RebeccaD – Jewcy

Public Parts

RebeccaD — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 07:40:05 +0000

Emily Stern, daughter of Howard, became the object of many Internet searches when she appeared nude as Madonna in the satirical play, Kabbalah, at the Jewish Theatre of New York in 2006. Though she pulled out of the production as soon as compromising photos began surfacing—and her father’s company threatened to sue the producers for exploiting her—she’s never stopped performing. Now she’s starring as Echo, an alien-loving teen in Jonas Oppenheim’s Earth Sucks, at Art/Works in Los Angeles. We emailed with Emily about how musical theater is like sex. Favorite television shows: Being in this body is so much stimulation… Good thing I can change channels with my breath and mind… Otherwise I’d be getting up all the time! Guilty pleasure: Being Advisor. Last book read: I have been staying with a friend who also houses amazing books! I have been reading Martin Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim. Was blessed in picking up Leonard Cohen’s Book of Mercy, and just found a copy of Carlos Castaneda’s The Art of Dreaming next to my bed! Favorite new-ish album: Coming in October 2008, Rabbi Andrew Hahn’s album Kirtan Rabbi: Live! (I am also chanting on it as a member of his "posse").

Favorite old-ish album: New, but timeless, Shir Yaakov’s EP, Shir. Best part of New York: There are lights everywhere. Best part of LA: Being here. Favorite Jewish holiday food: Manischewitz. Worst vice: Facebook. Something you truly can’t stand: on Stilts. Something you truly can’t live without: Awareness. Big hope: That I Am. Fantasy mate: Soul Connecting Psychic Expansive Supportive Love. Your idea of hell: Forgetting…. Just For Getting. Or…Anyone other than President Obama in the White House. You’re a lifelong New Yorker spending a few months in L.A. for your new play. What’s the transition been like? What do you miss most? What’s been the best discovery? In terms of transition, I notice first the air. I know people talk about the smog, but I did not notice, which made me reflect on the possibility of some psychic smog for me in New York. I am enjoying California very much largely for this reason. It feels that there is a lot of space out here. Very physically, metaphorically, all in all. Of course, in Earth Sucks, I play a space-obsessed teenager. What differences do you see in the theater communities in New York vs. Los Angeles? Do they parallel the stereotypical differences between New Yorkers and Californians? Each show feels so unique, and I have come across exceptionally beautiful and permissive working environments in New York. This show, however, holds a kind of joy because much of the cast identify as musicians. I enjoy acting with them because a lot of the time they just speak on stage, and are also easily impressed. Musical theater isn’t exactly the hippest genre in performance these days—how did you decide to pursue a career as a singing actress? Were you one of those kids who came out of the womb singing and dancing? I remember thinking one day in High School that the songs in musicals were kinda like sex… that the feelings gets so heightened that they must spill over into a song. This is an interesting question because in Earth Sucks the aliens end up teaching us Earthlings about "The Age of Song" where song is mode of communication. My character, Echo, uses song because she must express herself, and this is her voice. All the characters have some kind of very telling relationship to song. A main thing for Echo is that her father, Superscientist Max Bell, is unable to sing with her. All the healing takes place through song. Tell me what you mean by "being in this body is so much stimulation?" How do you "change channels with [your] breath and mind?" Breathing, loving, imagining, feeling… any of these human things. What is a Being Advisor and what do they do for you? What a wonderful way to view this. When I wrote that my guilty pleasure was "Being Advisor" for my friends and family, I had meant assuming that I know what is best for another human being. I love this "Being Advisor" position because I now understand that it is about being a "being advisor", which puts being ahead of I am right. You’re obviously well-versed in Jewish fiction. Did you read a lot of it growing up? I like to read, and was drawn to stories of magic and symbols. I found a home as a child in musical theater for these reasons. A foundational element of most American musicals is that it be set in some fantastical context because it is typically a escapist genre, but these symbolic stories, where light usually prevails, were spiritual snacks for me growing up, and so I continue to look to them. I feel, for instance, that Peter Pan is the story of the pieces of Wendy all vying for a voice, on the eve that her father mandates that she transition from sleeping in the Nursery with her younger siblings. Traditionally, the role of Captain Hook was played by the same actor playing her father. I do not deem one realm as more important or significant than another. Stories like Rent, Oklahoma, or West Side Story reclaim and glorify "every day life" with song and dance. "Earth Sucks" carries all these elements because it deals with the new frontier of Space as a means of dealing with a generalized cultural "Is this All? Eternity inside a mall?" A teenage Echo Bell sings "The Universe is Expanding. Some thing’s landing, something good," Of course, her universe is expanding, her body, her desires, her questions, her mind, and continues to expand throughout the play, even through all the angst. Culturally speaking, it is important to think of Earth finding her place in the cosmos, expanding, and shifting towards a new consciousness. Talk to me more about songs in musicals being like sex. I don’t think many of us commonly associate the two. Most things are like sex if we are thinking about Unification, and practicing wholeness. This is why eating is so highly erotic. It’s all about the joy of release, so this is what the songs are. I am answering this question now in a different context than when I first brought this concept up. In "Earth Sucks", The Alien lead singer, Fluhbluhbluh (his name is even sounds like a release, like a horse sigh) says multiple times, "allow me to explain. In song." Even violence becomes un-doable in the play, and so it is all about releasing into song, flow, joy, light, love, expression, which eventually elevate or transport, much like the songs in a musical. You talk about eating as erotic. What’s your favorite meal? Whatever "hits the spot!" I know you have a solo album in the works –what’s it like? Like an adventurous suppertime snack.
And now, the elephant in the room – your dad. I would be remiss not to ask about him. Is he a musical theater fan? No.

What music did he expose you to growing up? Some heavy metal. Do you think being his daughter has made your career easier or more difficult to embark on?

I don’t know. it feels like a big lunch with way too much salt, but the leftovers seem to be getting better.

