Holiday Video 1999

Holiday video. No copyrights intended. So I took my second-hand JVC GR65 VHS-C camcorder with me to 'the holy land' in the late summer of 1998 when I was in my mid/late 20's. I flew to Tel Aviv with the simple plan of volunteering for kibbutz work via an agency then spending my time working and holidaying until I ran out of money, or lost my video camera... ...after video'ing the landing at Tel Aviv I found a hostel and was there for a couple of days before being sent by the kibbutz agency to 'Harel' on the edge of the Judean hills. A lot of history there which you can read about on wikipedia. For my initial time in Israel I didn't really video much of anything at all for two reasons, namely that I was acclimatizing but also cautious about losing my camera, which back in the last days of analogue was still something of a novelty electrical item. I worked in the turkey farm at first which I didn't like very much at all, so then I was in the kitchen before being transferred to working 'the fields'. There was also the kibbutz library. Well-stocked with the deposited reading materials of fifty years worth of kibbutznik's and volunteer-worker's reading material, with a lot of interesting stuff in English. In the fields where I was put to work it was the time to harvest the cotton. Fifteen hours a day I was away from the kibbutz working in the very same valley where David slew Goliath or whatever (I was told). I then rediscovered my longer-attention span that allowed me to devour a book per day. The kibbutz library books were (and are) key to this video. I read Heinlein's 'Stranger In A Strange Land' for the first time which seemed fitting, however I realised that a throwaway shot of me reading that would be pretty corny, so what if I played with reality somewhat and video'ed myself reading books that I didn't necessarily read whilst not bothering to record certain books that I did read and rather enjoyed, for vague 'artistic reasons'. This allowed me to 'play'. There are also one or two shots where I'm drinking from a vodka bottle when it's actually water, while towards the end when I'm reading 'Memoirs Of A Geisha' what I'm drinking from the glass cup is vodka. Stolichnaya vodka was very cheap in Israel back then, it probably still is today. The Jews aren't Muslims after all. So I developed a healthy reading habit and rediscovered hardcore alcohol self-abuse too. Plus I had my camera to play with, my old school cassette personal-stereo, a small portable TV and a radio-tape player back at the volunteers chalets... ...though being out in the fields for fifteen hours a day meant that I really had to take my video camera everywhere with me just so I didn't have to worry about it getting stolen. October and November I worked the fields, days I had off I spent in Jerusalem, the cotton was all harvested well before the first rains which came towards the end of November, and because I'd been working such long days I managed to accrue quite a few days off. After all the other (four or five) volunteers had been relieved of their duties and moved on to pastures new I was able to just hang out by myself and explore, which is when I found the way to the nearest larger kibbutz which was four or so miles away across the fields. It had a larger volunteer population too featuring Swedish christian girls and an on-kibbutz bar/nightclub. All the more opportunity for me to be an insufferable drunken prick with a camcorder... ...during an xmas '98 trip to Jerusalem I stayed at the Tobasco Hostel in the Arab quarter of the old city, I asked if they had any work and they offered me night-shift receptionist duties which I started in the new year. Then the alcoholism really kicked in. It's a mad place alright. You get the sense from most of the locals that they feel like their god is watching them all of the time. As an atheist/Fortean I felt somewhat alienated to say the least, but then again that's not so unusual for me. The alcohol and random-hook ups eventually took their toll upon me though, I had a fairly normal relationship with a cute German girl for a week or so, then after she went back home she telephoned me at the Tobasco from Germany to say that she really liked me and whatnot. I had already hooked up with some cute nutty Danish girl by this point and felt somewhat emotionally confused to say the least. So I ate my camera. Or I may as well have, I don't know, I lost it when I was drunk. 'Cannibal Holocaust'. The end. I quit my job at the hostel, moved back to Harel for a week before flying back to homelessness in the UK. Then a bunch of other stuff happened and it took me about a decade before I finally finished editing a lot of what I'd shot. It could have been better. I took a load of still-photographs when I returned to the kibbutz with the intention of using them as the final scenes put to Puccini's 'The Humming Chorus'. A bit like in 'Heavenly Creatures'. 'Fallen Angels' was a good 90's movie too.