What a strange season of my life this is. While I'm not trying to be unduly cryptic, there's only so much I can say about it at the moment. Bear in the mind the counsel of the often sardonic Fran Lebowitz that one ought not to take one's philosophy of life from a popular song. I am not suggesting anything by song lyrics, am I?. It is just that music is the thing that is getting me through these days. That, and a lot of time on the zafu... Voila,mon petit zafu:

Je suis malade complètement malade
Comme quand ma mère sortait le soir
Et qu'elle me laissait seul avec mon désespoir

I'm sick, totally sick
Like when my mom went out at night
and left me alone with my dispair
~Serge Lama

If, however, you feel up to storming the Bastille, this is definitely the day for it!. In the meanwhile, here is Lara Fabian singing one of the first dozen or so songs I learned in French. A French boy named Bruno taught it to me at Kibbutz Ga'ash. He wasn't quite as ardent as Ms. Fabian.


Lara Fabian's mother is Sicilian and her dad is Flemish. She sings in French, Italian, Spanish and English - all of which she speaks fluently - and sometimes sings in Portuguese and German as well. I only wish she would also sing in Dutch. Years ago when I was living in Portland, Oregon, I used to tune the dial to 90.7 FM on Sunday mornings for my community radio, KBOO's</a> program, the Yiddish Hour with Yankl Falk. (How funny to meet one of of his sons here in grad school!). If I woke up especially early (before the 10 am show...) and flipped on my radio while the coffee was brewing, depending on the week, I would either get the Italian Hour or the Dutch Hour. That, long with two visits to the Netherlands, convinced me that music sung in Dutch...is a lot like Dutch food. Oi! Please, somebody, prove me wrong!

Nature Boy
There was a boy
A very strange enchanted boy
They say he wandered very far, very far
Over land and sea
A little shy and sad of eye
But very wise was he

And then one day
A magic day he passed my way
And while we spoke of many things
Fools and kings
This he said to me
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return"
~eden ahbez

eden ahbez
Born into a Jewish family in Brooklyn in 1908, Alexander Aberle reinvented himself in California, taking the lower-case only name eden ahbez. He worked as a dishwasher in a vegetarian restaurant where, once a week or so, they'd also let him play the piano.


the bucolic eden ahbez and his mishpokhe עדן אחבז הכפרי ומשפחתו

Nat King Cole liked his song, Nature Boy and once the singer finally tracked the composer/lyricist down and got ahbez's permission, he recorded it.

Nat King Cole singing eden ahbez's Nature Boy

Finding the bare-footed, long-haired ahbez and his family was not so easy. Living on a diet of fruit, veggies and nuts, they were dwelling with the family bicycle and their sleeping bags under the first 'L' of the Hollywood sign, which in those days, was 50 feet/15 meters tall.


Reduced in stature from the sign that Ahbez called home by 5 feet / 1.5 meters

I always thought that the Hollywood sign was on, well, Mt. Hollywood. Instead, it is on nearby Mt. Lee. Mt. Hollywood is where the Griffith Observatory and Planetarium are located and where James Dean gave Sal Mineo his red coat in Rebel without a Cause before Sal's character, Plato was gunned down by the police.


Sublimated passion: keeping it platonic in the planetarium?
שבוע טוב I do wish a good week to all, full of friendship, of love and especially, of health.

Itai

"Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods."
~Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, [Book VIII, 1155a5-6]

Tags: Fête Nationale, aristotle, eden ahbez, lara fabian, nature boy
Current Mood: listless
Current Music: KBOO: Music from the True Vine