I don’t really have a monumental focus for my first non-political post. It’s just, like, why? Why this and why now? Blogging is already passé, this isn’t, as far I as I can foresee, going to make me any money, and I’d be absolutely mortified if it won me any fame. So why?

I think part of it is that I’ve always wanted to be a writer. Not the cheese and crackers, angst-filled, Village-dwelling MFA type of writer- I have a day job and I’m not planning on quitting it for a less secure future. By writer, I mean that I’m able to express my inner self well in writing. I’m true, in a way that a reader says, “Ahhhh, yes. I know that. I’ve been there.” And whether someone’s sides are splitting or they’re nodding thoughtfully, real communication with someone else is always gratifying.

So, if you like writing, you end up reading a lot about writing. And one of the rules in writing, one of the necessary goals is, “Find your voice.” Well, I’m working on it. But it’s hard to find your voice when so much of you is splattered across your day. In their heads, people are part planning, Franklin-Covey style, and lumbering for the cafeteria, and guilt tripping themselves about not going to their great-aunt on a free Sunday, and wondering about the mysteries of life. In my head, I’m funny and philosophical and deliberate and pathetically self-pitying. And it’s hard to get that out consistently into a “voice”. I know it’s hard to get out consistently in action, even though to the people around me I have a very well-defined personality. I just can’t track it from the inside.

I went into the Sam Ash across from Kings Plaza once and met a jazz musician who worked part-time in the guitar section, and we were “talking in music” (lehavdil, the way Torah scholars “talk in learning”), and I told him about a guy I know who plays bass and was constantly trying new types of music- folk, rock, blues- to stretch himself as a musician.

“That’s good”, he said, “but it’s okay to focus in on one thing. It’s okay never to leave the world of jazz, to make yourself the best jazz player in the world.” I think it’s true for writers as well. I think it’s true for people as well. I think the best writers and the best people are those people who know their one good voice and display that to the world.

Another, second rule of writing, which like the theory of relativity has now either been completely debunked or become axiomatic, is “Write what you know.” Well, I know me. So like the advice I took from the jazz musician at the music store, I decided to focus exclusively on one genre of music and one voice. My music is religious American Jewish music. So’s my voice. It’s so much a part of me that it gets awkward trying to explain it, kind of like my femininity. It’s not a preference or an upbringing, it’s identity. The fact that I’m female has very little to do with how my parents raised me. The same goes for the rest of it.