I first knew that I wanted to write about Yehu Yaron when I heard sometime in May his double-single "This Great Abyss"/"I Know How to Deal with History". I couldn't decide which song I liked better so I decided to wait for a clip or the album, whatever came first. Now his album "The Self-Persuading Artist" is here and available to buy or stream, as well as another single: "She". After listening to the album from start to finish I realized that I have to talk about the album as a whole instead of focusing on a specific song and because the lyrics are such an important part of the album, I ended up translating all of the songs. I had so much fun because except for a few difficult words here and there, Yaron writes clear and precise texts which (I hope) are easily understood in English. Translating his songs really felt like a journey (which might still need corrections) in which I came to have a much better understanding of Yaron's rich inner world.
I heard "The Self-Persuading Artist" right after I heard the new Kanye West album-mainly because it was the middle of the night and Kanye's album was so disturbing that I needed something to help calm me down-I thought I would hear just a song or two but I ended up listening to the whole album while closely reading the lyrics. If there's an album to hear at 4:00 a.m it's this one-it starts out very dark (and in a way a perfect transition after Kanye), you get really lost in its depths and dark issues but eventually rise up to the surface ready for the new day and with a much-needed new perspective. Maybe I've been reading too many music reviews but I couldn't help but see some very interesting parralels between Kanye and Yehu which help understand the main differences between the works.
Yaron has said that the album is a documentation of the period in which it was written. During this period Yaron and his wife waited for the birth of his first child, a daughter. In addition, Yaron suffered from an outbreak of the terrifying desease Multiple Sclerosis. Yaron shared with the student radio station "Kol HaCampus" his main influences in the process of the album which include the controversial Curzio Malaparte and gospel slave songs like this one.
I find it very interesting that Kanye and Yaron wrote such powerful and intense music right before the birth of their daughters. It's as if they wanted complete closure of their past lives before beginning a new life-changing phase in which they will have total responsibility for a human being, maybe at the risk of losing creativity? Yehu sings quite a lot about his relationship with his wife and it's really beautiful how in love they seem to be. There seems to be a real partnership between them based on quite a few years of love and friendship. Kanye's story is a bit different and you can fill in the facts from the tabloids. It's been written that the album is a kiss-off to bachelorhood and there's a strong sense of things happening way too fast. There's also (as always with Kanye) a very self-centered view of "me against the world" unlike Yaron's "we'll get through the world together" vibe.
Yaron infuses unlikely genres, for example gospel music, to create his own sound and style. I'm not very familiar with gospel music used in most Israeli music but it sounds so right in Yaron's music and it's very original. I think Kanye does a similar thing with his samples of electronic music which gives his music a signature sound and blurs music boundaries.
Curzio Malaparte is an Italian writer who was a part of the fascist party but became one of its biggest critics and turned to communism. He detailed in his books the perils of life during war and later on critiqued the middle and upper class culture. I can't help but see some of the latter in Kanye's songs as just that-especially the infamous line "hurry up with those damn croissants" from "I am a God". However, Yaron took two texts from Malaparte: "Regarding Their Sweet Death" and "The Dead" which couldn't be further from Kanye's persona-especially the lines "We don't need another small Jesus/It's not very difficult to be Jesus today".
But the main parralel I see is in how they present themselves as performers. I first came across Yaron through his amazing performance of "Everyone is So Quiet" for the Indie City project. I was impressed by how he used his whole body and voice to convey his feelings yet I was also taken aback-it was a bit too strange for me-too "in your face". But I found myself humming the chorus and remembering the lyrics, realizing how painfully honest they are. I was never a big fan of Kanye or his music but I was very impressed with his SNL performance of "New Slaves"-it was uncomfortable to watch and hear, but you couldn't move your eyes from the screen-and he was talking about an uncomfortable truth in a very total way. Unfortunately, I didn't get the same experience while listening to his album-I was too distracted by the shallow lyrics and although it left a strong impression on me, it didn't feel like an enlightened one (and I'm not quite sure it was supposed to). However, Yaron's album is just that-an enlightening experience on so many different levels.
I feel like I've said enough even though there seems to be so much more to add. All I can say is listen to the album, read the lyrics and see for yourself whether you disagree or not.
*By the way, Yaron seems to be everywhere these days (lucky for us!)-he sings and plays contrabass on Aviv Guedj's excellent new album "Children of Immigrants" and also produced Kalbey Ruah's debut album (whose lead singer, Hila Ruach, composed "I Know How to Deal with History").
