Category Archives: Kinesthetic

Body movements

Persian Rituals adopted by a Non-Persian, Jewish Family

Nationality: American/Jewish
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Beverly Hills
Performance Date: 4/23/15
Primary Language: English

Basically, when someone talks bad about you, or someone does something to like, harm you, or let’s say like for example I’m wearing a nice dress and I come home and I’m like ‘oh mom, this lady said “nice dress, it looks really good on you,”’ my mom would be like, ‘oh, she has a bad eye on you.’ And my mom will run, and she’ll get salt, and she’ll put salt all around my head. Like she’ll start spraying it, like literally having salt fly in the air, and like, pouring salt everywhere and then she says like, ‘to keep the bad eye away from my daughter,’ she says like a little prayer in her head. It’s like a blessing of salt over your head to keep away the evil eye.

 

So your mom does this to you?

 

She did it once. She learned it from her Persian friends. I’m not Persian, but my friends that are Persian, their moms have done it to me too.

Another thing is like, I don’t know if it’s traditional but like when you get a new car or you get something new, you take eggs and you run the eggs over with the car. You put like two on the back tires, two on the front tires, and you run them all over. So it’s like good luck cause you’re like coating the tires with an egg? Not an egg but like, you break the way for the car kind of. You break the way for the car to like enter the world, the streets.

 

Why eggs specifically?

 

I, I don’t know. These are just things that I’ve seen people do. And then, what is the jumping over fire one, Nic?

(Her friend: That’s for Persian New Year.)

Why?

(Friend: You’re asking the wrong person. Ask Sogol.)

 

ANALYSIS:

This is an interesting folk superstition and ritual that has been adopted by a family that isn’t Persian, but is Jewish, and are surrounded by a community of Jewish Persian. The informant’s mom, through interaction with her friends, has inherited or adopted this belief and practice of protection and keeping bad spirits away. One can easily see, though, how the original meaning or belief has become lost / confused/ muddled, because the informant did not grow up being as exposed to this tradition in her family. However, as her friends and her friends’ parents have done these rituals, she has been exposed to them and so participates in them, just not as fully perhaps as her friends with Persian heritage. She does know why these rituals are practiced and some of the symbolism behind the eggs, for example. It is also a sort of initiation ritual for the car to enter into the world.

Awkward Turtle

Nationality: polish
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Performance Date: 4/30/15
Primary Language: English

My informant is a 20-year-old College Student. She has a predominantly Polish heritage.

I was interested in asking my informant if she knew about any specific gestures that she had learned over the years that had some significance to her. She could not think of any with any real special significance, but she did inform me about the “awkward turtle”.

Informant: “Awkward turtle is just for awkward situations. When something awkward happens, you throw up the awkward turtle. You just put one hand flat on the other and wiggle your thumbs like turtle fins. I first saw it when I was at a battle of the bands in Toledo, Ohio. One of the drummers of a band dropped his stick and screwed up the whole song. They ended up having to stop playing and the lead singer was like, “ooh awkward turtle”, and did the gesture. The whole crowd then put their “hand turtles” in the air and did it with him. It was really weird because I was left out of this weirdness but I quickly put my hands up and conformed even though I had no idea what was going on. I still use the turtle today, it’s really funny for situations that are awkward because you don’t have to say anything, you just make the awkward turtle and other people catch onto it.”

Analysis: This piece is really interesting because of the way that the informant learned about it. She was in a large crowd and she only did it because she was mimicking what everyone else was doing. I think this says something about our society as Americans. We want to be grouped together and we are such social creatures that acceptance is the main goal. Even when we don’t know what we are doing, we go with the crowd so we don’t stand out. My informant was on the outside of this knowledge circle until she made her own awkward turtle and then she was inside the circle of this shared knowledge.

Teddy Bear Dance

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA; Ukiah, CA
Performance Date: 4/23/15
Primary Language: English

I caught my friend watching her family videos on YouTube so I asked her what was going on, and she explained to me some of her family traditions.