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Communicating with the Dead

RebeccaD — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 08:43:55 +0000

Most people my age would take a trip to a village ruled by fortunetellers for its ironic value, but when I pulled up to the spiritualist community of Lily Dale, New York, I genuinely believed I would reach the ghost of my father. After all, I had in the past. My father died when I was 20. We held the funeral service in the same Roman Catholic Church where he had been an altar boy. All three of his wives—two Jewish and named Linda, one Catholic and named Ginny—and all six of his children sat in the front row. As the rest of our dad’s family stuck out their tongues for communion and made the sign of the cross, my Jewish brothers Paul and Daniel and I stayed in our seats. The priest talked about how we’d be reunited with my dad in heaven, and I wondered whether this applied to us as Jews. If someone had told me that forsaking my Jewish beliefs meant I’d see my father again, no doubt I’d have done it. Here was my basic understanding of the two faiths present in my family: one focused on what happened when you were alive, and one on what happened after you were dead. So once someone close to me was dead, I shifted from a Jewish to a Christian point of view. The night before my father was buried I prayed to God to be reunited with him, and I fell asleep fantasizing about blasting Billy Joel’s “Only The Good Die Young,” his favorite song, from a boom box outside his funeral. I hummed it under my breath during the service, clutching the crucifix the priest had given me in one fist and the hand of my six-year-old brother in the other. Losing my father convinced me that Christianity was like magic life insurance: Believe and there was no death. Once I started thinking about the afterlife, I began to notice all the opportunities society offers to connect with the dead, from the five-dollar fortuneteller living next door to me in a basement apartment in the West Village to the young man in pancake makeup who came on TV every afternoon with the promise of “crossing over.” Because my father’s religion was all about saints and spirits and holy ghosts, it was easy for me to believe in his spirit. Suddenly I found profundity in things that had once seemed invisible or ridiculous to me before his death.

I'm not the only one willing to pay for a conduit to the Great Beyond. Around the country, an entire movement has been summoned up to service the needs of bereaved relatives desperate for one last chance to commune with the dead. TV psychic John Edward (watch him here) has managed to cash in on the trend twice, starring in shows on the SciFi Channel and Lifetime. Even science is getting into the game: University of Arizona psychology professor Gary Schwartz has published The Afterlife Experiments, in which he scrutinizes published, peer-reviewed studies of mediums to figure whether they pass muster with the scientific method. They do indeed, he says. Ten years after my father’s death, I decided it was time to see whether he was still with me. I wanted to hear from him, but even more, I wanted confirmation that he was hearing me every time I spoke to him silently, with my eyes closed. And consulting a spiritualist medium didn’t feel like a compromise to my Jewish identity. It was my Jewish mother who’d long ago given me faith in after-death communication. Just after my father died, on a trip to England, my mom met with a man named Mr. Molinari, a medium at the Hogwarts-esque London College of Psychic Studies (LCPS). At dinner the next day she insisted I visit him as well.
I protested. I was about to be 21 and what had happened seemed so unreal to me—my healthy, 54-year-old father rendered paralyzed and speechless, then dead, of a spontaneous brain hemorrhage—that I had to work constantly to convince myself of the reality of it. If I was ever to "get over it," I couldn't allow myself to believe contact was possible. A waiter appeared at our table with a silver platter of marzipan fruits. I had always hated the chalky paperweights—simulacra of more delicious things. My mother reached for a "grape," then offered the tray to me. "Yuck!" I said, "I hate marzipan." "Fine by me," she said, in a singsong voice, "But Daddy loved it." "OK," I said, gesturing up to heaven, "Daddy, if you like marzipan, tell me tomorrow." At LCPS the next day, Mr. Molinari gestured for me to follow him into a musky room on the third floor. "Different mediums work different ways,” he said. “I see things. I am going to close my eyes, and I want you to do the same. Then concentrate on nothing. Just be here and give me a minute. Then I'll tell you what I see." He had a soft British accent and he didn't seem at all the type of person to be involved with the dead. If I saw him on the street, I probably would've taken him for a small business owner—the kind of man who runs the family sweet shop. I closed my eyes and put my hot palms on my knees, thinking, Please God let this be real. First, Mr. Molinari saw a woman. He thought it was my grandmother, and she said my apartment needed plants. Disappointing. Then another woman, this one all in black. With her was, according to Mr. Molinari, “Your father.” Chills. I was a reasonably young girl—anyone would assume both my parents were still living. And my mother had promised she'd told Mr. Molinari nothing. She'd made my appointment over the phone, giving the receptionist just my first name, so as not to give anything away. I stayed silent, waiting for more. He said some cheesy things, the sort of things a person would think a grieving child would need to hear—be strong, follow your heart, your father will always be with you—but then there was a surprise. "One more thing before you go," said Mr. Molinari, "And I must admit, this has me confused. Your father is holding out a tray of those little fruits Italians make out of almond paste, and he says, "This is not just for proof, but also to remind you to treat yourself once in a while.’ Do you understand what that means?"
Wow, right?

