Jack and May Musicant

A Daughter Is Grateful - Alice Bernstein Speaks at Congressional Auditorium

2010-03-06T20:24:00.003-05:00

On October 21, 2009, an event took place in the Congressional Auditorium in the US Capitol Visitor Center, "The People of Clarendon County"--A Play by Ossie Davis, & the Asnwer to Racism! based on the book edited by Alice Bernstein and pubished by Third World Press. The featured guests at this gala event were House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, and Congressmen John Conyers (MI), Elijah Cummings (MD), and Jose Serrano (NY). What follows is Ms. Bernstein's bio as it appeared in the printed souvenir program:

Alice Bernstein is a journalist and Aesthetic Realism Associate whose articles and regular column, “Alice Bernstein & Friends,” appear nationwide. She is the editor and co-author of the anthology Aesthetic Realism and the Answer to Racism (Orange Angle Press, 2004). Mrs. Bernstein was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, where she attended Abraham Lincoln High School, and majored in English literature at Brooklyn College. She is grateful to her parents, the late Jack and May Musicant, who were among the earliest students of Aesthetic Realism with Eli Siegel, for encouraging her desire for knowledge and her interest in people of all faiths, races, and backgrounds. Alice Bernstein had the honor to study in classes with Eli Siegel, and continues her studies in professional classes taught by Ellen Reiss at the not-for-profit Aesthetic Realism Foundation in New York City.
In 1963 she married noted photographer David Bernstein, and they have a daughter Rachel. Throughout their marriage, the Bernsteins have collaborated on many projects, including news stories and interviews, often illustrated with his photographs, and essays on cultural and historical subjects—for example, “Photography and Feeling: The American Indian” (1968), “The Opposites Visit Old, Old Egyptian Art” (1973), “A Ceremony of Grief and Triumph: The African Burial Ground” (2000), “Bronzeville and Harlem: Photography and Justice” (2004), and “Remembering the Civil Rights Struggle in Brooklyn—and Brooklyn Congress of Racial Equality” (2006).
Mrs. Bernstein began writing about Aesthetic Realism as the knowledge that can end racism in 1982 with a story against apartheid in South Africa. She is a scholar and contributing writer of many entries in African American National Biography, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (Oxford University Press, 2008), “the largest collection of black lives ever assembled.” Her entries include the great tap dance master Dr. Jimmy Slyde and South Carolinians Rev. Joseph Armstrong DeLaine, civil rights leader in Clarendon County, and Judge Matthew J. Perry, the first black lawyer from the Deep South appointed to the federal judiciary, after whom a U.S. courthouse in Columbia, SC was named in 2004. Her research also uncovered extensive information about North Carolinian Israel B. Abbott (c.1843-1887), carpenter, editor, and state representative during Reconstruction. In 2005 Alice Bernstein began the oral history project of interviews with unsung heroes, “The Force of Ethics in Civil Rights,” which in 2009 includes over 140 men and women— black, white, Asian, Latino, and Native American— around the country, videotaped by David Bernstein. About this project, State Representative Tyrone Brooks of Georgia writes, “I am grateful for what Alice Bernstein is doing to preserve our history and bring it to the forefront so that it captures the attention of young people.” The project was awarded grants in 2007 from the Puffin Foundation and the Yip Harburg Foundation.

Photo: Alice Bernstein at Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (Harlem, 2008), on the occasion of the first revival of "The People of Clarendon County" by Ossie Davis, after 53 years!

To read about the event in the Congressional Auditorium,

click here.

