 |
| My sister reading her ghost story thrillers to me and my bother |
Link to my composition, inspired by Maria’s first novel, Dark Plums:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNMDJGH5pDo
FROM MARIA TO KANSAS CITY BOB
After high school I spent a year and a half at Washington University, St. Louis, getting up enough ‘A’s to get me as an out-of-state student into UC Berkeley. (This would make up for my expulsion from Friends Academy in my junior year).
Well, me and KC became good friends. He even ‘comped’ me to see him play in an East LA. Jazz club. (Alas, I got to hear only half a set before I made the mistake of going outside for a cigarette, where a passing St Louis police car grabbed me and forcibly took me ‘back across the river’ to my Wash U dorm. You see, young midde-class looking White boys were not allowed in Black East St. Louis after dark. (No race mixing here!)
Anyway, KC Bob’s enthusiasm sent me going onto more piano time playing my own stuff. But my ‘free’ playing would never have influenced Bob except for my sister Maria’s non-stop, extravagant, super intense, furious, almost drill-sergeant demand that I had to keep playing my own improvisations regardless of my broken classical training and non-existent jazz training. Every time she came home from the city or from college or from Paris she would insist that I play for her. And no matter what I played, whether good or bad (or in my own opinion terrible), her praise and insistence that I keep going, well, DID keep me going – without which KC Bob would have probably just kept walking by that fateful evening in the Washington U student lounge. And I would not have the finger strength and fluidity to make my first album, Space Swell, and have that German reviewer praising my technique.
You could draw a line from one to the next: Maria -- KC Bob - Space Swell.
---------------------------------------------------------------
After high school I spent a year and a half at Washington University, St. Louis, getting up enough ‘A’s to get me as an out-of-state student into UC Berkeley. (This would make up for my expulsion from Friends Academy in my junior year).
Well, me and KC became good friends. He even ‘comped’ me to see him play in an East LA. Jazz club. (Alas, I got to hear only half a set before I made the mistake of going outside for a cigarette, where a passing St Louis police car grabbed me and forcibly took me ‘back across the river’ to my Wash U dorm. You see, young midde-class looking White boys were not allowed in Black East St. Louis after dark. (No race mixing here!)
Anyway, KC Bob’s enthusiasm sent me going onto more piano time playing my own stuff. But my ‘free’ playing would never have influenced Bob except for my sister Maria’s non-stop, extravagant, super intense, furious, almost drill-sergeant demand that I had to keep playing my own improvisations regardless of my broken classical training and non-existent jazz training. Every time she came home from the city or from college or from Paris she would insist that I play for her. And no matter what I played, whether good or bad (or in my own opinion terrible), her praise and insistence that I keep going, well, DID keep me going – without which KC Bob would have probably just kept walking by that fateful evening in the Washington U student lounge. And I would not have the finger strength and fluidity to make my first album, Space Swell, and have that German reviewer praising my technique.
You could draw a line from one to the next: Maria -- KC Bob - Space Swell.
---------------------------------------------------------------
I. LONG ISLAND –
a) Our ‘Marrano’ parents: both our parents had something they were hiding. My father had been an active Communist from the 1930s until around 1950, and then gradually left the Party. There was a three year period of transition, during which I think we were the only house in Westbury that had both Stalin’s Short Course of the CPSSU and Orwell’s 1984! Of course, the 1950s were a dangerous time to be an ex-Communist in the USA if you wanted to keep your job, and we were relying on Dad’s job teaching sculpture at Adelphi College to get by, aside from the occasional gift from Mom and Dad’s parents.
However, mine wasn’t so bad, because I could sort of hide behind my brother Mike, who had an ace in the hole – actually, TWO aces. He was athletic, on the school baseball and football teams – and he had a connoisseur’s knowledge of rock and R&B. And to some extent I was protected by my brother’s reputation - and by his links with some of our local school mates, with whom athletics and knowledge of R&B were both highly valued. But Paula’s few friends from the private school all lived over a half-hour drive away. So, until Paula was old enough to start taking the Long Island Railroad into New York, she had very little social life, nothing to protect her from the sado-masochistic vibes that Dad and Mom continued to send our way. (figure 1)
b) When Maria’s turn at high school ended, she was a pretty lonely woman, usually dressed all in black, who wrote bitter prose fragments about ‘inverts’ and outcasts, in the currently academically fashionable style of John Hawkes and others. Her solitude was occasionally broken by screaming accusations of our parents, punctuated with swears and blasphemous curses. So me and Mike tended to avoid Paula, except when she was listening to my piano improvisations.