This story has served me many times in the past eleven years, most recently to justify my trip to Lily Dale. Founded in the mid-1800s, this town of small, ramshackle, pastel-colored Victorians—more summer camp than gothic hideaway—about an hour southwest of Buffalo, in Chautauqua County, not far from Lake Erie, is the home of the spiritualist movement. While its members consider themselves a congregation, they are much more focused on connecting with the dead than with God. Driving there with my friend Betony, who also doesn’t not believe in ghosts, I was sick with anticipation. I had reserved a reading via email and immediately regretted it because, as all my friends said, “She can just Google you then!” But I didn’t care if my medium had access to facts about me—if she said something authentic, I would recognize it. We rang my medium’s doorbell, but no one stirred. Inside the screen door was a little podium covered in pamphlets with the medium’s headshot and posters listing her upcoming talks, as if she were a life coach rather than a conduit for the dead. I motioned to one of the more ridiculous posters and whispered, “Maybe it’s best if I miss this appointment!” Just as we were skulking out the screen door, we heard a frantic voice coming from inside. “Just a second! I hear you!” A plump, sixtyish lady with thinning white hair and the face of the fairy godmother in Disney’s Cinderella emerged from the house, radiating heat. “I was answering some emails because I assumed you had cancelled. You’re late. Which one of you is Rebecca? Come on in. You,” she said, motioning to Betony in an oddly accusatory fashion, “can sit outside here, or you can go over to the Crystal Cove and do some shopping.” She said “Crystal Cove” with the same anticipatory tone one might use for “Barneys Warehouse Sale.” Betony scurried off and I entered the inner sanctum, which was a heavily calicoed room punctuated by a loud yet ineffective air conditioner. My medium, shiny with sweat, opened the reading with a prayer and asked in a snobbish, world-weary tone whether I wanted to connect with any loved ones. “Of course,” I answered, sounding more hostile than I meant to. “Why else would I be here?” “Well, I also provide general advice and guidance,” she said, clearly a bit insulted I hadn’t grasped her role as a New-Age shrink.
I wish I could say this bumpy beginning was in no way indicative of the amazing insights revealed by my medium as she became a conduit for my father. I wish I could tell you she’d given me news direct from Daddy: he had heard everything I said to him in ICU, he loved my New York apartment, he’d left me a fortune in a Swiss bank account and here was the number. But our reading, which was five minutes shorter than I had paid for ($60 bucks), consisted of my medium telling me my maternal grandmother was in the room (Rosie is not dead, thank God) along with my brain-injured brother (he’s not dead either!). Then she asked me about my ghostwriting projects in New York and bragged about her own, insisting we compare rates. Finally, she asked me who my agent was. I left the reading livid. Betony could tell immediately by my expression that my medium had been a sham, but I think we were both surprised by how emotional I was. It was clear I’d really believed I would hear from my dad. On our second day at Lily Dale, we stopped at a yard sale in front of a church. Among the piles of trinkets, LP’s, old toys and dresses was a solitary 1980’s-album-cover button: a young Billy Joel, leaning against a brick wall. Betony pressed it into my palm and said, “Your dad sent this to you.” After all the little moments like this—the time I got lost in a part of Queens I’d never been to, only to end up at the cemetery where my dad is interred, the time I put a dollar in a slot machine I knew he’d love, and hit the jackpot—why did I need to pay someone to connect with my father when it was so clear I was already connecting with him myself? Commodifying something this ethereal was vaguely pathetic. I still believe there is some life beyond this one—I just finally see through the people who claimed to be the gatekeepers to it. I’ll admit that I’m mystified by the persistence of my belief amidst such convincing proof to the contrary. But believing in a dead loved one is just faith, and what is faith if not the refusal to buy what everyone else is selling?

* * *

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Rebecca Diliberto has previously covered beloved-but-irrational phenomenons in her stint blogging The Secret. She's previously written about being the child of intermarriage in "The Play-It-Down Jew."

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The Play-It-Down Jew

RebeccaD — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 05:27:20 +0000

1985. United Airlines flight 80, SFO to JFK, seat 4B. I am a child of divorce, en route to visit my father for the summer. I’m unwrapping my third Fruit Roll-Up and humming along to the Xanadu soundtrack when Gargamel and Zorro appear in the aisles, holding AK47’s and wearing dishdashas. “All Jewish children, please come to the front of the airplane,” one screams, “It is time for us to eat you in the name of Allah!” I think of my passport. American. My last name. DiLiberto, Italian. My blue eyes. My light hair. They’ll never guess I’m Jewish. I can pass. I can live. I tighten my seatbelt as all the good little Jews march, silent and stoic, to the front of the plane. Even at ten years old, I know I am a coward. Those little Jewish children will go to heaven and I will languish here on Earth listening to my conscience. Wait, do we—Jews, I mean—have heaven? 1985 was the year Uli Derickson saved a bunch of Jewish passengers on TWA flight 847 by hiding their passports. I became obsessed with the news story and spent hours contemplating what I would do if I found myself in a stand-up-and-be-counted situation. I used my mother as a sounding board.

“There’s no way they would know unless I told them, right? Think about it. My eyes. My name. I don’t seem Jewish.”

