Maimuna, part 2

Sustenance

We celebrated Maimuna last night. There was a residue of enchantment.

Maimuna, part 2, a story continues

1976

I knew nothing about where I was going. I went to the library in the Wilderness I was leaving to take a look at the Wilderness where I was going.

When I finally left, I thought I left for good. I was vomited out of one Wilderness for another, the circumstances of my leaving the country where I was born were difficult.

I didn’t know a soul when I arrived in Jerusalem. I had one bag and a steel string guitar. I had never been to Israel before. This chapter was not continuous with my former life.

I sat on the steps of my school and I played the blues. Several days later, an Israeli guy came asking for me, “who’s the guy who sits on the steps and plays guitar?” I met my manager Moshe. He was an excellent guitar player with an entrepreneurial spirit and he booked us all over Israel.

We played at army installations, kibbutzim, officer training schools, newly excavated second century synagogues, clubs, underground venues. I snuck away from school and had a secret night life. Early on in the year we settled into a performance space in Jerusalem called Tzavta and became something like the house band.

I played with musicians from all over the world. Between sets I sat in the green room and pored over my studies, asking the native Hebrew speakers who were performing with me to help with my homework.

What are you studying? they asked me. I am studying to be a rabbi. None of them believed me. We sold out the room three, four, nights a week. People were dressing like me around Jerusalem and my name was plastered on billboard walls. In those days I wore a signature trench coat, I kept harmonicas in my pocket which I played while chewing gum. I was awful but my audience loved roots Americana shlock.

I went to Israel to study. What I did was spend a lot of that year entertaining at Tzavta on King George Street with my new Israeli friends. I came on stage with a guitar draped over my shoulders and did a set often without singing a complete song. I was doing what might be called stand up comedy, except that it was terrible. I think it was so off the wall that people enjoyed it, but I’ve heard recordings (once) and I can’t stand to listen. I sound to myself like Lenny Bruce in his last days.

Which I was. I think like many entertainers, I am an inwardly drawn person. I was altered whenever on stage, in those days I was much too inside or withdrawn to appear in front of people without a mask. The mask became my master. I couldn’t get out from behind it.

In many ways, my new life, the depth of studies, my teachers, my College – saved me. I became uncharacteristically loyal to Sources. I remain that way. It has been sustenance for me.