The Best American Poetry

Tracing Dreams [by Lera Auerbach]

Last night, we said goodbye to my father. It felt unnatural to see him in the coffin, he who was always so full of vitality, humor, and brilliance. To honor my mother's wishes, the casket was opened so she could see him for the last time. To protect her fragile state, only the closest members of the family were present. The silence hung in the dimly lit room. Groomed and dressed in all white, my father looked like a stranger, someone I never knew—a wax figure instead of a real man. The strangeness permeated the room, turning everyone attending into shadows. I was an observer, and some part of me was still observing that observer and on and on through a mirror labyrinth of reflections, removing me even further from reality until I doubted whether any of it was real. I caught myself wishing to call my father on his phone and tell him what a strange joke he played on us by dying, only to realize that my call would remain unanswered.

During the last year, my father went from 210 pounds to a mere 110 pounds. He lost all his fat and muscles, becoming a living skeleton. He had many friends but avoided seeing them towards the end of his life—he did not want them to remember him like this. Lev was a proud and stubborn man. He was strong, courageous, and independent, and that's how he wished to remain in the memories of those who knew him.

Last week, I went for a solitary walk in Glasgow. It was drizzling, and the city looked gloomy and ghostly, with its streets covered in mist. I took a photo of the winding, empty road devoid of colors. It resonated with how I felt: a lonely path stretching into the unknown, full of reflections and shadows – abandonedly sad but also, somehow, hauntingly beautiful. I was thinking about my future senza Papa.

A few nights before he died, I had a nightmare. I was angry at my father in my dream because I knew he had let go of his attachments and was ready to depart. "You might be ready for this, but I am not," I screamed in despair, and my screaming woke me up. I fought the urge to call him right away. I was in Germany; he was in New York. I did not want to wake him up. I called him later that day. To my relief, he sounded cheerful. He had just returned home from the hospital. He asked me in detail about my upcoming concerts. He did not sound like a person who was ready to let go of life. I felt comforted and reassured, forgetting that even in my dream, it was I who was not ready for what was inevitably coming, while he had already accepted it and was awaiting this new adventure.

How he loved adventures! His favorite time was traveling. He felt best driving to some unknown, exciting destination. And now his greatest adventure was very near, and he no longer wished to resist its pull. I already knew he was terminally ill, but I was still harboring some stubborn hopes for a miracle. I knew it was selfish of me, but I couldn't help it. Just last month, he jokingly promised me to make it to his birthday. I was upset when he said it—since his birthday was only a few weeks away. We were making plans for the summer. I wanted him to think long-term, to believe he had a future, and to look forward to something. I still believed in the power of "we."

And now I was alone, walking on the empty road in Glasgow while my father was dead in New York. I could do nothing to change it. I knew—beyond any doubt—that he was in a good place, no longer suffering, that it was only his emaciated body, nothing more than a shell, what was left in New York, and that he was everywhere and in everything, partaking in the eternal dance of life everlasting. I felt joy for him and from him. Yet I also realized that he had been a constant in my life, a resounding tone of love and reassurance. As long as I had a father, I was still a little girl, a child discovering the world's wonders, knowing there was always someone to catch me if I fell.

My father taught me to be courageous. He said courage is not the absence of fear but the resolve not to let fear stop you from doing the right thing. He taught me to swim in cold rivers, ski down mountains, and jump from ski ramps. When I was four, he enrolled me in ice skating school. An hour later, I complained that they had only taught us how to fall. He told me, "To learn how to fall is an art in itself. Who knows, maybe it was your most important lesson. If you learn how to fall, nothing can harm you. If you learn how to fall, you can be fearless."

My father, a child of the war, born in the horrific year of 1937 when his own father (my grandfather Isaac) was sent to the Gulag, was a kind man who deeply believed in the goodness of people. He always chose to see the best in them, even when they failed him. Papa instilled in his children the importance of generosity, not through words but by being generous in his actions. Lev never complained, even in the harshest times. He was a natural leader, leading not by force but with kindness and by example. He was stubborn and, at times, impossible.

My father was the first reader of all my writings in Russian, both poetry and prose. His knowledge of the language was impeccable. He loved literature and was talented at drawing, blending analytical and artistic perspectives. We spent two and a half years living together in Florida during the pandemic. For the first time since I left Russia at 17, I spent much time with my parents, rediscovering them as people. I wrote a book about that strange time when I experienced their aging closely while reliving memories of my childhood with them. This book is "200 Glances Towards Sunset." I knew the sunset was just around the corner and treasured every moment of its fragile beauty. I did not want to publish it while my father was alive, but perhaps the time for that is nearing.

My father was a quiet anchor in my life, with his never-ending confidence in me. He taught me to play chess and helped me solve math problems. He believed in me even when I did not believe in myself. He encouraged me to fly high and take risks.

How much of my strength was just his projection? Was I strong because he believed me to be strong? Was I strong because I wanted him to see me strong? Was I ever strong? I don't know.

My father was not a saint, but I think he was at peace with his choices and did not have too many regrets. He was proud of his professional accomplishments, his children, and his grandchildren. He loved dogs and nature and traveled a lot. He had a remarkably interesting life.

I left Russia at the age of 17, and it took me ten years to bring my parents to New York. They missed much of my life from ages 17 to 27. That's why it was incredibly meaningful to have them in the audience whenever I performed. Four weeks before his death, my father attended the last performance he would ever see—despite significant health challenges, he traveled to Boston to see me conduct the world premiere of my String Symphony No.2 “Tenebrae lucis.” Was the title of the symphony, translated as The Darkness of Light (referring to the approaching night), a mere coincidence? Before the performance, I dedicated this concert to my parents. The audience gave them a long applause, and my father was deeply moved. I knew it would be the last concert he would attend, but I did not expect his final days to arrive so soon.

"Old age is such a strange thing to happen to a little boy." The little boy was still in him until the end. He would joke about his illness as if it were happening to someone else. His body was failing him, but not his sense of humor or his love. Those who love us never leave us, at least not entirely. At least, it is what I choose to believe. After all, where does the love go when the body is gone? It is energy, and energy can't just disappear.

The road is turning, and I do not know what awaits me. Whatever it is, I accept it. After all, fighting the change only makes it more difficult. You can't fight an ocean's wave, but you can ride it, trusting it will lead you where you need to go and trusting your strength to get there intact.

In many ways, my father remains a mystery. I will keep tracing his contours through my memories. At some point, I made a long list of uneasy questions I wished to ask my parents. But even as I was preparing this list, I realized that I could never ask many of these questions because I would hurt my parents by doing so. Questions are more important than answers; not all questions need to be answered. To understand someone’s life would take another whole life. True understanding requires compassion, and compassion means some things should never be asked. I will never fully know my father. But I will keep finding and rediscovering him, and by doing so, I will keep rediscovering myself.

 

The Map of His Dreams

My father never asks for directions.
Even when he’s lost – he looks quite confident.
He spends long hours drawing maps.
(If it’s not on the map – its existence is doubtful.)

My mother asks everyone for directions,
even when she knows where she is going,
even when she is near her home.
She is like a child waiting to be found.

My father likes the smell of his old car,
its obedient noises, familiar caprices.
He feels that only in the driver’s seat
he’s still in control, while all else is slipping.

My mother goes to sleep early,
she’ll sleep soundly until the morning.
He comes in quietly, fixes her blanket,
sits in the armchair, a book on his lap,
thinking of driving to an unknown sight
he is dozing off, his mouth open,
his nose sharpened as if growing into a shadow.

(In his sleep, he’s drawing the map of his dreams.)

The Broken Mirror of Facebook [by Lera Auerbach]

© Lera Auerbach

Something peculiar occurred on the night of October 13th, 2020: my personal Facebook page disappeared. It was abruptly deleted by Facebook with the warning that this action was permanent and irreversible.

I have used Facebook since 2008. During these years, I have never received any warnings or suspensions. I am not involved and do not comment on political matters. Mostly, I use Facebook to share my art, poetry, and music. So, I was at a loss as to why my page was removed. The explanation I was given is that, according to FB, I was impersonating a public figure. In other words, I was accused of impersonating myself. Before killing my page, Facebook asked for proof of my identity. I uploaded a copy of my driver's license, and a few seconds later, I was informed that my account was permanently closed, and I was irrevocably banned from Facebook.

I maintained two pages: a personal page with 5000 friends and a professional Artist-page with around 25,000 followers. While my personal page disappeared, my fan page remained frozen in time, with the last post on October 12th, as my connection to the fan page was removed together with my personal account, which administered it. I had no way of accessing or posting on my fan page even though it was still published.

I felt a strange emptiness as if some part of me died with my page. I never considered myself addicted to Facebook, although addicts rarely admit their addiction. Yet, I probably spent far more time on FB than I should have, never realizing the extent that FB had become embedded in my life.

