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figmo
Clam Chowder, and Minus Ten and Counting.
My first exposure to anything con-related was a Clam Chowder album that a college frend had; it was mostly folk music with a twist here and there, and I knew that they performed at cons. Then somewhere along the line I learned about filk -- I'd known of computer- and SF-related song parodies for a while but didn't know that people actually got together and sang them -- and that sounded like another reason to go to a con. Around this time the tape Minus Ten and Counting was published and it hit all my wanna-go-to-space nerves, and this was almost professional music (compared to what I'd expected of filk), and someone told me that I'd hear stuff like this at cons.
So I got that friend to take me to a con (Unicon, somewhere in the DC/Baltimore area -- it's dead now), and the filk circle (probably mediocre on an absolute scale but I had no point of reference) blew me away, and I went back for more.
It would be a couple more years before I would work up the nerve to actually sing something in public, and I never wrote my own stuff.
Yes, I'd been reading SF for years at that point, but never really got as into the panels at cons. I enjoyed reading, but didn't find sitting in a room listening to people talk about it to be all that exciting.
2. What made you decide to convert to Judaism?
Short cryptic version: Without meaning to or looking for it, I bumped into the truth and felt compelled to follow it.
Slightly longer less-cryptic version:
I was pretty much an agnostic; I wasn't interested in religion, having rejected what I grew up with. I am, however, someone who likes to learn stuff, so I absorbed bits and pieces here and then from friends in and after college. (We didn't have any Jews in the small town I grew up in. Or if we did, they kept it to themselves.) I even went to a couple seders just for the learning experience. But that was all.
Eventually I found myself dating a secular Jew. He didn't care about religion at all, but we did go to his family for Pesach because they did that. It was more of a family reunion than a religious occasion, but I paid attention to the haggadah and wanted to know more. He wouldn't or couldn't answer most of my questions, though, and I didn't push.
We split (for completely unrelated reasons). Pesach came around, and I found that I cared. I schmoozed my way into a campus Hillel seder and realized that there was something about Judaism I was missing. (That is, it wasn't just that I missed his family.) I was rather confused, and proceeded to do a lot of reading and talking with people. The more I learned, the more I found myself saying "yes, that's right" or "yes, I agree". I still wasn't sure about this whole God idea, though, but being a good little engineer, I decided to hypothesize God, behave sincerely in an effort to reach him, and see what happened. And I became convinced that there was in fact someone out there who was nudging me to pay attention. So I did.
There's a longer version here (I should write a FAQ or something :-)). It was written in 1999, but since it's mostly recounting the past that's ok. (There is also a much longer version, but I figure most of my friends don't care. :-) )
3. What made you decide to keep Kosher?
It was a gradual progression. I spent a while at the stage where I didn't eat non-kosher species (because the torah said not to) and I didn't eat beef-dairy combinations (ditto), but I didn't see the justification for all the rabbinic fences (separate dishes, waiting periods, chicken as meat, etc). Gradually, I realized that there was probably hidden dairy in some meat meals (e.g. was there milk in that loaf of bread?), but that restaurants probably understood "vegetarian", so I stopped eating meat out. I don't remember when or precisely why I started buying kosher meat; it probably fit into my philosophy of "if it's easy you may as well do it".
One morning I woke up with the idea that it was time to separate the dishes. I don't know where it came from, but I decided to do it. Shortly thereafter I received an unexpected gift of a set of glass dishes. Hmm.
Eventually I decided that if I had gone this far I may as well pay attention to the little details. I replaced some utensils (wood and plastic) with dubious pasts, bought some new stuff, and paid a lot more attention. I found that the mere act of having to pay attention when cooking, eating, and shopping was meaningful to me, and it wasn't really a big deal to have an extra sponge and an extra dish towel at the sink.
I'm not 100% there by traditional standards. I will buy food that doesn't have a hechsher, for example, if there's no hechshered version present and I believe from inspection of the ingredients that it's ok. (I don't buy non-kosher meat, though.) I have been forced to make some compromises that I dislike for the sake of the marriage. But I know how to cook food in my kitchen that is up to the stricter standards, and when it matters (for certain guests, for example) I do that. I wish I could just do it all the time, but shalom bayit and all that...
4. When you're not listening to filk, what kinds of music do you listen to?
- folk music (mostly singer-songwriter stuff like Fred Small and Eric Bogle, but also Steeleye Span and similar)
- renaissance music (particularly dance music and polyphony)
- medieval music (motets, other songs, estampies)
- Jewish music (Israeli and NFTY-esque stuff, not so much the eastern-European stuff)
- occasionally soundtracks from musicals
- electronic/modern stuff that I don't know how to classify (e.g. Christopher Franke, Cliff Art)
5. If you were stranded on a desert island with only the essentials and were told you could only have one musical instrument or device, what would that be, and why?
Hmm. If I can have a source of power, a computer with music-composing software, because I'm at least as much a composer as a performer, and I can get adequate playback from the computer to hear what my work sounds like without being able to play it for real. (And hey, that way I'd get off my butt and actually get back to composing. :-) ) If I can't do that, then it's a toss-up between the dulcimer (because I enjoy playing it) and an instrument I don't currently know how to play (because I'd have all the time in the world to learn), like viola de gamba or 'cello. The latter presumes that I can bring instructional material of some sort, though. :-)
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