London, touch and televizya metzuyenet

ONE

I tried and tried to write a little something about touch - the sense that comes next but always first where I am concerned. I am no biologist but touch maybe is what we are first aware of, no? It is not only where we come from but also when you start growing you are embedded in something so it is physical proximity which leads to everything else coming together?

It is very difficult at times to detach touch from sound. We have this expression "touching", don't we...and all this "touching the heart" etc...it makes me uncomfortable, it doesn't sit right. Touch originates from a wordless situation. The Nalagaat Theatre, its process and development rely on touch and how it can make visual and aural language possible (via the interpreters I mentioned before).

The British are known for their formality where touch is concerned. This rubs off heavily on their children and then on their children et al. The etiquette is hard because, now there are lots of connections with the outside world (much as the UK loves its autonomy and sovereignity and not having the Euro etc) and all sorts of euro-chic and sixties remnants and eighties remnants and drugs and severely mind-altering use of them, it's all a bit messed up and noone knows quite what to do. And does an overt sensitivity and appreciation of touch...using the mouth to feel, skin-on-skin, love of texture...necessarily go hand-in-hand with being tactile?


I really don't think it does. This evening I went to a beautiful evening of music and performance poetry hosted by the very, very touching Yarona Caspi. She sets poems by contemporary Israeli writers to music as well as performing more established pieces and accompanies herself on keyboard and guitar in a way I have never seen before. The evening was in the Galeria Shoreshim (Roots Gallery)...a small space with, at the moment, angel-focused pictures and a huge lion sculpture outside. Between her songs, Yarona invited different performance poets to come and read their work to the audience. My teacher L was one of them and, during one of her pieces, she needed to cry and leave the stage.


Now how and why this focused to the touch-sense I can hardly explain, but it did. The music, the emotion and the atmosphere all pointed towards a small, smoky little cabaret bar with red wine and beers but the gallery was clean, bright and cheerful. We sat in attractive, comfortable chairs, didn't need to make eye-contact with or touch one-another at all, and there was no drink of any kind to be had. When L left the stage in tears, other artists who were performing at different times went to comfort her and Yarona continued her repertoire without batting an eye. In Israel, touch is acceptable in a way it is not in the UK and I do not mean people are physically more open or tactile. It is more that if someone is uncomfortable with being hugged and kissed you know without having to test the water. Likewise, if someone not only likes and appreciates but needs physical affection they will just go for it and the recipient, whether or not they are like that themselves, responds and acknowledges and any awkwardness is dispelled.

It was this sense of unity...a very different type of harmony...that revealed itself to me in an evening of bizarre yet completely functional clashes. I suppose the principal one was that all the songs and poems were in Ivrit and whilst my understanding has improved I could by no means decode the meanings and metaphors. But this only occurs to me now as I write.

TWO
It's less than 2 weeks now before I go back to London. The thought fills me with a type of intense dread I could never have attached to coming here. I am not going to describe it or dwell on it but it leads me on to how walking the streets of Tel Aviv (I never take the bus or sherute now if I can avoid it...I would rather save the shekels and eat granola out in the mornings) puts skin-on-skin, sex and feeling and talk all the time in my head. The sun is on my arms and legs and I walk, always to somewhere with some (probably false...hopefully false) sense of purpose and I fall deeper and deeper in love every step I take.

Last night Liron taught me the words to London - an Israeli song written by Hanoch Levin (I never knew he wrote songs) and performed by Chava Alberstein. Listen to it here...it's grand. The nub and crux is that even if she dies lonely as a bitch in London at least it will be in front of some good telly. She also can't wait for the indifference of people in London. Or perhaps its their friendliness...I've had 2 different stories now it is most confusing. But the loneliness transcends both Israel and London in the song.

So does human touch alleviate loneliness in the shorter term? Does sex? Is that its main purpose in the average closed-off, free-for-all-living person's closed-off, free-for-living little world? It seems that yes, it really does. The fine line between feeling united with someone and just not being lonely is made up of sex and touching. And fine lines are not about satisfaction or fulfilment...they are fragile, not solid and stable. But what is? We are conditioned to think, for example, of good marriages as being these things but I would say that we must think carefully of what they actually are. When a fundamentally happy husband and wife have sexual contact, to what extent does it meet that fine line? Are they are quite assured that they are not alone, and to regularly have sex provides that stability?

There are so many different types of marriage, of relationship, in which touch is expected to create...maybe babies or maybe intimacy or both. But when I walk with a truly awakened sense of touch it is above and beyond any sexual experience I have because it both enforces and reconciles the inherent sense of loneliness I cherish. Heat hugs very tightly and I suppose it is not always comfortable but its intrusion is welcome. Cold is just inconvenient and repellent where my body is concerned. When I went to the Pashut Festival in the Ashram there was a workshop on touch. Some of my friends who also did it were really moved and felt connected to the other participants, their isolation diminished via the openness and acknowledgment of how important physical contact is. But my lasting memory will be of the men who just ejaculated after hugging me in the conclusion. Because of course.

Touch will always be my favourite sense, I think. though there's never any telling. It's so raw, so dangerous...you can never detach from it if you have it. It's connection to everything else...all the other senses...is unique.

And when someone is touching me and I feel nothing it makes me feel sadder and sicker than bad food, sad sights, sour smells and unwelcome sounds ever could.