I am a private and introverted person by nature. On my FB page, in the short description about myself, I wrote, “Hermit in search of a hermitage.” As a concert pianist and conductor, I enjoy performing in large halls, leading hundreds of people in an orchestra, and facing 3000-plus people in the audience. I love the magic of being on the stage, but behind the spotlights, I am a hermit, at least as much as my profession allows it. I'm shy. I don't speak much – unless it is a public speech. I don't go to parties, and I'm terrible at small talk. Strange as it may seem, when I'm not on tour, I can spend weeks without ever talking on the phone. Over the last few years, I use email less and less. Facebook became my primary connection to the world; its messenger replacing email and phone.

Yet, Facebook also became an overbearing presence continually feeding information, acting as Orwell's Big Brother – predicting my likes and dislikes with frightening insightfulness, bringing to my attention offers that would feed not my needs but my desires and, yes, seeping away my time and concentration. Often FB’s feed would appear with precise knowledge of my most recent conversations, thus giving an uncomfortable sense of being spied on and analyzed by something or someone on the other side of the screen.

Although FB was stealing my time, it was also a source of wonders and even miracles. It resurrected my dear childhood friend with whom I lost contact for over 20 years. It provided fragile but tangible strings of connections. I built new friendships that spilled into real life. My friends provided a sense of support and gave feedback for my research. Over the years, I built an international network of like-minded people, musicians, writers, artists, choreographers, actors, translators, orchestra directors, art collectors, and poets who inspired and stimulated my work. In addition to music, I'm also a writer and a visual artist. My friends on Facebook often served as first readers or first audience for my works-in-progress.

Facebook is not the real world, but it is one of its mirrors. It reflects different things to different people: it can become an irritable and alienating discourse or a sharing of inspiration. After my life-threatening illness and surgery at the Mayo Clinic in the first months of 2020, immediately followed by the global pandemic, I have been in personal quarantine and complete isolation since February 2020. Four out of five people in our family are immuno-deficient and at higher risk for COVID-19. During this time, Facebook more than ever provided the sense or perhaps only the illusion that I'm not alone.

After my page disappeared, I spent the first couple of days in disbelief. I expected that at any moment, my Facebook page would reappear since it was so obviously a mistake. There was no customer support, no telephone, no email to make a complaint. I asked one of my friends to post what happened to me on her page, hoping that someone from Facebook would see it and do something about it.

“You must have done something wrong,” one of my friends said, “Facebook couldn't just kill your page like that without any warning.” Another friend, a curator, told me that once her account was suspended because she posted a sculpture by Michelangelo, which Facebook considered nudity.

“But my account was not suspended; there was no warning. It was just removed from existence,” I insisted, “besides, I have not posted anything that AI could consider indecent or offensive.”

“Perhaps, it was your poetry,” another friend suggested. I write poetry in the Russian language, and, unfortunately, there is no feature on FB to turn off automatic translation. Automatic translations of poetry are dreadful, and many of my bilingual writer-friends complain about it. My friend suggested that perhaps in its automatic translation, something in my poem could have triggered the AI Centurion of Facebook's morality. But I could not imagine anything in my poems that, regardless of how flawed the translation may have been, could have given Big Brother a warrant for my guillotine.

Over the next few days, I was astounded to realize that every person I shared my story with assumed that I must have inadvertently done something wrong. This reaction was so prevalent that I also started to think that I must have indeed somehow made some mistake and that the verdict Facebook gave me of "impersonating a public figure" was just a cover-up for some deeper-rooted cause. Yet, I could not think of any posts that could have been the reason. I also noticed that whenever I approached someone about my Facebook problems, they seemed reluctant to get involved as if I was infected with a plague, and the plague could spread into their lives.

In its less severe virtual form, the situation reminded me of what my parents and grandparents faced in the Soviet Union. As a child growing up in Russia, I knew all too well that our phone-line was tapped, that every word we said needed to be self-censored before uttering. At that time, when someone was visited by a KGB agent, all friends assumed that he or she must have done or said something wrong. The person would then start suspecting that perhaps he or she indeed said or did something wrong; perhaps, too much was said during a birthday party, or maybe so-and-so could have misinterpreted words, or that a private conversation was overheard. In 1937, the KGB came to arrest my grandfather Isaac and his brother. My grandfather's brother refused to follow them, claiming there was clearly a mistake. The KGB agent said if he refused to go, they would shoot him. He insisted that he was innocent, and it was a mistake, so they shot him dead. Then they turned to my grandfather, asking if he would follow them. He did. My grandfather was accused of being a Japanese spy and sent to Gulag for many years. His only crime was being Jewish. I was not sent to Gulag, but I was removed from my home page of Facebook, banned from re-entering it, without any avenue of appeal for justice. I was accused of impersonating a public figure. By the same logic, I may have been accused of being a Japanese spy as well.

Another friend suggested that perhaps someone did this to hurt me purposely. A couple of years ago, my website was hacked, its contents erased, a skull with crossbones appeared with the slogan "Death to Jews." I don't involve myself in political matters. But I don't hide my Jewish roots. As an artist and a public figure, there are always those that dislike who I am or what I do. I'm not sure what's worse: for this micro-universe, which you have carefully built over 12 years, to be destroyed by a random computer mistake or to be specifically targeted by someone who hates you.

Psychologically, it felt strange being suddenly and permanently removed from the Facebook world I had become so dependent on without fully realizing my dependency. Every time I opened my computer, the Facebook URL would appear, and sometimes, without thinking, I would press the return button only to enter a blank page with the notice that this account no longer exists; or I would touch the Facebook logo on my iPhone only to be reminded of my expulsion. My husband also has a Facebook account, although he doesn’t use it much. We have mutual friends. At times, I found myself tempted to sign into his account just to visit my friends' pages to see what was new in their lives, but I always stopped myself. I did not want a peephole into the lost paradise.

Over the past years, I did consider quitting Facebook more than once, but there is a significant difference between being expelled or leaving of your own free will. The only other time I was away from Facebook for any length of time was during my Svalbard expedition with National Geographic. I was researching my ARCTICA symphony, for which I was commissioned by National Geographic, The National Symphony Orchestra, and the Oslo Philharmonic. There was no internet connection so far North, and I enjoyed a wonderful sense of liberation and isolation – while looking forward to sharing this incredible adventure with my friends. Upon return to Longyearbyen, the most northern airport in the world, I was finally able to connect to the internet, and through Facebook messenger reached my friends in Greenland. On their instant invitation, instead of flying to Miami the next day, I flew to Nuuk to continue my Arctic research. The facility of connection through Facebook made this miraculous change of plans possible.

I read Rilke's line "Excess of being wells up in my heart" in one of my friends' posts. "Excess of Being" became the title of my published book of aphorisms. Another FB friend, David Lehman, a poet and the editor of the Best American Poetry anthology, posted a question about a phrase from Nijinsky's diary, which he needed for his upcoming book. I had recently read Nijinsky's journals, and I answered his question. Later, we became friends and had a joint poetry reading at the well-known KGB poetry bar in New York. On his invitation, I became a regular contributor to the Best American Poetry blog. On Facebook, I met Marilyn Nelson, a wonderful poet who became my close friend and collaborator. In 2021 our joint book of poems for children "A is for Oboe" will be published by Penguin-Random House.

Facebook became not only a source of distraction and procrastination but also a wondrous matchmaker. And now I missed it. I felt a sense of loss as if suddenly I had lost all my friends. During the pandemic, with its isolation and travel bans, losing access to my Facebook network of friends increased the sense of alienation.
Where were my friends? My 5000 friends and 25000 followers?
Did any of them notice my disappearance?
Besides a few people whom I contacted in the hope of reaching Facebook powers to review my situation – nobody seemed to notice my disappearance.

When the execution of my page happened, I was in the middle of a Daily Reflections project: posting every day a newly made recording of my poetry and a new work of art. The project was meant to continue daily for one year – leaving something creative born from each day. Did any of my friends notice that these daily reflections suddenly stopped? (I did not stop the project; I continued posting daily but on YouTube.)

The first person to notice I was missing in action was my father. My parents are staying with me during the pandemic – a rare occurrence since I usually travel worldwide to give concerts. Although we are rather close, they seem to be more informed of what I am doing through my Facebook posts than from life.
– What's wrong with your Facebook? – My father asked.
– It was removed.
My father was in disbelief.
– You need to speak with Mark Zuckerberg!
– How? I'm not on Facebook. Besides, he probably receives thousands of messages.

More days passed. I didn't hear from anyone. Nobody noticed I was gone. Ten days later, a friend called asking why I'm no longer among his Facebook friends. He claimed that I was the only reason he was on Facebook in the first place. A choreographer contacted me. He was wondering if somehow, I was upset with him and blocked him on FB. We were in the middle of discussing and planning our next collaboration when suddenly, all my messages and my account vanished from his view.

Through a mutual friend, I was introduced to someone who works at Facebook. If this person would vouch for me, perhaps Facebook would review my case? But he said he could not vouch for me, and the Facebook system would know that he did not know me personally – we had not corresponded before, and he wasn't among my friends. Vouching for me could cost him his job even though he knows and trusts our mutual friend and believes that I was not impersonating myself, but actually, I am myself and have been myself for the last twelve years on Facebook.

