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Today, via facebook and thanks to the photos my brother Chen took, I'm saying goodbye to my childhood home. It’s a strange thing to look at this place, the bare walls, the bare floors and to force a Proustian moment of summoning the past, remembering days gone by, a lifetime ago.

These tiles, for example, how I used to lay on them on hot Tel Aviv summer days to cool myself, how in this living room I used to sit and draw as a kid, or run around making space noises imagining myself a Luke Skywalker or a Transformer or whatever it was, and how we would sit on Friday nights with my grandfather (may he rest in peace), watching an Arabic movie, because that was the only thing on, and fast forwarding many years later it was also the last place I saw him, the last Friday dinner with him, and when we said goodbye and it hit me that this could truly be the last time, and I ran to the balcony and saw him walking away down on Nafha street, hoping that he will stop and turn around for a second, though he never did, and I remember saying, not aloud, but to myself, goodbye Sabba. Or even many years prior to that where I used to spend hours watching the street from there sucking chocolate milk (or just milk?) from my bear-shaped baby bottle waiting for my father to come home from New York. That same balcony where Tal, and Dan and Liad, and myself used to take the speakers out every Friday afternoon and “teach” the masses frequenting Sheinkin Street (from wherever it was they all came from – I still don’t know) what’s good music, at that time we thought it was hip-hop (but forgive us we were 15 or 16, and hip hop was still good back then), or a few years prior to that how my dog, Belfi, when he was still alive used to bark onto the Sheinkin garden across the street, hitting his nose on the iron bars of my balcony accentuating his dog cries with a metallic echo. And how after he died, my mom and I kept finding locks of his hair around the living room and didn’t know what to do with them, how can you throw away relics? The living room where my mom taught all the kids in my class how to dance in one of my birthday parties in elementary school, and how hours earlier I was terrified that no one will show up to have their half pita with hummus, pickle and pastrami. And how, in cold winter nights we would sit close to the red gas heater staring at the blue flame and watching TV, I believe I dreamt about that heater last night though it looked much different, but in that dream we ran out of gas and had to go downstairs to the small courtyard to switch gas tanks, where years later some idiot had a great idea to open a juggling store, and I had to carry my dying dog when he couldn’t walk anymore, all 100 pounds of him, through a barrage of bouncing balls, up the stairs, that thank to the dog was no longer populated by any stray cats, that used to scare me when I was 5 years because our landlady, Mrs. Lenchner (who used to ran the café bearing her name), would leave food for them, and I climbing up the stairs and the cats frozen not sure if to run further up to the second floor or down the stairs towards me, staring me down and hissing violently in yet another long standoff. Or the open kitchen (where my mom is standing in the photo), into which out of boredom I would consume crazy amounts of grapefruits, grapes, Milky chocolates, and peach yogurts, or Romanian salami my grandfather brought from his trips to Romania and Hungary, or Biltong that my mom’s friend had brought from South Africa. And the kitchen table where my mom sat me down and told me she has cancer when I was in high-school, and when years later Itay Yerusalem, may he rest in peace, would force us to sit our drunken early 20s group, and make us toasts to absorb the insane amounts of Jameson he’d first challenged us to consume, or the bathroom where my brother and I caught a burglar once, entering the same bathroom window through which I would enter myself whenever I’d lose my key (which happened quite often), or the narrow hall leading to my bedroom, which I used to climb all the way up to ceiling leveraging myself with my legs pushing on the opposite walls, where I broke my front teeth playing football with my brother, or down that hall, my bedroom where I used to play basketball with a tennis ball shooting at the gap between my wall and the door, and my old-fashioned curtains that would create strange stretched out light patterns on my wall at night whenever a car drove by in the street below, and the base of the curtains where a family of pigeons made a nest, after which the crying of the pigeons-chicks during feeding time served as not such a welcomed wake up call each morning. And perhaps it’s appropriate that my current room in the Lower East Side of Manhattan is facing an interior courtyard populated with pigeons so that in the morning I wake up to sounds of home. But now home is just a memory, an assemblage of visual thoughts, the architecture of it lost to new tenants and the planned renovations of the new landlords, and the imaginary continuity of my childhood to my adult-self is broken. But it is broken already, whether I choose to admit this or not, I’m closer to my 40s than I am to my childhood. That’s an indisputable fact. 

So, goodbye childhood home, we will meet again in my dreams.

   

Thoughts ranging from Christopher Plummer to Amy Whinehouse...

I watched "Beginners" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1532503/) last night, and its truly a wonderful film.

I laughed, I cried, fell in love a bit with Mélanie Laurent. But most of all I thought about how much I love watching Christopher Plummer. It's strange, but from all the remaining old masters of the craft , Plummer seemed to be the least talked about.

People always remember Connery, Caine, Derek Jacobi, John Hurt, but almost never Plummer. But, one every couple of years I see him in a film I say 'god dammit he still got it!'.

