Librettist - Lyricist

2020 Robert and Stephanie Olmsted MacDowell Fellow

From now on, I will be known professionally as Lauren Kahane.

“Taslitz” was fine when I was practicing law, and irrelevant when my kids were still home and I was simply “Mom”. But it isn’t comfortable anymore. It does not conjure who I aspire to be as an artist.

“Kahane” is not a random choice.

My father, Lawrence, was born to Milton Kahane. Milton died in his early 30s, when my father was three. A few years later, his mother - my grandmother – Gloria, married Joe Taslitz, who adopted my father. Lawrence Kahane became Lawrence Taslitz. My father didn’t tell my sister, brother and me that he'd been adopted until we were adults, concerned we wouldn’t treat Joe like our grandfather.

A word about Joe Taslitz:

Joe fled Odessa when he was 17. Came here. Taught himself English. Put himself through law school and spent his career working at a bank. He was strict. Stern. There was a whispered about temper I never witnessed. Joe wasn’t a bad man, but he was not warm. Even though my brother, sister and I saw my grandparents every Sunday growing up, Joe never remembered my name. Every week he'd ask, "Stacie?” (My middle name.) “Tracey?” (My sister’s name.) “Which one are you?" 

Occasionally, Joe'd take the family to dinner. He'd claim his place at the head of the table, and tell my brother, sister and I if we were good children - seen but not heard - we'd be rewarded at the end of the meal. Our reward was always the same: a piece of the hard candy Joe secreted in his pocket. Cylindrical. Hard on the outside with a soft, fruit flavored center. Wrapped in a heavy white paper, imprinted with the image of fruit, the flavor spelled out in fancy script. In French.

One last Joe Taslitz story, for no reason other than I’m not likely to write about him again:

Joe worried about dying early, too. When Joe was 40 years old, he had “a heart attack” and was told by his doctor to avoid stress. Whereupon Joe stopped driving, leaving Gloria to chauffeur him around until she, too, stopped driving. 

Joe’s health stayed good, until sometime in his 80s, when something went wrong in his brain. He had surgery. Afterwards, based on the assumption Joe was too old to do well, he and Gloria moved into a senior residence. And there they stayed. Joe lived to 104; Gloria to a week short of 100. My father, Lawrence, died at 71, predeceasing both of them.

My name should be, was "meant" to be Kahane. I like the sound of it. "Kahane" announces itself with confidence - that hard "k" sound - but then it takes a breath. An exhale into an open vowel. Finally, to keep the word from disappearing into nothingness, an "n," a gentle touch of the tongue to the roof of the mouth, a soft button. 

Bottom line, going forward, I am Lauren Kahane.