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About Us
Our Wedding, 34 years ago June 11. 1978
When we decided to get married in 1978, Margie Dignan, a new friend
(then in the process of a divorce and whom we unfortunately have not
seen since because she moved far away) had most graciously (and
unexpectedly) offered to us her very large and historic home in East
Hampton for the day. We had met her because I was doing sound
reinforcement for a group of acrobats who would put on acrobatic plays.
Her home at 63 Hunting Lane had the huge front and back lawns, several
expansive porches and large rooms of the classic Hamptons summer
"cottage" of the 1800's. It was a shingle-style Dutch roofed affair with
a large in-ground pool with diving board and, as befitting a woman
putting on acrobatic plays, an in-ground trampoline; in short, the
ultimate party house. We felt very fortunate, and have always been great
believers that when you need something and have faith, help will be
offered. It sometimes comes disguised as something else, so you have to
be attentive and creative with what comes your way, but that is a lot
more fun and good for your development than just having exactly what you
want plopped in your lap.
My morning started at Ashwagh Hall,
the famous and sweet community building in the Springs district of East
Hampton, known as a place for artists to premiere their work. I was
there to pick up two hundred folding chairs for our assembled guests.
Situated on a triangle of land with lovely views of a the wetlands,
Pussy’s Pond, and the lovely Springs Presbyterian church and cemetery,
this venerable little one-story white stucco shingled hall has seen art
shows and parties frequented by the work and person of Elaine and Willem
De Kooning, Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollack, Ibram Lassaw, and the
literal crowd of wonderful and dedicated artists of all persuasions that
has and does live in Springs, East Hampton, and the Hamptons, in
general. It is a wonderful place for Amy to have grown up in as an
artist.
After hurriedly driving back to the cottage and setting
the chairs up, Amy and I hung about fifteen of her "Materializations",
exquisite fabric-collage tapestries for which she has since won an NEA
fellowship. The place looked great. We festooned the tables with the
flowers from the fifty rhododendrons from our garden that Jessie and Ray
had planted when they all first moved to East Hampton. We had
“happened” to find more than a dozen silver lamé tablecloths in the
Ladies Village Improvement thrift shop.
After checking with the
catering staff, recruited from our friends at the East Hampton Day Care
Center, where Amy’s sister Toni taught the cutest little kids, and
making sure that the trays and trays of delicious mocha wedding cakes
from Silvers restaurant in Southampton had arrived, I ran upstairs to
change into my hand-made, 40's vintage double-breasted wedding suit
which I had bought from the Southampton Hospital thrift-shop for $10.
My beautiful bride was attended by her many happy bridesmaids and our
hairdresser, Jon, who had left his chic Madison Avenue shop for the day
in our honor. Amy's gorgeous wedding dress, a creamy-lace 40's vintage
stunner, was a $2.50 "Scoresville" (as we call a great deal) from the
L.V.I.S. thrift shop. At that time and for years afterward, we bought
all of our clothes in thrift shops and lived on very little money. But
you can have a lot of fun with a little money and we always did; we
still do. Even now, when Amy’s one-of-a-kind tapestry embellished
Spiritual Couture jackets sell at New York City’s Bergdorf Goodman for
thousands and thousands of dollars, we still have fun shopping at flea
markets for inspiring discoveries , on EBayand at T. J. Maxx.
I
love going shopping with Amy. I have recently had an insight into the
phenomena of shopping and I think it can help everyone. Shopping is like
hunting and gathering. It is certainly a lot different than when I
accompanied my father and his police friends on hunting expeditions in
the mountains of upstate New York and for that I am glad, but it
satisfies that same primordial need to go out and hunt for what you want
and need. If more men would realize this, I think they would not only
be more understanding of their partner’s need to shop, but would get
into it enthusiastically, themselves, like I have done. Finding what you
need for a great price is positively intoxicating.
Speaking of
intoxicating, we had arranged to be married by our friend Jack the well
known psychiatrist, who also happened to be an ordained minister. What
we did not know was that he had given up a very long career of heavy
drinking on the day before our wedding and his demeanor and the tremor
in his voice we attributed to nervousness at presiding over the first
ceremony he had performed in many years was actually caused by having to
do our ceremony and, happily, his sobriety for the rest of his life.
