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.

Sense 1: Momentous manipulation...should it be momentary?

As I leave my full-time work at the Karov and instead focus on the different ways to get it abroad as a part of my, Nico, Dorit's and the other Karovians' Israel, there are other things to relate. They link to much of my learning here and to record them with a sense of consideration because others might read will also be helpful to me as I use this archive throughout my life and work.

My first week-long blog project is about the senses...sight, sound, touch, taste and smell.

Like always, it is amazing for me to hear anything that my writing or its components may spark in you so do consider sharing if you ever want.

On Thursday evening we went to see Not By Bread Alone at the Nalagat ('please do touch') Centre - a theatre and restaurant geared towards the work and productivity of deaf and/or blind actors. This show is famous now and will be at the Arts Depot in London, hopefully featuring also at the LIFT Festival. During the show 12 actors - some of them completely without sight or hearing, others with varying but generally low degrees of one or the other, make bread and relate their lives, dreams and observations (sorry) with immense creativity, aided by a special touch language 6 interpreters impart to them over the hour.

Afterwards C and I ate at the wonderful little Cafe Yafo up the road, forgoing the 30shekel live jazz an hour later to continue our talk as we walked back to Tel Aviv along the tayelet.

One thing I have been constantly intrigued and at times frustrated by over the past 5 months is the obsession with taking photos. Photos photos photo opportunity come on photo posing photo oh my god oh my god oh my god All The Fing Time. A told me her friend actually forgo swimming with dolphins in Eilat because nobody would be there with her to take pictures. wtf. And within this crazy scene I am increasingly aware of my own attitude to being in pictures. In the final leadership seminar one leader was taking individual pictures of us as we explained a project and I found myself, completely unintentionally, asking her not to photograph me. Put me on my trampoline, a swing, a stage of any kind and take whatever. But it's not that I just like not knowing when exactly someone's clicking. Sometimes it's fine...when there is no pressure, I suppose, to pose. I can't pose really. I just can't. Unless.....

Unless the moment is manipulating me...there's a stimulus. Being photographed is often aligned with the subject manipulating the moment, turning nothing into an inanimate animation - making a piece of film or a screened image amazing. At the top is a photo by D and at the bottom one created by A (although she is in it) and in both I found the situations (one I was aware the picture was being taken, the other one no) so sexy sexy sexy being photographed was great.

Stepping out of self-focus zzzz for a second, I love the pictures some of my photographer friends take...I mean those which are considered so highly, so thoughtfully, with the immense vision and angle in every sense of the word that a true photographer possesses. There are 2 people who really come to mind and to have an example of what I mean read the introduction on JP's wedding photography website. The other, R from my program, reflects the light of her presence, depth of emotional perception and extraordinary engagement with the bigness and smallness of the world in every moment she captures.

We will call her Erika, my favourite photographer personally known to me. She knows my "issues" with being photographed though we never had really the need to speak about them...I just knew she knew from her gentleness with me on one such occasion. She turns down some paid photographic work that doesn't incorporate the kind of thing or vibe she wants to picture...not out of snobbery or even real an idealism...it just doesn't come naturally. The way she talks about her art projects and those of her brother has taught me so much in its unknown humility and honesty. I won't write too much for discretion but Erika, if you are reading this, know how you touched me.

In a nutshell, when I have a conversation with people about this subject I dwell on my fear of camera-brandishers missing out on the moment itself because they are so keen to capture it on film. I really think a lot of the time they do. And it's an age-old cliche I know, the best photographs being imprinted on your memory. But even if you don't remember, does it matter? On the way back from Nalagat, C and I sat for a good while on the rocks overlooking the sea and talked at length. We came back to the moment itself and how we would cherish and remember it. The power of the sea, the sun, of how whether we call it G-d or science or struggle to define a greater creator or force it's to some extent immaterial. We spoke of personal impact, the definition of ambition and success. I said to C how she has effect already through her writing, through her conversations. Any subsequent development of her work, professional or otherwise, will carry on the success but on many levels she has already succeeded. As far as I am concerned anyway. :-) Moments and minutes count every day, whether we are waking, sleeping or dreaming. And isn't photography a wonderful thing to explore and extend those experiences for those with the gift of sight?