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Three

The Finjan and Bob Dylan: Travel Substitutes

When Ronit was four years old her life changed dramatically. Invaded by an unorthodox segment of society, her nuclear family was suddenly extended, requiring radical adjustments. Shimon opened a folk music club called The Finjan, the word for an Arabic coffee pot, around which people traditionally gathered to sing, tell stories and drink coffee. Each week a different performer was hired as the main act, while Shimon, the house musician, was the warm-up act. It was an immediate success.

In the early sixties performers like Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, and Kris Kristofferson, not yet popular, were eager to gain experience and exposure by performing in small clubs. Even seasoned performers like the Blues musicians Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and the Black Blues guitarist, John Lee Hooker, were readily available. Shimon and I, both devoted to Folk Music and Blues, found it thrilling to have musicians we had listened to on record, right there in the flesh. It was especially thrilling for Shimon who had never seen live performers in isolated South Africa, and who was, by now, a competent musician himself.

One of his idols was Josh White, the great Blues musician. Even in South Africa, Shimon had every one of his recordings. He could hardly believe his good fortune when one day Josh White came to our house.

Shimon had recently been learning to play some of Josh White’s chords and blues sequences. There was one elusive chord he had found impossible to duplicate, the stretch was too great, and he was sure some ruse must be employed to play it. Knowing this might be his only chance, he took the plunge. With the humility of an initiate crossexamining the master, he asked Josh White if he would demonstrate the chord. Josh White drew his guitar to him like a lover and, spreading the fingers of his large black hand over its body, struck the impossible chord. The sound swelled, filling the room like the sound of the great amen. Shimon looked as though he had just seen God.

The Finjan was located in a part of Montreal where hotels were expensive. Since we couldn’t afford hotel costs, the financial arrangement included rent-free accommodation with us. We put an extra bed in Ronit’s room. She slept in one bed and every week a different performer slept in the other. Her room was small and sharing it necessitated removing her toy chest. Together we selected her favourite toys and squeezed them on to her bookshelf, banishing the rest to the locker. We also emptied one of her drawers and made space in her closet. Although she was not enthusiastic about the new arrangements, she adapted to them without protest.

At first she reacted to the succession of musicians sharing her room, passing through her life, with indifference. Somewhat shy of strangers, she kept a cautious distance, yet made allowances for their presence in small ways like tip-toeing in her bedroom — they had probably gone to sleep not much before she awoke. Essentially she carried on with her life out of their way, while at the same time quietly observing theirs. She was good at entertaining herself. Not especially fond of dolls, she busied herself with painting, drawing, looking at books, or playing with her building toys.

Later, after they had returned several times, she became friendly with some of the performers, even developing an affection for a rare few. She accepted the fact that there was always someone living with us, that a constant stream of people came and went. She learned to live her life around that fact, gradually incorporating it into her existence, just as she learned to live with the constant strumming of guitars, and the acceptance of people she found strange, sometimes frightening.

Ronit was three before she saw a black person — there were hardly any in our neighbourhood, few in Montreal. She was astounded. “Mummy why does that lady have a rubber face?” she asked, bewildered. When black musicians started appearing in her room she reacted with suspicion, convinced they hadn’t washed, asking why the palms of their hands were clean and the rest of them dirty. But by the time Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee performed at the club she had grown accustomed to black skin.

Because Sonny was blind and Brownie lame, and because they were well-known performers, no longer young, who deserved extra consideration, we had arranged rooms for them in a hotel. However, they liked spending time in our flat. I cooked special dinners for them — Sonny’s favourite was baked ham and pineapple pie — and on their nights off musician friends would come by for wonderful jamming sessions.

From the very beginning Ronit was more friendly with Sonny and Brownie than with the other performers. They were accustomed to relating to children. Brownie had several of his own including a daughter Ronit’s age, his youngest. Identifying Ronit with his daughter, he always referred to her as “the baby.” Even years later when she was a teenager, he would ask, “how’s the baby?” Sonny treated Ronit to special harmonica effects, making his harmonica talk for her. Her favourite utterance was “I want my mamma.” She would sit on the floor, looking up at him, small and white, her eyes wide, her legs tucked under, waiting for “I want my mama” with the avid expectation she’d wait for sleeping beauty to spring to life. And he, large and black, his big boot thumping beside her, his gold rings flashing, his eyes smiling down on her, coaxed whoops and hoots and howls from his harmonica until it finally wailed, “I want my mamma.” Each time he played it, her face lit up in wonder and he laughed his great belly laugh, slapping his thighs in delight. Although she could hardly understand his thick Southern accent, I could sense a connection between them, the unlikely connection of polarities, they communicated through “I want my mama.”

