Bible Hill: Digging into the Past

This is a picture of the remains of a search for remains: a square left by archaeologists, which, over the years, has become a kind of archaeological remnant of its own.
I don't know why there haven't been extensive excavations on Bible Hill. Perhaps the test squares failed to indicate the presence of important remains, or perhaps the Department of Antiquities lacked the resources to do a full excavation.
It's hard to imagine that a hill in such a prominent location remained undeveloped over the thousands of years of human settlement in Jerusalem. On the other hand, it's also hard to understand why it remained undeveloped in the 60 odd years of the existence of the State of Israel. Maybe there's a problem of ownership.
Property rights in Jerusalem are often difficult to sort out (I say this in the light of a very recent Supreme Court decision denying the rights of Palestinians to the houses in East Jerusalem where they have been living for decades, because the land was owned by Jews before 1948 - a clear instance of a huge disparity between law and justice).
Archaeology also raises the question of how much the past should own the present. Does the presence of something ancient necessarily trump the claims of living people? If the point of archaeology is gathering evidence about the past, once the evidence has been gathered, why not clear away the ancient debris, especially if it's not something particularly beautiful or impressive?
Archaeology can be a metaphor for our attitudes toward our personal past. Some people turn incidents in their past into monuments, and others sweep their past away and move on. I don't think this is the result of voluntary decisions. Some of us can't stop worshiping our past. We can't clear our ancestors' bones out of our living room altars, while others can't relate to those dusty urns at all. There is danger in remembering too much and in forgetting too much.

On Improvisation, Another Interest

Years ago, when I first began attending the workshops given by the late Arnie Lawrence, I told him that my goal was to learn to improvise. At the time, I thought it was a kind of technique that you could learn, and, in a sense, it is, but not in the way I thought it was.
On the one hand, improvisation isn't all that mysterious or difficult. Every time you open your mouth and utter a sentence, you're essentially improvising. When you're learning to speak a foreign language, it often takes a long time before you can produce new grammatical sentences in that language -- improvise in it -- and improvisation in music is very similar in that respect. You have to learn the musical language that you're improvising in before you can do it.
My goal was to improvise in the language of jazz, and it has taken me ten years or more of steady work to reach the point where I am beginning to feel confident in my ability to do it.
Earlier in the process, when it came my turn to improvise, I often felt like someone who has dived into murky water with his eyes closed, hoping to come up in a certain place, but never sure whether he'd reached it or not until after his head broke the surface and he could look around again.
Or else I felt as if the music were zooming past me at such a pace that I could never catch it.
The next step was playing relatively mechanically, repeating similar patterns over and over again, because it was hard enough to say to myself, "This is an A Major Seventh chord, and I can play certain notes over it," so I couldn't be in much control over which notes I played or how I played them, as long as they weren't wildly inappropriate to an A Major Seventh chord (though, in fact, if you play it in the right spirit, you can play any note over any chord).
I'm still more or less at that stage, but I'm getting better at choosing the notes and avoiding repetitive patterns (at least I think I'm improving at that). Improvisation involves a paradoxical combination of control and freedom. The best times in playing a solo are when you suddenly find yourself playing something that surprises even you, when you suddenly think of playing some notes that you've never practiced and never thought of before.
It's very much like what can happen in writing: an unplanned thought occurs to you - and it's the most important thought of all.

Complaints

This is the way the old and disused Jerusalem railway station looks from the western edge of Bible Hill. The neglect of this venerable and beautiful monument is, at least metaphorically, criminal. About half a year ago, somebody set a fire in the upper floor. You can see the stains left by the smoke over the windows. The official response to this arson was to place some police barriers (which soon fell down) and warnings that the building was now "dangerous," meaning that it might fall down onto passers by.
The railroad station is not the only derelict public structure nearby. Obviously real estate developers have their eye on it, but until someone decides what to do and receives permission to do it, the building sits in neglect.
A few years ago somebody commissioned murals on metal panels that were placed over the doors and windows, pictures the evoked the building's past as a center of transportation between Jerusalem and Jaffo during the mandate period. It was built at the end of the nineteenth century by the Ottomans. The railroad connection between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean coast changed the character of the city.
I am upset by the neglect of this lovely building, which has so much potential, and, on a larger scale, I am upset because this kind of thoughtless neglect is typical of life here in Israel. Why isn't anyone taking on the mission of saving the railroad station and turning it into an attractive cultural and commercial center?

Bible Hill - An Explanation

Two or three times a week I take a short walk with Kipper, our dog, to a place that the Jerusalem Municipality has decided to call "Bible Hill." Aside from putting a couple of signs up, informing the public that it is an urban nature preserve, the city has done nothing in particular to change it form the way it has been for as long as I remember: a low hill rising up between the disused railway station to the west and the Mount Zion hotel, to the east. The Scottish Church, which appears in the photograph here, is to the north, and to the south is a recently refurbished stucco building that once housed part of the government printing office.
On the lower east slope the remains of an ancient quarry are visible. Between the church and the recently built Begin Center are ancient burial caves. Some impressive archaeological discoveries have been made there, but for now no one is digging.
I go there with a notebook and try to jot down ideas while Kipper runs around, but he foils me. When I sit down quietly, he comes and sits down restlessly next to me, sticks his nose in the notebook, and demands that I walk around with him. So I decided to bring my camera as well as my notebook.

Sitting on a Half-Demolished Stone Wall

Here I am on a hilltop

In the center of Jerusalem,

Vacant for no discernible reason.

My mongrel is roaming free –

No cars here to kill him,

Plenty of things to sniff at.

Trivial questions distract me.

I don’t even know what kind of building

This wall once belonged to.

What am I trying to capture or figure out?

There might have been a message once, but

I was young, and the young

Don’t know how to listen. They only hear

Words they’ve already said to themselves.

So I probably got the message wrong

Or misremember: Maybe no one told me,

“Life is supposed to be fun.”

Now I think they were saying:

"Life isn’t supposed to be anything

Specific, just what it turns out to be."

Performance is Reality (or vice versa)

Yesterday evening I played jazz with my friend Ra'anan, a pianist, at a restaurant in Jerusalem. I played baritone sax. I like to compare the baritone to a big, friendly dog. It's so big, it doesn't have to be aggressive to make its presence felt. But it's a heavy, clumsy instrument, and playing it standing up takes a lot of strength.
We performed about ten songs, a mix of standards, blues, and Latin. Ra'anan and I have been playing together for years, and we have performed in public a few times, but maybe now we've reached a new stage, when we'll be performing a lot more.
My concentration on the music is considerably more intense when I'm performing in public, even if the audience is mainly people who aren't really listening very carefully. I am inside the music in a way I can never be when I'm just listening to music. If I were a better listener, I would also be a better player.
Bringing your art, whatever it is, outside, putting it in front of other people, gives it a quality it can never have when it's only private. In theory or aspiration, I always try to play so that every note I play counts and matters (or, for that matter, so that every word I write matters). But of course that's something I can rarely achieve. When I play for other people, my intention is more powerful. At the end of the evening, I am both exhausted and exhilarated.