1. This Great Abyss
Inside it's as if everything's okay
Outside it's as if the sky is falling
And you don't see the end of the water
In this great abyss
All of the fire that burns inside me
All this fire I'll give to you
If you'll come down with me
Into this great abyss
All of the light that shines in me
All of my light I'll give to you
If you'll come down with me
Into this great abyss
Outside there are seven bad years
Outside everyone is applauding
All of the cities all over the world
Are closed and besieged
There isn't one healthy medicine
There isn't one doctor who knows
What's the truth and what's half the truth
And what are simple songs
And the day is over
All of the pain that hurts me
All this pain I'll give to you
If you'll come down with me
Into this great abyss
The dog barks but the dog is dumb
The law bites but the law has no teeth
Everything is old-we'll forget everything and become new
There's a weird attribute in the air
There are new birds in the sky
Someone turned back the time
But only my watch
And the day is over
All of this bitter sorrow
All of my sorrow I'll give to you
If you'll come down with me
Into this great abyss
The strong man makes a visit
The strong man always wants money
The strong man is used to getting what he wants
And soft eyes won't help
Holes in socks won't help
Again I lose everything because of something stupid
And the day is over
All of the fire that burns inside me
All this fire I'll give to you
If you'll come down with me
Into this great abyss
The whole city relocated
New cities moved in
A stranger smiles to me
From the window of the opposite building
They say hello to me and I'm not familiar
They speak to me and I don't hear
There are large grey clouds
Inside my head
And the day is over
All of these bitter tears
I'll give up the big abyss for you
If you'll stay with me
When the day is over
Inside it's as if everything's okay
Outside it's as if the sky is falling
And you don't see the end of the water
In this great abyss
My illness requires how you are
And she roams through the record shelf
In every corner of the house she is hanging on the walls
My illness requires how you are
And the air gets too thin to think
And my thoughts breathe my air with me
All kinds of sick evils lie on the fence
Rages and tempers that belong to someone else
But the moment I open my mouth it's as if they come from me
I have a venomous snake under my bed
And a private hell dances on my roof
Every night, when I fall asleep, the house gets up and shakes
In mid-May the hand stopped working
And then came back and then stopped again and people died
But they stopped dying and began to die again
And a great miracle was never here
In the theatre I saw a five year old boy
Recite someone else's opinions
While an older kid bangs his head against the wall
She: Reality sets over me
She: The bad ending of a stupid
movie
She: The end of each balloon
She: There is a storm in the horizon
She: Stage lights which throw only black light
She: I give you a check and know that it will bounce
She: I have her, she has me
But I was first
Even when everyone realized in the end what's happening
It didn't help me understand, it just made me feel
That everyone is continuing to live and ceasing to live
And I remain stuck here in the middle
(I don't eat when I am full
I don't sleep when you're not here
Among people I know how to put on a happy face
Because at the end of the day
I can suffer aloud)
3. I Know How to Deal with History
I know how to deal with history:
In darkness
In dampness
In full nudity
Partially controlling
Without electricity
Electricity distorts history
Your blood is a perfect bibliography
Write down conclusions on a note
Put it in the Western Wall
Put it in the polls
Put it in your motherskush
I know how to deal with history:
Run around family legends
A brave look over your shoulder
Your brother's blood is shouting in a universal grammar
While you are marking slots in a belt
Write an anthem
Announce independence
Sell everything that matters to you
Buy what's important to others
Make a verbal revolution without getting out of bed
Fall in the trap fall in the trap fall in the trap
I know how to deal with history:
With a mischief smile
With an erection
With the perished parents of one grandmother
With the infiltrated parents of a second grandmother
Without a grandfather
And mother will sing
And father will write
And the past will come true right in front of your face
Today I talked with many people
I was anxious and hyperactive
And when I got home my stomach
ached
We don't need another small Jesus,
Any one of us can save the world.
Any woman can give birth to another Jesus,
Any one of us might climb on Mount Calvary
While whistling with pleasure, all of us can be condemned
With nails on a cross while a song is on our lips.
It's not very difficult to be
Jesus in our day.
What does it matter
A pink dream or a white lie
We'll all end in the same place when the time will come
The departing soul will not remember faces or names
Only the wind will remain to blow between the bones
When we all will be
In the end we all will be
In the end we all will be
In the end we all will be
Just dirt in the ground
It's blood that flows from the feather of a black falcon
I want to know if I am the sky or just a bird
Because in Eden there is no room
And a fire broke out in the Underworld
We are harnessed forever
And condemned to carry the burden
Because we all will be
Then we all will be
In the end we all will be
In the end we all will be
Dirt in the ground
So the murderer smiled
With nerves of concrete
A groan was heard when he rose to the gallows
And all the hearts in the crowd pounded loudly
Pounded quickly
He is swaying above everyone and the hanger says
That we all will be
In the end we all will be
In the end we all will be
In the end we all will be
Just dirt in the ground
Cain murdered Abel,
Lifted a stone, blood spilled
The skies opened and the whole world thundered
How will there be revival of the bones
Even when the valley is full of meat?
