Jewish Songs

Nigun
I once read that Pushkin had invented the word ‘Niguna’ which he supposedly said described ‘Judeo-Slavic bliss’.
So this Judeo-Slavic bliss, what is it?
Could it be the little sigh before replying to the question ‘How are you doing?’.
Could it be the wave of the hand that can mean anything: ‘forget it’ or else ‘don’t worry, Everything will work out’.
Could it be that same passion invested in discussing a detail of everyday life as in arguing metaphysical issues? And to conclude by a humorous story at the most unexpected moment?
Could it be a way of replying to a question by another question, and no doubt, one day, even though it be in a whisper, the question, ‘What is it to be a Jew?’.

Psalmody
To chant is the art of organizing time.
To organize time by choosing anchor points.
It is knowing how to accent a phrase. It is the story that one explores, that one tells between the anchor points which are there for you to catch your breath, pause, and set off again.
Psalmody is in the words, in the inhalation between phrases, in the grand fluid arcs that crest to a trance-like state only to break like waves on the sand, content to have left the void behind them like a tightrope walker after a crossing.
It is perhaps that which inspired me the most with certain cantors. That art. The art of taking flight.
Which leads me to speak about rubato. How can words express what rubato means, a sense of liberty in the telling but this time within a strict tempo?
Bending a phrase towards the next beat, only to arrive just ‘on time’.
Or on the contrary choosing the perfect regularity of an arc traced on paper.
Tempos are like a pulse. Like a heart that beats. Certain strokes are anchor points on which one leans, physically. It is vertical time. Then carried away by a phrase, you rise above the next beats, like the hull of a boat that skids on the waves only brushing against the crests. That is horizontal time. The tempo is then forgotten, though it remains a muted punctuation, until another anchor point on which the phrase depends comes into sight several waves further on.
Between two anchor points there always exist unexplored configurations.

Conversation
Or the importance of dialogue, of dialogue with others.
Dialogue with someone who confronts me, someone who unsettles me, someone who shows me.
Another way of seeing things, someone whose tale will join up with mine.
Someone who will cause me to go off course (because he or she has no knowledge of my course) so that, perhaps, I will find it broadened on my return.
Someone who will never let the force of habit take over unobtrusively.
Someone who will make sure that I am sufficiently amazed. It’s a question of rhythm, of a going back and forth as between two chess players seated face to face.
The Russian version of this dialogue is a saying : ‘Better lose to a great intellect than win against a fool’. The Russians always find a way to put things in a few words.

Elegy
When I pronounce the word ‘elegy’ images come to mind.
I think of long still film shots.
I see Eastern European Jews who have emigrated to the United States. They have been settled on a waste land, in New York, and are seated at tables or standing ; they are facing us. I hear the story told by the sister who has lost her brother in the camps, yet thinks she glimpses him around every corner.
I listen to the eighty-five year old man who ends a song in Yiddish with a piercing, fragile, crystalline note, pointing his hand to the stars as if wanted his last note to reach them.
I see that other man who is looking for Stanton Street, and despite the attempts of all those around him to explain how to get there, the conclusion is that there exists no way to go to Stanton Street.