Reading Dylan

-

Succot coincides with the first days of autumn and is, in theory, a wonderful time for taking trips: still warm but not burning. And indeed, it seems that much of the country (those who are not abroad) are racing from the Haifa film festival to the Acco alternative theatre festival to the hot air balloon fest in the Negev or the Susiada horse show near Beit Shean (partial list). We too took a short trip - to a buffalo dairy and to Idi's, Ashdod's famous fish restaurant, but with am yisrael tearing up the roads, the best place to be is of course close to our succah-like rooftop.

The free time I gained by not traipsing all over the country allowed me to finally polish off the 29th and last interview in 'Dylan on Dylan' (collected by Jonathan Cott). One of the inspiring things about the unpredictable and mercurial Mr. Zimmerman (65ish) is not only the length of his career but his resolute (not always successful) search for songs that resonate in that particularly Dylanesque way. If there are other Dylan fans out there, take a look at this list of links from what looks like his official website.

As we devote Succot to indulging our tastes, all around us the different players in our little Middle Eastern puzzle are jostling for better positions ahead of the November peace conference: the settlers are trying to set up 5 more illegal outposts (how many do they need?); the Hamas wants a truce and the large gaps between Olmert's and Abu Mazen's positions are beginning to show.

Meanwhile, let the escapism continue and what better way to escape the reality of the Middle East than by painting sensitive fantasy out of it as in the award-winning Israeli film The Band's Visit (bikur ha-tizmoret) we saw this afternoon. It was human and touching but to my mind, laid on a bit too thick. Worth seeing though. For a taste go to

http://www.flix.co.il/tapuz/showVideo.asp?m=1851917

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Unfinished Apartheid Thriller

-
Image
                 An Israeli Prime Minister as imagined by the DALL-E AI programme     About six months ago, I was revisited by the writing bug and decided to try my hand at fiction  - a "diplomatic thriller" to be more specific. The choice of genre was not dictated by any literary preferences. I'm not a big fan of thrillers. But the idea was to use the thriller as the most suitable vehicle to write about what was really bugging me - Israel's inevitable slide into apartheid.      I also thought that my professional experience might come in handy. For more than two decades I worked as the press officer for the EU Delegation to Israel and followed the sometimes turbulent relations between Israel and the European Union from the vantage point of an Israeli working inside the EU, in other words as someone with a split identity. I believed that this familiarity with the mind-sets and decision making processes of both sides would somehow provide me with the tools to weave a b
Read more

Four Views From the Roof - Introduction

-
Image
  Four Views From the Roof   Introduction      In 1994, against the advice of friends and family, we managed to scrape together the deposit for a dilapidated three room, third floor flat in an old apartment building on Yehuda Halevi Street in south Tel Aviv.  It was all we could afford if we wanted to put down a stake in Tel Aviv.    The building and its environs literally reeked of negligence. The once impressive but now deserted building opposite ours that had once served as a courthouse, was populated by  drunks and junkies. To the west was tumbledown Neve Tzedek just starting to attract artists and students. To the east was a business area heavy on cheap eateries, wholesale textiles and low-end fashion outlets. Old men on tricycles navigated long bales of textiles against the traffic on the narrow streets (and still do). On parallel Lilienblum Street, dubious characters would whisper “Dollar? Dollar?” to passers-by interested in by-passing official restrictions against holding for
Read more