For example, recently I watched "The Last Station" in which he was magnificent, and just before that as the only redeeming aspect of "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" (please don't tell me Heath Ledger, yeah you miss him, but whatever... he was crap in this one).

Anyhow, I convinced my roommate today to watch one of my favorite films of all time: John Huston's "The Man Who Would Be King", which starred not one by the all three of my holy triad: Plummer (in a minor role as Kipling), Sean Connery and Michael Caine. If you somehow managed to miss this 1975 film, do yourself a favor and rent/stream it the first time you can spare 2 hours. It's magnificent. Connery and Caine are just incredible, and I would wager some money that their "Danny" and "Peachy" characters were the basis of quite a few buddy-adventure narratives (the first that comes to mind is Lucius Vorinus and Titus Pullo from "Rome"). I watched this film so many times, that the theme music of the film (the hymn of "The Minstel Boy") was so ingrained in my head that I would find myself humming it constantly as a child. As an adult I can only hope that I was a bad hummer, for what would my teachers think of me, humming this English Christian hymn in a Jewish post-British colonialist land. Perhaps my grandfather from my mom side would approve, actually. He was a British officer, perhaps he hummed it himself during his service in that Second World War?

In any event, today I open facebook to learn that Amy Winehouse is no more. I'm not gonna say it's not sad, obviously every death is very sad to people around that person (somewhere in England, I imagine Noel Fielding is shedding unicorn-shaped tears), but to put her on the same list as Morrisson and Hendrix, is a tad ridiculous. I'm not gonna go into the Why of it, it's a silly proposition from the get go. Sad yes, in a general sense.

I said it numerous times to people around me who still have patience to listen to some of the words that come out of my mouth: There are only 3 "celebrities" that I probably be extremely sad when they pass on: Sean Connery, Michael Caine, and Christopher Plummer. Three and Three only.

So, yes, go watch "Beginners" (If you don't like old people, Ewan McGregor is outstanding in it as well) and check out "The Man Who Would Be King" which is as good a watch today then it was when I was 8 years old.

Robin Hood = Decoded

With the resurgence of popular adaptations to the myth of Robin Hood (TV series, and a Hollywood movie directed by Ridley Scott), I find it hard to believe that very little critical work was directed into deciphering the myth.

I would like to point out below some incredible (though purely circumstantial) historical elements that could be threaded together into forming a fascinating alternative picture to what and who Robin Hood really was.

It is my understanding that myths should be examined first and foremost in the context of their first appearance, only should we take a look at the time frame in which the myth and its narrative unfolds.

But first, let uss go over the basic narrative. Robin Hood returns from the Crusades (which crusades? We don’t know yet) to find that his land was seized by the greedy sheriff of Nottingham. He withdraws to Sherwood Forrest (in Nottinghamshire), where he joins with the Merry Men (Brother Tuck, Will Scarlett, Little John, etc) and begins a guerrilla war against the Sheriff’s people in which he steals tax money and redistributes it back to the peasants.

This mini-civil war escalated, until in the end: 1) He is captured and executed; Or 2) The return of Richard the Lionheart from the crusades, who acts as a deus-ex-machina, removes the sheriff from his post and allows Robin Hood to reclaim his title and land.

Before we take a look at the first and more plausible conclusion, lets take a look at the second ending. The first thing that sticks out is the introduction of King Richard the Lionheart (1157-1199), which gives us an actual time frame to these events, and the possible crusade in which Robin Hood participated, the Third Crusade (The Kings Crusade, 1189–1192).

If we to entertain this time-frame two problems arise immediately: First, we need to assume that Robin Hood returned to England between 1189 and 1192. This would in effect mean that the taxes Robin Hood was stealing from the sheriff were actually taxes funding the crusade, which means that Richard the Lionheart would not have been so inclined to restore Robin’s stature in English society.

Secondly, Richard the Lionheart didn’t even reside in England. He lived in Southwest France, ruling from afar, using England as a revenue source rather as his homeland.

I feel it’s safe to rule-out Richard the Lionheart as a meaningful element in the story of Robin Hood, though it does raise an interesting issue: Why would he be inserted (one would assume) in a later date, and what does his inclusion to the myth come to represent or hide?

One answer, is that at the time of the crusades the commoners had no interest in subsidizing their king’s ambitions in the holy land, and therefore Robin Hood and his Merry Men came to represent a justice in that respect.

In a later time, in which the crusades were gazed upon with lenses of nostalgia, the myth had to reconcile two conflicting arguments, and thus differentiated between the crusades and the unjust taxation inflicted on the commoners (which now were personified by an evil sheriff).

However, I still feel that the legend of Robin Hood requires much more scrutiny.

