that we’re about a minute from the end. He stands quietly until it’s over. The power goes out in the building about an hour later. I lose about twenty minutes of work, but I can easily recreate it. The boss comes out of his office singing wedding music. He announces that the bride and groom are about to come down the aisle. This must refer to some tradition that I don’t know. As we stand around, a new worker asks me what kind of music I make. I try to describe the soundtrack that I’m working on now, with the layers of algorithmic improvisations and mixes of scrambled speech and found sounds. He says that he’s into the Rolling Stones. I surprise him by singing a bit of one of their more obscure songs, which I don’t think has ever been on an album. Later, he gets to talking with a programmer about Peter Hammill’s music. They’re both fans, but of different parts of his career. I only know one of his songs, though I knew what he sang on a Robert Fripp album. We talk about music for a while. When the lights come back on, we return to work.
Tuesday, March 9th, 2021
“Please be patient. The technology has been sleeping for a year.” The woman at the front of the hall turns and looks at two men behind her. One turns knobs and pushes buttons. The other shrugs. I have gotten to the theatre early. I’m one of the first audience members. They haven’t quite sorted out the ritual of entering. I need to show them my Green Pass so they know that I’ve been vaccinated. Or maybe I don’t. There’s a disagreement over that. I do need to show my ticket, which is on my phone. They try to scan it a few times before it works. I have to wave my hand in front of the thermometer, which shouts “Normal temperature!” in English. Apparently there’s no volume control. And I have to show them my government ID. I finally get to sit down and watch workers fumble with the setup up front. A laptop is playing videos via VLC on the big screen, but there’s no sound. Eventually someone changes a setting, then changes it back to how it was. The sound returns. I count 24 people in the hall. The maximum, when seats aren’t blocked off, is 158. The food counter is closed. I doubt that they’re making any money tonight, even with tickets priced at fifty percent more than they were when the theatre was last open a year ago, but it’s a test. About fifteen minutes after the start time, a man without a mask picks up a microphone and talks to us. He’s a local DJ and author. I understand about half of what he’s saying. He seems to be going on for a long time, but he’s enthusiastic and most of the audience enjoys it. I keep watching the computer clock on the screen. I wouldn’t feel time passing so keenly if it weren’t there. After half an hour, he thanks us and puts down the mic. People applaud. The lights go down. The movie finally begins.
Wednesday, March 10th, 2021
A year ago yesterday, I posted here about seeing people with masks on a bus for the first time. I posted the next day and the next, keeping to a set of writing guidelines that I had made for myself. I have kept going every day since then, posting (since I started counting) 200-500 words a day.
Now, 365 daily posts later, I think I'm done. We've had a bit of a return to some of how things were. I'm frankly running out of things to say. Rather than stretch on like a TV series whose network insists that it continue after it's run out of gas, I feel that it's time to stop.
I'll still post these intermittently, as I did in the time between the end of the book "as if in dreams" and the beginning of the current crisis. But I'll only do so when I've encountered something remarkable.
I expect that the posts will become a new book, tentatively titled "The Afternoon Prayers (as if in dreams, Volume 2)." It will be in two sections, "The Time Between," covering the sparer period after the first book, and "The Year of the Virus," with the daily posts from the past year. I don't have a time frame for putting it together. It will be a far larger book than the first one, but I've already done much of the groundwork for creating it.
Meanwhile, my focus (other than my job) will be on a new project, the feature-length film "dreamtext." In it, four images of a single dancer move through a dreamscape of images of Israel, to the sounds of my city and variations of a beloved song.
I expect that the film will take about a year. I'll be doing a crowdfunding campaign to be able to make the film. I will probably continue the weekly newsletter, though its form may change. More on that as it happens. Thanks, all, for your interest, reactions, and comments. I'll still be here, so let's keep talking!
Colophon
(Unchanged from last week, except for this line!)
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See you next week!