In my wildest dreams I never imagined that a work that had been waiting decades to come true would grow skin and tendons the moment its inventor passed away, and whoever got the torch to run with it on would be me.
Back in the childhood years at home, the early 80s, my brothers veered from classical music exclusively to rock, girls meditation and smoke. I'm a naive little girl and still do not know English and do not understand what they are talking about, but the clip of Kate Bush and Donald Sutherland for cloudbusting has already managed to flicker in front of my eyes and shake my little soul. Like her, small in front of a big, mysterious and knowledgeable mentor, who trusts his hands and heart on her, even when he is not only focused on her, but their reality together as simple is the meaning of her life, I also knew I had a big big brother who knows everything. But the end of the clip, the injustice, the snare in which the parting and the fulfillment take place at that very moment and literally move clouds, when it is taken from her but signals to her to continue, when she realizes she must decide and stay here for both of them's dream. Explained to me never.
My brother, Yuval Mesner. The inspiration of my life. In recent weeks I have been describing it, through millions of words about music, food, architecture, humor, wisdom, some wisdom some, sea, breadth of horizons, eyes, restraint, delicacy. Every now and then I stop to feel the pulse practicing to describe it, the one who was as clear to me as the sun, my back, my back, my eyes, the one at every intersection, small and large, showed me the most optimal way I could take, the one who knew how to reset me when I felt Overflowing, the one who always had in his eyes a glimmer of ancient affection, one who knows that while the days of fogging and discovering the great secrets are over, that we are big kids and the secrets are shrinking into adult sobriety, but we still share a cave of little secrets, within this great and sometimes terrible world, She's ours and she's warm and safe. If only because she's ours.
In recent weeks I have been describing it to sustain it.
Whereas only the words were at my disposal, even though I feel at home with them, I doubt I was conscious now.
But he left me songs.
He left me clouds of songs.
Decades ago, during the turbulent and long teenage years of both of us he would have come to my parents' house with the loot.
Tattoo, Mess, East West, Compositions and Compounds, and every week a new song or two, sketches of his melodies for Leah Goldberg.
There was a story that she had a profound impact on his life and that she was the greatest of them all for him.
In sadness and wealth.
The songs were painfully beautiful, and our mother would ask as in protection that he make a decapitation and play the song she had already heard last week.
Every time another song was piled up on this decoy, sometimes he agreed and sang on the piano, sometimes he lost patience, for her it always ends with a smile that tells satisfaction but hides a lot of embarrassment.
How genius her son is, and how charged things are.
I was more practical than her and did not hang my happiness on his willingness to play my flute.
I rolled up my sleeves, opened a diary and set a weekly piano lesson with it.
A bit of harmony, a bit of theory, the real book of jazz, Autumm Leaves, structure and rationale of blues, how to find chords, and the cherry has always been a song by Leah Goldberg.
Written chords, remarkably matter-of-fact small notes, soft and clear and unpretentious handwriting, typical, distinct, and accurate.
He was the best teacher I've ever had.
With modesty and devotion he taught me a language which in very few lessons has remained engraved in me in its simplicity and truth to this day.
In between I unloaded in front of him my youthful rebellion against the world and there was nothing like it to contain, giggle, and also rebuke lightly when I was too foolish.
It was not cool to argue with him, he was too smart.
In the following years Yuval was in a sea of other works and I played and sang all these beautiful songs to all the friends and bands, he is in Tel Aviv, I am in Jerusalem, and the work goes up and down mountains, a detached and magical collection of powerful and indivisible emotions and images, polished like diamonds. In the meantime our mother went to a world that is all good, and together we learned longings from them. Yuval was already a father, we were married a few months apart, we shared parenting experiences, lots of equality between us, and always, the mix of being best friends, and at the same time the big brother and his little sister.
Long after he left Leah Goldberg's songs in their ambush for the day they would rise like a wall, as one of them, I decided to put them on stage.
The piece went into hands that changed the course of the songs and not by my choice weakened their status.
He in his much modesty gently said his opinion but left me the freedom to do what I understand.
I for my part stood on my hind legs because the songs are the treasure here and may not become the margins of another work, and the price was another genizah for many years to come.
In the meantime, we created together "Die, My Love", a solo show that I have been running with for years.
He gave the show its life, thanks to the music he wrote for it.
He heard the sounds of the forest and the vibration of the heart and the intensity of the passions in the sensitivity of a classical composer.
A few sounds from the bowels of the earth, with which he paved an imaginary space for me that allowed the show to breathe evening after night.
And as a few more winters passed, as this excitement became as mundane, beautiful and clear as morning and night, Leah Goldberg sought to get up again and happen. The days were plague days, and we sat down to play. Leah Goldberg's childhood diaries were cast as the arteries between the songs, and the songs gave them back their full depth and three-dimensionality. It was a perfect connection. The first house that welcomed us on a winter evening was a beautiful home of friends, which allowed for a fat and promising pilot greatness, and we set off, safer than ever.
Winter has passed, spring has passed, practicality is back to being something to build on, and last summer we made appearances. We laughed a lot, we worked on it efficiently, it was ours, and it was so exciting that befitting the synchronic tendency to the atmosphere of a high mountain and thinning words, there was no need to talk about how exciting it was. At night imagine the cello being photographed in a trailer, his bow caressing the fatigue of the songs and lifting their spirits, and during the days we shared the worries of our family lovers, as a strong team of brother and sister sharing the most difficult moments together but knowing their work is at their disposal.
About the beginning of this fall I will inevitably learn to sing, for many years to come.
Everyday lyrics are irrelevant to moments of this kind, maybe that’s why songs were written.
A tearful and so quick farewell is not built for order and logic.
Maybe that's why music is written.
The corridors of the hospital were filled with sorrow and songs, and I did not stop singing them, and as I knew we would soon become a song, I insisted on getting used to hearing Yuval in my ears, singing it between my tears, practicing, believing, guiding me the way, no matter what.
October 2021. "With this wind," rising, whole, like the cloud of Kate Bush, beautiful, sleek, and mist-free.
And the inventor?
Like TV in the living room of the 80s.
Figures in black came and took him without again.
He said goodbye and in his eyes said: No matter what happens.
Keep going.
Keep going.
You will be able to move the clouds.
Hello, Yuval.