As days passed, the sense of disbelief and anger turned into grievance and loss. I kept on telling myself none of it is real. My real friends are still there. Facebook is nothing but an illusion and, ultimately, a huge waste of time. Still, I felt sadness as if someone, perhaps part of me – my virtual self – had died. And there was no funeral, no closure. My death went unnoticed, as if I had never existed.

On the 21st of October, it was my birthday. Last year I enjoyed over 500 birthday messages. This year besides my family, my birthday remembered three friends, one journalist, and my publisher from Hamburg, who always sends me very thoughtful and eloquent wishes. A day later, one more friend emailed me a birthday card. That's it. I was not surprised. It was what I expected. 500 greetings are an illusion. Six are reality. Yet, I also knew it was unfair to think so. I'm not any better. I have friends but rarely remember when their birthdays are; I relied on Facebook to remind me.

Facebook is a mirror but a mirror that changes its functions. Sometimes it prettifies your world by sending you illusory flowers and kittens. Sometimes it shows you the ugliest side of people whom you thought you knew well – their comments on current events make you wonder how the same person could combine seemingly disparate personalities. The broken mirror of FB works only one way as in an interrogation chamber: Facebook seems to know more about you than you know yourself, yet you have no idea who is watching you and how to contact this invisible someone – or something – to ask for justice.

In the same week my FB page vanished, I discovered that my credit card was hacked, and a large sum of money was withdrawn. Also, the internet connection in our house stopped working. All of these events were unrelated, but altogether I felt more and more isolated and vulnerable. There was life before Facebook and before the internet, I told myself. And not so long ago. We are so dependent on computers now, but in my childhood and student years at the Juilliard School in New York and Hannover, Germany, I didn't own a computer. I managed without it and managed well.

Slowly the internet problems were solved, the fraud perpetrated on my credit card was reported and resolved, but Facebook remained absent. I noticed that I rarely used the internet those days. Instead, I dove into writing. Since all my concerts were canceled in 2020, I concentrated this year on literature. Usually, I would write most of the day with some Facebook interruptions. I write by hand, then type into a Word document and then edit. I enjoy writing by hand, although a computer is a necessity and a very handy tool for editing. Since my Facebook collapsed, I have been writing almost non-stop, filling one notebook after another, changing the ink in my fountain Waterman pen daily. I have finished the second book of my novel, "Note by Note"– memories of my early childhood and started the third. Being fully immersed in my childhood – a world without computers and Facebook – I could fully appreciate how rich and sensitive that time was. As a child, discovering the world through music and art, I felt more present, alive, and aware than now, being split between virtual and real worlds, torn between what appears and what is.

Perhaps, I was indeed impersonating myself on Facebook. If so, who is more real? My avatar-face shown to the world, to my friends, fans, and foes, or the real me – a hermit in isolation, seeking connection, yet also fearing it.

On the evening of October 26th, inexplicably, my Facebook account resurrected. There was no message, no explanation, no apology, no warning – nothing at all. The page just reappeared with its last posts dated October 12th, as if the previous two weeks disappeared from my life. I don't know how it happened and who intervened. I asked several people who might know someone on Facebook to help, but I probably will never know who saved my account from extinction. Whoever you are and everyone who tried to help – my deepest gratitude.

It felt peculiar to visit my page and find it as I left it – as if seeing an old house you no longer live in. In one of his interviews, Solomon Volkov said that he had two immigrations in his life: one from the Soviet Union to the United States, and the other from the USA to Facebook. I don't share his sentiment. Yet, during these days, I realized that most of my professional contacts happened through Facebook. I realized that Facebook is a source of inspiration and support. I also realized that I became too dependent on it, forgetting that I am only a guest there, even on my own page; forgetting that there is the other side of the screen which is not seen in this one-way mirror; forgetting that this mirror is no longer just a tool of connection, but a spider which feeds on your time, who reflects you not the real world but the world you believe in, the world according to your likes, feeding you information that confirms your beliefs to keep you hooked, to keep you hungry for more likes so it can continue to feed on your time.

I looked at my page, but I didn't feel like posting anything. I didn't feel like saying hello to my 5000 friends and 25,000 followers, real or imaginary, who were just fine without me.
I visited a couple of friends whose pages I see more often, but I didn't feel like clicking likes. I felt balancing on the edge of the Matrix, not sure if I wanted indeed to return there, now that once again I had a key into this forbidden garden of social delights. By now, I felt free from my FB addiction, from needing its daily dose of fake relevancy, its noise of the gigantic fugue of voices demanding my attention, crying to be appraised. Was I happier without it, now guarding the entrance voluntarily? I was grateful to be given back the choice and to be able to glance into this mirror, but I also appreciated my privacy and freedom even though freedom doesn’t always equate with joy.

The great choreographer John Neumeier, with whom I closely collaborated in creating three full-length ballets with my music, doesn't have an email. Well, actually, he has an email address, but he rarely uses it, if ever. He doesn't have Facebook or other social media pages. Not having them is a luxury, and sometimes I feel jealous of it. What confidence and inner freedom, what a secure network of friends and colleagues one must have to remain free of virtual attachments. John is over 80 years old, and he is as active and creative as ever – a living legend in his field.

Can I afford the hermitdom I seek?

 

 

Dislocated in Time [by Lera Auerbach]

Photo by Lera Auerbach

 

(1)

The problem with the future is that it is unforeseeable –
the great unknown is full of opportunities for dreadful disasters.

Their multitudes are inexhaustible.

The stars are the pores of our reality.
They shine because that’s how we see the light of another world. 

The Arctic fox dances its foxy dance, pretending to be a woman,
pretending to be a nurse. 

The seal waits underwater. It knows it is being hunted. 

The stars are not the pores; they are pills,
round white pills the woman-fox is giving me.

Pills for pain, pills for sleep, pills for blood pressure,
pills for muscle aches, pills for adrenal gland function,
pills for inflammation or rather against inflammation,
pills for/against nausea. And steroids.

And more pills for pain. Killers of pain. 

(How many universes did I swallow today?)

 

(2)

Everyone is very kind to me. So kind, it breaks my heart.

Everyone is doing their best. Or his or her best. 

I feel generous with the pronouns. I think pronouns are so yesterday. 

So are all nationalities, religions, sexes, and any other boxes of definitions, including self-definitions.

If everyone were so kind, there would be no need for any of these limiting concepts. 

I understand how beautiful it would be, how connective, how whole and wholesome,
and it breaks my heart that it is not yet universally so.

I cry from the unbearable weight of my love that I cannot express. 

My husband, concerned, asks if I’m in pain. 

“No, on the contrary,” I try to explain what I feel. “I understand what it means to be ‘we.’ 

I am the seal; I am the fish it ate; I’m the polar bear waiting for the seal to breathe; 

I’m the polar bear hunter, waiting for the polar bear to strike the seal. 

I’m the polar bear hunter’s mother, wishing to feed the polar bear 
so that the bear could feed her son one day; I am the polar bear hunter’s girlfriend,
enjoying the safety of the aroma of the Lancôme perfume.

I am the surgeon searching for the patient who has his initials drawn on her belly. 

I am the patient praying to be her surgeon’s masterpiece.”

(“You are on drugs. It’s the painkillers,” says my husband.)

 

(3)

Where do all lost things go? 

Perhaps, lost things are dislocated not in space but in time.

It is why something may disappear and then later appear right in front of your eyes –
where you have already looked for it and more than once.

Instead of moving in space, they fall into the holes in the fabric of time.

Because time is made of porous material and things may fall through. 

Sometimes things reappear, moved back by some internal tides; 

at other times, they disappear without a trace, 

and new strange things appear instead. 

It is hard to hold on to your belongings when they keep falling 
through the porous realities of time and space.

It’s quite difficult, especially lately, to hold on to myself 
with all these electrons, protons, and neutrons misbehaving as particles 
and waves the moment you try to observe what they’re doing. 

Just think of all the effort my poor self needs to put together 
in order to hold some kind of a recognizable shape of a body 
instead of just becoming a soundwave or melting into a puddle. 

(No wonder I feel exhausted all the time.) 

 

(4)

Yesterday I learned there is such a thing as repulsive gravity.

By repulsive, I don’t mean ugly or unpleasant. 

Apparently, gravity can be not only attractive, 

thus attracting things ever closer the way earth 

doesn’t let us float away and fall into space, 

but also repulsive, meaning always repelling things 

further and further away. 

In all likelihood, this universe was made by such repulsive impulse, 

resulting in the Big Bang and all its consequences. 

It is why we are still expanding, universally speaking. 

(Just think of it: all we are is a hiccup of some repulsive shudder.)

 

(5)

Time in the hospital – sleepless nights, leg compressors, IV drips, 

blood-pressure measurements, vital signs checks every hour, medications. 

You wish to sleep, but your sleep is continuously interrupted by machines, nurses, 

and your own body. You melt one drop at a time and float restlessly in the night. 

And you still need to repeat your name and date of birth 

each time you are given the meds. You swallow a bunch of stars 

and start feeling that the repulsive gravity which made the Big Bang 

is just around the corner, and the reversal could happen at any moment.

You are internally running extremely fast while not moving at all. 

(And you’re still naked under the hospital robe.)

