My Sister, Bibi, Is Doing What Nobody Thinks To Do: "It's Not Only A Performance, It Is A Ministry."

Bringing Music, Joy, And Memories To New York's Post Covid Bedbound

My sister, Bibi, has invented a new form of ministry: Showing up with her guitar, her light, and her songs, for the people nobody shows up for anymore. Bibi shows up, and when she starts singing, they feel no pain anymore. She does for them what nothing in the multi trillion dollar “elder care” apparatus can do.

She drives, alone, from upstate New York, to distant parts of the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Harlem…and she performs, room to room, for the elderly, in nursing homes. They light up with joy, like nobody thought they still could. They dance in their beds, they sing along, they request their favorite songs. It’s so touching and impressive I almost can not bear to confront it: How easy it actually is, to bring joy to the elders, contrasted with how seldom we try.

Bibi compensates for many of us—doing the things we never think to do.

She is also the only person I know who went to New Orleans after Katrina, and helped the afflicted. She just pitched in, and did what was called for. Some day I want to locate and publish her writings from that harrowing journey into the unbelievable, before we knew they had so much more unbelievable in store for us.

New Substack!

Bibi has transformed her Substack from a chronicle of the funniest rabbits in the Hudson Valley, to an invitation and How To, for any and all musicians who may wish to begin to experience the joys of performing live in nursing homes.

You can subscribe to Bibi’s The Merriment Experiment here—all musicians will be especially interested, but it’s for non musicians as well.

Bibi has written so many truly great songs—this is one of my favorites: “Your Sweet Time.” (More at her YouTube Channel, linked.)

Once of her songs was featured in a Kodak commercial! That’s here:

There are so many more things she has done, including a musical history (recording, and touring) with Richard Lloyd Of Television, who she reunited with for a gig as recently as last week. Her main website, BibiFarber.com, is here.

I hope you consider subscribing to Bibi’s Substack, The Merriment Experiment, to support her novel music ministry, with or without payment, but let’s spread the word, and the incredible (yet simple) idea.

Also: Bibi will perform for us at a future Zoom call.

I am so very proud of my sister, from whom I learned so much, as a child—including how we could use pop music as a balm for what we were enduring.

In the beginning, it was The Partridge Family….

But for my sister, we would never have had music, as portal, consolation, or dream dimension, to get us through.

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