Lovin' you?

   I don't listen to music of my own choosing as much as I used to. I now often prefer silence, the radio (usually classical, jazz or progressive talk radio) and the (sometime) desire to listen to what's going on within me physically and emotionally, though when I do want to choose my music, I'm often in my car, so I plug in my iPhone to play what I've loaded onto it.
   Every so often I connect the phone to my computer at home to change what I've put there, but over the last three years or so there's almost always a consistent selection of soft pop music from the nineteen seventies.
   For most of the year ninety seventy I was six years old (turning seven only in December), and the music  years that I generally find myself drawn to the most are those from approximately nineteen seventy three to nineteen seventy six. Much of the music on these playlists is pretty commercial pop stuff, and though I usually dislike pretty intensely most pop music, this music has content for me that surpasses its' sound; it indexes a time in my life that carries strong emotional weight, and coincides with a very painful time. This is the period when my parents marriage was falling apart as was I on the inside.
   If you had asked me in my earlier adult life if I would want to listen to music that elicits painful memories, I'm pretty sure that I would have said no, but as I've gotten older I've learned that these associations can help to bring forth things that I had previously consciously forgotten, and having these come to light allows me to look at them, if I choose.
   If someone that I know sees me listening to this kind of music they are generally surprised, and will sometimes say to me, "do you like this music?". If I am asked this, I will usually reply, "I'm not sure, but I know it", and that answer, although sounding somewhat cryptic, is in fact straight to the point.

The single record cover of one of the songs often on my iPhone, circa 1975

 

Chosen culture

   New York City, where I am originally from (and spent the first forty two and a half years of my life) has more than 2 million Jews, second only to Tel Aviv, Israel in Jewish population. San Francisco, California, where I have lived for the past nine years, is supposed to have more than 220,000 in it's greater bay area (a not insignificant number considering the population here is much less dense than in my hometown), yet I often feel more like an ethnic afterthought when it comes to the culture that surrounds me.

   According to numerous figures that I've read, Jews account for roughly twenty percent of the population of Manhattan, where I grew up and spent much of my young adult life, second only to Catholics in term of percentage; so even in Jew York, I was part of a minority, albeit, a very visible one. 

   I bring all of this up, because I have a difficult time not feeling culturally invisible here, and although I have always been an atheist and therefore non-religious, there is an ethnic component to being Jewish that I've always identified with. As an old friend of mine used to say about me; "Adam your not so much of a Jew, but very Jewish". It comes as no surprise to me that I may feel a bit culturally invisible, because I am prone to feeling that way at times surrounded by other Jews (I've felt very alone at a Bar Mitzvah), but the Jews that I've met here in San Francisco are, like people are about many things here, kind of laid back about being Jewish. I don't think those words ever came to mind relating to the Jews that I knew growing up, and I knew A lot!

   So it seems that what is really at issue here is a question of cultural style, rather than ethnic invisibility. I always thought of myself as being Jewish, though I think I relate more to it over time, and it's really hard to tease out whether this is because I find it harder to relate to it here on the west coast, or whether it's simply a product of me getting older (I was told that my father's father was a Bolshevik for much of his life, but became more religious in his later years).

   I do consider myself a Californian at this point in my life, and I should make an effort to acclimate to how things are where I live now. If I could do that a bit more, I may not become a 'good Jew', but perhaps feel a bit more Jewish.

     

Your author, pretending to prepare for Passover