 

 

Making of an Opening [by Lera Auerbach]

"Opening" by Lera Auerbach

 

1. The Absence of Trees

You know
you're getting closer to the North
when trees disappear.
The world without trees.

At first, you don't notice that the trees are missing. 
Then you feel the absence of something important,
but you are not sure what it is.

By the time you understand that the trees are gone,
you are too far North to turn around.

(After a while, there is no way back.)

 

2. Unborn Music

In the Arctic they say –
this world is porous,
that's why there are
Auroras in the sky.
You can glimpse the light
of the other worlds
through the tiny holes
in the material of our world.

Shamans can travel
through different worlds
in search for answers.
They fly through the pores
and find their way back.
Sometimes such flights
are not possible, thus
many questions still
remain unanswered.

A dermatology-inclined friend
explained to me once –
when a pore is clogged,
nothing can go in
or out until
it explodes. At times,
I feel like a blocked pore
that needs an explosion.

(My cat gently examines
the strings of the piano
as if sniffing unborn music.) 

 

3. An Opening to Breath

I need an opening to breathe.
Is that what writing is –
the making of an opening? 

Far in the Arctic,
a polar bear can wait
for hours and hours next
to the breathing hole
made in ice by a seal. 

A seal needs to breathe.
Sooner or later, it will come
to the surface to gulp air.
That's when a polar bear,
if quick and attentive,
can kill the seal.
That's when
a polar bear hunter
can kill the polar bear

who is hunting the seal,
because you cannot
see white on white.

They say in the Arctic,
“If you see a polar bear,
it's the very last thing
you will ever see.”

(There are no cats in Svalbard.)
 

4. Quiet Chuckle

A book can only lead to another book –
a trail of steps in the snow:
reassuring but disappearing before your eyes.

Why do we voluntarily subject
ourselves to harsh conditions?

Why?

I gave my Arctic friend Gaya
a fancy perfume bottle from Lancôme.

"This is so perfect," she beamed.
"Polar bears hate French perfume."

(Her boyfriend, an Inuit, a polar bear hunter, only chuckled.)

  

5. Trail of Breadcrumbs

If I cannot weave a protective blanket of words,
I could at least leave some breadcrumbs.
Breadcrumbs could be useful. 
Not as useful as a hot meal in good company.But still. 

Breadcrumbs can help you find your way back.
That is if you can turn around.
If not, breadcrumbs could feed your followers.
Maybe your followers could rescue you one day.
They could also drown you or feed you to the polar bears.

(But one shouldn't assume a pessimistic view.)

 

6. What’s Not Allowed in Svalbard

The reason why no cats are allowed in Svalbard
is, perhaps, because cats have nine lives.

Before you come to Svalbard, you sign an entry form.
Many things are not allowed on Svalbard.
For example, feeding polar bears.
Or dying.

If you die, you will be fined, 
because dying is not allowed in Svalbard. 

(Dying and bringing cats.) 

Silent Music [by Lera Auerbach]

Leitmotifs Photo by Lera Auerbach

 

 

At the Marlboro Music Festival, returning home at night –
my door was covered by moths. I opened the door quickly
as not to let them in, but at least twenty managed to fly in –
into the light of the dining room's lamp.

 

Today I found them dead all around the entrance,

dried angels, almost transparent in their fragile death

with the powder – angel's dust – still on their wings.

 

I think of them while listening to Chopin's mazurkas –

so fragile, so transparent, immortal in their captured beauty.

I gently lift the dead bodies of white&gray moths
from the floor – sliding them into an old glass jar.

 

There they shall rest. They look alive.

Most have their wings open, as if in flight.

My fingers are covered with the powder from the wings.

Their silence is music too.

 

When I wake up tomorrow morning

– they shall still be here, under the glass,

frozen in their death, as in a dream

hearing the music only they can hear.

A protective blanket of words [by Lera Auerbach]

 

Arctic Dreams - Photo Credit: Lera Auerbach

(1)

I learned that a friend of mine was going through a tough time. His mother died, and he had debilitating neck pain. He needed to write the obituary and arrange for the funeral. His mother had dementia. Was he able to say goodbye? I did not ask. 

I don't know which scale would measure grief. Such a scale doesn't exist. 

Physical pain is easier to manage. If it is yours. Because at some point, the pain stops defining you. 
Grief buried deeper, so deep it can't be torn away, it becomes you.

In the Arctic, old babushkas, when they become unable to take care of themselves, hope to be killed by a polar bear. When they become too ill and weak, they look for the bear to eat them. I asked why. Being devoured by a wild animal didn't seem to me like an attractive way to finish life. 

"The bear will be nourished by eating me," explained an old Inuit woman. "The bear will become strong and fat. Then one day, my son will kill that bear. My son and his family will eat the bear's meat, make healing mixes from its fat, and make trousers from its fur. Thus, through the polar bear, I will nourish my son and keep him warm, even past my life, even past my death."

Post mortem motherly care.

(2)

A few years ago, I travelled to Greenland and stayed in Nuuk in the apartment of a polar bear hunter. A polar bear hunter's home looked like an IKEA house made by children constructors of adult sizing. Everything was modern, functional and perfectly unremarkable. 

A photograph on the wall showed a polar bear (or rather its fur) covered in blood, soaking in a bathtub. I realized it was the same bathtub in which I had showered that morning. It had rubber ducklings as lucky ornaments. Perfectly, chillingly, unremarkable bathtub.

(3)

"I wish I could make a blanket of protective words to shield you," I wrote to my friend, whose mother died after suffering dementia for several years. 

“A protective blanket of words” could be a definition of poetry. 
“Could be” because, like everything else, it rejects any definitions. 

Poetry is no different than spell-making or alchemy.

As if words could make a difference. 
As if anything could still make any difference.

In the world gone mad with apocalyptic craziness and fear, can words remain protective talismans? 

(4)

Bears in the Arctic are suffering from global warming. They're skinny and weak; they couldn't kill even old babushkas on their suicide mission. 

If I could stitch a protective blanket of words, I would make one for the polar bears, another one for the suicidal babushkas on their mission to feed the polar bears, and the third one for the polar bear hunters. I would then make a gigantic frozen quilt for the Arctic to protect it from climate change and even a bigger blanket for the entire world to save it from madness. 

Every stitch would be a word of love, a talisman against impending disaster. 

But I never learned how to make blankets or quilts. I can mend sounds and strings but not threads. The thoughts made of words are unravelling, and I can't weave them together. 

 

Traces [by Lera Auerbach]

^{Untitled - Ink on Handmade Paper by Lera Auerbach} 

 1.

When I think of my Great Aunt Rosa, I hear her laughter – deep chuckles rising from the belly of the Earth and exploding like an uncontrollable volcano. My earliest recollection of Great Aunt Rosa goes back to the time in my life when crawling seemed easier than walking, and every situation had a fantastic array of discoveries. Aunt Rosa was a gigantic mountain that captivated my mom's attention entirely. I was free to crawl around on my own to my total satisfaction. I had a small, plastic red fox. From time to time, I heard volcanic explosions of Aunt Rosa's laughter and thought that a tiny fox may not fully comprehend these sounds and feel scared. Remembering from one of the fairytales that foxes liked hiding in dark spaces (or in pretty wooden huts they would steal from the less intelligent animals), I looked around for a hiding place for my fox. I found it in Aunt Rosa's shoe, which was perfectly designed to be a home for a small plastic fox, combining the best qualities of a foxhole and fox-hut.

I must have fallen asleep somewhere next to the shoe rack. My parents carried me to the apartment of my mother's sister, Natasha, where we stayed during our Moscow visits. The little red fox spent that long night alone in Great Aunt Rosa's shoe, probably wondering if she would ever see the daylight again or if I had abandoned her forever.

2.

Nothing lasts forever. Perhaps, only the Great Nothing lasts forever until Something appears. Of course, it could not have been "forever," but perhaps it was – if Time (as we understand it) did not exist then. No space, no Time – nothing. Or, rather, everything so condensed and indivisible that it all had to fit into Nowhere. Then – Big Bang – everything explodes, divides, and we hear singing – the Word – God's name. Or His laughter. Or Her laughter. Or Great Aunt Rosa's laughter, which explodes and spills over as I wake up.

My mom, who is holding the telephone receiver away from her ear (so as not to be deafened by thunder), is also laughing. I can't help it and start laughing too, even though I have no idea why we are all laughing. And Natasha, my mom's sister, walks into the room and starts laughing too. And from the receiver booms Great Aunt Rosa's laugh, filling the room, spilling through the windows into the sky and breaking into snowflakes, dancing in the wind.

3.

My tiny red plastic fox had bitten my Great Aunt Rosa when she (Aunt Rosa) tried to put on her shoe. It did not surprise me. After the long night, the fox must have assumed that this shoe was her home. I wondered if small plastic animals have the same concept of time as we do. I decided that no, a night spent in a shoe could seem to last an eternity to an abandoned fox. So, of course, she bit Aunt Rosa's massive toe, which threatened to squish her inside the shoe. Aunt Rosa promised me she would keep the fox safe until our return. She did.

4.

