PaRDeS

When peeking into the pardes intently for the first time in nearly fifteen years, the song Desperados Under the Eaves came to my ears. 

I was sitting in the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel
I was staring in my empty coffee cup
I was thinking that the gypsy wasn't lyin'
All the salty margaritas in Los Angeles
I'm gonna drink 'em up

And if California slides into the ocean
Like the mystics and statistics say it will
I predict this motel will be standing until I pay my bill

Don't the sun look angry through the trees
Don't the trees look like crucified thieves
Don't you feel like desperados under the eaves
Heaven help the one who leaves

Still waking up in the mornings with shaking hands
And I'm trying to find a girl who understands me
But except in dreams you're never really free
Don't the sun look angry at me

I was sitting in the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel
I was listening to the air conditioner hum
It went mmmmmm…
Look away down Gower Avenue,
Look away...


Over the last seven months I was puzzled by these words, this tune and especially what this artist Warren Zevon means to the pardes and me – until the story of Ben Zoma explained it:

Our Rabbis taught: Once R. Joshua b. Hanania was standing on a step on the Temple Mount, and Ben Zoma saw him and did not stand up before him. So [R. Joshua] said to him: ‘Whence and whither, Ben Zoma?’ He replied: ‘I was gazing between the upper and the lower waters, and there is only a bare three fingers’ [breadth] between them, for it is said: And the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters – like a dove which hovers over her young without touching [them].’  Thereupon R. Joshua said to his disciples: ‘Ben Zoma is still outside.’

Here is Ben Zoma: the one whose glimpse of paradise shatters sanity, leaving him continually vibrating in the frequencies of the endless. Faced with the crisis of a great soul in limbo, his comrades of the moment – or perhaps the chorus of voices conjured by the imagination of some master redactor of traditions centuries later – gather around him with compassion. Healers riff on a verse to save him, passing his story around like a peace pipe in a circle of poetic understanding. They say:

See now, when was it that the spirit of God hovered over the face of the water? On the first day [of Creation]. But the division took place on the second day, for it is written: ‘And let it divide the waters from the waters!’ And how big [is the interval]? R. Aha b. Jacob said, ‘As a hair's breadth;’ and the Rabbis said: ‘As [between] the boards of a landing bridge.’ Mar Zutra, or according to others R. Assi, said: ‘As [between] two cloaks spread one over the other;’ and others say, ‘as [between] two cups tilted one over the other.’ (Babylonian Talmud Haggigah 15a)

In this scene I also hear Dylan singing You’re a Big Girl Now:

Bird on the horizon, sittin’ on a fence
He’s singin’ his song for me at his own expense
And I’m just like that bird, oh, oh
Singin’ just for you
I hope that you can hear
Hear me singin’ through these tears

This is how Ben Zoma’s comrades gather around him and tend to his broken wings, his fluttering and delicate heart, his soul just a breath away from evaporating into itself.

The moment echoes what is so powerful and appealing about the epics packed in a few lines that the rabbis tell of themselves, and it is what makes for great rock and roll, too.

In his new book on Van Morrison, Greil Marcus calls such singing of tales by masters as “moments of upheaval, reversal, revelation, and mirror-breaking.” Anyone who has been comforted by a song in moments of revelation or despair knows just what Marcus is talking about, moments where a great singer catalyzes emotions beyond anything normal or expected. For Zevon’s narrator, like Ben Zoma, despite everything he has seen and lost, there is respite at a way station, the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel or the steps of the Temple, which will be standing until he or some gracious friend finally pays the bill. It’s the love song of Springsteen to long lost friend Bobby Jean:

Maybe you'll be out there on that road somewhere
In some bus or train traveling along
In some motel room there'll be a radio playing
And you'll hear me sing this song
Well if you do you'll know I'm thinking of you and all the miles in between
And I'm just calling one last time not to change your mind
But just to say I miss you baby, good luck goodbye, Bobby Jean

If the pardes is a destination, it must be the place where hopelessness and compassion, empathy and remorse, and most of all love, fuse themselves into a great song that sings the singer, heard by God best and more faintly but still well by other very lucky, careful, and friendly ears.

