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