When grownups talk, I prefer to hide under the table. I imagine them growing heads of animals: this man is a bear, and this woman is a sheep (just listen to how she bleats to every word the bear-man says.) This one is a wolf, and he always contradicts the bear. They have different strengths, the bear-man, and the wolf-man. The bear-man might be stronger, but the wolf-man is faster and more aggressive. It is why they argue; they challenge each other. In the corner, there is a woodpecker – he repeats the same point over and over again, proving everyone else wrong. He wins every discussion because others become too bored and lose any interest in him and his point of view.

5.

But who is Great Aunt Rosa?
I think and think but can't picture her as an animal. Maybe a bird?
I think of the stories involving birds but can't imagine Aunt Rosa flying. At least not now – maybe when she was young?
Was Great Aunt Rosa ever young?
Perhaps, she is a Dodo, that mythical bird, timeless and strange, so familiar, yet completely incomprehensible.
Aunt Rosa is flapping her wings, erasing colors, fading into a less and less traceable outline, until nothing remains except her shoes.

 

Rugged Silence [by Lera Auerbach]

Personal Mythology - Acrylic on Wood Board -  by Lera Auerbach

 

I love old rugs. 

Rugs with animals, flowers, and small people. 

Prayer rugs and large entrance rugs. 

Rugs with dragons and monkeys. 

Tiger-rugs. 

Yes, especially tiger-rugs.

 

One day I will buy a house 

and fill it with old rugs. 

I'll put rugs everywhere on the floors. 

And on the walls too.

And, perhaps, even on the ceiling. 

 

I will lie down on a rug and listen. 

The silence of a room covered in rugs is very different 

from the silence of a room with naked floors. 

I will listen to the rugged silence for such a long time 

that I too become part of it. 

I will shrink and disappear into the rug, 

becoming one of its tiny people.

 

I will jump from rug to rug, 

meeting its wondrous animals, 

befriending a dragon, 

fighting with a tiger. 

One day, one of the flowers in the rug 

will swallow me whole, 

and something would change in the silence, 

it would gain an extra stitch. 

(The silence, not the rug.)

 

Permission to Fail [by Lera Auerbach]

Hidden Room • Ink on Paper by Lera Auerbach

When you struggle to survive, 

there is simplicity in perspective:

You take one breath. 

Then another.

You take one step. 

Then another.

You learn how to respect your body's new limitations.

You learn how to challenge it. 

You try to hold on to who you are.

You try to reassure others. 

You give yourself permission to rest, to stay quiet.

You grow impatient and irritable.

In anger, you call yourself a failure, 

then remember –

you have given yourself permission to fail.

Sometimes you feel alone.

Sometimes you feel loved.

Unscalable [by Lera Auerbach]

Ivan Shishkin's Morning in a Pine Forest & Russian Chocolates

On the grand scale of things, it's not always clear what keeps the balance. 

But things are not scalable. Memories hide in the smallest details and surfaces like a shy relative of long-forgotten relations:
in the color of the window-curtains from childhood,
in the taste of sgushchyonka (sweet condensed milk of my childhood),
in the sound of unwrapping a chocolate candy – the favorite one with three brown bears-cubs and their mother-bear on the cover.

The picture of four bears was from a well-known painting by Shishkin, a famous Russian painter. 

Come to think of it; I'm not sure why Shishkin was so famous if the work he was mostly known for was this painting of four bears playing in the forest. Later it was discovered that Shishkin did not paint this painting, or rather he painted the forest but not the bears, because painting animals was not his forte, and he asked a friend to do it.

'Shishka' in Russian means a pinecone, but it also means a bump, as when you hit your head. It also can mean, in a slangy way, a big shot – a person in a position of power. 

The painter Shishkin clearly loved Russian nature with its pinecones, but he also hit his head hard with the bears' fake authorship. He did manage to remain a big shot in the annals of Russian art. 

I stopped liking these chocolates at the age of five when I discovered wriggling white worms in one. It was 'war chocolate' from the boxes of food my nanny kept in case of a new war. She had some of these boxes since WWII, some 40 years earlier. 

Time was eaten by worms, leaving only crumbs behind; crumbs dressed in the picture of the cute bears painted by a man who didn't get proper credit for painting them and whose name escapes my memory right now, unlike Shishkin. 

 

No Longer My Own [by Lera Auerbach]

No Longer My Own - Ink on Paper by Lera Auerbach

1. Some books matter only
   for the future-books
   hiding in them.
   
   
2. Books with strong plots
   offer safe captivity,
   allowing us to hide.
   
   
3. Books without plots
   may dangerously spiral,
   exposing us to memories of unburnt desires.
   
   
4. When you are writing a book, in reality, you are writing two books:
   one is the book you are writing; the other is the book
   about writing the book you're writing.
   
   
5. I face myself in the mirror,
   but I'm no longer my own.
   
   

Smelling Beyond Words [by Lera Auerbach]

На птичьих правах - Ink on Paper by Lera Auerbach

 

There is a phrase in Russian, ‘na ptich'ikh pravakh’,  having birds' rights. 

To live ‘na ptich'ikh pravakh’ means not having proper rights to occupy space (i.e., no correct documents or inability to pay rent) but being temporarily tolerated and allowed to remain. 

What rights do birds have? 

And why birds? 

Why not say opossums' rights? 

The flattery of wings? Geography? Lack of stability? 

Can the lack of stability be something stable, constant?

If you're constantly absent, does this make you reliably absent? 

The bird can sing and leave. 

I do the same, but behind me snakes a trail of debt and obligations, a chain to keep me within its reach, stones available for throwers. Personalized gravitational pull.

* * *

In the world of confusion, only a dog knows the truth. 

But we rarely listen to dogs. We forgot how to listen.

A dog knows what would make us happy. Because it's precisely that which would make a dog happy: a walk in the woods, smelling the fresh air, that sense of well-being which only comes when you can commune with nature and feel fully present. 

A dog is not interested in words. 

Words are the mythological woods in which humans get lost instead of visiting the real woods and taking long walks with their dogs.

A dog knows the danger of words. That's why it can understand all human languages. 

It knows to smell beyond words. Because words are only shells. What's essential lies within, beyond the shell. And the shell may be misleading, a disfiguring perception of the shape it contains within. 

A cat also knows it all but doesn't have the patience to deal with human stupidity and stubbornness. A cat knows – it is futile to change us. 

Dogs are more hopeful.   

* * *

Living life in dogs' years. 

How many dogs will still adopt me? 

My childhood's big Sheila, then Toto and Daisy (all three were still alive when I left Russia for New York at the age of 17.) 

Then came school years without a dog, living on ptich'ikh pravakh here and there. For a while, I managed to keep a lizard at the Juilliard dorms, but it was difficult to shop for live worms and keep them all hidden. 

The moment when I rented my first apartment – little Sheila joined my life. I named little Sheila after big Sheila who died peacefully in my father's arms in Russia after I left for New York. Little Sheila also died in my father's arms, but in Boston, many years later. She was aging, she was ill, and I knew my father would take better care of her than I, in my birdy ways, fluttering from one city to the next.

And for the last two years of Sheila's life, there was Finek, whom Sheila hated as only an old cranky dog may hate a young puppy, who stole her human's attention and love. Finek didn't steal my love, for I still loved Sheila. Sheila was Sheila, and Finek was Finek. 

But I knew she did not forgive my betrayal with another dog. 

The moment Finek appeared, Sheila realized she was no longer the only one. 

Even today, many years later, I still feel guilty about it. Never sorry for getting Finek, but sorry for hurting Sheila in doing so. 

Dogs are supposed to be forgiving? Not so sure. 

But for my father, Sheila was still the only one. She's buried in Boston next to my aunt's house.

* * *

My life in dog-lives…

At night I protect Finek's dreams. 

He snores. His legs jerk – he is dreaming. 

His dreams often turn into nightmares, and he cries. 

I gently wake him up. He falls asleep again, breathes quietly. 

Does he ever dream about me? 

Am I the cause of his nightmares? 

 

Sheila and Finek

With Sheila in Siberia

Resonating at Random [by Lera Auerbach]

 

Ink on Paper by Lera Auerbach

 

A tree is never just a tree. 

Social distancing one could measure. But how distant should one be from oneself? 

Too distant, and you risk losing yourself and becoming numb, incapable of true empathy and love. 

Too close, and you fall apart, unable to hold on to the imaginary thread
that keeps different parts of you together.

A book is like a tree: it needs a chance to grow, to take hold,
to find enough nourishment in the soil, enough water. 

In its early stages, it's too fragile, while the hurricane season is just around the corner,
and strong winds could uproot and demolish it. 

Where do all the unwritten books go? Half-written? Completed manuscripts waiting for editors? 

Forgotten manuscripts waiting for readers? Forgotten lives? 

Like a child, a book requires sacrifice. It hurts you, its birth can be bloody painful.

It can also give you the greatest joy. Ultimately, it is never yours. 

It is born through you but doesn't belong to you; you are simply its tool
and a highly imperfect one at that. 

To read a book the way one asks for forgiveness, 
as an act of searching for solace. 

But a book is just a book – a collection of words, 

resonating at random 

only when struck.