At Mike’s Place, an infamous dive in Jerusalem, there was a ratty, blissful nirvana populated by the mostly harmless underbelly of the Holy City. Not a place for the politics or religion of the newspapers, it was a grubby hole for souls to crawl in and get lost: the gargantuan Vietnam vet on some secret military mission weeping to “Sweet Home Alabama,” the heiress in a low-cut dress buying drinks for the house one night and then disappearing by morning, the yeshiva drop-outs, the college drop-outs, the U.N. drop-outs, the roustabout kids of pastors, rock stars, and rabbis, and an endless stream of backpackers from all over the world.

A weekly gig at Mike’s Place meant ministry, banging out the psalms of rock and roll from a pulpit at the corner of the bar. Best memories of those times challenge my threshold for differentiating between nostalgia necessary for relief from a totally different today and reclamation of some of the transcendence of then. But as much as can I recollect them, there were moments in those nights when the myths I was singing blended seamlessly with the meditations of days spent reading, writing, walking, and wrestling with who in the world I should become.

A variety of vices inflated both the self-importance and the inspiration of those moments, but there is this to savor: a full house, and each sound of my guitar and inflection of my voice in sweet control. I was protesting, celebrating, sweating, and alive in a miracle of lucidity with many witnesses just meters from the walls of the Old City, singing past my troubles unto the spheres of existence far beyond them.

I once owned an LP of a radio interview with Bob Dylan from the mid-’80s. He was asked if there was another trade he would ply if he had not wound up a singer. He was mumbling in the answer, but his sounds ended in a final clear phrase:   “Or maybe I should just be on a boat.” For a singer, nothing quite compares to the open spaces provided by a song done well. Or as Warren Zevon sings, and Dylan covers on Enjoy Every Sandwich, a collection of tunes performed by others in Zevon’s memory:

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
Hoist the mainsail – here I come
Ain’t no room on board for the insincere
You’re my witness
I’m your mutineer

I was born to rock the boat
Some may sink but we will float
Grab your coat – let’s get out of here
You’re my witness
I’m your mutineer

Zevon, Springsteen and Dylan all try to enter paradise, playing with the idea of perfection and a release from the mundane.  They all have the same utopian mission, the resolution of purpose, but arrive at different places when they ultimately, as we all do, fail.  Zevon finds cynicism, Springsteen, hope, and Dylan, resignation.

First comes the moralist in cynic's clothing, Warren Zevon, in "Looking for the Next Best Thing:"

Don Quixote had his windmills
Ponce de Leon took his cruise
Took Sinbad seven voyages
To see that it was all a ruse
(That's why I'm) Looking for the next best thing
Looking for the next best thing
I appreciate the best
But I'm settling for less
'Cause I'm looking for the next best thing

Giving up does seem to be just about right sometimes. You settle. You scoff. You shake it off and take what's there. 

Springsteen takes it all much more seriously and he does not settle. His career traces the theme of America as a Promised Land – utopian aspirations for abiding justice and meaning that are both timely and naive. Like any great interpreter of sacred stories and ideas, his conclusions emerge in the nitty gritty details of work and love of people and places deep in the bowels of American myth. “The Promised Land” from Darkness on the Edge of Town (click here for all of the lyrics) exemplifies Springsteen's application of very specific elements of the biblical Exodus trope to contemporary scenes and needs: a desert journey of escape from the pains of grim labor, a hazily defined redemption disrupting the continuity of generations, and a cause for living “the right way:”  

On a rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert 
I pick up my money and head back into town 
Driving cross the Waynesboro county line 
I got the radio on and I'm just killing time 
Working all day in my daddy's garage 
Driving all night chasing some mirage 
Pretty soon little girl I'm gonna take charge 
 
CHORUS 
The dogs on Main Street howl 
'cause they understand 
If I could take one moment into my hands 
Mister I ain't a boy, no I'm a man 
And I believe in a promised land 

And Dylan? He is the master of glorious resignation, master of the unflinching mask as the garden burns. Dylan ascends safely and descends safely, the Rabbi Akiba of the bunch: "Tangled Up in Blue." "Gates of Eden." "Up to Me." In all of these, "Nothing Was Delivered:" 

Nothing was delivered 
And I tell this truth to you, 
Not out of spite or anger 
But simply because it’s true. 