Her only periods of calm or sanity was when she hung out in Manhattan and Greenwich Village, meeting and having casual affairs with artists and musicians - most importantly for me, the young composer and jazz theorist of Lydian harmony George Russell. After a few weeks George and Maria broke up, although they stayed friends for quite a while, long enough for George in 1970, via Maria, to urge me to go to New England Conservatory instead of Berklee (suppose I had? There’s an ‘if’ for you!) Well, back when they broke up Maria left her copy of George’s first album on her bed. When she was back in the big city I snuck in and listened to the album – and was blown away. What complex harmonies and melody lines, and yet always with soul and strong emotion. I listened to that album every day for years – it became my ear training lab even after Mingus, even after Coltrane.
So the two major ways in which my sister Maria influenced my music was first, her way over-the-top enthusiasm for it, and second, that ‘accidental’ gift of the George Russell record.
Here is the link if you want to hear it for yourself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-AlfFyRtu4&list=RDEM7JsdUHyPfC2qJaKXSqxg_Q&start_radio=1
2. PARIS AND MARIO – Paula Cronbach becomes Maria Espinosa; Lelia translation
Mario was a Chilean journalist and writer, although he was an alcoholic more than either profession. When I met him back in Westbury in 1963 – after he and Paula had married – I disliked him intensely, and sneered at him as being not a writer, but a talker and drinker. However, Mario had an ability to see the truth in relationships between people, and inside people themselves. During his years with Maria (no longer Paula), he tore apart the myths our family had been hiding under, ripped off almost all the masks (except Dad’s) and in the process, freed Maria (Paula no more).
Maria says she owes her freedom, to Mario – that he set her free from the influence of the sado-masochistic menage at Westbury, Long Island, and gave her the self-confidence to return to her writing career. Mario also started her biologically creative career, as it was after her marriage, just a few months before returning to Westbury, that Maria gave birth to Carmen, and discovered that she loved being a mother.
 |
| Dad and Mom Mario / Maria |
They had returned to Westbury partly because they thought Dad’s and Mom’s connections could help Mario get an academic job, but his drinking and fights with our parents ended that possibility. Then they drove West – and Maria really started her new life. Living first in Marin County, then in Berkeley, she separated from Mario - although still seeing him socially. And she dedicated her first book to Mario, a self-published collection of poetry (Love Feelings, 1967 and then another book of poems (Night Music, 1969).
This was when I really spent a lot of time with my sister. We both were living in East Berkeley, as was my band Chambray, so it was easy to drop by her place after a rehearsal or a gig. We would drink red wine and smoke a little grass while talking for hours. It was very romantic, sitting in the evening dusk watching the streetlights slowly come on while we delved into every detail of our family and love lives. It was then that I finally told someone about my Horror House dream: That all of us were siting cramped in the little attic bathtub, all naked, all stabbing each other with kitchen knives – except for Dad, who was sitting also naked on the toilet, conducting us by swinging an obscene little doll to and fro. I had this dream twice, the second time the night before I left home for college.
The stabbing metaphor in this dream reflects itself in a dream I had 40 years later when playing church music in Seattle – the second dream took this stabbing elements of the first and turned it on its head (really just the stabbing concept) the Lord telling me that He liked what I was doing because all these people were having fun “without stabbing each other”. So I should keep on playing. But only with my own human effort, because I was far too morally corrupt for my body to contain even one touch of the Lord’s little finger “You would explode!” But I must practice more and harder to build up my own strength using my own energies: don’t expect any assistance from the Lord, just practice more and harder, because this was a chore the Lord wanted done – no excuses!
Maria told me a lot about her life with Mario, and her perception of Mom being a potentially a poet who had sacrificed her own career to help Dad advance his. That one reason Mom was so often sad and angry with us was because she saw us as chains holding her down. Maria read me one of Mom’s poems, where she says she is surrounded by baby birds crying for light, but Mom had nothing to give: she herself is looking up to the sky begging for light. And then Maria’s awareness that Dad was hiding his true self behind a mask, that his eyes did not show his soul but were as if made of porcelain or glass.
