Shema Productions

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! 

 

Peace Meditation

Happily measuring rooms in my new house in Lenox, MA in joyful anticipation of my furniture coming in a couple of weeks I am overcome with sadness. “Send in the Clowns” is on. It is part of a collection of Broadway tunes I am playing. All the years I didn’t care for myself or where I delayed in taking wise action come sweeping through my cellular memory.

I put down my measuring tape, sit on the bed and begin the free virtual peace meditation that I lead every morning for ten minutes. I imagine my ‘tools’ - the Hebrew letters and more - because I need to address this feeling NOW.

Dangerous Beauty

 
My favorite movie of all time is Dangerous Beauty, a true story of Veronica Franco who was a famous courtesan, poet, writer and defender of love and women’s rights in 16th century Venice. Veronica’s mother convinced her to be a courtesan because she recognized her daughter’s beauty and thirst for knowledge. She knew that given the family’s low status Veronica would live a life of drudgery if she did not choose this path of pleasure. Women of that time, even those of wealth, were uneducated and disempowered. This was their only path of freedom, as limited as that was.

In the movie, Veronica’s mother brings her to a richly appointed library. “Mother,” she says, “we can’t go in there!” Her mother explains that while common women are not allowed in, courtesans are. She says, “Courtesans, my dear, are the most educated women in the world.”

I love the sumptuousness of the movie and what keeps bringing me back to it again and again is the message. Passion, a woman’s voice and her value as an intelligent and worthwhile human being are worth fighting for.

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.