 

Beethoven's Choice [by Lera Auerbach]

The truth is that I do not know how I feel about Beethoven.

There seem to be two separate things – one is Beethoven, the other one is our admiration for Beethoven. The second is so thick that it's impossible to find the real Beethoven.

Just try to move the world's admiration for Beethoven aside: what will you see in its place? The admiration seems to be made of bronze: it can take any patina or color, yet it is so heavy it cannot be lifted or moved; it seems to replace Beethoven forever. Beethoven became insignificant compared to what he symbolizes: the greatness, the spirit, the best of the best of humanity.

Was the real Beethoven a great genius, a spiritual leader of free men, an example of the best of humanity? Nobody knows; the bronze veil of admiration is just too great to move aside. I suspect there is something awkward about Beethoven. We admire him because he can rise above his squareness, grumpiness, and inability to fly easily. He triumphs over his limitations, and that is why he's closer to the masses than Mozart with his Mozartian divine ease. 

Beethoven is a lion who tears music with his teeth, claws, and sforzandi. Through the efforts of his stubborn will, he can roar at the end triumphantly. We celebrate his brows; we celebrate his sweat; we forgive his foul smell, nasty hygiene habits, and bad manners, his lies. None of it matters. 

We forgive him for a choir that has to wait for an hour before singing for a few minutes at the end of the ninth symphony. We happily forget that Beethoven didn't write his most famous tune: it is a drinking song. None of it matters.

When a man becomes a god, he sheds all his humanity alongside his life.

Godliness, like anything else, requires sacrifice.

Was that Beethoven's choice?

 

Beethoven's Death Mask

Sergey Yursky - The Seasons [by Lera Auerbach]

During the time of the pandemic, I am thinking of people that have inspired me and my work.

 

On March 16 Sergey Yursky would have celebrated his 85th birthday. He died last year. While his name needs no introduction in Russian-speaking countries - he is truly legendary, many of my friends who do not speak Russian probably have never heard of him.

 

Yursky was a legendary actor, I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that he was, perhaps, the most celebrated Russian actor of the 20th century, but his contribution was far greater than acting. He was a writer himself with several books published, and his greatest love was poetry. He was one of the very first artists (if not the first one) who would publicly recite poems by poets who were oppressed at the time when it was still rather dangerous to do. He would tour with his "poetry concerts" reciting poems by Tsvetaeva, Mandelshtam, Hiippius, Brodsky, all his concerts were always full, he was one of my childhood heroes. 

 

I met Yursky for the first time in New York when I came to one of his poetry concerts in Brooklyn. I was 19 years old, shy, and quiet. By that time, my poems have appeared in many Russian magazines and newspapers, and three small books of my poems were published. My parents were living in Chelyabinsk while I was in New York alone since I was 17. I came backstage and gave Yursky one of my small books of poems. I thought he would never open it and that most likely, I will never hear from him again. A few years passed. One day my parents called me. At that time, it was still complicated to call from Russia, not to mention very expensive, so we rarely talked, mostly exchanging long letters that would sometimes take a few months to arrive. My mother’s voice was excited: “Lera, you would not believe this! Last night we went to hear Sergey Yursky’s concert, he is on tour in Chelyabinsk. The program was called “Russian Poets Abroad.” It included poems by Tsvetaeva, Tyutchev, Brodsky and … you!! We are coming again tonight - he is repeating the program."

 

Needless to say, I was shocked. I asked my parents if they could ask Yursky if he would consider recording a CD of my poetry. They did. He immediately agreed and spent that night in the radio station recording each poem in different interpretations, sometimes five different takes of the same poem, so I could choose the interpretation I liked.

 

He continued to champion my poetry and even written a preface to one of my books. We met from time to time. Most memorable was a walk through Soho galleries with him and Ilya Kabakov - another legendary Russian artist, but in the visual art world. 

Sergey Yursky had a larger than life personality. He was a giant, not only in his stage presence but in his views, his perspective, his fearlessness, his honesty. His presence is forever bound with the history of Russian poetry. I miss him greatly.

 

Here is a link to him reciting my poem “Seasons” and the English translation of this poem.

Seasons

 

I 
 
Life is an ouroboros. Spring
Doesn’t keep count, but binds
Everything, everyone, life, death.
For centuries, rebirth has turned
The earth. Only God, surely, knows
What lies behind this endless rotation.

With life ahead, we are more honest;
Stripping down the earth, we lay our deposit on love.
At times like this, we can be happy in a cell,
The poorest shelter can be our palace.
Now, the year seems long
And we battle windmills like the Don.
 
II 
 
The days pass. Spent Spring feels 
Summer’s farewell breath at its back.
We grow used to maturity, it always
Reminds us of home, our native land,
Of household chores, of the family,
Of work and the titles we have taken on …

This time of hot middays, when the sun
Stares straight into its own 
single eye shattering the water
(Life allows us to submit to the flow).
Stamping out grains of dust with yellow rays
It reaches the height of its paralyzed state.
 
III 
 
The days pass and the birds fly by, away.
The leaves fall, fall, but still, they cannot
Quite find a way to settle on the ground …
At times my thoughts cohere –
A sign offered up by my senses
Like a question put to a departing God.

Life resembles a flowing garment sewn
Out of days like a toga’s folds, the last 
Made from foreknowledge of winter.
The cradle is draped with sunset’s shroud.
And the fir tree’s fractured trunk
Crooks like a hanging question mark.
 
IV 
 
The days pass. Crows’ nests –
Old rags on the bare branches.
The snow settling on your temple
No longer even melts, and iron nails
Start to come loose, th​e frame of the house
Breaks up, springs leaks​ like a canoe

Or an ancient ship. And the heart’s gasp
Oppresses. Something weighs on your breast.
Sounds are muffled … The scaffold
Rises suddenly, a cross on your path;
So unexpected is it that you have
Time for just three words: “For everything – forgive.”

Song of Gratitude [by Lera Auerbach]

Final notes of Beethoven's Heiliger Dankgesang

 

On Beethoven, my new string quartet, and the eternal Song of Thanks

Beethoven wrote his Heiliger Dankgesang as an expression of gratitude for surviving a near-fatal illness. The tradition of ex-votos (“from a vow”) artworks created in gratitude and to give tribute to divine intervention of deities in personal calamities has a long history. Ex-votos can take a wide variety of forms. They are not only intended for the helping figure, but also as a testimony of the received help.[1] They can be found in many cultures from those in Abydos in Ancient Egypt to Mexican folk art.[2] Just as in ex-voto retablos, the religious aspect is present as slow sections of the Heiliger Dankgesang which are based on a choral, with its timeless hymn-like meditative nature while the faster sections in Beethoven celebrate the dance of life, renewed strength, the joys of recovery.

Beethoven lived in a time when humanity still believed in heroes and antiheroes; children's stories and fairytales represented a clear division of good and evil, and words still kept some capacity not to betray their meaning at the very moment of their utterance.

I live in a different time. After the extremes of romanticism, distortions and distractions of the 20th century, and the confusion of the 21st century, my initial reaction is to question and doubt everything. Perhaps, when one is or considers himself (as Beethoven did) mortally ill, the gratitude addressed is not towards the future which might be too brief, but towards the past with its memories of the life lived? Perhaps such thankfulness carries the sweet sadness of acceptance? Maybe the song of gratitude is the act of letting go, of embracing the inevitable - like a return to true home, to that interconnected place of true peace, to the origins from which we are expelled for the duration of our lives? Perhaps the sense of real recovery is possible only through the full embrace of the finite aspect of our human existence? Maybe we are only able to appreciate how precious every moment is when we are fully aware of its finite nature?

Artists tend to be superstitious; they love finding inner rhymes in life and deciphering their hidden meanings, finding still resonating overtones through the centuries. I am no exception. It was the Artemis Quartet’s wish for my new quartet (String Quartet No. 9) to connect in some form to Beethoven for his 2020 anniversary. How and in which form this connection would take place, they left up to me. I admit that although I was pleased to collaborate once again with Artemis, initially I dreaded the thought of needing to connect the commissioned work to Beethoven. For a while, I was at a loss of how and where to begin. I knew that such a relationship or homage to Beethoven needed to feel genuine, organic, unforced, inevitable.

The concept of structuring my quartet upon Heiliger Dankgesang came during a prolonged illness; perhaps this was the reason why this particular quartet of Beethoven resonated with me and generated further ideas. The idea also occurred to me on the day of the American Thanksgiving holiday, which I only realized the next day as I was in Vienna and entirely forgot about this holiday. It added an unexpected rhyme to an already forming sequence of thoughts. I can’t help asking again - what exactly are we celebrating? Or how this holiday is viewed from the perspective of the American indigenous people? Life and death are so intertwined that only questions can remain. Is building a new and free nation justification for the destruction and rape of another culture? Are those who kill today “in the name of God” better or worse than those who kill in the name of fatherland, motherland, revolutionary idea or whichever excuse or justification is given to acts of cruelty and bloodshed? Literature, the art of words, is more direct than other art forms in reflecting and forming our understanding of our time, as well as of the times passed. After Nikolai Gogol’s work, there are no more perfectly positive heroes. When such heroes or ideas of them are imposed as in the case of the 20th century Communist Soviet Union, fascist Germany, and Mao’s China, such heroes - in time - are viewed and perceived as monstrosities.

