Museum on the Seam

Located in a former checkpoint house between the Israeli and Jordanese parts of divided Jerusalem, scared from gunfires from several assult, this museum now raises questions about socio-political reality and the various civil rights. It's not big, we went through it in a couple of ours, and some of the "art" is only art because it's in a museum. But it also had some nice pieces, that made me think. First of all that I still don't know the local history well enough. And I didn't know the razor-wire was invented in South Africa (an artist from SA had bended razor-wire into frames).


I liked the very expressive and composed photographies by Claudia Rogge - e.g. one with people in black robes, had they been white were it Ku Klux Klan, one holding a big silver cross supported on the ground - and the "invisible Man" photo bu Liu Bolin, apparently he's made many more, very impressive photographs. (Here's an article about him with many pictures.)


The best Israeli piece was a short movie by Doron Solomons (and normally I don't like movies in museums, I think they are too wierd), called "Blood brothers" in Hebrew and "Brothers in arms" in English. A repeating scene called "Brotherly love" was the artist as a siametic twin, doing worse and worse things to his other half - I interpreted it as Israelis and Palestinians who fight over this piece of land - ending with something like "maybe I can't control my own body, but he's not going to control it!" and the own siametic twin shooting the other in the head. And maybe dying also, because they share the same body, the same vital organs?

All this religiousness

Jews in traditional clothes,
Monks and nones èn masse in and around the Old City
Pilgrims walking and chanting, carrying a cross on Via Dolorosa (the believed path Jesus went with his cross - and it has changed several time over the centuries)
Muslim women with scarfs, some few with niqab
Big beards, wheather Muslim, Jewmish or Armish...
Souvenirs and souvenirs and tonnes of souvenirs from the three religions, often side by side.

One should think I would get inspired by it all.
But what I was most inspired by was a video send to me by a friend in DK, "Science saved my soul".
We're all made of stardust, everything we have here on Earth has at some point been inside a star. We're very small and unimportant. But we're here. Able to observe it all, to marvel over nature and everything in it, from the smallest plants growing, to the biggest stars and galaxies.

No restrictions from any God in this view (I miss leverpostej!), but because I am so amazed of how everything works (created by a God or not), because I think it's all so beautiful, I want not to harm it, and therefore I am kind to it.

And this is enough for me.
For now.

Let's see if Jerusalem can change my view...

New strings for my 3oud!

I was happy to get my 3oud back - didn't think I had become so attached to it already, I've only had it for a month, and my theory is that one connects more to a wind instrument (through the mouth) than to a string instrument. But I might be wrong.

My teacher had put on new and better strings for me, and I can hear the difference in sound, though I didn't think I would be able to. I wish I had my tuner (which I forgot in the bag of my "old" 3oud in Denmark) so I could tune it properly - but I'm still able to do the fingering exercises I got. Thanks to my teacher for actually giving me tips on how to do "zakhrafe" [ornamentations] in the Arabic style, and for his patience with my still fumbling fingers. There's still a long way before I can play fluently, but I'll get there.

Palestinian orchestral challenges

Today I rehearsed with the wind band at ESNCM. That is, we 10 people rehearsed in one of the three fractions of the wind band. The other two fractions, with 30 more people all in all, are in Ramallah and Bethlehem, respectively. It would be convenient to meet in Jerusalem to rehearse all together, but not all the kids from the Palestinian Territories are allowed to go to Jerusalem. So we meet in Ramallah. But only when we have a sceduled concert to get ready to, which we don't have now. But our conductor tries to get one, if not for anything else then for us to try to play in a bigger orchestra.

And once again I feel fortunate at home to play in a big orchestra, that can meet without thoughts of checkpoints, permissions and big distances.

Concert with Shmemel!

We went to The Lab (where the entrance stamp is a mouse - of course) to hear Shmemel play (again after suggetion from the couchsurfer community). They play a mix of klezmer, funk, rock, and with loads of energy! They were great - unfortunately we'd forgotten our earplugs (and the soundmaster was of the regular type thinking "loud is great"), so we couldn't bear to stand in front and dance with the other people enjoying the music.

The band had a wind section of three sometimes four musicians, electric piano, 2 guitars, bass, drums, and a very expressive-crazy lead singer. Well, all of them were very expressive, and you could see how they enjoyed to be on stage and play. Many were jumping up and down a good deal of the time. They don't have a CD yet, but might release one in July. And then we'll be there. With earplugs so we can dance!

Link to video with some samples of their music - but the jumping energy miss!

Language school found!

Yay, I've found a language school so I can learn Palestinian dialect, understand what people here are saying, and stop sounding Egyptian. It's located in the Old City very close to the Temple Mount, and it's a part of al-Quds University (Jerusalem is called al-Quds [the Holy] in Arabic), at the Centre for Jerusalem studies. The teacher is very sweet and cheerful and pleasant, and I got a whole page of new words from our 3 hours' lesson. The class started in mid-January, but I'm jumping in anyway. It's the highest level they offer in dialect with class lessons, and I want classmates for sociable reasons. The class is meeting each tuesday and thursday for 3 hours, and today we were 7 students. It's gonna be good.

Backyard nature

I know it's not nice to take pictures of people without their concent, but this scene was just too great not to share. I was walking the dog we're "babysitting" (annoying little thing when he barks and whimpers all morning before we've got up, but I enjoy the few walks we've taken), and in the green valley in our backyard I saw this highly religious Jewish man sit on his chair in the middle of all the green reading the Torah. And he was not the first I'd come across on the walk.
Wonderful that there's green retreats around, and wonderful that people are using them!

When music becomes noise

During the rehersal tonight with the Israeli amateur orchestra I play in, I reaslised how fortunate we are at home in Greve at the music school to be trained so well in good sound on our instruments, and that there's so much focus on noise and that we have to take care of our ears so we don't get hearing damages. Two things that really miss here!

I considered to sponser a SoundEar (see the picture), to make the orchestra aware of their own noise level - but then I also want a little sign next to it, saying "Thanks to Re'em JLM for sponsoring this great device, which made our rehersals so much nicer". [There are SO many of these "sponsered by ..." signs and memorables here, I think it's silly.] I had to use earplugs during the rehersal, something I never really need at home.

Oh, and we're also fortunate to have a good conductor, who clearly shows where which beats are. And she places them in down-strokes, not in up-strokes... (Which has confused me many times; where is the beat going to be?)

But otherwise it's a lovely orchestra with very sweet people. And I look forward to play with them, and try to play concerts also.

Oriental music concert

We went to a student concert at the Centre for Middle Eastern Classical Music, an Israeli music school close to the Old City. All the musicians did a good job - though the hall was too small for all the many people wanting to listen; maybe they heard about the concert via couchsurfing.org, as we did. I enjoyed 3oud and qanoun sounds, and the oriental rhythms, I was carried away by one of the group songs in two voices (I guess it was Hebrew; in Arabic you normally don't use harmony). It was funny to hear Israelis sing in Arabic (I knew "Zourouni" originally sung by Fairouz), because the r's are different, and Arabic have some more guttural sounds.

I wonder if this school knows about ESNCM and vice versa - and if they would be interested in making concerts together... Their interest area is the same (music, more specific Oriental music), though the students at ESNCM are considerably younger than those at this centre. Language might also be a problem, though maybe not the biggest.