Shema Productions

A Musical Gift for You

A Holiday Message and Song

Singing helps me express my gratitude for life. I think of something I am grateful for and allow the sounds of love to come out of my mouth. Sometimes the tune reminds me of something my Grandpa would sing, a melancholy or joyful tune from the old country. Sometimes it sounds pretty good and other times it definitely doesn't. I erase those from my iPhone. Others I keep.

Today I am grateful for all the wonderful people I have connected to over the past year. If you are reading this, you are one of those! Thank you for being on this journey with me. Wishing you a joyful, peaceful and beautiful holiday season and new year.

Here is the circle of letters I was looking at when I sang this for you! You can see (if you look hard) that three letters - Shin, Lamed and Final Mem which spell Shalom - are in the middle.

 

 

 

How can I help?

 

Pictures of our Holiday Marketplace

I love it when things are easy. Amy, the owner of the Rookwood Inn, and I just hosted a holiday marketplace together here in Lenox, MA. Amy sold pre-copies of her new book and I got to meet lots of people from my new community while sharing and selling my artwork. Amy gave me the whole dining room to display my work. Thanks Amy for making me feel so welcome!

You know how things can just flow sometimes? Well this did. In thinking about why this worked so well I realized that my suggestion to Amy to host a gathering together came from my sincere wish to help her get her product out to the community and get more people to visit her Inn. I had the idea that we could do that and create a space for me to be introduced to my new community while showing my work.

Amy loved it. She is a real community person and she wanted to help me too. With little effort (except for all the food that Amy and her staff prepared- which was great) we wrote a press release, it went out, we had lots of people visiting and schmoozing and we had a good time. We both wanted to help one another. I really think this is key.

As I go forward putting my work out in the world I want to remember, "How can I help?" as a mantra for getting things started on the right foot. It isn't about me so much as it is about right relationship and timing. If the juice is there and the intension is good things do seem to take off with a better start.

 

 

Bathtub Meditation

So, I have this humongous bathtub in my new home. And honestly, when I was looking for this place the thought literally passed through my mind, "Wouldn't it be nice to have a two person bathtub!?" (You know what I mean?) Well, be careful what you ask for because things are literally showing up fast these days.

Getting in this tub alone seemed daunting. It is BIG. Finally today, after four weeks of living here, I leaped over the side and got in. I relax so much in the water that I am able to tap into wisdom I cannot access in regular going-about-my-business kind of days. It is such an easy way for me to get in a meditative state. I really have to do this more often! 

I settled in and called upon my 'team' of helpers from the spiritual realms. I asked a few questions I have been wanting answers to. For one, I want to know the deeper meaning of the 72 Names of G-d that the Kabbalists identified as very powerful healing tools. These are not just new agey things, and I want to make sure I present them as such in the art pieces I am creating.

I got some cool advice. I felt the energy of the letters permeate my cells, soothing them like a salve in places I had healed through psychological and spiritual work over the years. Like positive alchemy.

So here I am, clean, a bit wiser and ready to start my day. This could get addicting.

 

Power of Place

It’s taken me a long time to settle down and into my self but I feel like I may have found the place that supports me the best at this time. My last home ON the ocean helped me heal after my divorce and FLOW with my own creativity. I opened up to my art again and even allowed myself to tap into my Jewish roots which I resisted for years.

Now in Lenox, MA, two and a half hours west of my old home, I feel a very different kind of support. I am surrounded by trees, boulders and mountains. I feel very GROUNDED. In two short weeks I been able to settle in, unpack, and go out socially with a lot of new friends. I am most excited that I feel energized to put my work out in the world with more ease - artwork, workshops, online meditations, and even proposals to do corporate training again! Fun stuff that I couldn’t seem to energize as easily near the water.

Is it timing, creative community, the solid ground below me? Likely all of the above. What I know is it was the drive to create my souls work that had me unroot myself again. Moving from one place to another, year after year, had its challenges. Each place served a purpose in my evolution though. It was like adding and subtracting what works and what doesn’t so I could feel at ease and aligned with what is truly mine to do. I think I am getting there! Phew! It feels good.