And of course, we talked about our careers – Maria had just published two books of poetry, while I was sure that Chambray was on its way to the top of the rock world. So we were two happy people back then, seeing a rosy future shining through the wine-glasses and marijuana incense, in the rays of the streetlight shining through the purple-dark twilight.
These conversations were the first time we really opened up to each other. So now my sister was one of my best friends. For the rest of my performing career, I sent her cassettes or tapes of everything I did, and Maria always sent back huge praises while saying she loved dancing to my music. When I started writing this book we had many email exchanges and long chats.
3. PUBLISHING SUCCESSES: MOM AND LELIA –
Mom did one huge favor to Maria in the early 1970s, which really started off Maria’s career. She introduced Maria to a friend of Mom’s who was in the publishing business. This friend introduced Maria to another publisher’s secretary, and this one to another … and this led to Maria’s big break. This last contact was able to get Maria assigned to write an English translation of George Sand’s novel Lelia. The feminist movement was really taking off in the early 1970s, and George Sand was a feminist hero for being such an early spokeswoman.
B) Lelia - Lelia was considered one of her best novels, but had never been translated into English. This alone helped establish Maria’s writing career, but what made this an even greater success for Maria was the praise for her translation came from none other than V. S. Pritchett, considered by many as the best English essayist of the day (one thing that Gore Vidal and Anthony Burgess agreed on). In a lengthy review of Lelia in The New York Review of Books, the leading literary periodical from the 1960s until today, Pritchett, who usually said little or nothing about translations of classic literature, heaped praise on Maria’s translation of Lelia: "Maria Espinosa's translation . . . is remarkable for coming very close to the resonant vocabulary and its extraordinary images.” (New York Review of Books, 1976).
Germaine Bree, one of the most well known feminist authors, also praised Maria’s translation highly (“This translation … opens up, brilliantly, perspectives on a gifted woman’s reaction to her world. It should become one of the central texts in woman’s studies program”). Ms. Bree proved a prophetess here: Lelia soon became a central text in women’s studies programs throughout the English speaking world, and almost 50 years later is still going strong. This success established Maria’s reputation, and laid the ground for the publication of her later novels.
Germaine Bree, one of the most well known feminist authors, also praised Maria’s translation highly (“This translation … opens up, brilliantly, perspectives on a gifted woman’s reaction to her world. It should become one of the central texts in woman’s studies program”). Ms. Bree proved a prophetess here: Lelia soon became a central text in women’s studies programs throughout the English speaking world, and almost 50 years later is still going strong. This success established Maria’s reputation, and laid the ground for the publication of her later novels.
4. WALT SELIG -
When Walt Selig came to the US from Israel, he had only an 8th grade formal education, but had gotten an M.A from the University of Chicago via a correspondence course from the United Kingdom. This was while living on a kibbutz and serving in the Israeli armed forces. This had taken so long, with a war interrupting his studies, that Walt decided not to go for a Ph.D.
Nonetheless Walter got a great job at Lawrence Livermore, and worked there as a highly regarded chemist until his retirement. He also published numerous papers in scientific periodicals.
(Maria speaking) “Walt was the most important man in my past life.”
"He was instrumental in helping me achieve writing goals and getting published ....
his financial and emotional support were incredible. I owe him a tremendous debt."
"I was with him from 1978 -- divorced but remarried... remained with him--emotionally... even though we were physically apart until his death in 2009... I would leave for extended writing periods... but always came back... he was incredibly generous in spirit... although dour and Germanically rigid...except for bursts of joy and spontaneity, which especially came out when he went Greek dancing at a community center."
"The Greek dancing helped as a deliverance… Walt was free and joyful at these dances."
And it was at one of these Greek dances that Maria met Walt.
Part of what made Walt rigid was his experience as a post-World War II Jewish refugee. He escaped to Israel and joined the Israeli army. He was as tough as any sabra, but always had a big heart behind his tough demeanor.
And what a brain! He worked at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory as a research chemist until his retirement. He was incredibly generous in spirit.