It is noble to seek, noble not to wait, noble sometimes to walk away, noble to hope for better, even to demand better. But there is something of particular nobility in containing all of these ups and downs within oneself when the moment of facing the promise of fleeting utopia splinters. Come and go in peace stoically, turning your face, not out of spite or anger, but simply because it's true.

Godhead. God's head. Last week, continuing to move in and around the Pardes, we spent a second session with Ezekiel. His are some of the most beautiful, frightening biblical words (these verses from the King James version as our teacher Ruby has taught us to quote when English is required):

And thou, son of man, be not afraid of them, neither be afraid of their words, though briers and thorns be with thee, and thou dost dwell among scorpions: be not afraid of their words, nor be dismayed at their looks, though they be a rebellious house. And thou shalt speak my words unto them, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear: for they are most rebellious. But thou, son of man, hear what I say unto thee; Be not thou rebellious like that rebellious house: open thy mouth, and eat that I give thee. And when I looked, behold, a hand was sent unto me; and, lo, a roll of a book was therein; And he spread it before me; and it was written within and without: and there was written therein lamentations, and mourning, and woe. Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, eat that thou findest; eat this roll, and go speak unto the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth, and he caused me to eat that roll. And he said unto me, Son of man, cause thy belly to eat, and fill thy bowels with this roll that I give thee. Then did I eat it; and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey.
(Ezekiel 2:6-3:3)

We might imagine that merging with God's head would be a tranquil state, or that God's head on our shoulders would release a Son of man from the many burdens of seeking the divine. But Ezekiel takes in these sweet words – these dirges and lamentations – and soon after must heed God's direction for violent, disfiguring rituals in preparation for carrying woe to the House of Israel. He is told to construct a replica of Jerusalem in the mud and lie frozen on one side before it for more than a year, to mutter curses at the imagined city and eat his own shit, to shear his body of hair and burn it in precise portions, all in preparation to mourn and warn the House of Israel in its iniquity.

These images cast me into thinking about the vast gap between the soaked, steaming, shocking images of Ezekiel – who like nearly every one of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible is unaware of holding his destiny as a messenger until God forces him to it – and the vacuous arrogance of so much religious teaching I find in the bookshops at airports or embedded in the glimpses of news on the web that I can still tolerate reading: God rewards the winners in today's narratives – the suicide bombers and the settlers and the preachers in mega-churches, smooth-skinned and smarmy, promising wealth and joy to true believers.

I contemplate Warren Zevon's vast indifference of heaven:

Same old sun
Same old moon
It's the same old story
Same old tune
They all say
Someday soon
My sins will all be forgiven
Gentle rain
Falls on me
All life folds back
Into the sea
We contemplate eternity
Beneath the vast indifference of heaven

Bearing down on self and garden both, true grounding like Ezekiel’s is the wise cure for the static waves of sheer arrogance pretend prophets radiate. Real prophets gulp grandeur to their guts, always tempered by humility and an incredible tolerance for doubt and pain. And if humility is somehow missing as one finds the Garden, says Bruce Springsteen, the Garden learns you to it:

Tonight I'll be on that hill 'cause I can't stop
I'll be on that hill with everything I got
Lives on the line where dreams are found and lost
I'll be there on time and I'll pay the cost
For wanting things that can only be found
In the darkness on the edge of town

There is a Darkness on the Edge of Town, God’s head at play.