Singing the New Story

I did it! I posted my performance of Humans Being Rag on YouTube and on my website. I wrote this song for the reunion of The Art of Humans Being gathering I helped co-create. We explored many ways of creating the new story for our world.

This performance was at Summersongs, the songwriting camp I went to last summer. I LOVED being with this great, creative and musical community. Thanks to Larry Seese of Bluesy Productions for creating the video and to Glen Roethel and Mark Dan for being my back up band! 

 

Aleph

I’m reading a book called Aleph. A friend gave it to me as a present at my wonderful going away party in Swampscott.

At first glance I was excited by the title then, I, and everyone else in the room did a double take and a big, deep sigh when we saw the author - Paulo Coelho  He is  the author of the classic  The Alchemist, a life-changer for many of us. He is writing about Aleph!? Wow. Cool. Very cool.

This is the most auto-biographical of his books yet. He’s on a journey of transformation, hoping to find more happiness and balance between his worldly life and his spiritual life. The Aleph shows up as a portal into all time, a place that allows him to travel to past lives and experience all time in the present moment. There is so much more and I can hardly put it down! Thanks Mimi!

The Art of Creating

At the end of August the earth and our world were literally shaking on the East coast of the United States with an earthquake and a financial plummet. All of a sudden I had a ‘hit’ - a deep feeling inside that it was time for me to move. I had opened up to my art, my Judaism and my singing over the past 15 months while living in Swampscott, MA. All of a sudden I understood, it was time to stop renting, move inland and have creative community around me so I could put my work out in the world more easily.

I follow those intuitive ‘hits’ as they often proove to be very sound. I wondered, ‘Where to now?” I remembered a friend saying that the Berkshires, where Tanglewood, Kripalu and many other creative and spiritual institutions call home, was a portal of conscious energy and a great place to live. So I started looking and just three weeks later I found the lovely house I am now living in!

Entering Peace

OMG! "Entering Peace" came to my mind and heart as soon as I drove into this magical place, the Hancock Shaker Village just north of Lenox, Massachusetts. I was taking part in a Peace conference co-presented with the Center for Peace through Culture.  I learned a lot, sang with Barbara and Graham Dean from Summersongs, connected with friends new and old, including Nancy Roof of Kosmos Journal, and took in the simple, elegant magic of this place.

My heart is full, full, full. I will be living near here soon, as part of a vibrant, creative community dedicated to social and spiritual activism, peace and conscious living. I am forever grateful.

 

Music of the Spheres

“You now what’s out there? A series of higher tones arranged by nature and governed by the physics of the whole universe. It’s an overtone. It’s an energy. It’s a wavelength and if you’re not riding it, great Lordy, you’ll never hear it.

“Where do you think it comes from, what I hear?”

“I think it comes from all around you. Really, I mean it comes through us, some of us. It’s invisible but I feel it.”

“So only some of us can hear it?” “Only some of us are listening.”

Wizard (Robin Williams) in conversation with 11 year old music prodigy August (Freddie Highmore) in the movie August Rush (2007)

For a rich description of the Pythagorean theory of music and wonderful scientific and cross-cultural descriptions music as a healing force see this article.

An Infinite Smile

I didn't know I had it in me to write creatively. But given the prompt "an infinite smile" during SummerSongs, the songwriting camp I LOVED, I was able to let go of my self-judgment after awhile and see what wanted to show up on the page.

"Behind her infinite smile you can see the years of pain, struggle, release, forgiveness, deep compassion and now contentment that brought her to this moment. Her eyes with their permanent twinkle let you know that she's mastered the journey of life, at least for now.

Wisdom gathered in the hills of Tuscany, in the vineyards that were adjacent to the villa and from the intergenerational stories that she heard throughout her many years flood her mind as she sits still during these cold winter weeks in Leonardo's attic studio.

Mona Lisa wonders how she will scratch the itch on her nose so as not to disturb the master at work."