New Age

Abstract

New Age is a memoir about growing up as a witness for my mother, an atheist Jew, who rejects a terminal cancer diagnosis by embracing non-western healing modalities transforming into an occult feminist, living each day full of gratitude, joy, and music. The scene is 1980s Boston, which happens to be the perfect place for a terrible tragedy to unfold. Not only is Boston home to cutting edge western medicine, but it is also open-minded enough to support expansive, new age healing modalities, coop grocery stores, a thriving music scene and a non-western spiritual community. The story starts in December 1970, with the beginnings of my music education in utero, and chronicles the ups and downs of my family’s life through psychotic breaks, divorce, a terminal cancer diagnosis, a groundbreaking lawsuit, a major miracle, a hugging saint, and the daily traumas and magic one might expect growing up with a very non-traditional mother and the constant threat of impending death. New Age contains many short vignettes or essay chapters which flow back and forth from past to present as I uncover buried memories and try to connect my children to the grandmother they never met. I do this work through a ketamine assisted psychotherapy session and by reconnecting with some of the esoteric healing modalities and people that helped my mother in the 1980s. The story is told from a few points of view. There are three flavors of first-person: adult narrator talking about the present, adult narrator looking back, remembering, and child narrator, sharing the moment with the reader. There’s some third person, mostly used to give some background on my parent’s lives, to round out their characters. These chapters are usually events that I was either not alive for or too young to participate in. There’s one chapter that uses second person, where I speak directly to my mother. In addition to all of those, I include excerpts from my mother’s writing which consist of journal entries, poetry, and some prose from my personal archive. New Age is a memoir about memory, grief, connection, music, healing, and being present in the moment.