Their Love for Literature

2008-04-24T08:51:00.002-05:00

Jack and May Musicant had a love for literature, and I'm grateful that they encouraged this love in me. Their appreciation for the world literature was broadened, strengthened, and encouraged in the hundreds of Aesthetic Realism lectures given by Eli Siegel, which they attended for many years. I remember my mother coming home after hearing Mr. Siegel speak about Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, and reading it aloud to her children and our friends. My father read us Walt Whitman's poems, and some of his journal entries as a nurse during the Civil War. There were humorous books, like Life among the Savages, by Shirley Jackson--the "savages" being her children and the predicaments they got themselves into. And, of course, there were novels, like Thackeray's Vanity Fair, and Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe and The Pirate; the plays of Shakespeare, Eugene O'Neill, and short stories and histories--the wealth of knowledge the world provides.
At a recent Writers' Conference in Connecticut, I had the privilege of speaking about how I came to love writing, reading, and research based on my Aesthetic Realism education. That education began in classes I was privileged to attend, taught by Eli Siegel, and classes taught today by Ellen Reiss, the Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism. It gave me great pleasure to speak at this conference about the influence of my parents in my passion for literature, which is so much a part of my life and thought.
Here are some links to literary criticism by Ellen Reiss and others, which I see as thrilling, and having the exactitude that makes for the deepest pleasure and respect.
Ellen Reiss writes on poet Robert Burns: "I comment on two poems of Robert Burns that are a means of asking, How should jobs and work be in this land?"
Ellen Reiss comments on eight poems by Eli Siegel. The poems are titled "The Persistence of Fabric." She writes: "They are beautiful. They have the factual immediacy of cloth one can touch—and also the mystery that can be in the feelings of people: the emotions that whirl within us, or rustle in us, even as we put on a well-fitting garment."
Aesthetic Realism Can End Racism / Writing by Ellen Reiss and others. Educator Christopher Balchin Includes links to not-to-be-missed articles and websites countering racism.
Class Conducted by Ellen Reiss. "How Should a Child Be Seen?" A Report by Barbara McClung and Lauren Phillips, elementary school teachers
Ellen Reiss on J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter, & Romanticism. Commenting on Eli Siegel's lecture Aesthetic Realism and Nature Ellen Reiss tells of these opposites: the ordinariness and strangeness of reality.Ellen Reiss on "criticizing" John Keats in 1818. In her important commentary on Eli Siegel's lecture "Poetry and Keenness," Ellen Reiss describes the motive behind a notorious attack on the great poet John Keats, illuminating an anger in our time as ugly as the anger at Keats in his time.

The Beauty of New York City

2006-10-21T17:24:00.000-05:00

Jack and May Musicant were both born in New York City, Jack in Brooklyn and May (nee Schultz) in Jamaica, Queens. They each had life-long love for this city. I feel sure they would have loved the new website, "The Beauty of New York City." You can visit this website at: http://beautyofnyc.org

Marriage Is for Liking the World

2006-02-18T12:10:00.000-05:00

Jack and May Musicant were married on September 14, 1941, and like most couples they had the joys and turbulences of love. They were very fortunate to meet and study the education Aesthetic Realism, founded by the poet and philosopher Eli Siegel (1902-78), and to learn that the purpose of love is to use another person to honestly like the world. Here are some early photographs of my parents around the time they married--photographs showing two people liking the world. I'm very grateful to my sister Judy Rappaport for preserving these photos. In a recent visit to her home, we had a moving time looking at them and talking about them.

I am immensely happy that because my parents wanted to value what they were learning, they enabled me to learn it, too. On result is my cherished marriage of 43 years to photographer and cameraman David Bernstein.

The Musicant Family

2005-11-24T13:15:00.000-05:00

May and Jack Musicant with their daughters
(l to r) Alice, Judy and Gerri Ellen. Photo credit: Louis Dienes

A Father, Carpentry, and Beauty

2005-11-24T09:37:00.000-05:00

This article by Alice Bernstein, Aesthetic Realism Associate and journalist, appeared in her regular column, “Alice Bernstein & Friends” in many newspapers nationwide. She co-authored, “Aesthetic Realism Explains the Economy” published in The Carpenter, (Jul/Aug1992), the magazine of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners; and her story, "Union Leader Outlines Most Important Study for America,” about Timothy Lynch, president of Teamsters local 1205, appeared widely in 2002. About the present article, she adds the following:
"A love for carpentry and a passion for unions have been big things in my family. Both my grandfathers were carpenters in the early decades of the 20th century: Reuben Musicant was a stairbuilder and Aaron Schultz was a woodturner and joiner who died on a picketline in the 1930s. My father's older brother, Harry Musicant, was a carpenter and I have fond memories of watching him build window sashes in the workshop of a Brooklyn factory. The following is dedicated to them and to all who love fathers, carpentry, and beauty."

