Paul McCartney

On Thursday night, Susan and Noah went with Marylin, Michael, Rachel, Ayelet & Chen to see Paul McCartney in Park HaYarkon in Tel Aviv.  Michael emailed when we were in America, writing that he'd decided to go because he was turning 50 and after all you only live once, and wondered if we wanted to go.  Tickets on the lawn cost 500 NIS (~$150); seats cost 1500 NIS and 5000 NIS.  Luck was, we received Michael's email while at Noah's parents house, and Rachel was there when it arrived.  Noah reported that Michael was going, but it was too expensive to go himself, and Rachel said, but it's Paul McCartney, and anyway I owe you an anniversary present and can you order tix over the internet and, long-story-short, five minutes later the tickets were ordered.

We biked through the park to get to the venue, by the end navigating thickening crowds and finally admitting that we couldn't weave through the people anymore, and walking.  The gates were a mob, and when we got through we took a place far back, a football field from the stage, and drank contraband wine we'd siphoned into water bottles.  Huge banner jumbotrons on either side of the stage scrolled photos of the beatles, mostly, and some of wings.   It had just gotten dark when McCartney in a nehru jacket jogged to the microphone and said, "Shalom Tel Aviv ... Ahalan!).  He picked up his Hofner bass -- the bass we all know that looks like a violently stretched violin -- and started signing "hello goodbye" from magical mystery tour.  

And it seemed to me that much of my life was contracting, contracting and collapsing into that one moment, surrounded by 45,000 people in tel aviv, and Susan and Michael and Marilyn and Rachel, Dara and Micha a short bike ride away, hearing a song I played over and over 40 years ago (from an album swiped from my sister's room).  Later, McCartney strapped on a ukulele and, peering down to his cheat notes taped to the floor, say "ha-shir ha-zeh mukdash le-george" (This song is dedicated to George) and then played "something" on the ukulele and it was odd and sad and moving and beautiful.  And I thought, "Look at what's become of us," without knowing fully what I meant.  

The concert ended with Sgt. Pepper's, at the end of the second encore.  I felt like the end of Yom Kippur, as if something had happened that had meaning, and tired, and cleansed, and sad and hopeful.