My mother would roll her own blue eyes at me. “There are plenty of Italian Jews. With blue eyes.” “Yes, but it’s less obvious. That they’re Jewish.” “This is a ridiculous conversation.” “What I want to know is do I have to tell them? The hijackers? Do I have a moral obligation?” I have always loved catchphrases. “While I hope you’re proud to be who you are, I don’t think any rabbi would argue with using any means necessary to preserve your life in an extraordinary situation.” “But during the Holocaust—“ “This conversation is over. I’ll be on the airplane with you, and I’ll decide what we do.” If only my mother could come with me on dates. Here’s the dirty truth: I am a play-it-down Jew. Recently, I was on my first date with a sleepy-eyed patrician lawyer. We were swapping tales of our childhoods. After I told him about growing up in San Francisco among hippies and crab mongers, he told me about his hometown of Dearborn, Michigan. I said I had heard it had the highest concentration of Arabs of any American city.
“And it’s no coincidence,” he chortled. “It’s the most antisemitic place in the world! Because of Henry Ford.” I nodded. Ford was on my Jewish stepfather’s list of famous Jew-haters, along with Vanessa Redgrave and Louis Farrakhan. Never would our family buy a Ford or rent “Blow Up” or attend a Nation of Islam rally. “I had a friend when I was growing up in Dearborn whose house had a tile floor, and inlaid in the floor was a huge swastika mosaic! Can you believe that?” My lawyer laughed and took a swig of his martini. I snorted uncomfortably. Why was he telling me this? He had no reason to suspect I was Jewish, did he? And was he outraged—or amused?—by his neighbors’ antisemitic interior decorating? I needed to make an interception before one or both of us were humiliated. “Whoa, you don’t have anything against Jews, right? I mean, I’m part Jewish.” Part Jewish? My mother’s mother is Jewish, but her father is a Southern Baptist. My own father was Catholic, and although he didn’t protest when my mother insisted on raising her children as Jews, he loved to tease her by claiming he’d had me baptized while she was at the beauty parlor (better safe than sorry). So I’m actually only a quarter Jewish, but the right quarter. When we were young, my father’s three Catholic sons from his first marriage all found it hilarious to refer to me, their only sister, as “the JAP.” On the other hand, I started getting “You don’t seem Jewish” in second grade at my Waspy all-girls school—from both the Wasps and the other Jewish girl. In Hebrew school, the principal snickered every time she had to say my Italian name. In college, the first and last time I ate dinner at Hillel House during Passover, two girls I knew socially whispered to me, with a giggle, “What are you doing here? You’re not really Jewish.” It was confusing. To gentiles, my quarter-Jewishness defined me, the way just one drop of food coloring turns a gallon of water bright blue. But Jews rarely accepted me as one of their own. I was stuck, and reasoned my way out, moseying down the path of least resistance. There was no question which identity was easier to take on. Certainly not the one who was supposed to know thousands of prayers in an ancient language, or actually enjoy gefilte fish, or trade stories about a drunken confirmation trip to Israel I hadn’t gone on. When it came to the Jewish experience, I could never measure up.
Still, I squirm if I find myself at a church service, whether at a wedding, a funeral, Midnight Mass, or on a trip to a foreign country. Private prayers buzz about inside my head: I do not accept Jesus as my savior, just because I’m here or anything. He was a really stellar citizen, not a savior. Well, some people’s savior, obviously, just not mine, per se. Shema, Y’israel… At my own father’s funeral: Do I kneel when the priest says to, like all the good Catholics? What am I supposed to do when my brothers take communion? Is it more disrespectful if I eat the wafer, or if I don’t? Will it affect my father’s ascent? Because if yes, I’m opening my mouth right now. Oddly, I’ve always felt I belonged in synagogue. Not in youth groups or classes or that terrible post-service lox-stinking brunch room, but invisible in the sanctuary, listening to ancient prayers whose meaning I don’t necessarily know, but which still resonate in some place inaccessible to my rational mind. Part Jewish? Everyone knows that Judaism is a matrilineal religion—if you bloom in a Jewish womb, like me, you‘re a Jew. Entirely, not “part.” Why hadn’t I just told Mr. O’Lawyer , “I’m Jewish?” Because I actually liked this guy, and I didn’t want to risk nipping our nascent relationship in the bud. I figured I’d let him fall in love with me first, then drop the J-bomb. I am deeply ashamed to admit it, but I fear that my Judaism is something a potential suitor might hold against me. Family lore has it that a dashing Princeton boy fell in love with my mother while she was still in high school. She says that after he found out she was Jewish, as they nibbled roast pork at his parents’ manor, he never called her again. When I was a prepubescent, this story felt like a cautionary tale. My mother was perfect! Her Jewishness had to be the reason this guy dropped her! It didn’t occur to me that she might have used the wrong fork at dinner, or that he might have been seeing an older girl at Princeton, or that—heaven forbid—he just wasn’t that into her. My ten-year-old take-away was this: Gallant, rich, important men don’t like Jewish girls. So, some forty-odd years later, I took the implied lesson to heart: Keep the religion thing close to your chest. But come on—how long could I stay on the Down Low if this guy and I actually got into a real thing? (Well, for quite a while, come to think of it, seeing as how I’ve pretty much abstained from religious holidays since my bat mitzvah, and there’s the Italian name thing, and the Southern Baptist grandpa thing, and the fact that the only Jewish food I can stomach are those little chocolate-covered jellies you get on Passover…)
But—aristocratic suitors aside—how could I live with myself without full disclosure? It scares me to think that I might compromise my identity—Jewish or otherwise—to snag a husband. Or that I think so little of the men I go out with that I assume they’re antisemitic. But I am ashamed to admit that I don’t want to seem “other,” part of some creepy, horn-hiding, baby sacrificing cult. Do I really think anyone still harbors these ridiculous ideas of Jewishness in 2007? Come on! Beyond all the Jewbilation ale, Kabbalah bracelets, and VHI specials, we all know that Jews remain the warty fairytale villains of the global subconscious. I don’t need to tell you that “The Passion of the Christ” grossed more, domestically, than any other R-rated film in history, or that “The Protocols of Zion” is reportedly a bestseller at countless bodegas, or that many liberals and conservatives alike blame the United States’ Israel obsession for this horrible war we’re in. No wonder little Noni Horowitz changed her name to Winona Ryder. My impulse to pass has less to do with self-loathing than an obsessive need to be loved. I’m sure if I were to date more Jewish guys, I would be belting out Dayenu at Passover, and not only at the table. But for some reason I rarely find myself breaking bread with a lantsman. They just don’t seem to go for me, whether it’s that I’m not Jewish enough or simply that I’m voluptuous (everyone knows that Jewish guys, no matter how robust themselves, are weight Nazis). Besides, am I even allowed to call myself a Jew? My looks, paired with my nonobservant background, have contributed to a lifelong sense of cognitive dissonance: At once, I feel too Jewish and not Jewish enough. My Jewish self turns her nose up at my gentile side, and vice versa. On vacation alone last year, I became friends with a burly, married Italian named Tony. In the first five minutes of our acquaintance, we bonded over our last names (which both end in the classic “o”) and our identical philosophies on the cooking of Sunday red sauce (pork being the crucial ingredient). We took long daily walks, during which he expressed unhappiness over the state of his loveless marriage. I nodded sympathetically when he told me he had decided, as a Catholic, never to divorce, but to have clandestine affairs instead (he felt a strong sense of “duty” toward the institution of marriage). He had assumed that, as a DiLiberto, I was Catholic too, and I didn’t correct his assumption. (I mean, I am a little bit Catholic, right?) In this case, I wasn’t interested in romance, just acceptance—a sense of kinship with another lonely stranger. And I was afraid that, like many members of my own Italian family, my Italian buddy harbored deep-seated anti-Semitism. It’s my pesky pathological need to be loved: if I sense someone might be uncomfortable around a member of the tribe, I play my Jewishness down. The converse works, too: In the company of observant Jews, I suddenly find myself making comments like, “I wish I could keep kosher!” or “There’s something so sexy about a well-placed yarmulke.” And I should say that this see, we’re just alike! proclivity extends beyond religious affiliation. * * *
Needless to say, Mr. Swastika Mosaic and I went nowhere—things fizzled after a few dates. It would be convenient to say he stopped calling when he found out I was Jewish (which was my mom’s belief, of course—this from a woman who erects a 1000-piece miniature Christmas village every November), or to explain that the swastika comment was enough to send me packing—but we made out after both revelations, so the burnout had nothing to do with principles. And there’s no question I am more ambivalent about my own Jewishness than he was. I realized after things were over the absurdity of my tendency to play the Jew thing down: I could end up married to an antisemite. What would my unsuspecting hubby think when my mom insisted he watch my bat mitzvah video, or when my Yiddish-speaking Grandma attacked his cheeks? More important, how would I feel lying next to this man in the middle of the night, knowing I had cheated both of us out of the best thing marriage has to offer: total honesty without judgment? Probably the worst feeling would be the lifelong shudder of self-betrayal, shouldering the guilt of lying to terrorists on an airplane every day for the rest of my life. Thank God Judaism has a built-in honesty clause: even if I were to marry a bigot, his children would be, officially, Jewish. An eighth, but the right eighth.