Whereas Ronit accepted the new life style with detachment and neutrality, warming to it only gradually, I embraced it. I worked at The Finjan right from the beginning, leaving Ronit at home with a babysitter on week nights and with my parents, who lavished affection upon her, at weekends, accepting their indulgences for the sake of my freedom. I loved everything about The Finjan; the atmosphere of the room, intimate with fishnet, brass lanterns and candlelit tables; the late nights; the all-night restaurants; the music; and especially the musicians. Every night was a Saturday night. I never knew the mornings.

By now Ronit was able to get her own breakfast and dress herself for school. She woke me only to braid her long plait and to hear me say, “have a good day at school, and don’t forget your lunch.” Then she waited for my father to take her to school and I slept until noon.

Plaiting her hair was the one thing I didn’t resent being woken up for. I did it lovingly. Ronit’s hair was my indulged darling, the fulfilment of my childhood fantasy. No sacrifice was too great for it. It fell like a cascade streaming over her bum, thick and rippling and long, long, long. I would never let it be cut. When I was a child I yearned for long hair. But my mother viewed long hair as an enemy against which she waged a relentless battle. Then one holiday at my aunt’s farm, when my mother was preoccupied, it slipped by her watchful eye and grew to my shoulders. For one sweet summer I felt like Rapunzel. Then suddenly, alarmed by her terrible lapse, she summoned a hair cutter. I remember screeching in agony as the scissors descended. The poor woman thought she had pierced my skull. My first act of independence was growing my hair long. I never cut it again. Ronit’s first act of independence was cutting hers short. It was many years before she allowed it to pass her ears.

For me, meeting a new performer every week was, in a way, like travelling, each musician an adventure, a landscape to explore, a magic encounter. I didn’t have to court the exceptional as every real traveller does, the exceptional courted me. I learned to tread softly as though entering a new land, feeling my way into the experience. I had a special affinity with those who not only sang traditional ballads, work songs and blues, but who wrote their own songs. Long after Shimon had gone to sleep, I would spend what remained of the night, ensconced in my wonderful kitchen, listening to their music, participating in their visions, immersed in their poetry. They were like the images in their songs, like the sound of their music, tender, powerful, haunting, original. They were like outlaws with anti-establishment lyrics as their weapons, they embodied romance, mystery, excitement, rebellion. I looked into their eyes, breathed their atmosphere and longed for the unknown yet to be experienced. With the first signs of light I’d slip away, not allowing the shapes of morning to dispel the poetry of the night. In what remained of the day, I would cook for them, ascend Mount Royal in the heart of the city to dream under the weeping willows by the lake, attend to the flat and to Ronit, prepare for my university courses, and wait for the night.

Most of the performers were male. Women found the bitter solitude of anonymous cities strung together by vast stretches of highway, with only a guitar for comfort, too hard for consistent endurance and rarely returned. They fascinated me, these determined, devoted males, these gypsy bards. I was fascinated not only by their talent, by their need to make music, but also by the way they lived, on the edge, exposed and vulnerable, singing protest and love, their lives part of their songs.

Performing at The Finjan was a difficult, lonely experience. Bereft of electronic assistance, of extravagant lighting, of a distanced stage, the performer was alone, impaled by a red-amber spotlight, caged by expectant faces, with just his guitar and his voice. Yet he created sounds and images that went directly to the centre of feeling, enhanced by the intense sensuality he projected. He held up his soul like a mirror and I saw myself in it. He sat on a tall stool, the guitar cradled in his thigh, the fingers of one hand stroking the slender neck, while the other beat a driving rhythm, and I could feel him lower his head into its curves in perfect oneness. When he threw back his head, drawing the guitar to his breast, clenching his eyes shut in some wild ecstasy of music and man, I’d shiver with the embrace. Sometimes I knew I could love him because of his song, such was my empathy, my yearning, my desire to nourish, to hold. I related to the wanderer in him, the seeker, the rebel, and because I was temporarily anchored, I was able to provide an anchor, a small haven, a brief respite. Because the musicians were always on the road, not in one place long enough to make friends, they responded to my extension of care with enthusiasm and affection. In one way they had the effect on me children were supposed to have, they inspired mothering, but unlike children they never overstayed their welcome, their last song left me wanting more. And they inspired much else. They dared to point to a new horizon over which the changing times were taking shape, and I, along with my generation, tuned into their vision, sharing their sense of triumph in breaking new ground. Armed with flowers in our hands and in our hair, “coils of beads around our necks,” and lines from their songs, we embraced the changing times. I became very close to many of them. Some eventually became lovers, some remained my closest friends, and some went on to become famous.