A Father, Carpentry, and Beauty by Alice Bernstein

As Father’s Day approaches, I think of my father Jack Musicant. He was one of the most fortunate people who ever lived. In 1946, when he and my mother May had been married five years and were parents of three little girls, experiencing the vexations, joys and hardships representative of many Americans, they had the good fortune to meet and begin studying Aesthetic Realism, the education founded by the great poet and critic Eli Siegel. What they learned made their lives happy, and I love them for enabling me to study this grand, kind, scientific education. “The deepest desire of every person,” Aesthetic Realism teaches, “is to like the world on an honest basis.” And the means to truly satisfying this desire is in the principle: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”
Although Jack Musicant died many years ago, I learned that I still have the job of trying to know him and using him to like the world. And so I look at a question he had, which others have had, and which Aesthetic Realism explained in a way that made my father feel understood to his depths.

My Father, Jack Musicant
.
Carpentry Puts Together Thought and Action
My father was a carpenter, and as a girl I liked to watch him use tools to build and repair many things. I remember the excitement of seeing him draw a plumb line with a chalked string, which he plucked to make it snap, creating an exact vertical line. I also learned from him the correct use of a level – the suspense of watching the bubble move until, there! it lined up in the exact center! The exactitude made for enormous pleasure!
Jack Musicant also liked to read and kept notebooks in which he pasted newspaper articles and copied passages from books. I had no idea that even as he cared for these things – carpentry and books – he also felt they were different and didn’t seem to go together.
Shortly before he died, my father wrote an essay, “My Fifty Years as a Working Man.” I am proud to quote Jack Musicant’s description of an Aesthetic Realism lesson he was privileged to have in 1953:

Mr. Siegel explained why I felt like a different person when I was studying than when I worked with my hands. He asked: “Can you combine thought and action?” I said No.
Mr. Siegel said he knew a person who felt he could only think while sitting down. “You have a feeling that thought is taking it easy, and when you are active that is something else. You’ve made a division between the resting and active life. Were you born with this division?”
JM: No, I wasn’t.
ES: You’ve been interested in words, and then in the active. Could a person punch a punching bag and still read Voltaire? Can you clench your fist and still think of America? You thought you should be very active, so you can give yourself the right to be in yourself later. Can you see thought as athletic? As you are listening to me, you are going through a lot of action. Thought is work. Trying to understand things takes energy.”
And he asked,

“Can you pound with your fist and say, ‘concept of justice’?”

As I pounded the table and said “concept of justice,” two things came together, and I felt very happy. I learned that honest pride comes from respecting reality and myself as a oneness of opposites. Mr. Siegel was going after my being a more integrated person. I saw it was possible to be actively thoughtful and physically active at the same time. For this I am very grateful, because my life, including my working life, took on more meaning. My mind had more energy, and my work became more careful and accurate. I had a new pride.

Jack Musicant, working

Thought and Hands Are One
I learned from Aesthetic Realism that my father represents the questions of all humanity. The burgeoning interest in home improvement -- with television shows, tools, and do-it-yourself stores – while very practical, also includes the hope in people to make thought and action, mind and body one. In his great essay “Art As Logic,” Eli Siegel writes:

“Thought goes on in art, and it is the very basis of art; it is art itself. It is thought that makes the hand right, and if the hand and eye help thought, why, then, hand and eye help logic: there is no reason why our bodies or senses should be seen as inevitably against logic.”

Ernest DeFilippis, Aesthetic Realism Consultant to men, has spoken and written importantly on this big subject. Recently we discussed notes of an Aesthetic Realism class early in his study when he was doing carpentry work. Like Jack Musicant, he spoke about feeling a division between wielding a hammer and studying literature, and Mr. Siegel explained, “Force is anything that can affect something else. It’s usually seen as physical, but there’s no such thing as body work without mind, thought. Mind is a force.” And with beautiful imagination, Mr. Siegel illustrated this by singing a popular folk song, and changing the last word:
There ain’t no hammer
On the side a this mountain
That rings like mine boys
That rings like mind!
In seminar papers and art talks at the not-for-profit Aesthetic Realism Foundation (www.AestheticRealism.org), Mr. DeFilippis has spoken about the immense value of this education, including what he learned from Mr. Siegel about the aesthetics of carpentry and the15th century Italian artist, Lorenzo Ghiberti. In a thrilling talk, “Ghiberti’s Bronze Doors—or, How Can Men Make Sense of Mind and Body?” given by Mr. DeFilippis in the Terrain Gallery’s historic series “Aesthetic Realism Shows How Art Answers the Questions of Your Life,” he discussed these doors which Michelangelo said, “might fittingly stand at the Gates of Paradise.”
Quoting Ghiberti’s description of “infinite delicacies which the eye alone cannot grasp, but which only the hands can discover by feeling,” Mr. DeFilippis said that the artist saw hands as an extension of mind. He continued:

“I’m very grateful to Eli Siegel for encouraging me to study…the relation of hands and mind with more accuracy, wonder and joy. As I do carpentry work now, I have come to see there is a dialogue between my hands and mind. For example, as I am chiseling, digging a groove, making an edge or a curve, my mind has an idea, a picture of what it should be and my hand responds to it and also says what it thinks. As my finger runs along an edge it might suggest, ‘it’s got to be sharper; it doesn’t feel right this way,’ or mind will say to hand, ‘don’t make the groove too deep, go easy, keep it shallow.’ And when I stop and look, there is a feeling of wholeness because hands and mind have worked together to try to make something beautiful.”

Beauty in a Hammer and a Crowbar
I remember feeling wonder about the variety of tools in my father’s workshop, including a micrometer which measured the thickness of wires, some as fine as a hair; and a power saw which could cut a tree trunk with ease. I love Aesthetic Realism for encouraging me to think about the people in history who used their minds to devise the right tools for all kinds of work. Recently at the Terrain Gallery, I was stirred by Steven Stankiewicz’s bound book of 64 etchings, titled Hardware: a homage to tools: wrenches, pliers, hatchets, bolt cutters, hammers, saws, power tools, dancing calipers. The artist’s lovingly exact, sometimes mischievous rendering of these tools, had me see opposites in the world, the workman, and in myself in new ways.
Crowbar from Hardware, 64 etchings
by Steven Stankiewicz

Sledge Hammer from Hardware,
64 etchings by Steven Stankiewicz

There is a proud and humble sledge hammer, standing modestly, bathed in radiant light. While this simple object with its heavy head and slender handle has the power to smash matter, we feel through the delicate lines and the subtle changes of light and dark, a soul within, faintly trembling, perhaps even yearning, to be known. And there is a severe and jolly crowbar. This solid, heavy object - made of dense metals enabling it to pry loose the hardest spikes - has jaunty curves depicted by exquisite cross-hatching making its blackness velvety. Though it weighs a number of pounds, the backlighting sets it out daintily in silhouette. And little star bursts of light running along its edges, cheerfully lift up all that heavy, black weight. We respect the mind of the artist and others who came to these useful, beautiful objects.

These, then, are instances of using Jack Musicant to know and like the world, which I look forward to continuing all of my life.

Alice Bernstein is an Aesthetic Realism Associate and journalist whose articles appear nationwide.

Jack Musicant Loved Baseball

2005-10-23T09:29:00.000-05:00

As America celebrates baseball through the World Series, I am reminded of Jack Musicant's love for the game which began, as it does for many, at a tender age. Here is Jack (center) with two of his friends in the Kendales. Raymond is on the right. I don't know the fellow on the left. One of the many things my dad loved in my mother, May Musicant, was her enthusiasm for the game.

In coming posts I'll write about what my father and others learned from Aesthetic Realism about the beauty of baseball and how it can be used to know and like all people and reality itself.

My family were fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and I remember the great World Series of 1955--when the Dodgers beat the Yankees! This photograph was taken in Brooklyn in the 1920s, but the youthful energy and grace are as fresh as ever!--Alice Bernstein

Aesthetic Realism and the Answer to Racism

2005-09-20T21:45:00.000-05:00

Orange Angle Press has published a book, Aesthetic Realism and the Answer to Racism--Articles Published Nationwide and Abroad by Alice Bernstein and Others. To find out about this book and speaking engagements on this urgent subject in colleges, libraries and other educational venues, visit the website of the publisher: http://www.orangeanglepress.com

Opposites in the Art of Sewing by May Musicant

2005-05-08T09:51:00.000-05:00

Note by Alice Bernstein. In honor of Mother’s Day, it moves me deeply to publish an essay by my mother, May Musicant, from 1971 about the important subject: sewing. Among my earliest memories are my mother and grandmother sitting at a Singer foot pedal sewing machine, making clothing for our family. Often my mother sang while she sewed, and I can still hear the sound of her lovely voice blending with the mechanical whirring of the machine. May Musicant died many years ago, and I have a feeling of wonder that I, or anyone who knew her, can still think of her in a vibrant, lively way. Later in her life she was an Aesthetic Realism Consultant to women.