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Urban Zen: Death by Macrobiotics

RebeccaD — Fri, 25 May 2007 03:12:07 +0000

Someone is punishing me for my skeptical attitude toward Urban Zen. By someone, I guess I mean God, in the way my mother says “God is punishing you” when I trip after making fun of someone, or rip my pants after ridiculing the tightness of someone else’s. I was famished when lunch arrived on our table during the break yesterday. A dashing waiter came bearing a beautiful wooden tray stacked with bowls of “living” food—the kind of stuff rich, enlightened, skinny fashionistas are served at every meal. The people at my table—three yoga teachers, an internist, two nurse practitioners and an administrator at the American Cancer Society—snapped them up immediately. I reached for my bowl with hesitancy, because I have to be extremely careful about what I eat outside my own kitchen. I have severe food allergies to seafood and pine nuts; they make my throat swell and cause what I will refer to delicately as “gastrointestinal distress.” I knew I didn’t have to worry about seafood. “Living food” is vegan. (I hope!) I unwrapped my chopsticks and started poking around in the little bowl. Beautifully wilted bright green bok choy and dark grey pieces of eggplant lay on top of a bed of black grains, which seemed wild-rice-ish. No pine nuts in sight, seemed safe. I dug in. “I’m surprised there’s eggplant in here,” I say, trying to make conversation, because I want to kill myself with anxiety when stuck in a silent group of strangers, “It’s a nightshade, right? I thought macrobiotic people didn’t eat it.” I looked around for a response but my tablemates ignored the comment and continued eating. Oh-kay. I am a dork. I take a bite, avoiding the eggplant as I know some people get a scratchy throat from eggplant that isn’t cooked properly and I don’t want to mistake a scratchy throat for an on-the-verge-of-closing throat as I am not holding any Xanax. The bok choy is all right but it isn’t all that. Everyone is talking about how “incredibly delicious” and “refreshing” the food at this conference has been, how they wish someone would post the recipes on the website. The food reminds me of those little plastic containers of seaweedy mystery you find under the water bottles in a health food store, but I am done commenting on it. I eat a few bites and pass my near-full bowl to a waiter, who looks at me as if I were throwing away a little bowl of gold. As we work through our lunch—brainstorming strategies for improving the experience of dying in America’s hospitals—I feel myself growing spacier and spacier. My writing is getting messy. Is it hot in here? My forehead is beading sweat. I know what is coming. The back of my throat is swelling; my epiglottis is irritated too, so enlarged that if I were to breathe in deep and quick you could hear it flutter. I eat a few grapes to try to clear out the bitter taste of histamine from my mouth, test my swallowing reflex.
Michael Bernard Beckwith—the handsome African American guy with dreads from The Secret video—is leading a meditation. He intones, “So that which is eternally going on becomes the object of our awareness…” The object of my awareness right now is that I might go into anaphylactic shock and barf in front of Donna Karan, Christy Turlington, and Uma Thurman’s dad. “The realm of everything good is revealing itself through this panel, this conference, this gathering…” But not through this lunch! I open my eyes to locate the nearest bathroom. It is located right off the main meeting room, and were I to retch inside it, everyone would hear me. No question embarrasses me more than “Are you OK?” when I am sick, so falling apart in front of this crowd is not an option. Though if I were to fall apart, now would be the time to do it, while they’re all on planet meditation. “Allow us to become more and never less than our true self…” I am about to be one lunch less than myself if I don’t get out of here… I gather up my huge bag and coat and weave through the legs surrounding our table, saying, “Bye! Thank you! I have to run!” Until this moment I haven’t noticed that I’ve essentially lost my voice due to throat swelling. What if I leave and asphyxiate on the fringes of the far West Village? No one will discover me for at least an hour—the conference is scheduled to run until 3 p.m! Walking outside, the fresh air helps for a second. I run toward the nearest Starbucks, which is two blocks away. Outside, three weird guys yell at me, “Save your receipt for a two dollar Metrocard!” What? I pray for no line. There’s a line. There’s a woman with a massive wheelie suitcase who has obviously popped in to do her post-flight grooming. Think of something undisgusting. Vanilla ice cream. Disgusting! What if someone asks me if I’m OK? Morning sickness, that’s a good answer. But then they’ll ask when the baby is due. How depressing. If I ever come back to this Starbucks I’ll have to come up with a miscarriage story.
Come on, lady. I consider throwing up in my coat. I could turn away from the baristas and just hide my face in the black wool, wrap the whole mess up, and toss it neatly into the dumpster outside. But I really like this coat. Once, after a similar anaphylactic experience which, coincidentally, also occurred in the West Village, I threw up into my favorite shawl and tossed it out the window on the West Side Highway. The cab driver didn’t even notice. Mercifully, the post-flight girl is finished rather quickly. Her makeup looks good. I run inside and no matter how hard I push I can’t get the spring-loaded door closed quickly enough. I do so in just enough time to rid myself of a gallon of black mess—caponata!—and feel better instantly. I splash water on my face, put my sunglasses on, and crash into another Urban Zen participant as I career out of the bathroom. She looks at me sympathetically. Probably thinks I’m bulimic. I run out of the Starbucks and the weird guys yell, “Didja save your receipt? We’ve got your Metrocard!” “I didn’t buy anything!” I scream at them in my underwater swollen Disney villain voice. They are frightened of me. Bounding toward the Christopher Street station I pop into another Starbucks and repeat the experience. For goodness sake, I only ate one bite! OK, God, I promise to be more openhearted when it comes to Zen fashionistas. I’ve learned my lesson. But tomorrow I’m going on a purifying fast.

