by Gary Corseri

A review of The Wandering Who, by Gilad Atzmon

http://dissidentvoice.org/

Caution! Do not enter this book unless you are prepared for serious self-examination, self-dialogue, and a dialectic with an astute listener, challenger, provocateur and wit. Leave notions, assumptions, biases—positive and negative—at the doors of your perception—which are about to be vigorously cleansed! Be prepared for topic sentences like this: “My grandfather was a charismatic, poetic, veteran Zionist terrorist.”

The author of such disarming prose, the grandson of that “veteran Zionist,” is internationally-acclaimed musician and composer, Gilad Atzmon. Born and raised in Israel–a Sabra—Atzmon, like his peers, “didn’t see the Palestinians” around him. “Supremacy,” he writes, “was brewed into our souls.”

And then a strange thing happened. “On a very late-night jazz programme, I heard Bird (Charlie Parker) with Strings. I was knocked down. The music was more organic, poetic, sentimental and wilder than anything I had ever heard. …” And the most extraordinary thing about Atzmon’s first encounter with the iconic American saxophonist? “I realized that Parker was actually a black man. … In my world, it was only Jews who were associated with anyting good. Bird was the beginning of a journey.”

Now in his 50s, with a luminous musical career of his own, Atzmon has published two novels, and numerous essays and articles at websites and periodicals worldwide. The Wandering Who is a collection of 22 essays that serve as a baedeker for those who want to accompany him on his extraordinary “journey” of self-discovery and self-actualization. The book’s sectional titles include, “Identity vs. Identifying”; “Unconsciousness Is the Discourse of the Goyim”; “Historicity & Factuality vs. Fantasy and Phantasm”; and “Connecting the Dots.” Accompany Atzmon and one finds oneself sharpening one’s own tools for self-interrogation and reflection, wandering with him to discover our own elusive “who.”