The first evidence of the name appears in the 14^th century (two hundred years after Richard the Lionheart), and I would like to argue that a something in the early 1300s was at play when the myth was a very current event.

Before we embark to my actual theory, let’s examine a few of the actors in this myth.

The first thing that comes to mind is that both Robin Hood and Will Scarlet could be seen as similar if we consider them to be signifiers rather than proper names. Scarlet and Robin share an etymological link with the bird, Scarlet Robin. Is it just a coincidence? Perhaps, but if we play around with the names, in which Scarlet will replace Robin and vice versa, at one of the combinations we will arrive at Scarlet Hood.

Though Robin Hood is mostly depicted wearing a cap in modern adaptations to the story, what if we imagine the Hood as an actual hood, or a cloak, or possibly a robe?

The color scarlet was worn by the clergy, more specifically, by Cardinals, specifically, a scarlet-colored robe. Additionally, one should take into account that only a hundred years after the first reference to a Robin Hood (1493) in a petition to the Parliament the name (now term) Robin Hood was used to describe a vagrant felon.

Which leads us to the question of vagrancy: Though vagrancy (wandering or displaced people) was quite common during the 14^th century throughout Europe, our particular case of vagrant people, i.e the Merry Men, are quite unique in the fact that they were all men. So we have a group of men, living together in the woods, possibly wearing scarlet robes, one of which is actually identified specifically as religious figure (Friar Tuck, or Brother Tuck).

Furthermore, if we to consider the ambiguousness in terms of Robin Hood’s origin; some narratives claim he came from the aristocracy; some claim he was a commoner; would it make sense that he was neither, or rather that he was somewhere in between.

And let us get back to Friar Tuck. While in the later versions of the story, he was described as a jolly food-loving character, in the earlier versions he was described as physically fit as well as a good fighter. There were two prominent groups of clergy men in those times known to be soldier-priests, could Friar Tuck be a member of one them? And should we make anything of his transformation from a soldier priest to a gluttonous fool? And was gluttony even a laughing matter in those times?

Now let us take a look at this at yet another angle: What about Robin Hood’s love interest, the Maiden Marianne. Though the British medieval scholar Maurice Keen tried to connect the myth of Robin Hood to 13^th century French Pastourelles and May festivities (in which the couple of Robin and Marion were prominent, I would like to assert that a single love-interest personified in a maiden lady seems too convenient.

In the earliest versions of the Robin Hood story from the 14^th century, Robin Hood was attributed a unique religious affinity: Marianism.

Marianism, as we know, is a belief that Jesus’s god was not the Hebrew Yahweh but rather a sacred feminine entity based on the Egyptian Isis. In this light, what do we make of the name of the Robin Hood’s group, the Merry Men?

And if we to assemble the separate threads: the color Scarlet, robes, the Crusades, fighting priests (later accused in a deadly sin, i.e. gluttony), and marianism, which group of people operating in those times fit the bill?

The Templars.

And let us look again at the arena in which this myth takes place, Nottinghamshire.

Though London was the base of the Templars leadership in England, Nottinghamshire was the key area for the Templars to obtain their wealth.

Nottinghamshire was the most productive area agriculturally in all of Britain, and most of the wealth in England was levied from it. The Templars presence there was extremely vital and therein very beneficial over the years.

And lets us reframe this again by contextualizing the Templars in the time-frame of the emergence of the myth: the early 1300s had signaled the end of the Templars throughout Europe, although in Britain the situation was slightly different.

The Templars were not executed in Britain, but rather mostly dissolved into yet another group: the Hospitallers. And particularly in Nottinghamshire the situation was quite interesting in our perspective: Though most of Templar property was confiscated by either the King Edward II and the Hospitallers, in Nottinghamshire the Templars were allowed to keep some of their possessions, by the king’s court decree of 1308, as long as they pay taxes to the local Hospitallers who were based… In Nottingham. In other words, the sheriff of Nottingham was at the time in fact a Hospitaller.

Could we not argue that the myth of Robin Hood was in fact the story of the last years of the Templar court in England, and its last struggle for survival against the Hopitallers between 1308 and 1312? Yes, I suppose we could, because today after Dan Brown’s book anything mysterious has to involve either the Templars, Illuminati and other such drivel. And did I waste your time here? Yes, I suppose I did. But it does make you think, don’t it?

Quote of the Day (Apr 18)

"Do you believe in miracles? What if I told you that an expedition of climbers to Mount Blanc has discovered hard proof that my husband loved me?" (from the film "Amelie")

Jacque Lacan on Truth

"A truth, if it must be said, is not easy to recognize once it has become received. Not that there aren't any established truths, but they are so easily confused with the reality that surrounds them that no other artifice was for a long time found to distinguish them from it than to mark them with the sign of the spirit and, in ordr to pay them homage, to regard them as having come from another world. It is not the whole story to attribute to a sort of blindness on man's part the fact that truth is never to him a finer looking girl when the light, held aloft by his arm as in the proverbial emblem, unexpectedly illuminates her nakedness. And one must play the fool a bit to feign knowing nothing of what happens next. But stupidity remains characterized by bullheaded frankness when one wonders where one could have been looking for her before, the emblem scracely helping to indicate the well, an unseemly and even malodorous place, rather than the jewelry box in which every precious form must be preserved intact.