Informant: “Every Christmas eve, everybody gets a stuffed animal in my family and we put on Dolly Parton and Kenny Loggins Christmas CD. And play it around the house. And you select a leader so the leader is doing a dance move, and everybody copies.”

Collector: “Can you tell me more about these artists? Is there a reason why…”

Informant: “Cause ‘I believe in Santa Claus’ is the best Christmas song ever.”

Collector: “Does she sing the best version, or the most popular version? Or why that one specifically, because I’m sure there’s many versions of that song.”

Informant: “Its catchy. Everybody loves Dolly Parton. I don’ know, my mom likes country music, so…”

Collector: “Is this just your family, or do other families in Ukiah…”

Informant: “I think it’s just my family. We have so many stuffed animals. Like, everyone. I think I probably, when I was growing up I probably had like 20 stuffed animals. Maybe people just gave me stuffed animals for like, every holiday”

Collector: “Do you know why?”

Informant: “I don’t know why. It’s probably like an easy gift. When I was a baby. That’s probably why.”

Collector: “So this family tradition… when did it start? Did it start with your parents?”

Informant: “That’s a good question… it started with my parents’ generation for sure… but also, my parents’ parents, my grandma like, had this space where there was a fireplace in the center of the room, and they lived without electricity, so they’d always play the record and dance around… and then like, having no access to like, electronics or whatever… like, their popular culture was record players… or records, not record players.”

What the informant mentions at the end about records is particularly interesting because it points to a cultural shift in the way that family members interact with each other. This Holiday tradition started with my friends’ family at a time with a lot less technology than we have now, and they have maintained their family tradition of doing the Teddy Bear Dance, even though technologically they could engage in other more “modern” forms of entertainment. Although instead of using a record player they probably use a CD player or some sort of speaker system that hooks up to a digital music player, the spirit of the dance is probably kept largely the same. Family traditions like this are fairly common, and can vary widely depending on the family.

Hockey in New Jersey and no-shave rule

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA; New Jersey
Performance Date: 4/29/15
Primary Language: English

The informant and I were talking about sports and superstitions so he mentioned something specific to his home state’s sports culture.

“Hockey is really huge… a culture unlike anything in California. Everyone grows out their beard during playoffs season, and they don’t shave it until their team’s out of the playoffs. Bad luck for your team if you shave your beard. I don’t [participate], because I’m Asian and I can’t grow a beard.”

Sports superstitions are nothing unheard of, but it’s still interesting to observe how they vary from region to region. Some people don’t wash their jerseys until their team is knocked out of the playoffs, and some people don’t shave their beards. How such a tradition begins and spreads amongst a group of people would be interesting but probably difficult to investigate.

The Ghost of Lake Bella Vista

Nationality: Irish
Age: 22
Occupation: Student, studying Biomedical Engineering
Residence: Bradenton, FL and Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/25/15
Primary Language: English

The informant and her family used to live in Rockford, Michigan next to Lake Bella Vista. She says she grew up with the legend of the ghost of Lake Bella Vista, hearing it from neighbors and family members. She says she first heard it from her father.

According to the legend, a man who used to live on the lake went swimming late (well past midnight). He dove down under the water, and got his foot caught between some rocks at the bottom of the lake on accident. Without anyone around to help him, the man drowned, leaving his family behind. Years later, a group of teenagers (a horror story trope many will recognize) went swimming in the lake late at night. one of the girls started screaming that something had grabbed her leg, and before her friends could get to her, she was pulled under. Her friends swam to shore as fast as they could to get away from whatever it was that had pulled her under. They found the girl’s body floating in the water the next morning with a black handprint encircling one calf.

The informant says that the story is one usually told to kids at family get-togethers with neighbors and guests. Whoever tells the story usually pantomimes along with the narrative, and involves the audience by grabbing someone in the front row and pulling on their leg just as the ghost in the story had done. The informant says that the most performative part of the legend is when the storyteller puts a big, muddy handprint on the leg of the front-row “victim”.