After signing our marriage certificate, we went downstairs and did the
wedding march from the side of the house up onto the steps of the front
porch accompanied by our attendants, Amy by her sister Toni and her
friend Lori Solensten, and me by Dan Romer and John Okas, and
accompanied by music, my original compositions, played by Roland the
Robot, a humanoid creature I built to accompany me when I plied my
musicians trade solo in the local bars. I would prerecord several
different parts on my multi-rack tape recorder and Roland, whose chest
contained one of the first cassette tape recorders, would play it back
while I would normally accompany myself. I called my futuristic one man
band, “The Me, My Sylph, and Eye Band,” since a sylph is an imaginary
being without a soul. Roland, however, did have soul and I am still
asked about his whereabouts almost every week.
One of the best
things about having Roland as one of my three best men was that his arm
was a microphone stand and Jack stepped up to it and read the vows we
had written and passed out to the assembled happy throng. Here is a
copy of our wedding vows:
"Our gathering here today is both a
symbol and an example of love’s power to bring people together. We have
been asked here to feel and to share in the mutual love of this man,
Monte Farber, and this woman, Amy Rachel Zerner, and to witness their
marriage celebration.
We live in a time where “science” and
“religion” are finding a common ground in what once was known as
“magic.” Einstein proved that all matter is made of one kind of energy
and that made us all relatives. Both we and the planets of our solar
system are islands of matter adrift in oceans of time but, like all true
relatives, the planets do have an influence on us.
We, too, have
the power and the necessity to influence all things about us. Through
watching the results of thoughts and deeds comes the realization that we
get what we earn. For our every action there is a reaction that
religion terms “The Law of Karma.” According to this golden rule, it is
not only a nice dream to be open to growth through positive thoughts and
deeds, it is the most selfishly practical thing that we can do!
Our
conditions in this life are a result of all that we have done as the
many people we have been. Remembering this can give us strength and a
tool with which to build a better tomorrow. Let us, then, renewing the
past through the birth of our children, celebrate and dedicate to this
future all our abilities for the good of all."
I have not read
that since the day we were married and I must say that I am fairly
astonished at how we have not changed, either what we believe or, for
that matter, the “voice” in which we write. Neither of us thought of
ourselves as writers at that time. Though I was a song writer, I never
thought I would write anything other than songs. I can only wonder what
we would have written by now had we decided to do so. I am certainly
glad to be able to have shared our vows, our first collaborative effort,
with you now.
Everyone was genuinely happy for us because it was
obvious to them that we were two people whose marriage was a real one
that would most likely last a long time. One of Amy's bridesmaids seemed
so delighted we thought she's ascend to heaven, though we later found
out she was in the first blush of a torrid, illicit affair. But her
beaming face reflected the joy we were feeling.
We believe in
short ceremonies and long parties so we kissed and said "I do." Now
married, we stayed on the porch as our guests filed by congratulating,
kissing, and hugging us and then walking into the living room where
young Ms. Lisa Vetault and Ms. Judith Markowitz serenaded us on piano
and flute. The delicious food disappeared and I must confess neither of
us got to eat a crumb of wedding cake - it was so good that everyone
had seconds before we had firsts! Of course, we were both floating a bit
and fully satiated from 200 kisses and hugs.
I would not be
honest if I did not say here that Amy and I have been to a lot of lovely
weddings that would have been even better had the bride and groom made
the decision to make their wedding really theirs, more personal. I hope
you know what I mean. It is not just that people spend literally obscene
amounts of money trying to impress people or to show their love in
terms of dollars and sense. There are so many silly conventions and
outright superstitions that people seem to slavishly adhere to, not out
of respect, but out of fear of offending, or to fall back on which, to
us, a creative couple, usually seems to be an indication that the bride
and groom decided to take the easy way out, rather than risk making an
original statement of their own. When we do attend an original wedding,
our hearts soar because we know that such a couple has a much better
chance of making their marriage work.
