The State of Israel was declared today, in Tel Aviv, because Jerusalem was under seige.  I wasn’t there, because my stateless parents had just taken us to America, having been expelled from England.  Their previous attempts to make it to Palestine had led to their return to Danzig on the eve of the German invasion, and they weren’t going to try again after world war 2, since the British had just thrown them out of England.  Confused?  So were they.

Two states were declared, by the way, but while the Jews rejoiced, the Arabs rejected the declaration.

 

Panic Ensemble performed last night to a packed hall in Levontin 7.  If you weren’t there you missed a thrilling evening.  Even songs I’ve heard many times before, and have even performed with the group, were even more exciting than I’ve ever known them.  There is something about their sense of play, even on tragic poems, that works.So sometimes they interpret my work in a contrary way, and the opposition opens up the poem.  Sometimes they make me go crazy, as in the poem about Lot’s Wife.
SODOM

Look, look at the light

See the sky grow dark with the fire
Burning up, last night we were one
I want you to stay in my eyes
 
Oh the wildest nights
Holding the men
And women of Sodom
I want to love them all
 

Taste, drunk with the night,
Taste my blood grown thick with desire
Burning up, binded by love
I want them to stay in my arms
 
Oh the wildest nights
Holding the men
And women of Sodom

I want to love them all

 
Before us now – banal days

One life one love one lord

Empty land, no pleasure of love
I choose to bleach you from my heart
 
Oh the wildest nights
Holding the men
And women of Sodom
I am becoming salt.
Of course the text had to be altered to the music and pronunciation of Yael and Dirk, but the tragic music and tone, and the sense of ifcha mistabra, or taking the opposite side of the argument to see where it will go, remains.

© 2012 Tel Aviv Diary: Karen Alkalay-Gut Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha