To explain my ‘clearly not in Jerusalem’ self, I’ve spent the last week rehearsing and performing with the (somewhat crazy) Italian maestros Giovanni Sollima and Enrico Mellozi’s ‘100 Cellos’ Ensemble, at the Expo in Dubai.
I’ve attached some evidence of the rehearsals and concert and am realising now how useful they might have been during my two hour interrogation with the Israeli airline El Al, whose security team found my explanation as far-fetched and (suspiciously in their eyes) random as it sounds. After searching my bag multiple times, they asked why I was learning Arabic, how I was paying for my travels and why I wasn’t at University? to which I could only respond that my level of Arabic was embarassingly poor, my bank account similar and myself ‘very behind with University work’. They weren’t reassured by the very recent stamp on my passport from Jordan and the (mistakenly labelled) Irish citizenship on my PCR test result. I was just lucky that they didn’t find my lecture notes on ‘Terrorism’, with its unintelligible scribbles from class. And that the flight was delayed enough to accommodate me.
My journal was even read out loud in an attempt to find something implicating:
Day 1 - queues, pcr tests, more queues and conversations, the kind you have over and over again when you first meet lots of new people.
Day 2 - a quiet kind of heat this morning - ten minutes before rehearsals start and I’ve snuck away to the pool with a hot earl grey and hotter sun.
In and out of rehearsals and coaches with Stephen fry’s ‘Harry Potter’ in one ear and babbling Italian* in the other, spoken by everyone around me. *The language sounds about as musical as our day.
Day 3 - tiredness and flu taking over. My desk partner has the right idea and is shamelessly napping mid rehearsals while I try not to cough in the quiet sections.
Encouraged by everyone to stock up on medicine to tackle said cold:
And it turns out the shopping malls are quite beautiful here:
As was the M&S I found, a greatly missed home comfort containing English tea and marmite and scones and Easter chocolate. Enough to keep me entertained for an hour.
Day 4 - sneaking away in the early pre-rehearsal morning to attempt to be a tourist. After finding only strings of shops and residencies and restaurants, I did the only thing I really know how to do - swim. And take ironic and unglamorous selfies.
Back to the pool after instructions to ‘rest’, to sniffle through an entire toilet roll and an excellent collection of Montaigne’s essays found on the poolside bookshelf.
Days 5 and 6 were spent at the Expo itself: the most impressive organisational machine I’ve ever been part of. After leaving my artists pass accidentally in the hotel, I had a new one printed and laminated and around my neck in the same time as it would take to get an official to even understand what I was asking back in Israel. The whole structure was impossibly clean, much like the rest of Dubai, with automated bins that thank you as you feed them rubbish. And staff polishing plant pots and pavements, as helpful and polite as the self-driven robotic trollies delivering food around you as you walk. It was impossibly big as well, with an internal transport system for the 200 various pavilions and over 1,000 acres of cultural walkways:
All culminating in an Eden-project type glass house appropriate for the level of Edenic perfection that the Expo seemed to be aiming for: a utopian land complete with a sound cloud of meditative, lo-fi type beats on constant repeat, supposedly there to enhance and literally en-'trance' the experience.
Its much like Dubai more generally. Their metros and shopping malls operate a similarly calming soundtrack and its metro stops are called futuristic names such as 'Internet City' and 'Business Bay'. A friend aptly described Dubai as a ‘new apartment, where you can still smell the fresh paint', it’s cleanliness and calm complete. It doesn’t share the character of Jerusalem, with its relative confusion and commotion, but what a thing to experience. Thank you @100 Cellos. And for now, back to Jerusalem in all its much missed chaos.
DUBAI
love you Phoebs
Very very interesting Phoebes. 🤓