Kristallnacht Sonata

May 1 was Yom haShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and Nov 9 is the commemoration date of Kristallnacht, the 1938 pogrom in Germany orchestrated by the nazi high command. Kristallnacht is often thought of as "the start" of the Shoah.

I presented the following piece a number of years ago during a Kristallnacht commemoration, and have wanted to record it ever since. I just purchased Mixcraft, an inexpensive but rather powerful software package for mixing tracks (and apparently images and video, as well). My first experiment was to produce a version of this, my Kristallnacht Sonata.

Since blogspot doesn't allow uploads of mp3's, I'm embedding a link to the sound file on my website. Here it is, but I'm not sure how it will work for you.

http://www.shivvetee.com/resources/KnachtSonata_v3.mp3

 

If you have problems with it, the recording can also be accessed directly by going to the Audio Room of my website, Shivvetee.com. Here's the link:

http://www.shivvetee.com/audio_room/shivvetee_audio_rm.html

Let me know what you think.

Transmigrant Journals, 2

Here's something raw from the jungle, another scene in Tranzmiegren Jernelz, a prose poem I began this winter. You can find the first post Dec. 25, 2008. That scene was entitled
Door to a Room
Mysterious Tale of the Beloved Son

I have no idea of the writing quality of this new scene. In fact, it's still in the editing process. You will notice parenthetic and bracketed text. They are unresolved alternatives I am considering, but they also mark potential segue and lacuna issues. I would love your feedback -- general, technical, detailed.
I call this one:
Door to a Closet
The Strange Tale of the Girl in the Amulet

... O, I hav had my share ov wimmen
who walked out on me [for one reason or another].
One moved out while I was [hitchhiking to Provincetown and back][hiking on Cape Cod]. I had no idea why she left.
Another got involved with a friend of mine and for awhile we lashed ourselves together in a love triangle, but it was more like a tesseract among higher dimensions of perversity and insanity. Strange tortures we give ourselves, after which we measure the scars, show them off in public, compare them to previous disasters as if they were some kind of trophy.
Yes, I know. There are some people who hang their scars like secret amulets in locked rooms and become obsessed. like cult members,
Like aenshent Kananniets hu, beneeth karvd poelz, tare thaer skin in ekstattek aggoneez.

Recently I began making the rounds with a [new] woman(.)( named Venus. I met her in a Shell station.) She’s a dancer who studies architecture. Lithe and graceful she is, with her hair cut to just below her ears. It bounces and gets tousled but falls (out)(back into place) like she’s always put-together. She’s a dancer. But for me she was like a cloud whorling in mythic shapes.
But like ennee uther klowd, she chaenjd in blu awway.
Now she is an hour, and a lifetime away. It didn’t happen suddenly, but I understood suddenly – she had moved to another town, not just for the job, but to leave me. Maybe there was another man.
A Kanannite preest sharpenz hiz nife, massojjez hiz skin...
All I knew was I was stuck in my apartment, the one where I slept on the long, low, slanting staircase so I could have a place to write. I realized she was farther away than I thought, so I left everything and hitched a ride to her new place, not so far south.
I was still on the road when I realized it was futile, that she had left, not for the job, but because I couldn’t find a way into her (ancient ruins)(dreams). Or maybe she was just a short-lived downpour I got caught in.
She was a gilt-edged cloud full of turbulence and she blew away. I guess it was really me that got blown away. When my ride arrived in Providence, I stumbled out of the car. It was an hour and a lifetime later and I hardly had the strength to walk. Each thought was a thunderstorm, eroding [my (energy)(will)][me in stark gullies][the clay off my faces], and my gut was tied up like some [sacrifice on a Mayan pyramid][torture victim in Teheran or Guantanamo].
That was the first hour and the first lifetime after the myth of her departed.

But here’s the strange part. It was just a dream and when I woke up I couldn’t remember ever knowing her, or ever having a girl leave me like that. And yet it was all so familiar. What kind of dream is that?
A rume full ov ammulets and meererz;
A rume with onlee wun dor
But wen I left, I kame owt intu difrent plasez.
I was tied up in knots, and all day I kept thinking I had just climbed out of that car, or I was still heading south when I realized the truth.
Maybe this detail is somehow connected: yesterday I was reading Amos, Ch.7, v. 17, “Your wife shall be a harlot in the city...” and now I feel like I am chasing after her. And then I remember... it’s only a dream.
Oenlee a dreem...
I passed through a room of amulets. She was one of them, a tiny dancing figurine hanging in front of a mirror painted with stars.
I wen in thru her iyz
An kame owt thru a berth kannal,
Krusht and krying.

I walked into a room of talismans and charms. She greeted me like the Hindu goddess Parvati, wearing a low-cut, satin dress embroidered with her sexual exploits; gold bangles up her arms, and tiny silver bells around one ankle. Her eyes were lined in kohl, and a mysterious henna pattern, like a Celtic knot, encircled her face.
“Du yu wont opeyum,
Or du yu wont me,
Or du yu wont the passijway owt ov yur littel werl?”
“All of them,” I answered, and looked down at her jingling bells. I saw that her feet were clay. I looked into her eyes, fell into a dream, and woke up in a car heading south.

Well, not exactly. I went to bed last night and dreamed of bygone days and long lost friends. Galvin, and Louise, and her. I met her in a bar drinking shots of tequila. I offered her a cabochon of turquoise that I bought in Meshad (near the forbidden shrine where I got stoned by the devout)(na).
I can’t remember the first time she came home with me, but I recall sleeping on the stairway, piles of blankets beneath us. When did she take the job in Providence? I’ve forgotten so many crucial details that I’ll never be able to analyze this properly. No wonder the only thing I could do was wake up and start again.

Now she is an amulet locked in a room.
Gashez on my armz, (like an) serpen tattuez;
A krouked kee iz in the lok.
Shall I (go in)(tern it) and [try tu (fien revive) her?][see if the ammulets ar still willen tu tok.]

Transmigrant Journals, 1

This is an excerpt only. To read the complete story, please contact me.
As promised, something in a language better known, but not better understood. This is the first version of a story, or perhaps what might be seen as the foundation layer of a painting...

Door to a Room
Mysterious Tale of the Beloved Son

... as the smoke cleared,
And my life, no more than a tumbling down shadowy tunnels,
Kaleided across the borders of our physics
Into a world within worlds,
A life within lives, times within a time
Into a moment, so slow,
And many generations.

I stood in the living room of a little house, speaking to two people I knew well, people I had never met before. Perhaps we spoke a language I now don’t know. Perhaps we spoke without speaking.

Now imagine a kaleidoscope tumbling into a new constellation, slowly, slowly it tumbles. Or imagine a slideshow with slow, superposing transitions, one image into another. Or imagine two galaxies passing through each other. If you’ve never imagined such an amazing thing, go to the Hubble Heritage website, or find a chariot to accelerate you across these borders.

I was the kaleidoscope tumbling from one world into another. As my world crumbled, I stood with one foot here and one foot there. Then I slowly stepped, and my former life glittered away. I was the projecting slideshow. For a lifelong moment I stood in superimposition, him who I was and him who I would be. Then the former faded away and was forgotten. I am that galaxy, and I am another galaxy, passing through myself, my selves.

And as I did, so are you doing.

Who can explain? And who can understand, who has not ascended out of this smoky world? Who can imagine, who has not ridden such a slow fast chariot; who has not been a migrant across constellations?

This shell, this garment of a body
So intricately woven, so dense of warp and weft, ...

-----------------

To read the complete text, please contact me.