this is not an internet comment section

on art, grief, and protest

When I get off stage, people often ask me about my musical influences. I never know exactly how to answer, because music seeped into my bones before I knew the concept of a “musical influence,” before I ever picked up a guitar. In high school, I listened to Regina Spektor, Death Cab for Cutie, Iron & Wine, Elliott Smith, and the like. I remember driving to the hospital once, on the way to the waiting room, listening to Regina’s song Laughing With. I was trying not to cry in the back seat. ‘No one laughs at God in a hospital. No one laughs at God in a war.’ My friend’s brother was in the ICU. He had been driving too fast on a wooded road, and it wasn’t looking good. Her words made me feel less alone. ‘No one’s laughing at God when they’re starving or freezing or so very poor.’

Last month, I went to see her concert, just to scratch that sad teen-aged itch. Just Regina and her grand piano. I sat there listening, hoping she’d play that one song. I hadn’t heard her music in a long time. I hadn’t been following along. But I’d always admired how strange she allowed herself to be, seamlessly moving from angelic falsetto to barking like a seal and back again, all in the same song. She gave me permission to be weird.

My friend Olivia and I bopped our heads to the music, nostalgia kicking in. Halfway through the show, Olivia left to go to the bathroom, and just when she left the room, someone started shouting: “Free, free Palestine! Free, free Palestine!” He rammed his raging body against a security guard, fighting to get on stage. Regina stopped singing. The room went quiet. “You’re just yelling at a Jew,” she said.

Regina and her family emigrated from the then–Soviet Union in 1989, fleeing discrimination as so many Jews have before. She was nine. The protester didn’t make it on stage. What would he have done if he had? I hope he would have waved a Palestinian flag. But then I remembered: they didn’t search my bag when I came into the building.

The next five minutes were unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. The audience came alive and angry, every opinion across the vast divide flying through the air. I held my breath. “Am Yisrael Chai!” a woman shouted to my right. In Hebrew, that means “long live the state of Israel” or “long live the Jewish people,” depending on how you interpret it. “We love you, Regina!” someone cheered from the middle, begging the show to go on. “I’m watching children starve,” someone else cried out from the front. “There’s a genocide happening,” another woman yelled, heartache in her voice. People wooed, desperately hoping she would just start singing again; hoping they wouldn’t have to sit in this discomfort for a second longer. “I thought this was different than an internet comment section. This is real life.” Regina said, kissing the mic.

The shouting continued. “Why can’t you just say it? Say ‘Free Palestine!” She couldn’t say it. Or she wouldn’t. Why couldn’t she just say it? Instead, she dared people to walk out. “You don’t have to be here. You can leave if you want. Now’s your chance.”

Some people walked out. Most stayed. The concert went on. My friend came back from the bathroom with no idea what she had missed. A lot can happen in five minutes. Regina sang. I don’t know how. Her voice was shaken at first, but she gathered herself and went on. To her, it must have felt like a Jewish triumph. To stop would have meant cowering in the face of antisemitism—letting them win. She paused before her next song, deciding what to say: “I think what’s happening here is that they don’t want us to feel welcome. Well… I feel welcome here. I feel welcome.” The crowd clapped and cheered, louder than ever. I was quiet.

The protester found his way back into the theater. “Free, free Palestine!,” he yelled, arms and legs flailing against big men who moved him once again toward the door. Regina said: “It would be nice if one generation of my family didn’t have to move to a new country and learn a new language just to feel safe. That’s why I know English. We were othered there, and now you are othering me here. It sucks. Yes, it sucks. The whole thing sucks.” I sat in my seat, crying now—torn into pieces by the pain coming from every corner of the room.

I see myself in Regina; a Jewish woman on a stage, fearing for her safety. A target of antisemitism—or at least feeling fear that I could be. But is that really what this is? If she had not been so selective in her compassion, so unwavering in her support of the state of Israel, even 661 days into watching the worst war crimes of our lifetime unfold from the comfort of our phones, I don’t think I would be sitting here shaking in my seat.

