Alexandra Silber's Blog, page 20

Questions from Book Tour - Part 5

1. Have you also always been a writer and if not, when did you start writing?

I have always been a voracious reader—ever since childhood. Books were not only my friends, my escape as well as my solace, but they were in every way, my first teachers. There is a private experience a reader has with a book—possibly the most intimate artistic exchange one can have for it is direct dialogue between you and the author. Literature and language were always at the center of my life, and I believe one ca...

Response to Violence

On October 28 (the Sunday after the horrible shooting of the Tree of Life Synagogue), genius musical director and performer Ben Moss and I joined Jamie Bernstein at the Center for Jewish History, to raise our voices in song as her father Leonard Bernstein so rightly said is our greatest weapon against violence:

"This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before."

 

In response to Pittsburgh

What happened today in Pittsburgh was a hate crime. Hate is hate. No hate crime is WORSE than another. People hate, act out and innocent human beings die at their hands. We have a global, systemic, hate disease.
I‘m aware that Ashkenazi Jews have had (what some might perceive as) the luxury of assimilating, & being able to “pass as white Europeans” for the last 60 years, but today is evidence that hate crimes still occur against Jews—all the time—by people still filled with bigotry. ...

I Walked Past a House Where I Lived Once by Yehuda Amichai

I walked past a house where I lived once:
a man and a woman are still together in the whispers there.
Many years have passed with the quiet hum
of the staircase bulb going on
and off and on again.

The keyholes are like little wounds
where all the blood seeped out. And inside,
people pale as death.

I want to stand once again as I did
holding my first love all night long in the doorway.
When we left at dawn, the house
began to fall apart and since then the city and since then
the whole world.

I want to be f...

Coulda-been-ku 19

19. I was impulsive. One cannot force love to bloomin smothered soils. 

Questions from Book Tour - Part 4

1. What made you feel ready to tell such a personal story [as White Hot Grief Parade] at this particular moment?

     I actually began writing White Hot Grief Parade in 2011— after I published a blog post marking the 10th anniversary of my father’s death. There was something about the milestone, combined with my Broadway debut just weeks before, that made me awaken to the fact that I had indeed “turned out okay.”

When a child experiences any kind of adversity, the main hope...

Coulda-been ku 18

18. You were that summer’s northern lights. You cooked.Thank you—for sharing the boat. 

' The White Room' by Charles Simic

The obvious is difficult
To prove. Many preferThe hidden. I did, too.I listened to the trees.
They had a secretWhich they were about toMake known to me,And then didn’t.
Summer came. Each treeOn my street had its ownScheherazade. My nightsWere a part of their wild
Storytelling. We wereEntering dark houses,More and more dark housesHushed and abandoned.
There was someone with eyes closedOn the upper floors.The thought of it, and the wonder,Kept me sleepless.
The truth is bald and cold,Said the womanWh...

Silence is not an option. For any of us.

     Dearly beloved: we are gathered here today to mourn Al’s marriageability in a timely manner. Why? Not because her Dad is dead and “no one will ever be him” [Cue: score of Yentl], not because she has “intimacy issues,” or because she broke up with her twenty-something long-term boyfriend in London before they could agree that getting married was easier than splitting their books up. Al’s marriage-before-40 likelihood is as faded and impossible as that Hilary stick...

The Jumpsuit: A Critical Essay

     Ahhhhhh the jumpsuit.

     Truth be told, when it comes to fashion I am, for the most part, lazy, thus hugely enjoy feeling vaguely “put together” in one simple garment.

Huzaah! Enter: the jumpsuit— the now ever-present summer staple that's always there to deliver on put-together-ness and outfit-selecting ease.

     A few seasons ago, wearing a jumpsuit would solicit comments such as “wow you are brave” or “gosh that’s daring.” I’d...