Bob Dylan epitomised many of the characteristics which drew me to the musicians. I first heard him play in New York at Gerde’s Folk City, a Greenwich Village club popular with folk singers. Every Monday Gerde’s had a hootenanny night where musicians came to perform and meet each other. The standard was high, many now well-known musicians used Gerde’s as a showcase, a venue to perfect their performance skills and to be discovered. I don’t know if Bob Dylan was scheduled to play that night, because when the M.C., Brother John Sellers, called him, he looked uncomfortable and dragged himself on to the stage, whereas the other performers leapt on to it. The audience didn’t know him, he had recently come to New York, and they seemed unwilling to make the effort to listen. After a few songs there were shouts for him to get off the stage. He continued singing through the shouts, looking so thin, I thought I could see his shoulder blades cutting his flesh, his pale aquiline face topped by a jaunty cap making him look thinner and paler. Before his allotted songs were up, he slunk off the stool, and looking like he’d been fatally wounded, slouched off the stage. I was among the few people who clapped, not only because of empathy, but because I thought he was excellent. His voice took some getting used to. At that time it had a rent, rasping quality as though it had been caught on barb wire which tore deeper as he struggled to free it, but it was ideally suited to both his lyrics and his appearance on stage, which were troubled, anguished, conveying a searing beauty. It went straight to my heart. He was deeply moving, unforgettable.

When he came to Montreal, less than a year later, I went to meet him at a down town bar to take him to The Finjan. By now his fortunes had improved. He had a small but devoted following, mainly musicians themselves, who thought he was brilliant. He seemed more assured, that perpetual orphan look, helpless and bereft, was almost gone. As soon as he saw me he launched into one of those sad funny monologues I was to become so fond of, explaining why he was late. He told me that upon arriving at the Montreal airport the customs officials put him through some intensive questioning — probably because he looked dishevelled and spoke with a rambling cowboy drawl. This came as a shock. “Hey man,” he responded to one question, “that ain’t none of your business.” His behaviour must have seemed so erratic, so surly, so resentful of authority, that the officials decided to search him thoroughly. “Can you believe those mother fuckers, they started poking into my things… my personal things.”

He was outraged by the intrusion into his privacy. When the officer had the audacity to open his bag he pulled it away, “hey man you can’t do that, them’s my personal belongings.” He looked at me, took a long pull on his cigarette, and said, “I hate that kind of stuff.” Apparently he didn’t know they could do exactly that and they did it. He became increasingly incensed as they not only probed his belongings but searched his person. He was at the mercy of authority and he detested it. Through sheer perversity he smiled sardonically and said, “hey man, if it’s the dope you want, I got it hid right here … in my harmonica.” He couldn’t believe what happened next.

“D’ye know what those mother fuckers did… they unscrewed every screw in every one of my harmonicas looking for dope. Those dumb-assed coppers thought I was going to tell them where I stash the dope, those creeps couldn’t even speak English.” By the time the search was over he’d missed his bus and had to wait over an hour for another one.

“When I got to town I went into a bar for a drink, y’know, just to cool my head, it needed cooling real bad. I ordered a drink and handed the barman a $10 bill. That dood took my good U.S. money and gave me monopoly money for change, y’know that phoney coloured money, he even gave me a $2 bill.” I remembered that American money has no $2 bills, and was all one colour, whereas Canadian money has a different colour for each denomination.