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Urban Zen: Searching for Dr. Feelgood

RebeccaD — Thu, 24 May 2007 11:35:10 +0000

The first panel I attend at the Urban Zen initiative is called “The Path: Doctors, Embracing a New Way of thinking.” Its goal is to encourage doctors of Western medicine to consider alternative modalities—such as yoga, Chinese medicine, and holistic nutrition—when crafting treatment plans for their patients. Donna Karan opens the session by welcoming the audience. When she speaks of her late husband Stephan, who inspired her alternative medicine crusade, I am surprised by my own tears. It’s hard not to get emotional—the film that follows her welcome speech features a series of still images of Stephan, and then a gut-wrenching clip of him on a ski trip. In the clip he has longish gray hair and a charismatic smile. He speaks directly to the camera before taking off down the mountain, cheerfully yelling, “Hasta luego!” But, of course, we don’t. See him later. Instead, we see a panel of world-renowned experts on health and spirituality, a gallery full of photos being auctioned off to benefit wellness programs, a pop-up “retail experience,” also to benefit Urban Zen. Karan has created an impressive spectacle to honor her late husband—and hopefully a dynamic initiative to help heal the sick. In the film, Karan says, “The idea that I had an idea and I didn’t do everything there was to be done… I couldn’t get up in the morning. It’s just who I am.” Everyone in the audience looks over to her at this moment, commending her with a head-nod or wistful smile or a thumbs-up. A beautiful cancer survivor and friend of Karan’s salutes her in the film, “What an amazing miracle that you created for me.” (The miracle she is referring to is—presumably—the Urban Zen initiative.) It’s all very Oprah. All forces at the Urban Zen initiative are conspiring to make Donna Karan feel good about herself, but they can’t give her the one thing she really wants: to bring her husband back. And this breaks my heart. It also makes me feel like a total bitch for having anything critical to say about her or her project. But the panel discussion that follows her intro is somehow unsatisfying. Yes, there are ten extremely accomplished people onstage trying to solve our country’s healthcare problem. Well, sort of. They all agree that few sick people are getting the care they need, and that multiple healing modalities are better than one. They all use anecdotes of Easternish wisdom to prove their points, saying things like, “Our fears need to be our teachers,” and “Just be there in that calm space.” They want to “bring the healing back to the healers,” they all have “the best job in the world.” But while they are masters of mutual congratulation, they offer few concrete solutions to offer better medical care to more people. One doctor asserts that in order to change how doctors think, we have to encourage their process of personal transition from mechanic fixing a problem, to whole person treating whole people. But how do you teach someone to care more? “Medical schools need to become schools of wisdom,” says a doctor who manages an integrative medicine program at a top hospital, “I want my physicians to be part of the dance of life.” There’s no question that doctors who act like human beings make better company than those who act like automatons. But are they really better doctors? Who can know?

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Urban Zen: Access Hollywood

RebeccaD — Thu, 24 May 2007 01:56:23 +0000

Getting into the first panel I attend, “Doctors, Embracing a New Way of Thinking,” isn’t easy. After I arrive at the Stephan Weiss studio, deep in the West Village, I get in line to check in with one of many frazzled-looking event coordinators in black headsets. While another writer and I languish at the entrance—“The problem is the PR people have never given us a list of press!” growls a pretty blonde—women carrying bags made of ostrich, lizard and snakeskin are waved in right and left. I am not particularly bothered by what some might consider a snub—this scene is no different from waiting for backstage access to a fashion show, which I did for years covering beauty and fashion trends for glossy magazines. The VIPS there and here came from the same guest list—in order to attend this series of panels and workshops, one has to be a patron of the Urban Zen initiative; sponsorships range from $6000 to $250000, roughly the same price range as a piece of couture. According to the Urban Zen website, sponsors help fund the attendance of nurses, medical students, and other healing practitioners who would otherwise not be able to attend. After about ten minutes of waiting outside, my fellow press buddy and I are ushered inside the building to wait some more in the gallery, where a silent auction of serene art photographs is being displayed. In this corral with all the other seatless people I have a good view of the audience, who seem to be getting to know one another, eager for the panel to start. “I am meeting with Donna next week to discuss strategy,” says the woman I met outside, who is getting anxious that everyone seems to be getting seats but us, “They obviously don’t know who I am.” She is the publisher of an established alternative medicine newsletter, and her sense of entitlement is sort of charming. She may have been to Washington to lobby for universal healthcare, but she’s obviously never been to an NYC PR extravaganza. Harboring no delusions about my own importance in this crowd, I settle into a conversation with another woman who’s waiting to be seated, a doctor of Chinese medicine. She is in her mid-thirties, Asian-American, and so fashionable and pretty I might have mistaken her for someone from the W magazine society page. She tells me she left corporate America to practice Chinese medicine and I second-guess my assessments of the other people I saw whiz past me at the door. Maybe they were all in the healing arts, too? Five minutes after the scheduled beginning, we’re still not seated, but a hush comes over the crowd as the panel moves toward the stage, the actor Michael J. Fox, who is living with Parkinson's Disease, at its tail end. Everyone is trying to stare out of the corner of their eye. He is magnetic. With the layout of the room—the stage at the very front, mics, photographers—it is easy to pretend we are attending a press conference for some new TV show. But this is not TV, it’s real. Fox’s gait is a little shaky. And when he gets to the stage, he’s seated next to his neurologist and a melanoma survivor and the head of integrative medicine at Beth Israel medical center—not Meredith Baxter Birney or Justine Bateman. This is real. No matter how hard we try to convince ourselves that celebrities are regular people, it’s deeply disturbing when they become sick. I could offer some pat explanation about the secret sense of satisfaction we feel when the mighty fall, but I don’t think it’s that simple—or that heartless. Once illness or trauma penetrates the placenta of celebrity, affecting those who dwell in our fantasy worlds, it seems, ironically, much more real and threatening to the rest of us. Plus our sense of empathy for them is artificially inflated. We feel as though we know them, so it’s like a good friend or relative is in danger. Because of this, celebrities can—and should—bring awareness to their diseases by speaking openly about them. This can lead directly to progress, both medical and sociological. Think what Christopher Reeve did for paralysis—he humanized it, brought a real sense of strength and dignity to the wheelchair, and he did more for stem cell research than any other individual. So why does this who’s who of Hollywood healthcare at the Urban Zen Initiative make me a little uneasy? Why, when the session opens with a moving film featuring Donna Karan, her husband (who passed away), and other famous cancer patients such as Edie Falco, do I catch myself doing an inner eye-roll? More on this later.