Ask in the market or in the palace
And everyone will say
That we all will be
In the end we all will be
Because we all will be
In the end we all will be
Just dirt in the ground
My love is pure truth
Built from small sins
And in the rest of the world a complete darkness
She knows how to sing songs
Which dance themselves alone
And in the rest of the world a complete darkness
My love rises to the roof
And shoots the birds
And in the rest of the world a complete darkness
She grew up in the woods with a pack of wolves
She dances only strange dances
And brings the rain
She has a new second name
Which she does not know how to pronounce
And in the rest of the world a complete darkness
Anything can happen
And we'll continue to dance and dance
More and more, more and more
My love is absolute truth
She has a supply of glowing moons
Which she hangs over the city
And in the rest of the world a complete darkness
My love is the genius of the generation
She knows by heart
And in the rest of the world a complete darkness
She is almost never wrong, or cries, or is angry
She is very quick and very concentrated
So she always wins
She doesn't carry a gun
She kills with her hands
And in the rest of the world a complete darkness
Sentences which she said
Are taught in schools
And in the rest of the world a complete darkness
She knows secrets. Deep and large
She carries in her womb my daughter
She teases with eternity
She was born far from here
And she lives here because of me
And in the rest of the world a
complete darkness
8. The Snake Pit
Today I was able to escape from the snake pit
I've been through difficult days
In the snake pit
And now I'm free
With a short memory I recall
An ugly and bitter moment
In which I didn't know where I was going
The lights from outside were so beautiful
I knew I had to go outside
From afar I might have heard whispers
Perhaps around me they knew something was not right
And a broken wind blew
And a broken sun shone
And a broken feeling became a broken moment
Between us
But I was able to escape the snake pit
And despite some difficult days
In the snake pit
It's now behind me
Even in quite peace there is a wall that collapses
There are screams into a pillow
There's an alliance under the table
In the weirdest dream I did not believe it was possible
To divert me against me
I am mad but I am
A self-persuading artist
I lecture in schools
And I have no regrets
I have no regrets
An hour a day I work
On having no regrets
But when each star falls
It illuminates quarrels and schemes
Everywhere I go
I cannot help but see
The snake pit
I come to you with sacks of sand
And spread them around and the whole house becomes a desert
My lies are big
But I do not take up space
And I can scream quietly
If you hear whispers, perhaps
They are starting now to discuss our affairs
But the wind around us is good
And the sun above us is good
And it begins to appear that good can also happen
To us
Tonight I dreamt about you
You invited me for a drink
And of course it's impossible to keep up with you
We sat in a big empty house
Just exercise-bikes
Are faced against a huge window
And all of your gloomy singers are in the background
And above all
A conversation we held
When your dog died
I never talked with you like that
And I always talked with your myth
And you really cried
And I felt that you didn't cry just about him
As if you adopted a dog
So that you would be able to cry when he dies
About everything you adopted to lose
Tonight I dreamt about you
You were sick of the house, you wanted us to go out
We went to get a tattoo
It's the middle of the night but in dreams
Dizengoff is crowded and bustling
The tattooist says
That with you it's easy
You have a thousand tattoos under your skin
You only need to press on the right place
And copy
You told him to press on the right place and say
What's drawn in your heart
And all because of a conversation we held
When your dog died
I never talked with you like that
I always talked with your myth
And you really cried and I felt that you didn't cry just about him
As if you adopted a dog so that you would be able to cry when he dies
About everything you adopted to lose
(I sometimes imagine you
Joyfully skipping from bad to worse
Falling in such an enviable way
Aiming and hitting all the lost causes
It's so sad
And it's so beautiful
And it's not real)
The dead are sullen, stubborn, wild.
The dead are stupid, capricious and arrogant
Like babies or like women.
The dead are crazy. It's bad and bitter if the dead
Hates the living. Bad and bitter if he falls in love with him.
Bad and bitter if the living insults the dead,
If he hurts his self-love,
If he violates his dignity.
The dead are jealous and demand revenge. Are not afraid
Of anybody, are not afraid of anything,
Not of beatings, not of injuries, not of the advantage
Of the enemy's number.
They don't even fear death.