“Hey man, what do you take me for, I ain’t no fool, I ain’t taking none of your funny money. You some kind of a crook, or what? He started hollerin’ and screamin’ and I started hollerin’ and screamin’ louder, and he said he was callin’ the po-lice. That dood was sure fuckin’ with my head. And all those streets were headin’ down the hill into the river and I just knew if I didn’t sit tight I’d roll right down into that river and drown.” He turned to me with a look of total incomprehension, “what kind of a place is this anyway? I sure could use some salvation.”

As he puffed relentlessly on his cigarette I wondered if it was possible that he knew nothing about border crossings, customs, countries with different languages, different currencies, if this was his first time out of the U.S.A. I never knew if that traumatic entry into Canada was entirely real or partly imagined or a bit of both, but I loved the story and its dead-pan delivery.

Later, when I got to know him better, I understood that the impression of baffled innocence and inability to fathom the ways of the world, of being a primitive anti-intellectual, as though he’d never read a book, was cultivated as part of his persona. In fact he was astute, knowledgeable, even disciplined. It was his way of keeping people off-balance, of controlling the situation by not letting on if what he was saying was fact or fantasy. I came to accept this and to enjoy which ever it was.

That attitude of incredible naivety when dealing with the practicalities of life, like he had just stepped into the twentieth century was much in evidence during the subsequent times I saw him in New York. Once I introduced him to Rivka, an Israeli friend of mine. They hit it off immediately. He said he’d never eaten Israeli food and she invited him to dinner. He was delighted by the invitation and was in the process of noting her address. “Eighty-eighth street,” she told him. He stopped writing, returned the pencil and paper to his pocket and looked at her with a sad apologetic smile.

“I can’t come.”

“Why?” she asked confused, things had been going so well.

“I don’t go above forty-second street.” He paused, then as if in explanation added, “there’s some real weird people up there. Forty-second street, that’s as far as I go.” And that was final.

Another time, inspired by my passion for travel, he said, “Yeah, I’d like to travel.… I’d like to see Israel… what d’ye have to do to get there?”

“Well first you have to get a passport.”

“How d’ye do that?”

I couldn’t tell if he really didn’t know, but went along for the ride. “You go to the passport office, fill out a form, take some photos, pay some money and apply for a passport.”

He looked disheartened. “Y’got to do all that?”

“It’s not that much.”

“I ain’t going nowhere if I gotta do all that.”

Israel was dropped.

Bob Dylan played at The Finjan and shared Ronit’s room. He was the only performer we ever had who people walked out on. (Later, young musicians like Toronto’s Murray McLaughlan, who was to became famous himself, vied to sleep in the bed he had slept in.) His rough, gravelly voice with its nasal twang didn’t appeal to Finjan audiences and, not knowing what to make of him, they walked out. One night, discouraged by the lack of appreciation, he said to Shimon, “this is the last time I play clubs, from now on I only do concerts. I’m going to play Carnegie Hall. I’m going to make it big.” Shimon laughed at the absurdity of the idea.

“Yeah, you and who else?” he teased. Shimon wasn’t particularly impressed by Bob Dylan’s non-melodic songs, and by his tuneless, often off-key voice. But I was mesmerised by his songs, by his performance style, by the combination of his dishevelled appearance and the careless informality of his music, juxtaposed with the precision of his poetry, the startling bite of his layered imagery, by his raw vital energy. For me the growling monotone voice people objected to was a third instrument interwoven with his guitar and harmonica, producing a tortured sound, counterpointing, complementing, adding a new dimension to his powerful lyrics. I thought he was unique, great. I loved his imagination, his original way of seeing things, his off-beat humour, and I loved what he was singing about, his challenge to authority, to “the masters of war,” his celebration of the young, the powerless, the outcasts.

After one discouraging Finjan performance, when he was hurt by the audience’s insensitive behaviour and, pretending it didn’t matter, he confessed to me that he was feeling down, achy, depleted. “I’m all twisted up” he said, “I need to untwist real bad.” I offered him a massage. He abandoned himself to that massage with the intensity he devoted to his song writing. As my thumbs circled and coaxed the small knots and ridges imbedded in his flesh and my palms pressed and kneaded his pale buttery skin, my fingers reaching into his pain, I could feel his body sigh as it surrendered to my hands. He wouldn’t allow the massage to stop; he needed it, he said, to level his head. He kept me at it all night long. When I protested and wanted to stop, he sang me snatches of songs he kept in his head, and told me sad, funny, mad stories. Soon the bed became a tiny island adrift in a surreal stream of consciousness, brilliant flashes suddenly illuminating the dark.