Yet, the notions of gratitude remain, they are universal, regardless of what originates the feeling of thanks. Appreciation for a life lived or life passed? Gratitude for a safe return home, in whichever form it may take, and to whichever home this return maybe? Gratitude for freedom even if true freedom may be attainable only through the liberation of death? Gratitude for kindness, because kindness is universal, and acts of kindness represent humanity at its very best? Finding gratitude is especially essential not because, but despite the difficulties and cruelty, one may be facing. It is like finding accidental beauty in the harshest surroundings – finding what to be thankful for in a world that has gone mad.

My quartet has more tragic and darkly intense undertones than Beethoven’s sublime meditation while approaching the same themes from different times, views and with a different understanding of history. If Beethoven lived in our time, how would he approach these themes? I can only ask questions. Paraphrasing Tolstoy, I do not know why my characters (or pieces) behave the way they do - ask them, not me. Works tend to have a mind and will of their own; my role as a composer is to let them grow into what they wish to become. I repeat: what they wish, not me. What I wish for might be entirely different. What I want is this “Neue Kraft Fühlend” (feeling of new strength as meant by Beethoven). I long for the sense of peace and wellbeing, for the ability to find simple joys to be thankful for; to sit in my favourite armchair with a large pile of books all around me with all the time in the world to read them. And if my quartet seems to address death more than the work on which it is based - it is what this music demanded of me, and I had no choice, but to follow.

________

1. Ex-voto "Ex-Voto". 2020. En.Wikipedia.Org.
2.  History of Egypt Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery, L. W. King, H. R. Hall, Echo Library, 2008

Labyrinth for Solo Piano [by Lera Auerbach]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Labyrinth for Solo Piano
Inspired by The Book of Imaginary Beings
and other writings by J. L. Borges

Tomorrow evening, March 27, 2018, I will premiere Labyrinth, a large work for solo piano commissioned by San Francisco Performances.

I have been fascinated with labyrinths - real or imaginary - all my life. So, it is not surprising that J.L. Borges has been one of my favorite writers for a very long time.

Labyrinth is an exploration of Time and its different prisms, mirrors, faces, games. The passages of the labyrinth are the passages of Time. Or, perhaps, Time itself takes the form of a labyrinth in which the inner and outer sides are the same, infinitely expanding and infinitely contracting.

Inspired by the hidden set of variations in Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (the series of Promenades portraying a man walking through the gallery) in Labyrinth appeared the "Traumwanderer" (Dream wanderer). I do not know where the Traumwanderer came from. I asked him, but his answers are cryptic. Perhaps, the Traumwanderer is my double. More likely, he is a shape-shifter and becomes the double of each listener who comes to a concert hall and unexpectedly finds himself in the bestiary of a labyrinth.

Together with the Traumwanderer, we discover different passages, become lost and sometimes recognize reflections of our memories, fears, and dreams in the strange and at times disturbing shapes of the imaginary beings that the Traumwanderer meets.

These beings have encounters and relationships not only with the Traumwanderer but also among themselves. There are connections and hidden clues that allow the Traumwanderer to recognize his features, even the most grotesque and foreign elements.

Is the Traumwanderer inside of the labyrinth, or is the labyrinth within the Traumwanderer? Is Time standing still while we are searching for our way, or is the labyrinth made of the same material as Time itself? Is the Wanderer's progress through the passages of the labyrinth illusory? What is passing — us or our Time?

Together with the Traumwanderer, we meet the invisible A Bao A Qu, who has lived since the beginning of Time on the spiral staircase of the Tower of Chitor. This tower is known to have the most perfect view in the world, which — as with any perfection — can never be reached. We meet the Kilkenny Cats, who get into raging quarrels and devour each other in anger, leaving behind only their tails. We meet the poor Squonk, who cries himself into nothingness. We encounter the magical binding of the gigantic wolf Fenrir, who is kept on the strongest, yet lightest chain ever made — a cord woven of six imaginary things. (Of course, Fenrir eventually breaks loose.) We experience the terror of the Traumwanderer as he becomes increasingly lost within the mirrors, dead-ends, and detours of the maze. We hear the calling of the mystical Simurgh, the immortal bird that nests in the Tree of Knowledge. The other birds (after a long and difficult pilgrimage to reach him) realize "that they are the Simurgh and that the Simurgh is each of them and all of them." And, of course, what labyrinth could be complete without its Minotaur?

I remember myself as a child, aged six, reading Greek myths and wondering: What did the Minotaur do all day long, sitting at the center of a labyrinth, in the unchanging room, looking at the same inescapable walls? I imagined him being bored, lonely, and malnourished. After all, the poor beast had to survive on an unhealthy diet of only seven young men and seven maidens per year. Always hungry, lonely, half-mad... I imagined him occasionally dancing with himself from boredom and loneliness, perhaps while thinking of some appetizing maiden. As Ovid wrote, “The man half bull, the bull half man—not simply a monster, but a sad, unloved, and a somewhat comical creature at the heart of a labyrinth it will never be able to leave.”

We encounter angels and demons, gods, monsters, and chimeras, while the three ancient Norns (Past, Present, and Future) weave the thread of our lives.

I built Labyrinth in search of a form where relationships and dynamics between the Observer and the Object of observation could be explored. Or, perhaps, I built it to create a space where the inner dialogue between the Self and the Brain (also in the form of a labyrinth!) could be imagined. Sometimes, I think that I am, myself, an imaginary being, just as my Traumwanderer. And, perhaps, it is the Traumwanderer who composed this music, and I am the one forever lost in the labyrinth without even realizing it.

This thread brings me back to the beginnings, to a poem I wrote when I was 14 years old, titled "Labyrinth." I wrote it in Russian. Here it is in its English translation by Ronald Meyer.

Labyrinth
by Lera Auerbach

   In the labyrinth of words and sounds

   I search for the riddle of life.

   Whether I'll find it or not -- I do not know,

   But I am playing upon the strings of the soul

   And in sharing this music, I find happiness.

Commissioned by San Francisco Performances in honor of Ruth Felt

Mussorgky's Pictures at an Exhibition [by Lera Auerbach]

As I prepare a recital program for my concert at San Francisco Performances next month, I return to a work that has accompanied me for most of my life. Modest Mussorgsky's masterpiece, Pictures at an Exhibition, is a unique bridge between the 19th and 20th centuries. Debussy and Stravinsky, two giants of the 20th century, were influenced by this work. Pictures have inspired an epidemic of orchestrations –  from Maurice Ravel's famous symphonic transcription to the imaginative electronic adaptation by Isao Tomita, more than seventy versions exist to date. What is the unique magnetism which attracts musicians and composers to this piece? Is it a secret fascination evoked by the childlike, fairytale images hidden in the work?I think that Mussorgsky was inspired not directly by Hartman's artworks, but by the idea of creating a musical exhibition in itself. The connection between Mussorgsky’s music and Hartman's images is tenuous at best. Mussorgsky's music cannot be regarded as representational of Hartman's subjects any more than Hartman's images can be interpreted as illustrative of Mussorgsky's music.

Mussorgsky chose the form of a suite as the most natural for his musical exhibition. The suite starts with the Promenade. It is a musical self-portrait of the composer walking through the halls of the museum. The Promenade recurs seven times in the work, (only five times under its own title), each time sounding different, thus creating a subset of variations. I believe that these promenading variations reflect the alterations in the mood of a person passing a series of paintings in a museum gallery. Thus, Mussorgsky gives us both: a series of brilliant musical sketches, and their reflections in his own soul; he is an author who creates his work and finds himself changed by it.

Unexpectedly, I found yet another hidden form of variation in this work. It is a partita-like structure, which occurs within the musical architecture of the piece. Bach designed his partitas to include several common elements, which unify the widely contrasting dance movements. These elements are usually a recurring interval relationship or a melodic and/or harmonic device. This is true of Pictures at an Exhibition. The entire work is based upon two primary intervals: a descending second and an ascending fourth. These two intervals appear within the opening three notes: G, F, B-flat. These three notes become the foundation upon which the entire work rests. Each movement is based on these intervals or their inversions.

In Gnomus, the weeping of the dwarf is built entirely on the descending second (mm. 19, et seq.). The ascending fourth in the opening of The Old Castle resembles calling of a distant horn, or, perhaps, the nostalgic song of a Minnesinger recalling the days of old. By looking at the final six measures of this movement we realize that the entire movement is built on the 'calling' fourth and the 'sighing' second.

In Tuilleries: The Children's Quarrel, the concealed descending second which is heard throughout the piece sounds like capricious children. It reminds one of Mussorgsky's vocal cycle In the Nursery, which so wonderfully portrays children's psyches. Could it be that this charming childishness is the central attraction of Pictures? We all come from the land of childhood and 'blessed be they' who shall remain children forever.