He hated to see Jews who had abandoned Jewish culture. He could tolerate and befriend a non-religious Jew who celebrated Hanukkah, but any Jew who tried to completely abandon Jewish people and culture was a ‘renegade’ in Walt’s eyes.
Aside from her 2 books of poems and one novel, almost everything she wrote was during her time with Walt. He was very understanding and generous about her writing, letting Maria leave for extended times while she worked on her next project, then receiving her with open arms when she came back with the new ‘baby.’ He was completely supportive of everything Maria wrote. (This is the same combination of loving support and great expectations that Duke Ellington’s parents used to make him a genius – note to parents: unstinted admiration and love combined with unstinted work expectations appears to be the best way to raise a child)
Maria also worked her tail off for Walter and the family. He had several kids from his prior marriages, and Maria helped raise them all, as well as Carmen. Luckily for the kids, many went to Berkeley High School, one might describe as an institution still high from the 1960s, so Carmen had freedom to experiment with all sorts of lives and professions. She wound up becoming a psychiatric social worker with what felt like magical powers to see your problem and present a cure (see Appendix). If she had ever gone on TV I am sure Carmen would have her own tabernacle by now.
Maria used Walt and his family as the central characters on her last novel Suburban Souls (although she also created a lot of plot – this is probably her most fictional novel!)
 |
| WALT SELIG |
5. MARIA’S TEACHING JOBS
In addition to writing and helping take care of the numerous children in the Selig-Espinosa household, Maria did a lot of teaching: English as a Second Language in Oakland and San Francisco, and after she left Walt, in the Southwest (Tucson and Albuquerque). She also taught creative writing from 1986 until 2013, in the same parts of the US as her ESL classes = (San Francisco and the Southwestern states). For a detailed list see her resume.
6. GARY MARES
I met Gary at the local bar-night club. “Just a block from my temporary apartment. There was a local band I think and disco type music.” This was after she had lived a few years in Albuquerque, around 2009, 2010, on December 23 (Maria remembered the day but not the year). She had stayed in contact with Walt, taught ESL and writing, and had made friends with several other women, writers and feminist Jews.
When Maria saw him, she asked him to dance. She was in the process of moving, and one reason she asked him to dance was because he looked strong enough to help her move the next day. He had already noticed her, as she entered the dance hall. At first Gary was “annoyed by her ‘hippy dancing”, and also ‘didn’t want to get involved” – but when Maria came up to him and asked him to dance, he couldn’t say no. “After one dance, he said “Let’s go somewhere else.” I hesitated... did I trust going off in a car with a stranger. my intuition said okay… Two days later was Christmas. On December 26 we went out on our first date … and have been together ever since.”
Unlike Walt Selig – whom I met often when visiting Berkeley from Los Angeles over a period of years – I met Gary only once, for twenty minutes during a ‘chat’ I was having with Maria about this chapter. I was immediately attracted by his deep love and concern for Maria, now 84 years old! And they had been together 13 years now, during which time Maria wrote what may be her last – and to my mind greatest – novel, Suburban Souls. Maria, like me, is suffering from the energy and memory losses of old age (who knows if I will live long enough to finish this blog?), and I feel great that she has someone as strong, intelligent, and reliable as Gary to be with her. Looks like Gary is her Rodel (although Gary is not an M.D.).
Maria sent me these notes about Gary’s background: “Gary was a mischievous troublemaker from the beginning...in revolt against his parents...called in at school because of the vast difference between his IQ and his grades....” Gary went on to college, but he ‘goofed off academically.”
Gary did landscape design when he was younger. Then he did various kinds of social work. Currently Gary is with Cuidado de los Niños, where he works as a liaison between parents and staff. He also spends a lot of time helping Maria (who is 84 years old, and needs a lot of help with physical activities.)
(Come to think of it, it’s a blessing that all three Cronbach children have someone devoted to taking care of them when moving into terminal old age – me and Rodel, Mike and Libby, and Maria and Gary.)
Maria and Gary have been together 14 years now.