I can't wake you up anymore when you dream bad dreams
Because afterwards you don't fall asleep all night
Behind the eyelids your lights are bright
You are searching for deals and there are all kinds of signs
You need answers and it is only night
The neighborhood kids are singing strange songs
And their parents are digging a hole at the square
They swear, it's important to them, they keep shouting
They've lost everything and somehow they keep losing
It hasn't begun and it's been long gone
In the world it just gets a bit darker each night when we sleep
I see it in the morning in your glance
Someone I love died three days ago
And I'm still awake and I'm still alive and I love you so much
On this side of the sky it's already beginning to get cold
But you can see that the sun is trying
You sent a crow with a note and this morning he came back
His feathers fell and his beak broke
At least he probably handed the note
In the world it just gets a bit darker each night, when we sleep
I see it in the morning in your glance
Someone I love died three days ago
And I'm still awake and I'm still alive and I love you so much
I can't talk to you anymore while you're asleep
Once you wouldn't wake up so easily
It's important for me to talk to you even when you do not hear
We talk during the day, it's not the same
So I always wake you
12. Up to the Thin Capillaries
Up to the thin capillaries
By moonlight
On one night
Body separated from soul
And only the stars
See everything up to the last detail
Up to the thin capillaries
Alone on the road
To nobody's eyes
They threw you by the way
But the facts
They buried nicely up to the last detail
You are a nightmare
Which in the end someone else
Wakes up in panic
Up to the thin capillaries
Sophisticated words hide decay
It's not just bureaucracy
It's not just fatigue
It's bad up to the very last detail
You are a nightmare
And at your end someone else
Woke up in panic
And that's all-
Everyone knows how to go back to sleep
Up to the thin capillaries
You stole a car, you hurt the body
But long before you were unwanted
And illegal, up to the last detail
Up to the thin capillaries
You're already dead
You don't care about anything
We'll stay here
Drunk from success and lost-
Up to the last detail
13. Everyone is So
Don't lie
Don't lie
Everyone is so quiet all of a sudden
Everyone is so quiet all the time
The wind from the sea has no chance against this street
Try waking up morning
Here it's always last night
There was something, no longer-you have no idea what it was
Only that everyone is so quiet all of a sudden
Maybe an apologizing smile in the corner of the mouth or an honest
condolence
No, everyone is so quiet all of a sudden
Everyone is so quiet all the time
Don't lie
Don't lie
And the high ceilings in old flats
It's the biggest fraud in this city
Comes some piece of shit and divide's his father's flat into seven
detention cells
With the toilet in the hallway
And takes three and a half a month
And it seems as if there's room because the ceiling is far from the
floor
High ceilings
And it's clear to everyone
But
Everyone is so quiet all of a sudden
Everyone is so quiet all the time
Don't lie
Don't lie
The headlines in the paper strike me with lightning
Like lies they told us when we were kids
And the sky is gray with worry and full of bad intentions
All the whores of Ben Yehuda
Towards the beginning of Allenby
Sing beautiful and sad songs in French
A beautiful and yellow sun sings to me sad and beautiful songs in
Biblical Hebrew
The entire street dons a grand appearance
Saturdayish
The smell of burnt feathers from the Carmel Market disappears
And everyone is preparing for the night
Suddenly
The head is lighter
The words weigh less
Every sentence has one hidden meaning at most
The majority stays unconscious, not aiming anywhere
There's no danger from home, no knife in the back
Everything is very frontal
Everything is very honest
Frontal and honest hatred is the closest thing to silence that I know
of
But
Everyone is so quiet all of a sudden
Everyone is so quiet all of the time
Don't lie
Don't lie
Sometimes the truth is so ugly that it's a lie
I want to fulfill expectations with one hand and to pull out hairs from
the ass with the other
There are days when
The birds on the tree by the house don't want to chirp
When they finally chirp it sounds like a curse in Romanian
But everyone is so quiet all of the time
So I write songs that won't be composed
And I compose songs that weren't written
And I say the truth, I say the truth
And I say the truth, I say the truth
But
Everyone is so quiet all of a sudden
Everyone is so quiet all the time
Everyone is so quiet all the
time
Already evening I spread a thin blanket
Over all the awful and terrible things I did
Like a field of dandelions
Above an old cemetery
Light rises in all the balconies
And there are whistles
And sticky versions to songs I used to love
Love can die
When you stick on the wrong rhythm
I want to cry
But there is no pain strong enough
To penetrate my skin
I'm immune so well now
Nothing will pass through
Everyone I meet
Right away checks my pulse
Lift up your hand just a few centimeters
Above my hand
And don't touch, just feel
The negative energy
It will calm down in your hand
And I will be able to go to sleep
The sun which shines in my head
Illuminates the corners
That I want to forget
My demons have grown
And they have learned how to live in the light
Light rises in all the balconies
In Tel Aviv there are no balconies
Even since I was a kid
It's not polite to cling
On a memory that doesn't belong to you
I want to cry
But this urgent need
Is not even real
I'm not sure if crying
Is like running to the bathroom
Whimper as much as you want
Something stays
Lift up your hand
To check my temperature
Don't be so worried
I've been sick for almost two years
With a disease that doesn't exist
And if it's just in my head
It's not contagious
This jarring anger
Is not even real
I look scary but
I'm most scared of me
And my hated sits and laughs next to me
So I don't shut up
But everyone is so quiet all of a sudden
Like a field of dandelions