But now truth in Freud's mouth takes the said bull by the horns: "To you I am thus the enigma of she who slips away as soon as she appears, you men who try so hard to hide me under the tawdry finery of your properties. Still, I admit your embarrassment is sincere, for even when you take it upon yourselves to become my heralds, you acquire no greater worthy by wearing my colors than your own clothes, which are like you, phantoms that you are. Where am I going, having passed into you? And where was I prior to that? Will I perhaps tell you someday? But so you will find me where I am, I will teach you by what sign you can recognize me.

Men, listen, I am telling you the secret. I, truth, speak."

(Jacque Lacan, "The Freudian Thing")

Qoute of the Day (Mar 5th, 2007)

“If its right that your body is 90 percent water, then why do we need to drink water all the time for? Why can’t we have some crisps?”

(Russell Brand)

A Good Death: Arthur Kane

Though a statement such as “Today is a good day to die” is mostly reserved (at least in Hollywood) to gunslingers, Apache warriors and Samurai swordsmen, I would like to begin what I hope will become a series of entries dedicated to good deaths in the realm of the arts.
Though most of the posts I am planning will have more to do with literary figures, I would like to start rather with a musician, Arthur “Killer” Kane, of “The New York Dolls” fame.

Perhaps it is not a good place to start, as his death, or the narrative of his death was brought to my attention as an overly produced and manipulated cinematic document, that is, the documentary, “The New York Doll” (2005, directed by Greg Whiteley).

Since I have no access to the story of his life through other sources, I have no choice but to refer to the cinematic version, but I must say that perhaps my biggest problem with it, would be actually that I wasn’t the one who threaded it together. So I will leave my ego aside for now and recount the series of events.

Arthur “Killer” Kane was the bassist of the famed “Dolls”, a rock group that emerged in New York City in the 70s and is considered as the group that opened the door for the punk rock era. Since I am not a rock historian, I’m afraid I cannot really contribute much in terms of musical critique, but the story is pretty fascinating.

The story brought forth in the movie is a story of redemption, of second chances, a modern day Greek tragedy. The Dolls had it all, the hype, the fame, the money, and were destined to remain the top of the game for many more years, if drugs and egos didn’t get in the way, which they did.

Some of the members were lost to Heroine, and the others went on to pursue their individual projects to varying degrees of success (It seems the only one who was really able to maintain some consistency, was the lead man, David Johansen).
Arthur Kane, on the other hand moved to Los Angeles and tried to regain his success but to no avail.

Slowly failure took its toll on him, and drugs, alcoholism and depression deemed his fate as an inevitable downhill spiral, which led him to several suicide attempts (I may be wrong, it could have been only one), the last of which, he jumped from his 3rd floor apartment only to break several bones that required a few weeks of recovery in the hospital.

It is there, where he found god. He received a leaflet from a Mormon church and wrote them asking to send him some more information. The information arrived in the person of two Mormons who were able to provide him comfort with their talks and redirected him to god.
Since then, though a much more stable and functioning person, he was still living in the past, or rather in that insufferable gap between what he had and what he has now. It is difficult for anyone to imagine a rock and roll personality working as a file clerk in a Mormon center, but it was a reality he had to cope with.

But he still had a dream; he was still hoping that one day he will be able to be on stage again, with the New York Dolls. And it seems life had a few more surprises for him after all.

Morrissey, the longtime admirer and follower of the Dolls (as a kid he headed the UK fan club of the dolls), was appointed in 2005 as the creative director of “Meltdown” festival, and one his first ideas was to reunite the Dolls for the concert.

He contacted Kane and the remaining members, and after a few weeks of rehearsals they preformed admirably in the concert. Kane received his chance, was able to reconcile with Johansen, and the dream became a reality.

Shortly after returning to the United States, Kane complained that he was suffering from jet-leg and overall weariness. After two weeks in which his state persisted he checked into a hospital and was diagnosed with some form of Leukemia. He died within hours of his diagnosis.
The film ends with the heartbreakingly appropriate Smiths song, “Please, please, please, let me get what I want”.

The proximity of the realization of his dream and his death is almost too uncanny. Those who favor longevity may object to my observation, but what good is a prolonged life if the echoes of one’s shortcomings will haunt him. And furthermore, wouldn’t the significance of this miraculous achievement wear off in times, breeding only more desires and more heartaches?

Timing is everything, especially when it comes to poetic justice.