OPPOSITES AND THE ART OF SEWING
BY MAY MUSICANT

It is my belief as a person who has the good fortune to study Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy founded by the American poet and educator Eli Siegel, that the principle, “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves," is true! And in surprising ways I have found its truth borne out in the very old domestic art of sewing.

Sewing makes the world more orderly and at the same time richer. Sewing quietly demands my attention and when I approach it with respect, with a desire to learn, both the garment and something central in myself are better off. That is a beautiful fact! Many opposites are made one in sewing. Some, which are crucial, are sameness and difference, tension and ease, separation and junction.

If you examine a piece of cloth and hold it up to the light, whether it is knitted or woven you will see that it is a oneness of sameness and difference. The vertical threads are crossed by horizontal threads. Within the weaving process, the warp or the straight grain, and the woof or the cross grain, make the cloth. The narrow border at the edge is called the selvage. This is the strongest part of the cloth, and it is interesting that this is where the cross grain and the straight grain in a concentrated way, terminate, reverse, and begin again, illustrating that cloth is a oneness of sameness and difference, junction and separation.

To make sure the fabric is strong and at the same time gracefully draped, the straight of grain, the selvage, which runs parallel to it, is used as a guide. This is a basic principle of sewing and it is an important instance of the aesthetic oneness of sameness and difference in reality, and also freedom and order as one thing.

Cloth can be cut in many ways, but the bias cut is the most f1exible and dramatic. A true bias is where the lengthwise threads of the fabric are folded to the crosswise threads, making them perpendicular to each other. This means that when the vertical and horizontal threads meet at a 45 degree angle forming a diagonal, something new happens to the cloth, making it most flexible and easily shaped. It is also the most dramatic, particularly when the cloth is woven with stripes or a plaid.

In the VOGUE SEWING BOOK, Patricia Perry points out:
“Some of the most attractive plaid effects are brought about by cutting the plaid on the bias. The final result is a chevron which is two sets of stripes meeting at identical angles.”

Now it happens the bias is a diagonal line, a oneness of vertical and horizontal, sameness and difference.

There are mathematics and geometry, straight line and curve in the world and they are in sewing, as well as within ourselves. Every person is a oneness of horizontal and vertical. Our bones are vertical and horizontal and our thoughts and feelings can be described as narrow and wide, concentrated and expansive.

In What's There: An Aesthetic Realism Art Inquiry, about the photographs of Lou Bernstein, Eli Siegel discusses the diagonal line in a very exciting way. He says:
"The diagonal is the most successful line, all in all that we have. I challenge anybody who is depressed to wear his hat on the side at a jaunty angle and say ‘I’m depressed.' If you have this slant, it is against complete prostration.”

In my experience I have seen this as true. Our attitude to the world and ourselves is mirrored in the kinds of clothes we choose to wear and the way we wear them. Color and line show emotions and attitudes.

Since humanity's beginning people have been concerned with three basic needs: food, shelter and clothing. The Bible tells how Adam and Eve “Sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.”

And since that far off time, the making of clothing has provided a means of livelihood for millions of people. It has been the cause of much pleasure and pain. The reasons for this go deeper than we know. A poem in the Mother Goose collection goes like this:
"Bonny lass pretty lass wilt thou be mine?
Thou shalt not wash dishes, nor yet feed the swine,
Thou shalt sit on a cushion, and sew a fine seam.
And thou shalt eat strawberries, sugar, and cream."

A girl's head can be turned by such an appeal, and I must say it sounds inviting. Sewing can be a source for leisure and recreation. It can also be a means of exploitation and sorrow. In his poem, SONG OF THE SHIRT, Thomas Hood the 19th century poet, expresses it this way in one stanza:
"Oh Men, with Sisters dear!
Oh Men, with Mothers and Wives!
It is not linen you're wearing out
But human creatures' lives!
Stitch-stitch-stitch.
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
Sewing at once, with a double thread,
A shroud as well as a shirt.”

