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elegy for a dream city
a sound installation
'Ilana Zuckerman
Ilana Zuckerman
"and all in three languages – hebrew, arabic, and death …"
Yehuda Amichai the city is built on a frozen scream, and above it the great eye hovers.
her nobel, solemn, beauty, charmless within its fraying borders, suspended within the brightness, the city on the mountain watches us, indifferent. city of stone touching the desert, behind the bare crest of the hill, behind dark cypress. the edge of light and shade that cuts her face is cruel.
stone walls and towers, minarets, churches, and synagogues – all ride atop one another: the golden dome of the rock and the domes of the russian church sparkles, hidden gardens behind iron gates, the bustle of the markets, silent cypress and olive tree, jasmine and fig.
here is the end of the landscape. from here memory deceives us, and despair tempts us. one is enveloped by another time. and always there is hard longing.
the city is spread out over the hills, turbulence within: a pastiche of languages and tuchings. the swirl of prayers and petitions rends its afternoon quiet. bells and muezzins, the wail of hassids, the shofar and sirens from streets, the cries of the merchants, and the morning train crossing through its neighborhoods.
at night, a heavy moon sails over it's dark, sad, doors and windows. by the city's roots the stone bleeds, the asphalt bleeds. and warning is written on it's wall. the shadow of a helicopter hangs over an empty street. the call of a crow.
far from the stir of rituals, swaying hips of prayers, far from cults and incense, far beyond a cloud an ethiopian jewish child, fasil, sees jerusalem flying through the air.
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