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Healing the Well-Heeled

RebeccaD — Wed, 23 May 2007 10:04:15 +0000

I am taking notes on a pad designed and provided by fashion guru Donna Karan. Sitting in her studio on an overstuffed floor pillow, Fiji water and raw walnuts within reach, I am admiring scores of taut, burnished individuals dressed in asymmetric, scapula- and clavicle-bearing organic cotton ensembles. Coldplay and Sinead O’Connor’s plaintive melodies emanate from hidden speakers and Donna Karan’s image is projected on white walls in the massive space. But I am not at a fashion show. I am at the Well Being Forum, the first event being put forth by Karan’s Urban Zen Initiative. This project began as a legacy for Stephan Weiss, Karan’s husband, who died of cancer in 2001. Its goal, according to Karan, is to “connect the dots” between eastern and western medicine. For this conference, Karan has summoned a who’s who list of doctors, yoga practitioners, nutritionists, healers—and their famous acolytes—to address an audience of philanthropists, patients and health professionals. Dean Ornish will talk nutrition, Rodney Yee will do yoga. Mehmet Oz—Oprah’s doctor—will discuss patient care. Michael J. Fox and his doctor will discuss living with Parkinson’s. Lou Reed—yes, that Lou Reed—will teach Tai Chi. His longtime partner, artist Laurie Anderson, will lead a meditation. The model Christy Turlington will serve on a women’s health panel. Think of it as Vogue’s editorial staff taking over the New England Journal of Medicine. While the motivations behind the project are undeniably good, the concept of an incredibly wealthy celebrity inviting her friends and their gurus to brainstorm in front of a studio full of people either wealthy or powerful enough to get on the guest list is complicated. Over the next few days, I am going to attend some panels and report back on them. Some questions I’m already asking myself: Who has access to “spirituality” in our society? What happens when our health and wellbeing are contingent on our ability to pay for guidance? How can any movement transcend preaching to its own choir? What’s behind the creative impulse that arises when a loved one passes away? Is it about trying to resurrect the lost person, or satisfying the living person’s narcissism? How can a room full of like-minded people avoid getting mired in sanctimonious self-congratulation and challenge each other to move forward? And, finally, if we believe people are capable of healing themselves, doesn’t that assign a cruel and irrational sense of responsibility to the terminally ill? Feel free to respond to any of these questions now, or later. And do propose any others you think I should be asking.

To check out the Urban Zen Initiative's website, click here.

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The Secret: What I Learned

RebeccaD — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 10:19:03 +0000

The Secret is no secret.

Everyone—including my most intellectual, pop-culture-deprived friends submerged in academia—has heard of it. I think it's safe to say The Secret has reached its saturation point. Which makes me think, if the whole planet knows about it, it can't possibly work anymore. There isn't enough room in the world for everyone to build their dream house. The Secret is exhausting.

There are gratitude lists to write, vision boards to collage, imaginary checks to forge—not to mention the constant exertion of active self-delusion. Investing this much time and energy, The Secreter convinces herself that it works in order to preserve any remaining dignity. (My paycheck is here A DAY EARLY? Must be The Secret.) Not everyone thinks The Secret is dumb.

I spend my days consulting for an Internet company. When I told our CEO—a boy wunderkind Faith Popcorn-y sales genius—that I was blogging about The Secret, he said, "That's a great movie." Ironic smile? Not so much. In fact, an informal survey I've conducted has shown that most extremely successful people I know personally think living The Secret is a given—the way they've always conducted their lives (the ever-humble Oprah said this on her show). This leaves me wondering about the difference between me and them. Will I concede that certain tenets of The Secret can lead to success? Absolutely. Will I ever be able to practice the Law of Attraction sans irony or self-deprecation? Nope. It doesn't look like I'll be facilitating any Fortune 500 team-building retreats anytime soon. The Secret gets boring.

It's been three weeks since The Secret came into my life, and while I was giddy from all the positive self-talk in Week One, my enthusiasm dropped off soon after. I stopped looking at the Vision Boards on the back of my front door, I ripped the 125 Post-It off the scale, I decided pretending my bills were checks was too stupid even for an experiment. I tried visualizing the opposite of what I wanted just to test the theory. And I got it. What does that prove again? The Secret doesn't go deep enough. Just ask Oprah.