I was enthralled by his stunning connections, the electric leaps from sense to nonsense, the unpredictable twists and spirals of his imagination, as he related the unrelatable. His mind became a collage of images overlapping into new meanings as he laid down layer upon layer of madness and sanity which entwined and interlaced, forming some kind of subliminal sense, moving in and out of my comprehension. It was astonishing — strange, wonderful, exceptional. Soon he didn’t have to urge me to continue massaging, because just as he couldn’t stop talking it was more than just talking — ideas seemed to be pouring out of him — I couldn’t stop massaging — it was more than just massaging, energy seemed to be flowing from my hands, shaping, creating, releasing the wild images trapped inside him. I had the sense that if he didn’t expel those images battling in his head they would explode into madness and that my hands were somehow maintaining sanity. I was compelled to continue. It was an extraordinary duet. I massaged him until morning came and he was asleep.

That massage cemented our friendship. (Later he confided that if he ever got rich the first thing he would get was a full—time massage person. I should have applied for the job.) I saw him whenever I went to New York and our times together were a treat. He had an unexpected side to him, which I adored. He liked being the jester, leaping into impromptu capsules of off-beat acting out, tiny improvised performances where he plunged in and out of other realities. He often shared these morsels of fantasy theatre with Rambling Jack Elliott, a musician friend who greatly influenced his music, his style and his behaviour. They were very funny together, breaking into incongruous scenarios of whatever took their fancy.

One summer night when I was in New York, the three of us were tripping through the streets feeling great. Bob and Jack looked like a pair of adopted cowboys, in cowboy hats, boots, worn jeans, guitars and dark glasses. (It was unseemly for cowboys to wear glasses but dark glasses, “shades” were acceptable.) I was the invisible cowgirl. They were at their playful, fun-loving best, laughing, joking, bouncing off each other. Suddenly we came to a wide square with an illuminated fountain in its centre rising and falling in bursts of colour. The setting was irresistible. They climbed the fountain wall, pulling me after them.

We sat on the wall, our legs dangling over the side, the fountain at our backs, looking down on the passers—by, like kings of the castle. Bob raised his guitar to toast the occasion and began strumming and picking, Country style. Jack joined him. A crowd gathered beneath us. Bob looked down into the raised faces and burst into Shakespeare. “I’m Ham-let,” he drawled, cowboy style, with more twangs and licks, “and this here’s Or-feel-ye-ah”. He pointed his guitar toward Jack who nodded and tipped his hat to accompanying strums and riffs. “Far out,” someone yelled. And they launched into a personalised rendition of Hamlet, narrated by two laid-back cowboys sitting around a camp fire and accompanied by Country and Western guitar picking. It was hilarious. A gem. We found the wall strewn with coins.

I was with Bob Dylan, walking down a Greenwich Village street, the first time he was followed by two teeny-boppers. He couldn’t be convinced they were following him and kept stopping abruptly to see if they too would stop. When they did, shyly and at a safe distance, he was ecstatic. “I’m being followed,” he whooped with joy, “can you believe it, I’m being followed!”

The incident inspired a confession. “I once followed Woody Guthrie … right here in the Village,” I said, aware I was unleashing a boomerang.

“Y’mean you followed Woody Guthrie?” He was as stunned as if I had just revealed that I was the Virgin Mary. He idolised Woody Guthrie. Woody Guthrie was his hero, his guru, the formative influence in his life. He modelled himself on Woody Guthrie, he talked like him, sang like him, wrote talking blues like him and his main reason for coming to New York was in the hope of meeting Woody Guthrie, and with luck, to sing him one of his first songs, “A Song To Woody.” He wanted to hear every detail.

