{"id":30147,"date":"2023-03-08T08:18:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-08T13:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=30147"},"modified":"2023-03-08T10:53:33","modified_gmt":"2023-03-08T15:53:33","slug":"extreme-concentration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/08\/extreme-concentration\/","title":{"rendered":"EXTREME CONCENTRATION"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #993366;\"><strong>I met<\/strong> <\/span>Earl (of Earl Bananas and His Band With Appeal) in Kansas City. Earl\u2019s band had been a minor sensation in St. Louis decades previously. Now Earl was a hotel developer with interests in trumpet, tennis, gardening and Orthodox Judaism. We talked about all that. We were at a Shabbat dinner.<\/p>\n<p>Earl said it was difficult to achieve <em>kavanah <\/em>(a prayerful mindset) in synagogue. It was a easier in music or even tennis, he said. He could really zone out at music and tennis. My wife, Alice, a gym teacher, said zoning out is also known as \u201cflow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Flow\u201d and <em>kavanah<\/em> are overrated. Face it, you can lose track of time at a casino or on Facebook.<\/p>\n<p>Try to <em>keep<\/em> track of time. That&#8217;s the challenge. At a bar mitzvah party, Yiddishe Cup strolled, going table to table, taking requests. We heard a crash \u2013 a table collapsing. We kept on playing. Then a second table collapsed. A third table went down . . . there were salads on the floor; 10-person round tables buckling; ice water, silverware and bread rolls all over. People were jumping away from the tables. People were soaked. We kept playing. I said, &#8220;We\u2019re on the <em>Titanic<\/em>, boys. Just keep playing.\u201d Extreme concentration.<\/p>\n<p>(The tables hadn&#8217;t been properly locked underneath.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; I met Earl (of Earl Bananas and His Band With Appeal) in Kansas City. Earl\u2019s band had been a minor sensation in St. Louis decades previously. Now Earl was a hotel developer with interests in trumpet, tennis, gardening and Orthodox Judaism. We talked about all that. We were at a Shabbat dinner. Earl said [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30147"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30527,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30147\/revisions\/30527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}