A person who saw the subject as serious and somewhat ridiculous was the Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle. In Sartor Resartus he relates clothing to legislation. He shows that clothing and fabric are symbolic of ethics and aesthetics; and how man is governed by natural laws and laws of men:
“Already when we dreamed not of it, the warp of thy remarkable Volume lay on the loom, and silently, mysterious shuttles were putting in the woof… For neither in tailoring nor in legislating does man proceed by mere Accident, but the hand is ever guided by mysterious operations of the mind.”

So, as the opposites are in the world, in cloth, they are also in ourselves. We want our lives to be well organized, as we yearn to have our thoughts organized. A woman can use sewing to be separate and dismiss other things. I have done this and I have seen how hurtful it is because it is against the deeper desire to relate oneself and one's skill to the scope and design of reality. Aesthetic, Realism is a means for people to organize their thoughts, through the aesthetic structure of relation. Sewing can be used to strengthen this relation. Every piece of fabric has a right side and a wrong side, as there are the front and back of a garment. They must be organized and joined efficiently.

Generally the complete garment is cut from the same piece of cloth, but often a collar or bodice is cut from cloth of a different color or texture. Front and back are both important. Sometimes the back of a dress can have a detail which seems more interesting than the front. While this adds to variety, it is the front of the garment that is given most detail. Every garment is a oneness of sameness and difference.

I am fascinated by the technical aspects in sewing, and one reason is that I see them as related to my life. For instance, take the family. How the members of a family see each other as separate, will determine how well they are unified. When a mother sees her child as too much of the “same cloth,” there is a bad mingling of separation and junction and often causes pain in both mother and child. Each person wants to be seen as a unique individual yet part of something large—the world itself—not just the closed family circle. In making a garment, each part must be cut separately and related accurately, before it can be joined as a unity.

Tension and ease must work together in order for a garment to fit well. The fullness and tightness around the waist must be comfortable. If it is too tight it may tear, as some people have discovered to their embarrassment. The dart, a short tapered seam so important in the proper fit of a garment, is a oneness of tension and ease. It is a means to maintain fullness and tightness at once in relation to the contours of the body. In machine sewing if the tension of the upper stitches is not uniform with the tension of the underneath stitches, the thread bunches up or pulls unevenly, making the seams clumsy and awry. If the stitches are too loose, the seams will gape.

There must be a good relation of tension and ease in all technical aspects of sewing, just as there must be a good relation of these same opposites in ourselves. Our attitude to the world will determine how at ease we are in it. Mr. Siegel once said, “An idea of heaven is where all the buttons and buttonholes will get together.”

I value the way Aesthetic Realism enables me to relate sewing to my life. In 1969, when the Opposites Company of the Theatre was preparing its production of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, based on Aesthetic Realism, I wanted to contribute to their important work. I went to school to learn costume design and in time I became a Costumer Supervisor.

In an Aesthetic Realism lesson on May 2, 1971, Eli Siegel showed how theatre set-design, lighting, and costumes are related to each other and to life. For example he said,
“Sewing is for the purpose of making the world and ourselves more fitting to each other. There is a constant question in art and in life itself: what is fitting? You have an artistic question. What setting is fitting? What lighting is fitting? Fitting has two aspects, 1) the truth aspect; it must be adequate, and 2) it must bring out power. The first thing in food is to satisfy hunger. The second thing is to enjoy it. Food is fitting, but good food is even more fitting. What is fitting is what is related well.”

And then Mr. Siegel said to me,
“Everything must be orchestrated and fit in, Mrs. Musicant. You are looking for a world that fits you, and you want to fit in with the world. Everyone wants that. The problem of getting the right costume and how to make it right is a problem of fittingness.”

I'm glad I'm a student of Aesthetic Realism with Eli Siegel. What I have learned has opened up a new way of seeing myself and the world. I am convinced that people are always trying to put opposites together in themselves. And this is what we are doing when we sew. We want a garment to fit and we want to fit in with the world.