The metaphysical purpose of
a ritual ceremony is to participate in the creation of a myth, creating
a union of the spiritual with the physical. Like our dream world, the
world of myths and fairy tales is real in its own way and quite
important to our everyday life. If children do not grow up with fairy
tales, they are much more likely not to have the ability to let
themselves feel happy when they grow older. It is not so much the
content of the myth or fairy tale that is important as the secrets it
reveals that will affect us all of our life.
Traditional myths
offer us guidance through our own life's journey, even if we appreciate
them as just a made-up story. In a very real way, we not only have to
explain the myth, we have to enact it as well. Our life's journey is
really to find our own myth, for myths help us make sense of our life
and the world around us. Amy and I have been extremely fortunate in
being able to find and live our myth together. Our wedding is an
important part of our personal myth because of its purpose and because
of the way we made it work. It was a great accomplishment for us as
co-producers and co-workers.
As for making our wedding work, we
did have a lot of liquid refreshments. Neither Amy nor I drink, though I
will have the occasional glass of champagne. We had decided that
champagne would be the only alcoholic beverage and so had quite a few of
our friends because the gave us cases of it as their gifts (probably to
make sure they'd be drinking their favorite brand). At this point, my
memory is not as sharp as I'd like it to be and so I must depend on
Roland, the robot.
I had gotten to know a lot of other bands and
musicians over the years and they all came and played at the wedding
party. We had blue-grass on the pool porch, classical in the house, and
rock n’ roll in the back yard. There was another flutist who was
walking all over the place playing what has since come to be known as
soothing New Age music to all and sundry. He backed up a healer doing
the "laying on of hands" to a guest slightly injured on the trampoline.
With all the music going on, there was a charged, celebratory feeling in
the air.
My relatives, who still had not gotten over the fact
that we were not being married in a traditional Jewish ceremony and by a
rabbi, looked on in amazement as elegantly dressed guests of all ages
bounced up and down on the trampoline, some bounding off only to dive
into the pool fully clothed. It did get wild but never out of hand,
though we did have a dozen or so party crashers.
In fact, the
only wear and tear to the house and grounds came from our hostess who
really got into the spirit of things and the spirits, too. She was
giving her jewelry away (which we got back and returned to her later),
writing her telephone number on men's chests with lipstick, and teaching
Amy's blind 80 year old great aunt how to shoot champagne corks over
the roof onto the forty people who were circling the front lawn holding
hands and calling up the "God Force."
The God Force was raised
by having everyone join hands and pray. We were helped in this endeavor
from some of our friends whose participation in the Baptist religion had
taught them that when the spirit moves you, you are going to shout, and
shout we all did. We had forty people in a great circle on the front
lawn and the electricity going through us was phenomenal, a great spiral
of energy ascending to heaven. No one was surprised that we started
receiving corks raining down on us, only we thought they were divinely
produced and not the result of great aunt Jessie’s new use for
champagne, launching the ship of our married life.
We were so
exhilarated that after everybody left Amy and I cleaned the whole place
up and in vintage kimonos that someone had given to us a wedding gifts!
My only regrets are that people were having too good a time to take a
lot of pictures and that I didn't have a picture of me at the dump
unloading at least 96 empty champagne bottles off the truck right next
to a fisherman, unloading a truckload of scallop shells. He smiled and
shook his head saying, "Must have been some party, Bub!" Dick Halliday
(aka Captain Shipwreck), the dear, departed friend I'd made playing
music at Snuggler's Cove in Amagansett, had made me an honorary
Bonacker, the name the descendants of the first settlers to East Hampton
call themselves, and so I proudly replied in their distinctive dialect,
"Yes, yes. It sure was!"
Our enchanted marriage was off to an
appropriately spiritual start. Picking the date astrologically worked as
far as the weather and as far as our life together since has gone. Yes,
weddings have astrology charts, too, as do businesses, buildings, and
anything else that gets created. We used the principles of alchemy to
help us transform our wedding ceremony into a very special day to
remember for everyone who attended. People still tell us that ours was
the best wedding they ever attended and it only cost us $2,000.
One
of the funniest things about the whole event was that it was reported,
complete with pictures of the wedding party, in the locally famous Dan's
Papers and they spelled my name "Merce Ferber". They spelled Roland's
name correctly. The perfect end to a perfect day.
(c) Monte Farber from THE SOULMATE PATH, Weiser Books) |
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