What I mean to say is not that I’m so familiar with the countenances of the great composers that I could pick any one of them out of a crowd of a thousand (although I could, I certainly could), but that I half-expected to see this particular late-Romantic Austrian-Bohemian-Jewish symphonist and conductor on this particular day, a fact that I remarked to him after removing my Ipod’s left earphone.
He didn’t hear me at first, and then it seemed to take him three or four beats to tear himself away from the view of Bayit VaGan, Malha, and the hazy Vale of the Spirits that winds through the Jerusalem hills down to the House of the Sun.
“Not surprised? Why would that be?” he asked, looking me over with what I could best describe as a sharp critical eye. “I do not normally patronize this place, but the celestial health club is closed for repairs and they have sent us here in the meantime.”
Gustav Mahler
You’re a Good Man, Bibi Brown — “Necessary Stories” column from The Jerusalem Report
Ilana rolls over and glares at me. “Calm down,” she says. “Your freedoms do not include shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded Temple.”
“Ohmigod,” I say. “I had the weirdest nightmare.”
“It must be something you didn’t eat,” Ilana suggests.
“I was a dog,” I say.
“A dog?”
“In a comic strip. And there was this music …”
“This is the fluff of which dreams are made?” Ilana sighs. “Let’s hear it…”