Daily Lyric: ANYWHERE ELSE BUT HERE

It’s raining

And I’m walking in Tel Aviv

They call this Little New York In The Middle East

What the hell am I doing here?

Dizengoff is all wet and slippery

And the only characters I see

Are the art rockers who sit at the sidewalk cafes

Seeing the whole world from the back seat

I flag down a cab

Driver asks me where I want to go

I tell him Take me out of this city

Anywhere else but here

I don’t understand! Somebody please tell me

Why things tear at my mind and every tear is fear

All my nightmares explode all around me

Don’t know shice from pishachs anymore

It’s raining

And I’m walking in New York City

They say this is the greatest city in the whole world

What the hell am I doing here?

West Street is soaked and lonely

And the only characters I see

Are the hookers winos and junkies

Seeing the whole world through keyholes

I flag down a cab

Eighteen empty ones go by but the nineteenth stops

I tell him Take me out of this city

Anywhere else but here

©2023 The Hesh Inc.

Tel Aviv, New York, Tel Aviv.

Hard as it is to believe now, Tel Aviv, Israel's metropolis and first modern Jewish-founded city and current hip international/cosmopolitan hotspot, was once little more than a dusty backwater by the sea. In the 1980s it was starting to reach for higher heights but it still had the air of a NYC wannabe. I generally did not enjoy going there (I would call it "Smell Aviv") and did my best to avoid spending any time there. Of course, being the commercial and transportation hub of the whole country, passing through there was all but unavoidable, especially during my army service when I would often need to catch my ride back to base from there (don't get me started on the city's bus station, ugh). One such day, a rainy Sunday in early spring of 1986, I found myself there, procrastinating about catching my bus and wishing I could be in the real New York and not its cheap Middle Eastern imitation. A slow blues groove rolled through my head as I mumbled these words to myself (what a sight I must have been). I never recorded or performed this beyond noodling at the piano.