7. THE MARRANO CONNECTION – OUR FAMILY, ALBUQUERQUE , AND MARIA’S THREE SPOUSES
a) Marranos - In 1492 the Jews were expelled from Spain, where they had been living for over a thousand years. They had created a rich civilization, and some of their most famous religious classics – Maimonides Guide for the Perplexed, the poetry of Ibn Khaldun, among many others,
For around 500 years, there was no clashing of religion in Spain, especially the southern half, which was an Islamic kingdom. The Christian North started warring on the South, and took over the whole Spanish peninsula piece by piece.
By 1492 the Christians controlled the whole Spanish peninsula. As this was an age of supreme religious intolerance, the Spanish rulers – Ferdinand and Isabella – decreed that by a certain date, everyone living in their country had to adopt the Christian religion or be killed. Thousands of Jews and Muslims were killed – estimates run to over a million deaths – and any who stayed in Spain had to hide their true religion. Any who were caught obeying a Jewish law – even one as non-theological as avoiding pork – was thought to be an apostate and were tortured horribly by the Inquisition, and then burned alive at an ‘auto de fe’ (= act of faith). These hidden Jews were called Marranos (= pigs).
When Holland, the Netherlands, and other countries adopted Protestant religions, they often adopted a policy of tolerance for the Jews, and so many Jews who had been hiding or disguised as Christians fled to these tolerant countries.
Some, however, stayed in Spain – whether because they loved the climate and culture (the tolerant Christian countries were located mostly in the much colder North-eastern Europe), or they couldn’t sell their financial assets without creating suspicion, which could led to torture and being burned alive (in a ceremony called ‘auto da fe = act of faith!) . These secret Jews were called Marranos (= “pigs”). Those who couldn’t escape to another country lived in constant fear.
 |
| Auto da fe |
When the New World was discovered, Spain’s explorers took the lead in discovering new lands and claiming them for Spain. For over 200 years almost half of the world belonged to Spain, including the Philippines, all of South and Central America, and around a third of what would become the United States.
In a situation like that facing the Marranos, there is some safety to be gained by living far away from the center of the empire. In the days of the Soviet Union, dissident-minded people would move to the most Eastern part of Siberia, as far away from Moscow or Leningrad as one could get. In China it was common for poets who had run afoul of the Imperial court to move hundreds of miles west to a remote mountain or farming community. So even though branches of the Inquisition were established all over the Spanish empire, they were staffed for the most part by less skillful inquisitors and have less records to help their search for heretics. For this reason, many Marranos moved to the outlying areas of the Spanish empire, and the American Southwest was a popular choice.
Maria’s novel Incognito gives an exciting and at times horrifying picture of a Marrano family torn apart trying to survive in 16th century Spain. “The core issue is that of identity, and the story deals with the effects of concealing one’s identity in order to survive …. I enjoyed the novel, which does indeed ask that recurring question: who is a Jew?” (CHAIM SEYMOUR, The Association of Jewish Libraries Newsletter)
 |
| Our Marrano ancestress - our great-great-great-great grandmother (on my mother's side) |
On both sides of our family a search for roots goes back ultimately to Spain. On both sides we were Marranos, but the act of hiding their religion for centuries meant that both families – the Cronbachs and the Silvers – were very weakly religious, and had a minimal knowledge of Judaism.
I believe that on my Mother’s side, the insistence that they have no connection with Judaism had a lot to do with the self-hatred that caused Mom’s early death. Maria has always been veryspiritual. She raised Carmen to know that she was Jewish but not forcing Carmen into any one type of Judaism. Which is a main reason that Carmen is such a healthy-minded person.
c) Albuquerque – After moving to New Mexico, Maria discovered that there were many Jewish groups here: liberal and feminist synagogues, meditation groups, writing circles, and so on. She made many friends here and her nervous energy seemed to be more moderated each time I talked with her or saw her. It turns out that a lot of Marrano families moved to the Southwest.
d) Mario and Gary – All three of Maria’s spouses were Jewish or came from Jewish roots.Walt was a solid German Jew and devoted to Judaism – he came very close to being a Holocaust victim instead of a Holocaust survivor.
Both Mario Espinosa and Gary Mares were raised Catholic, but had Marrano roots. Mario’s family name was originally ‘Goldfarb’, and the Goldfarb family came to Chile from Spain. Gary’s family came to New Mexico over a century ago, “and had very recently hidden Jewish origins …. His father told me all about this …. proud of his Jewish ancestry, although nominally Catholic.
