Religion, Nihilism and an Old Poem that Just Got Published

I consider myself a deeply religious person. I pray three times daily, only eat what I consider to be allowed by G-d, and my Shabbes observance has grown to new and ever strict levels. Judaism and the performance of divine demands has become central to my life, even informing my views on love and the reasons and ways in which I create art; however, I was not always this religous person. My teenage years were riddled with the pain of not being able to "fit in," as well as intense dissatisfaction with American culture. This dissatisfaction manifested itself in the near deification of music, which I to this day will contend saved my life.

Mastering rock guitar (I'm usually quite humble but I am by most opinions a monster guitarist) was the only thing that saved me from a sense of nihilism that I now view as having been based more in love of G-d and a desire for people to live by the highest of ethical standards than anything else. Through guitar I was able to discover myself and conversely the silence within myself that is the same silence within us all. In Hebrew, the word for soul is the same as the word for breath, "neshama." Music allowed me to breathe and understand what breath truly is.

I had been an absurdist because people did not act in the way in which I felt that religion mandated we should. I was an absurdist because every human action, when done without awareness of some final end cause (not necessarily a practical one), seemed ridiculous and absurd. Also, as a prep school graduate, I was so disgruntled by ubiquitous materialism that I rejected all aspects of it.

Later as documented in the song "The Forces that Be" from my debut album Ink and Sound, I attempted to fit this mold, to be someone that I disliked and am not, to play a game in order to do something besides "not playing at all."

I am sometimes criticized for having forgotten about my punk rock ideals because my willingness to obey rabbinic laws and customs (minhagim). However, it must be noted, that I find many of the desires and the modes of living in our secular, materialistic society to be upsetting. That is not to say that I dislike the secular world. I am not Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) because there are many aspects of the modern world, such as education, arts and culture, film, that are central in my life. But the traditional American attitude that all things that are not pragmatic are unnecessary is a disgusting one and must be rejected because teleogical concerns should always trump utilitarian ones. Although science does it part, many of the mysteries of life cannot and will not be explained in our time and it is those mysteries that I have embraced because they feel so much more real than much of what our society clings to.

Anyway, that was a rather longish introduction to a new poem that I have published at Bibliophiles, a new print and digital zine based in Massachusetts. I wrote this poem nearly seven years ago when I had all but rejected my punk rock lifestyle and was in the midst of playing the social game as it were. I was miserably unhappy, frequently thought of suicide, and felt I had betrayed some sort of ideal that was higher than myself.

I had been sitting on a park bench in Harvard Sq. a few days after my 18th birthday and was debating getting a tattoo (this was in my pre-Jewish days). All of a sudden, a young teenage girl started talking to me about Salinger, Hesse, and indie rock. I forget what I had been reading at the time, but it was neither of these holy authors. Anyway, she shook me up. It almost reminded me of that Borges poem where he meets himself as a young man on a bench by the Charles River. She was me from three years before, complete with a gang of unkempt but cute punkish indie rockers. It was then that I realized either how far I had come as a citizen or how low I had stooped as a human being from who I may have been. Please read it and give me feedback. Again, it's an old poem:

http://thebibliofiles.weebly.com/virtual-zine.html

To close, a very dear friend of mine seems to have disappeared. More than anyone else, she epitomized the punk delusion and anarchist ideals of my youth and she was one of my best friends. I was told by a girl I used to love that this girl another one I used to love in a different way ran away to join the circus. Laura Carrig, if you are reading this, I dedicate this blog to you.