Controlled Power

I apologize for not having been around for awhile. I took this long plane flight over an ocean, and the thing is, they don't let anyone open any windows so you've got hundreds of people all breathing the same canned air for hours and hours, and it's enough for one of them to be spewing microbes or whatever and some of the others will walk off the plane sick... and it took me another half week merely to be able to think again. What's worse, I'm not certain I see a way around this. Some people are so rich they can have their own planes, and I'll bet they get to decide for themselves if they want to open the windows or not, but I don't see myself having those riches for a while, and in the meantime I'll have to do a lot of flying in the regular cans.

Anyway.

Rita is one of our most talented singers, with an extraordinary voice. Some people feel that in recent years she has been somewhat overdoing the passion and emotion, taking a powerful voice and turning it into a mannerism. I'm not enough of a music critic to know about that sort of thing. A few months ago she separated from her husband, Rami Kleinstein; they had been together since their teens, and must now be in their early 40s. She has now come out with a new album. Over here you can hear what I'm told is the best song on it. If the critics were right, she has taken note, and if anything, the incredible power of this recording is that she's obviously holding back, and we hear both the power and the restraint.

You don't need to follow the Hebrew, I think. Her theme is the dreariness after "you left", and the final word, biladecha, is 'without you'