I was then fifteen years old. It was one of my first times in New York, and I was smitten by its unlimited possibilities. I had come with my friend, Rhoda Pomp, and while we were exploring the Village, feeling like characters in an adventure story, we came across a poster saying that Woody Guthrie was giving a Benefit performance that night. I was thrilled. Woody Guthrie was one of my favourite singers, a folk hero. I had read his autobiography Bound For Glory and his hard travelling was my inspiration. I had to hear him. But alas, when we got to the hall we discovered we didn’t have enough money for tickets; we hadn’t even noticed the price. As I retreated down the street, bitterly disappointed, I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was Woody Guthrie himself walking toward us. I recognised him from the poster. On an impulse we turned and followed him. He went up a staircase at the back of the hall and disappeared behind the stage door. I stood there dissolved in bliss, intoxicated by a rush of excitement, by the magic of New York. I couldn’t bring myself to leave that door. Rhoda Pomp and I sat on the metal steps, hoping for a miracle. About half an hour later Woody came out onto the landing to smoke a cigarette. We held our breaths. Suddenly he saw us.

“What you girls doing down there; come on up here and say hello.” Feeling like we were climbing the stairway to paradise, we clattered up the steps. I explained that we didn’t have enough money for tickets. “I’ll fix that,” he said, “you just come with me.” He led us through the door and to our surprise, right onto the stage. Putting an arm around each of us he introduced us as “Woody Guthrie and his Bobby Sox Brigade.” I don’t know how we survived the joy. He got us chairs and we sat in a corner of the stage feeling blessed. Later he took us for “eats,” “Gotta keep my Brigade in eats,” he said. The story was a winner.

The last time I saw Bob Dylan in New York was at Gerde’s Folk City, where I had first seen him. Shimon and I were there to check out performers for The Finjan. The word quickly got around that someone was booking for a club. Bob Dylan was talking to us when several musicians approached Shimon, eager to have a word with him. “Your husband sure is famous,” he said, impressed.

If for me The Finjan was a substitute for travel; for Ronit it was fertile soil for her responses to life to take root. If for me the musicians had a special magic, for her they were just people who slept in the bed opposite her bed and sat beside her at the kitchen table. When they began to appear on mega stages celebrated by mega audiences she deduced that everything was accessible. Having observed them so closely took the mystique out of their success. She had watched them picking up their guitars like this, playing them like that, it was all in the realm of possibility. No one fazed her, no achievement intimidated her. Soon she was singing on stage with Shimon. She had a pretty voice and could sing in harmony. Then she was asking for her own guitar. But here she ran into difficulty. Neither Shimon nor I were eager to teach her skills. Shimon believed that if she wanted to learn anything badly enough she would do it on her own, just as he had. I didn’t adhere to his philosophy but was simply otherwise engaged. She developed a quiet resolve, an extension of the determination she had first exhibited as a foetus, surviving the jungles of Africa and the storms of the Atlantic. Life outside the womb was comparatively easy.

During the first year of The Finjan she asked me to teach her to read. I refused, telling her that if she learned to read at four, she’d be bored when she had to learn at six. She devised her own plan. She asked my friend Dorothy, who was a primary school teacher, to lend her some first grade reading books. Dorothy was happy to oblige. Dorothy visited often and Ronit would wait patiently for the opportunity to ask her what different words meant. Soon she was asking anyone who showed an interest. Defeated by her determination, Irelented and helped her.

It was the same some years later when she made the sudden decision to learn pottery. I strewed her path with obstacles, telling her I knew no one who did ceramics, had no idea where she could be taught and doubted if such a place existed. Undaunted, she consulted the telephone book. Under “Ceramics” she found several pages of listings, probably factories and shops making and selling dishes. “Do you teach nine year old girls ceramics?” she asked each one in turn. Most of them had no idea what she wanted, many were French and didn’t understand English, but she persisted. Finally at the end of the list she found “Victoria Ceramics.” Yes, they taught nine year old girls ceramics but she would have to come early Saturday mornings to the other end of town. I hated the idea of getting up early, especially on Saturdays, but I had to acknowledge such perseverance. Each Saturday morning I struggled out of bed, took Ronit to her ceramics class, waited for her, and brought her home. My sacrifices were rewarded years later, in London, when Ronit made almost all our dishes, including jugs, ash trays and even casseroles.

Shimon eventually bought her a guitar but, in accordance with his principles, resisted teaching her how to play it. Although I didn’t think so at the time, perhaps he was right because through her own resolution she learned to play the guitar, the recorder and the flute and to read and write music. She discovered that if you want to do something all you have to do is do it. The Finjan years were at the heart of that discovery.