Julie Gladstone she/her
Numi Numi (Sleep Sleep my little girl),
January 2021
Digital Video / Performance at Garrison Creek in Toronto
Lace linen table cloth embroidered by my great grandmother
Numi Numi lullaby sung and recorded by Julie Gladstone
adapted from the original Yiddish folk song by Joel Engel
Every night I rock my daughter and sing Numi Numi, a Hebrew lullaby which translates as "Sleep Slep my little girl, Sleep Sleep my little one" While I'm rocking her, I also rock myself in the dark, trying to share in this brief window of rest before I put her down. She will probably jump up 8 times in her crib before she actually accepts sleep and stays still. I feel the anxiety of the toys I still have to put away, the dinner that needs to get made, the dishes that need to get done., the eating of the dinner, which may very possibly be interrupted by crying and the knowledge that as I enact these daily ritual, acutely aware that all of these gestures, and repetitive rituals like a dance I will do all over again tomorrow, starting much too early.
@julesglad
Sleep Sleep my little one, Sleep Sleep
My body is a meeting place.
Seeking currents and surges
lifelines to distant times and places
Since the birth of my daughter
we nurse under a tree
I lie in the snow with my ear to the ground,
wrapped in Julia’s linen tablecloths
embroidered in the desert
through laments sung in an old language
in the snow I’m listening for murmurs
of buried rivers
of forgotten stories
My body is a diplomat
Introducing tablecloths and shawls
and other heirlooms from the old world
to Canadian snow
Sleep Sleep my little one
Sleep Sleep