In the theme of Bydlo, the order of the two intervals is the same as in the Promenade: the descending second precedes the ascending fourth. They are rhythmically displaced so that the lamenting second is emphasized and the 'calling' fourth is subdued. What does 'Bydlo' mean? The traditional definition is an oxcart. The ostinato in the left hand resembles the slow rotation of heavy wheels. Yet there is another meaning for this word. My Polish nanny, when upset or angry would say Oh! Bydlo!,- an exclamation meaning "this is unfair!" This word can be understood in different ways, but it always stands for something heavy and unpleasant. When I hear Mussorgsky's Bydlo, I am reminded of a painting by Ilya Repin titled Barge Haulers on the Volga. In this painting, a heavy barge is pulled by tired, emaciated peasants. It is a depiction brutal, exhausting, yet meaningless labor. Perhaps, Mussorgsky's Bydlo is a tragic symbol of Russia itself

The Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks is a charming and humorous confection. A childlike, bright and touching fantasy, this piece is a joy to perform. The cackling of the chicks is represented by both: 'crushed' and melodic seconds.

In Two Polish Jews, One Rich and the Other Poor the inverted fourth and the second are incorporated to represent a severe image of the rich man and the pitiful begging of the poor. The repeated notes, combined with weeping seconds remind us of synagogue chants. The duet of the two men toward the end of this movement is a counterpoint of misunderstanding in which neither hears the other. I recall the words of Marina Tsvetaeva, "… Nothing is sadder than the hunger of the hungry or the indolence of the satisfied."

Limoges; the Market (‘Great News') - a noisy, sunny marketplace with its quarreling, bargaining, and gossiping. The repeated musical figures imitate the hubbub of too many people talking at the same time. From the outset, it is clear that this piece is built on the combination of the descending second and the ascending fourth. Mussorgsky wrote a text for the market gossips but later rejected it as too programmatic for inclusion in the published work.

Catacombs. A mystery. Somber chords lead the listener to 'Con mortuis in lingua mortua,' - 'with the dead in a dead language'. The theme of the Promenade is heard as chorale and as an ethereal voice from the underground, accompanied by a ghostly tremolo from another world. In the cemetery, where dead Latin words are written on the gravestones, dead men speak their eternal language.

Baba Yaga. The Hut on Hens Legs. This movement opens with seconds and fourths heard in threatening unison.  I love the folkloric image of Baba Yaga flying on her broom in a windstorm, with the trees bending their crowns to the ground. Baba Yaga's hut stands on large hen's legs, which can move on their own will. In mm. 25-30 there are cackling seconds, similar to The Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks, but now they sound threatening.  There is an amusing relationship between the hen's legs of Baba Yaga's hut and tiny chicks. Once a chicken, always a chicken! 

In the middle section, while Baba Yaga is away from her enchanted kingdom, two of her helpers, Kikimora (the hobgoblin who lives in the marshes) and Leschy (the wood goblin who lives in the forest) look at the twinkling marsh lights and listen to the owls hooting, waiting for the return of their mistress. She returns and storms right through the Great Gates of Kiev.

One last thought. In spite of the Russian, French, Polish, Jewish and Latin themes or, perhaps, because of them, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition create a quintessentially Russian atmosphere. The work projects Russia from all sides: fairy, pagan, religious, multinational, impossible and incredible!

 

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Guacamole Treatment [by Erroneous Anonymous]

 

GUACAMOLE TREATMENT 

[From The Infant Minstrel and his Peculiar Menagerie]

 

There was once a man

With such a long nose

That his wife had mistaken it

For a garden hose.

 

When she started watering plants

His nose turned red and tense.

Then he sneezed, as he was allergic to pollen,

With tears in his eyes and his throat swollen.

 

“Oh, my darling, I am so very sorry!

I am going to catch the best guacamole

To make for you a cold green compress –

The best-known treatment for a nose in distress!”

 

Cried his wife and cut for him her best rose.

“Pretty rose for your suffering nose!

– Ooops! I did it again: I forgot –

You’re allergic to all pretty things, poor lad!”

 

The man sat sadly

In a defeated pose

While his wife applied

Guacamole to his nose.

 

 

Tuesday, May 17, 2016 Lera Auerbach and David Lehman reading at KGB Bar 7:00 PM. Free

KGB Bar: 85 E 4th St, New York, New York 10003

 

 

 

 

 

Renowned Russian-American composer, writer, visual artist and concert pianist Lera Auerbach will be reading from Excess of Being, her new book of aphorisms and original artwork, by turns provocative, dark, ironic and humorous.

Poet David Lehman is a prominent editor, author and literary critic. He serves as the editor of The Best American Poetry series, which he initiated in 1988, and teaches at The New School. His most recent book is Sinatra's Century: One Hundred Notes on the Man and His World.  He will read poems from his forthcoming book Poems in the Manner Of (Scribner, 2017). 

-- sdh

Instead of Program Notes [by Lera Auerbach]

On November 24, 2015, I will premiere my new concerto for piano and orchestra with the Stuttgart Philharmonic and Dan Ettinger conducting.

Each work is a being with its own life, surprises, mysteries and destiny. This piano concerto has one of the most unusual histories of my catalog. It has haunted me for over twenty years – half of my life.

The opening of the concerto, as well as its entire second movement, is based on a dream I had when I was fourteen years old while living in the city of Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountains of Russia. One night I dreamt a strange hypnotic music, unlike anything I had ever heard. It was also very different from my own compositional efforts of that time. I was so shaken and moved by that musical dream that I forced myself to wake up and write down its main material. This experience was profoundly powerful and in some ways it defined my life. I have been composing music since the age of four and it was the most natural way for me to express myself. But it was this strange dream in which I felt that this music had chosen me rather than the other way around, which predetermined much of what developed later in my life.

For a long time I tried to find the proper vessel for this dream-music. First, I set it in the form of a Flute sonata (I studied and played flute through conservatory,) but the result did not satisfy me. A few years later, at the age of seventeen, I traveled from the Soviet Union to the United States for a concert tour and spontaneously decided to remain in New York. I entered the Juilliard School for composition and piano studies. Several times throughout my student years I returned to the musical idea that had haunted me since that memorable night. That material became the second movement of my Symphonie-Konzert. It was one of my very first large orchestral compositions. I struggled with its form and content. Its title kept on changing from "Symphony" to "Piano Concerto" to "Symphonie-Konzert" to the youthfully pretentious "Requiem for the Millennium." Its form varied from one movement to three, encompassing anywhere from 12 to 45 minutes in length. I performed it with different orchestras in the US, Russia and Germany. The last performance was my Konzertexam at the Hannover Musikhochschule where this was the very first time in the history of this university that a performer was allowed to graduate performing his original concerto.

In spite of its relative success, in spite of making endless revisions between these performances – I remained unsatisfied. I felt that I was not able to give full justice to this musical material. Perhaps I lacked experience of writing for the orchestra; perhaps I lacked experience in life. The abstract idea of this piece kept on shimmering in the distance, unattainable. I decided then that I needed to put this work aside and wait until I was better able to realize it.

Now, more than twenty-five years since my first dream-sketch related to this work, I had the chance to return to this music. I thought it would be a simple and straightforward revision. With the experience and perspective of the last twenty years - how difficult could that be? I was wrong. Terribly wrong.

Facing this music again was facing my own demons, facing my old fears, memories, facing myself. It was much more difficult than writing a completely new work. I was no longer that teenager who dreamt the second movement, nor was I the ambitious 28-year-old graduating with this work in Hannover. I'm a different person now, in a different stage of life. At the same time, something very essential in me remains as a defining leitmotif.

This work deals with Time and its transformations, one of the most important themes throughout my entire creative output. It deals with our age of decay, post-apocalyptic ruins of human vocabulary; it continues to challenge my personal dialogue with Time. It continues to question, doubt and haunt me, now much older, more experienced, but perhaps, in some ways, also more limited, more inclined to shy away from the essential questions it forced me to face.

I realized that I needed to approach this concerto anew, rewrite it freely. I needed to dangerously balance on a double edge sword: to be true to the person I am now, and at the same time not betray the person I was 20 years ago. Perhaps, it meant I needed to build a bridge between myself then and now, acknowledge and reconcile our differences. I needed to find that hidden leitmotiv that connects me to my past like a mythological Ariadna’s thread, leading me through a labyrinth of memories into the present moment in time. I wanted to preserve that larger-than-life, impractical, idealistic, dreamy approach of the younger me, yet guide it by the knowledge and experience of numerous orchestral compositions (requiems, symphonies, concerti, operas, ballets) that I have written in between these two chapters of my life.

Writing for orchestra can be a magical, wondrous and limitless experience. It can be also infuriating, hurtful and soul-breaking. Many composers never survive the baptism of orchestral writing – not because they lack talent, but because of the harsh, un-fulfilling realities of under-rehearsed performances, combined with the jaded, skeptical or even hostile attitudes of some conductors, musicians, audiences and presenters towards anything new, and general lack of support or even basic understanding of what it means to bring a new creation to the world. I am more fortunate than most. I survived. I flourished. I wrote dozens of orchestral works. The piano concerto kept on haunting me until I knew I had to face it once again. So here we are.