8. MARIA’S HOME PAGE
Maria Espinosa – Author
MARIA ESPINOSA is a novelist, poet, and translator as well as a teacher. Her publications include five novels: Incognito: Journey of a Secret Jew, Dark Plums, Longing, which received an American Book Award, as well as Dying Unfinished, which received a Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence from PEN Oakland. Her fifth and most recent novel, Suburban Souls, tells a tale of Jewish German Holocaust survivors in 1970’s San Francisco. She has also published two collections of poems, Love Feelings, and Night Music, and a critically acclaimed translation of George Sand’s novel, Lelia. Espinosa is concerned with human communication on a level that transcends the norms permitted by society. Her novels focus on the subtle as well as the obvious forces that shape a human being.
My favorites:
Dark Plums – a dark story turns sweeter and sweeter as the heroine, Rosa, a Chicana from Texas, is spiritually rescued from an ‘’artist-pimp’ by a Holocaust survivor (check on how Maria said this and use that).
Incognito – a historical novel about the Marranos of Spain - ‘hidden
Jews’ who if discovered were tortured and burned alive by the Inquisition.
Once the hero escapes Spain, he goes back and forth between Christianity and Judaism, until he flees to the New World.
Dying Unfinished - a semi-fictional portrait of our Mother and our family, it covers a lot of the same ground as Longing but is a much more accurate and better-written picture of our family and the Long Island-Manhattan scene.
Suburban Souls – A study of a Bay area suburban family in the 1970s, it has a much more exciting plot than even Incognito – while maintaining her interest in character description, she also has a fascinating and intricate plot worthy of Stephen King or Joyce Carol Oates. For me, this is her best and most exciting novel.
Maria has won two awards, the American Book Award in 1996 for Longing, and the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award in 2010 for Suburban Souls
She also published several short stories and poems.
=====================================
 |
| Maria visiting me in Seattle on publicity tour for Incognito (2002) |
 |
| Carmen chatting with Rodel's Mother in Pasadena Gardens, 1987 |
APPENDIX: Charismatic Carmen's Visit to the Philippines
Of all the people I met in my life, none had the almost magic power of Maria’s daughter Carmen, a social worker-therapist.. Carmen was always well-liked , but I never had a hint of how much psychic power she had until she gave me a therapy session when visiting me and Rodel in Seattle. I was amazed by her ability to go deep diving (as the current saying is) into the depths of my psyche in just a few minutes. But I never realized how much psychic power she had until she visited us in the Philippines last year.
The COVID scare was over, and so those restaurants that had survived the shutdown were open again. Rodel and I took Carmen to one of our favorite Filipino restaurants, DeLantera, where all is enjoyably elegant, from the service to the cuisine.
While we were eating a small band started playing – a duo of a guitarist-vocalist and an accompanist on a small drum machine. Carmen felt like dancing, and since my Parkinson’s made me ineligible, Rodel, with his Manila ballet training, was her partner
They got up, facing each other, and stood stock still. Carmen shrugged her right shoulder and then returned to a statue still position for a few beats.
Then she raised her left shoulder for a few beats and went back to statue position.
Then she started to dance, and almost immediately the other two couples in the restaurant got up and joined in. A few seconds later our waiter joined in, and was immediately followed by the whole staff – the maître’ d, the busboys, even the cashier. As the band started the second verse, the kitchen crew came boiling out onto the dance floor that the restaurant’s main room had become. All this in five minutes, to a quiet duo playing a medium tempo ballad. I couldn’t believe my eyes!
The duo kept the music going for another five minutes, and when they stopped, every person in the restaurant was standing on what had become the dance floor. Now, with my Parkinson’s I don’t walk well, and when I stood up with the help of my cane, customers and staff together practically carried me out to our car, with Carmen the magic princess in the lead.
Now I have been in all sorts of wild dance scenes in my life – from the 60s hippy dances to the early 70s funk-disco – but I had never experienced anything like this. Maria, in addition to writing some fine novels, had raised a daughter with magical powers. A long, long way from the distraught Paula caught In Westbury, Long Island!
Comments
Post a Comment