The other day, Russell Simmons was on her show promoting his new self-help book, which is all about seeing yourself as connected to a higher power. His is the god of yoga, but yours can be whatever. It's a personal choice. Anyway Oprah really liked this metaphor he used—we are all cups drawn from the river that is God, I think ("Which means we are made of God!" she gleefully explained to the studio audience). Then she sort of dissed The Secret. (I know, how Benedict Arnold.) The problem with it, she said, is that it doesn't connect us to any higher power. Oprah and I agree on a lot of things and it just so happens that I also have this problem with The Secret. In fact, looking for books to expand my understanding of the philosophy a few weeks ago, I came upon a book called The Law of Attraction: The Basics of the Teachings of Abraham. Eureka! I thought. Finally, a way to connect this Secret stuff to something concrete, sacred. I tried to guess the connection while I waited for the book to arrive. Abraham uses the Law of Attraction to father the people of Israel! He believes he's going to help God populate the world… and so he DOES! Abraham totally lived The Secret! When the book came I put down the X-Acto knife I was using to cut the head off a naked picture of Heidi Klum (I was going to replace it with my own—Vision Board) and tore into it. Well, um—it turns out this Abraham is not that Abraham. The Abraham husband and wife authors Esther and Jerry Hicks are talking about is a group of otherwordly beings, who collectively call themselves "Abraham" and speak through Esther. When she channels him, Esther / Abraham addresses skeptics with phrases such as ""We are not so much interested in that you believe in our existence, as we are interested in that you come to adore your own." So yeah, not the same Abraham as the one in the bible.

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The Power of Wishful Thinking

RebeccaD — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 09:45:58 +0000

For three weeks, Rebecca DiLiberto has been faithfully following the rules of The Secret, the Oprah-approved self-help phenomenon that's spent the last three months on the New York Times bestseller list. The Secret’s central idea is the "law of attraction," which teaches that your thoughts are magnets, pulling in your fortune. Dream for a Ferrari and your fantasies will deliver the latest model; fret about your dwindling bank account and it will shrink.

DiLiberto has thrown herself into a three-week regime of listless fantasizing. For the sake of this experiment, she has pretended to drive an imaginary car, affixed inspirational post-its to her bathroom furniture, and concentrated extremely hard on her empty mailbox. In return, the Law of Attraction has brought her a healthy tax refund and a table at New York’s most popular burger joint—on a Friday night, no less.

So does the Secret work? Can it change your life? Below, DiLiberto wraps up her three-week exercise in positive thinking. If you haven’t been following her on her adventures, check out the posts from previous weeks at the bottom of the page.

The Secret is no secret.

The Secret assumes you know what you want.

And there, my friends, lies the rub. I have a goal-setting problem, not a goal-getting problem. I’m complicated. I’m ambivalent. Some days I want to be a novelist, other days I want to be on staff at Ugly Betty. Sometimes I think, if money were not concern, I would like to specialize in bridal hairdressing. Fussing around with all that hairspray could be fun! And think of all the complicated braids I would learn! I feel guilty when I set ridiculous goals and meet them, because then I feel sorry for everyone who isn’t as successful as I am. I feel awful when I set ridiculous goals and fail to meet them, because then I feel sorry for myself. The Secret is brilliant. OK, let me clarify: deciding to film a bunch of life coaches blathering in front of a green screen and packaging the result as the key to the meaning of life is brilliant. Creating a philosophy that places all responsibility for happiness on the unhappy person is brilliant. Printing the transcript of this video and binding it and calling it a book is really brilliant. Come to think of it, why hasn’t anyone ever printed transcripts of other awesome videos and sold them as books? Like, those Red Asphalt movies they showed in Driver’s Ed in the eighties? They would be totally more effective than a DMV manual. Or the Alexey Vayner resume video? With full-color screenshots? What recent college grad wouldn't buy that manual of what not to do? Rhonda Byrne, creator of The Secret, would probably think I am jealous. And I am, sure—of her money and power. But when I ask myself, “Would I really want my name to be on that video?” the answer is no. The philosophy is too simplistic. Those espousing it seem delusional, not to mention uneducated. Most of all, though, it would be really embarrassing. And it could totally keep me from getting a job on Ugly Betty. Or a book contract. I’m not even sure it could be of much help in the bridal hair department.

* * *

Rebecca DiLiberto's previous Secret posts:

I’ve Got The Secret: Is our desire to be cool impeding our ability to be happy?

Vision Quest: The Secret brings satisfaction — at least when it comes to dinner reservations.

Meet Secret Rebecca: There’s a better version of you out there somewhere.

The Check is in the Mail: Visualizing money can fill your bank account.

What's Your Secret Weight? To get thin, just ditch all your fat friends and relatives.

Shrinking the Secret: The popular form of therapy that sounds a lot like the Secret.

The Plate of Your Dreams: In San Francisco, a raw-food restaurant uses positive thinking as a recipe.

The Dark Side: After the tragedies of last week, can we really embrace a philosophy that blames the victims?

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The Secret: The Dark Side

RebeccaD — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 07:27:18 +0000

Ever since two horrible events last week—the massacre at Virginia Tech and the brutal rape and torture of a Journalism student at Columbia University—I have had a hard time sitting down to write about The Secret. Not only because such ethereal musings seem frivolous in the face of such real nightmares, but also because of The Secret’s dirty little secret: Not only does it teach the law of attraction for good, but also for bad. Here’s Secret Person Joe Vitale:

Everything that surrounds you right now in life, including things you’re complaining about, you’ve attracted. Now I know at first blush that’s going to be something that you hate to hear. You’re going to immediately say, “I didn’t attract the car accident. I didn’t attract this particular client who gives me a hard time. I didn’t particularly attract the debt.” And I’m here to be a little bit in your face and to say, yes, you did attract it. This is one of the hardest concepts to get, but once you’ve accepted it, it’s life transforming.

Hearing this statement on the video, and reading it later in the book, I was horrified. What does this guy mean, accidents are our fault? Accidents are, by definition, accidents. This concept of total individual responsibility has dangerous implications: it can make us feel all-powerful—omniscient even—which is exhilarating when what’s happening is good, potentially devastating when it isn’t. The Secret plays to both sides of narcissism. Why would we be attracted—no pun intended—to a philosophy that assigns blame to the blameless? Aside from what might be a sense of masochistic martyrdom inherent to the new American character, I would also attribute it to our culture’s endemic solipsism. A terrible thing happened to them, but I am a positive thinker, so it cannot happen to me. It’s a mode of superstitious self-protection. Yet another way to differentiate us from them. Until we become one of them.

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