On the album he recorded when the cancer had almost taken him, Warren Zevon was joined by Bruce Springsteen for Disorder in the House. Springsteen shreds on a typically ironic and lucid Zevon shot to the gut, where body, house, and country are all lost.

Gardens of Eden: [See LABAlights #1]
Disorder in the house
Reptile wisdom
Zombies on the lawn staggering around...

It's the home of the brave and the land of the free
Where the less you know the better off you'll be

In the January/February 2010 issue of The Atlantic James Fallows writes:

Through the entirety of my conscious life, America has been on the brink of ruination, or so we have heard, from the launch of Sputnik through whatever is the latest indication of national falling apart or falling behind. Pick a year over the past half century, and I will supply an indicator of what at the time seemed a major turning point for the worse.

As I complete the final proof for a chapter on Springsteen and the Bible for Theorizing the Boss (Rowman & Littlefield, Fall 2010), I have relived most of his music more than once this year. Though his work may lack Dylan’s gravitas, Randy Newman’s cleverness, and Zevon’s snarl, nobody lovingly laments the American Eden like Bruce – his songs always brimming with both gritty apocalypse and a seemingly unquenchable, naïve hope.

In Born in the U.S.A.: Bruce Springsteen and the American Tradition, Jim Cullen – like Greil Marcus in his masterful The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes – begins the story of America and the world of Springsteen, Dylan, Zevon, and Company with 17th century fire and brimstone rockers like Jonathan Edwards and John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts, who said: We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when he shall make us praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, ‘the Lord make it like that of New England’…

Who is looking for a New England and a new garden now? Where is Warren Zevon when we really need him? As James Fallows says, it feels like the brink of ruination again.

I look out the window of my second floor office on East 14th Street, and my eyes glide over a patchwork of roofs and streets and people to Madison Square Garden (last gig of the East Street Band ever?) and then drop down into the tunnel under the river, rising up to skirt the white lines and potholes of the turnpike past what used to be the Meadowlands, the place Springsteen tore down this fall not far from where Rosalita’s man is “stuck in the mud somewhere in the swamps of Jersey.” And there we are kneeling by a lake, echoes of Lost in the Flood after a great escape, locked in on a reflection of “that pure American brother, dull-eyed and empty-faced” staring back at us. He sings:

Hey man, did you see that, those poor cats are sure fucked up
I wonder what they were gettin' into or were they all lost in the flood?

Bruce Springsteen called the late Warren Zevon a moralist in cynic's clothing. This makes him a fine, no-holds-barred partner for digging into the Bible. In thinking about translating the paradox of the Garden of Eden -- natural creation tainted by urges for civilization, the mash up of divine and human desire -- Zevon charts a course for the cutting paradox of modern paradise in Despardos Under the Eaves. (Enjoy this acoustic version with Jackson Browne, stripped down to the core without the string section).

Zevon sings:
Don't the sun look angry through the trees
Don't the trees look like crucified thieves
Don't you feel like Desperados under the eaves
Heaven help the one who leaves

Looking back on the mean and angry garden amidst the air conditioner's hum, he knows with a survivor's resignation that as long as there remains a debt to be paid, there is always another opportunity to re-remember the story and have another drink. He has the shakes and he has holes in his gut, but he is moving.

Dylan's Gates of Eden follows a different path. His Garden is so deep, so full, so ceaseless to grow, that there is no inside or outside. He speaks, he sings, he waits, and he never leaves:
At dawn my lover comes to me
And tells me of her dreams
With no attempts to shovel the glimpse
Into the ditch of what each one means
At times I think there are no words
But these to tell what's true
And there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden

When Warren Zevon was dying of cancer, Dylan sang his songs on stage often. One of his favorite's was "Mohammed's Radio:"
Everybody's restless and they've got no place to go
Someone's always trying to tell them
Something they already know
So their anger and resentment flow

But don't it make you want to rock and roll
All night long?

Seeing the Garden, peaking up and down: making notes, lots of notes.