You have a substack called “Psychic Courtyardism?” What is that?
Before social media, I used to put on klezmer shows with friends and for each show I would try to make a little zine. One of the zines I did was called “A Guide to Yiddish Lawn Maintenance“- which was my historical exploration of how we’ve come to think about those spaces outside the home and what they mean to us.
Long story short— amongst my ancestors, those spaces were expected to be more social than the deliberately empty lawns that we find in America. But no one ever told me that—
Hence your confusion.
Hence my sitting in a field somewhere in North Carolina with a broken lawnmower wondering how the hell I got here. And hence Courtyardism.
Psychic came from my reading of the philosopher/analyst James Hillman, who championed the idea of soul or psyche as an alternative to the rigid dichotomy of religion (spirit) and materialism (matter). As a perspective, soul gets lost in our current culture—we can’t really see it anymore— but was, according to Hillman at least, a way of viewing the world which helped us make sense of suffering. It worked in weird ways.
Like culture?
Yeah, Hillman used to talk a lot about images, but it’s hard to know exactly what he meant by that— he also talked about the imaginal— which sounds cool but when you’re forced to explain it, you realize how vague he left it. My blog is really just an attempt to try to put more meat on those bones and show how it worked historically and practically, without removing the poetry.
Yes your subtitle is “Practical Tips for Entertaining”
Yes. And there are all kinds of goofy but very practical ideas in there— the lament jam, the inclusive same-sex dance, experiments in dada poetry reading, the value of bear dancing— but I think I also wanted to show that this psychic stuff happens whether we want it to or not. Psyche can’t help but be practical in the sense of being embodied in our real lives. Psyche is where all that advertising and morality and shadow ends up. It’s this huge iceberg where we all live but which we are polite enough to never talk about. In a perfect world, art and music would help us navigate it, but I’m not sure that really happens these days. It’s kinda wild when you realize how we’re all just running around out here with these bizarro image-worlds we’ve been force-fed and there’s so little help that any of us get in dealing with them.
Psychic Courtyardism reminds me a little of the “Front Porch Republic” idea.
Oh that’s funny— you mean the rightwing thing? Yeah the idea of conviviality—of what the hell happens—or should happen, or could happen—when we step outside the little tyrannies of our own little private homes and interact with others isn’t an idea owned by the left or right (hey I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about politics?) After all, frat houses and country clubs are also places where these needs are met. But to me, just admitting that deep down we all need others—not just to fulfill our material or physical needs—but on a soulful and psychic level to me renders us a little humble and supports something vaguely “socialistic.” But if people on the left don’t name this need and help find ways to support it, those needs can and will be twisted in other ways—mostly to sell laundry detergent but also much much worse.
If nothing else, it’s an interesting field where left and right might be able to talk to each other without relying on the usual cliches. What is your vision of the convivial?
I always thought it was funny that these rightwing folks used the metaphor of the “porch”—an architectural innovation of African Americans.
You definitely sound like a Psychic Courtyardism reader.
Ha ha. You spend a lot of time on lament? How does that fit in?
This was a bit of a surprise to me. I had been researching lament for years as part of my interest in klezmer music, but I didn’t quite understand it until writing this blog. Without getting too lost in the weeds, ritual lament is, like soul, an easily misunderstood “third thing”- most people think it’s about consolation or catharsis (religion or psychology)— but it’s really about neither. And every time I poke my head into the history of some art or music movement, I almost always find the old ritual lament hiding somewhere, whether it be klezmer or old-time fiddling or Shaker gift drawings.
Shaker Gift Drawings?
A key aspect of lament is communication with the dead—who gets to do it and why and how., I’ve been really surprised about how lament is the thing that connects all these dots. I find it so often that sometimes I worry that I might be coming off a little crazy.
Well you did write an entire book on the subject that as far as I know is just a pdf sitting in your google drive?
Guilty. I guess I am a little crazy. Do you know anyone who wants to publish it?
I don’t know why I am this way but I can tell you I’ve been doing this for way longer than this blog. It’s just a weird way of looking I guess.
Let me try to explain it with a story. In my There is No Klezmer Guitar series, I looked at a lot of interviews with contemporary klezmer musicians. Usually somewhere in the interview was an admission that they got into klezmer because they just wanted to play music with others, or wanted to connect to their own culture in more meaningful ways—some sort of psychic convivial impulse. But if you look at the community and what they talk about amongst themselves—they never talk about this—it’s almost as if its a little shameful to admit. Instead they talk about who played third trombone on the second section of some 78rpm record from 1922. Now I love that trivia as much as anyone—but I also think there’s no reason to not talk about the other stuff. Maybe it ruins it if you talk about it too directly, who knows, but wherever there is that kind of shame, it usually points to a lot of psychic power.
We endless talk around this issue—money, status, geekdom—why can’t we talk about the thing it is that we really want?
I guess the irony is that writing about this stuff as an independent researcher is not very convivial after all?
Ha ha. Yes you nailed it. I have some readers I really respect. People who are experts in their fields and who offer me just enough feedback to keep going. But also I feel strongly that even if I were to completely disappear, the topic—conviviality or belonging or this strange lamenting “holding” thing we do for each other but which is so hard to cultivate—or even notice—is worthy of our attention. We live in an age where this just happens to be a huge blind spot and its driving us all a little coo-coo bananapants. Sane, non-spectacular conviviality can’t help but swim against our cultural tide—it can’t help but be viewed as weird or nonsensical—which is why we should just lean into it and get it over with—
aka “Psychic Courtyardism”?
Psychic Courtyardism.