Tikkun Olam

Means heal the world

Welcome to another edition of my sporadic publication! There are a lot of new people here so I want to extend a warm greeting. I’m so glad you’re here.

It was almost unnoticeable when it happened. I began to swallow words instead of speaking them. I did it because I was a good daughter. And then I did it again because I was a good granddaughter. As a good participant in society, I tailored my words so they would fit, curated the feelings I could share, and limited the truths I could tell.

And for a while, when someone would ask about my music, I would tell them that I hadn’t written a song in a while; almost glad to have conquered this unrefined part of myself, proud to be outgrowing this tendency to feel.

This is how much I internalized society’s hatred of the feminine, the stormy, the emotive. This is also how much I lived in fear of cancellation.

Cancellation is the quiet weapon of a violent society. Family members cancel one another over political views, friends cancel one another over missteps, we watch humans get cancelled for sport on TV… “you have been voted off the island!” At one end of the spectrum, cancellation looks like this country’s mass-incarceration rate. It looks like a car plowing through bodies at a protest in an attempt to cancel an entire point of view. At the other end of the spectrum, cancellation looks like silence. We cancel the words from our very mouths.

Cancel culture fosters the idea that we are fragile, without margin of error, and incapable of loving debate. It leaves no room for the varied texture of our complete existence.

I asked myself recently: What truth am I not telling? And this song came in reply. I call it “Tikkun Olam means Heal the World.”

The lyrics are available in the video description, I just ask that you honor the art form and read them in tandem with listening. To those who struggle with the content, I want you to know that I hold your experience with a great deal of care. Should you feel inclined, replies to this newsletter come to my inbox. You can also reach me at hanazaramusic@gmail.com

I give special thanks to Laura Josephs for joining me on this song.