Artist – Writer – Psychologist – Musician – Designer – Peace Activist – Quaker

Tanna Moontaro (nee Aileen Pearlman, September 27, 1952)
—musician, singer, writer, and psychological consultant—
passed away on February 17, 2015.

Mentor and life teacher to many, Tanna will be remembered for her creative childlike free spirit and sense of adventure, spontaneous wit, joy, enormous heart, wisdom and intelligence, beautiful smile, honest and direct communication, compassion, enormous empathy, active listening and generosity.

Tanna was a costume designer and prop person in New York City for many film productions, including Saturday Night Live and Mathnet, for which she received an Emmy nomination. She also worked as a stylist for still photography shoots. Years later while living in Santa Monica, she received her Masters Degree in Psychology from Antioch University and continued giving to the world through her practice.

A confirmed pacifist, dedicated Quaker, Tanna was a strong activist in the anti-war movement of the early 70s. She continued this work by facilitating workshops for the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) in prisons and community gatherings in an effort to promote more peaceful interactions among people.

Capturing Tanna's Spirit and Essence

How do we capture the essence of this singular creation in woman form?

We could remember highlights, certain special moments such as 19 year-old Tanna camped on the sidewalk in front of the White House as part of a Quaker Peace Witness being asked one night by one of the guards to lower her voice because her singing and guitar playing were keeping the Nixons up; or Tanna, age 24, as a street artist sketching tourist portraits in Florence, who one day laid aside her pen and pad, stood, and answering an internal call, poured body and soul into an a cappella version of “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman” to the wonderment and applause of those in the piazza. And these were but two arresting memories from a life rich in such scenes.

Or should we focus on her day to day being and giving? Living here in Santa Monica, she became the de facto mother of two young children from an adjacent building whose father was beset by addiction and whose mother was often mentally absent. It was to Tanna's home they came to do homework. It was she who introduced them to art and the imagination, she who attended parent conferences at school, she who took them on walks in nature, she who read to them. The younger child, Karen, with two children now of her own, credits Tanna with showing her how to be a mother.

Perhaps, though, it is in her talent for friendship—a talent that through decades of assiduous application she shaped into an art—that we come close to capturing, fleetingly, her spirit. And at the heart of her friendships was a willingness, an eagerness to to be real: with herself, with her friends, and even with complete strangers with whom she hoped to elicit humor, kindness, and the shared spark of humanity.