Two Sister: Judy and Alice

2005-04-13T08:37:00.002-05:00

Judy Rappaport & Alice Bernstein

Judy Rappaport and Alice Bernstein/Past and Present Join

2005-04-13T08:35:00.000-05:00

One of our hopes in this blog is to relate the past to what is happening today. In the book Definitions and Comment, Being a Description of the World, Eli Siegel defines 214 words that are central in all philosophic thought, which the education Aesthetic Realism honors deeply, including: aesthetics, chemistry, space, truth, nature, existence, reality, and also some surprising terms: home, duty, actuality, humor.
In his definition of the Past, Mr. Siegel writes:
“The aim of history is to make past feeling felt more, or, simply, the past felt more. The past changes into the present by being remembered."
As my sister Judy Rappaport and I think and talk about the past and about our lives in the present, I love both past and present more--and I love my sister more than ever. Above is a photograph of us taken in my home in 2004 by my husband David Bernstein.

The Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company

2005-03-20T11:50:00.000-05:00

Among May Musicant's proudest accomplishments was her work as the costume supervisor for a theatrical company which performed Ibsen's great play Hedda Gabler, based on the new, unprecedented interpretation by Eli Siegel, founder of Aesthetic Realism: "Hedda Gabler was essentially a good person." Today the Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company continues to show, through the drama of the world, that this principle is true: "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves." I encourage you to attend the April 10th special matinee performance of "Comedy and Music Defeat Contempt--An Ethical Celebration" with scenes from Sheridan's School for Scandal: http://www.aestheticrealismtheatreco.org/flyers/SheridanHandel05.pdf

and visit the company's website which states:

Who We Are

The Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company presents innovative talks by Eli Siegel, founder of the philosophy Aesthetic Realism, on plays such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Othello and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Sheridan’s School for Scandal, Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and George Kelly’s The Flattering Word.
Each production of our Company is a rich weaving of scenes from the play with commentary on its meaning, the intention of the playwright, the motives of the characters, the beauty of the writing--and what all this can teach us about our lives today. Our productions have as their basis this principle stated by Mr. Siegel:
All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.
Both personally and professionally, we're grateful to Mr. Siegel for his understanding of the drama, and the selves of people, including our own.
http://www.aestheticrealismtheatreco.org/

Sheldon Kranz, Poet and Aesthetic Realism Consultant

2005-03-13T11:08:00.000-05:00

Sheldon Kranz, was a colleague of Jack and May Musicant in the study of Aesthetic Realism with its founder, the great poet and educator Eli Siegel. Mr. Kranz was an editor, author and poet, who taught a groundbreaking class on literature at the not-for-profit Aesthetic Realism Foundation for many years. We encourage you to visit Mr. Kranz's website to learn more.
http://www.sheldonkranz.com

May Musicant Cared For Music

2005-03-05T10:28:00.000-05:00

May Musicant had a love for all kinds of music throughout her life. As a child, I remember hearing her play records of works as diverse as Beethoven, Dvorak, Chopin, jazz by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and vocal music from around the world including folk songs and operatic works that my father cared for, too.
May also had a lovely singing voice and among my deepest and happiest memories as a girl were those in which she sang, especially the Yiddish songs Oyfen Pripechik and Rozinkes mit Mandlen. An upcoming post will be her paper on Handel's Messiah, based on this principle of Aesthetic Realism stated by Eli Siegel: "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves." This paper, which she presented in an event at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, has fresh, exciting thought about this magnificent work. --Alice Bernstein

Jack and May Musicant - Introduction

2005-01-30T11:16:00.000-05:00

Jack Musicant (1910-1977) and May Musicant (1922-1988) were my parents. They were married on September 14, 1941 and had three daughters. My father was a carpenter and lumberman all his life with a big care for literature and poetry. My mother was very energetic, and also loved music and sewing. In later years she became a costume supervisor for a theatrical company.

In 1946 Jack and May Musicant began their study of the philosophy Aesthetic Realism which was founded by the poet and educator Eli Siegel. I love them for enabling me to know and later to study this comprehensive, kind education. What my family learned in lessons and literally thousands of lectures given by Eli Siegel on all the arts and sciences, on history, language, and world thought throughout the centuries, is knowledge that can benefit every person in America and beyond. The purpose of this blog is to tell about this, as a beginning for my later writing a biography of my parents.

One of the things I value most in my study of Aesthetic Realism is learning that though someone has died, we can always know them better, always see more about them than perhaps we did when they were alive. So as I tell about my parents, I am also seeing more deeply who they were, and I believe that meeting them will do you good.