I see myself (past self, alternate-universe self) in the woman yelling Am Yisrael Chai. How many people in this room even know what that means? I went to a Jewish school until 8th grade. I had a bat mitzvah. I learned about Israel. All signs point to Zionist. It’s an anomaly that I’m not one. I’ve been to Israel three times. I speak some Hebrew. My teachers, my uncles, and my childhood friends could have been that woman shouting Am Yisrael Chai. I could have been her too, if I hadn’t also been to Hebron and Bethlehem, met Palestinians, stayed in their homes, played with their children, and heard their stories.

Muhyiddin used to go to Jerusalem with his grandfather to buy socks and see a movie, but now with the wall, the forced checkpoints, and the hard-to-get visas, they weren’t always allowed. Thair was thirteen when he was taken by soldiers from his bed in the middle of the night, forced to watch his mother and younger sister beaten first. He spent his adolescent years in Israeli prison. He’s still not sure why. There’s nothing inherently wrong with saying Am Yisrael Chai. It’s an affirmation of Jewish resilience at its best. But in that moment, in that tone, it made my stomach churn.

If you go back farther, maybe it was just luck that my great-grandfather, Louis, got on a boat to the United States in 1901, and not Palestine, when he left Ukraine as a refugee. Israel was still 47 years away from becoming a state, but Jews had already begun fleeing Europe and seeking safety on that perpetually contested land, starting in 1882. In an alternate universe, I am an Israeli Jew—led to believe all Arabs are the enemy, that they want death to all Jews, that we must protect the Jewish (ethno)state of Israel at all costs, even starving babies. Yes, I know not all Israelis believe that, but many do.

Back in the theater, I see myself in the interrupter, channeling his deep well of rage into “Free, Free Palestine,” filling the echoing hall with his anger. I see myself in the woman watching children starve on the internet; and in the man begging his hero, “Why can’t you just say it?”

Why couldn’t she just say it? Say “Free Palestine.” Say something. Anything. Say: Of course I don’t want to see children starving. Say: I am devastated by the senseless killing of all innocent lives too. Something. Anything. Please.

I walked out of the theater to ride the swell of anxiety and grief bubbling up in me; to build a dam to stop the inevitable flood of tears. I walked down the hallway, wall to wall with lockers, and I saw my young self walking to class with headphones on, wondering about the world. No one laughs at God on the day they realize that the last sight they’ll ever see is a pair of hateful eyes. What if he had had a gun? Deep breath in. Slow exhale out. Hands shaking. Walk it out. It’s okay. You’re okay.

In the bathroom, I greeted my teary blue eyes in the mirror. I am Regina. I am the interrupter. I am the woman in the front. The man in the middle. The girl to the left. Inside the stall, I took a second. Two women walked in. More shouting. “Those people are such idiots! What do they think? That she’s responsible for all of this??? She’s just a person. She doesn’t know what’s going on.” (Yes, I think she does.) One friend said to the other, “I didn’t want to get up to go pee because people would think I was one of those Palestine freaks.” My eyes grew wide. Freaks. Freaks!!! Freaks???

It took everything in me not to yell back “Are you paying attention?” How could you not be one of those Palestine freaks too? I tried to shake it off and sit back in my theater seat, trying to force the tears to stop (they didn’t), trying to listen to the music (I couldn’t). What the fuck just happened? This is not an internet comment section. There is no easy way out.

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If you read all the way to the end of this long-winded essay, thank you. It’s been a long time since I’ve shared anything of a political nature on the internet, because it feels impossible to cut through the noise or say anything that’s not already being said. It also feels impossible not be be misunderstood. It is a weird time to be Jewish in America. Today is Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year and a day of atonement. We are meant to think back on our year and ask for forgiveness for all of the ways we have fucked up. Well, we have fucked up. Today, with the unwavering support of the US government, Israel intercepted a humanitarian flotilla headed towards Gaza, carrying milk powder, baby formula, and 500 international activists. What a shame. I don’t think we deserve forgiveness today.

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It feels strange to plug a show after all that, but I would love to see you on Saturday, October 25th at Rose City Guitar Company. RSVP here.

<3 Blair