For many years, Ive had an intense, intimate relationship with the
Golem.
What I mean is, over a dozen years now, Ive been assiduously working
with the 1920 Paul Wegener / Carl Boese silent film Der Golem How He
Came Into the World, having composed a score to accompany it live on
electric and acoustic guitars, played in real
time through many secret electronic
effects (no samplers or sequencers here).
The sound is symphonic, the science-
fiction flavored music sumptuous and
mystical.
Ive played with this film in over 15
countries around the world since debuting
the score in NYC at the BAM Next Wave
Festival in 1989. Tel Aviv, London,
Berlin, Budapest, New York, San
Francisco all have felt the power and
majesty of the Golem again, as I
reanimate this film a big hit worldwide upon release with my own
spectral music. I never grow tired of it. Night after night, its like peering
into a telescope at a microcosm of 16th century Prague, the Jews stooped
and shuffling their way through Hans Poelzigs gnarled and misshapen
ghetto mise-en-scene like some fantastically garbed Mummers parade,
strolling the streets and moving into the synagogue for evening prayers.
I love witnessing the dramatic arc of the story enfold time and time
again, the tale of the actual historic Rabbi Jehudah Loew and his Kabbalistic
magical prowess, and how he created the Golem, a man molded from
shapeless clay, to become a servant of the Jewish people, to protect them
from annihilation the ultimate revenge
for love of his daughter Miriam as the
Prague ghetto is consumed by flames,
caused by a Golem run amuck. I delight in
the foppish antics of the lustful Junker
Knight Florian, the sly machinations of
the servile sorcerers apprentice Famulus,
and Wegeners all-too-human portrayal of
the hulking juggernaut, the Big Fella
himself Go, Go, Golem!
Each night I play my heart out into
this black and white phantasmagoria,
changing the music round every time I
perform it, improvising new shrieks, whispers and sighs on my guitar,
curdling new electronic frissons in my electronic cauldron, hurtling my
Jewish heavy-metal soul across the yawning chasm of eighty-some-odd
years to try and put some spring back into the Old Boys feet of Clay. I
have played my music to this film literally hundreds of times, and I never
Me and the Golem
by Gary Lucas
9
get tired of it, I keep seeing new things within it, and it keeps haunting me,
keeps drawing me back.
My absolute favorite city to perform the Golem in, bar none, is Prague,
of course. My roots are literally Bohemian, and my family name was once
Lichtenstein, stone of light Lucas is close to that, deriving from the Latin
root for luminous. . . true to my name, I like to throw light in dark corners.
Ive played it there many, many times, beginning with a performance in the
Reduta Jazz Club (where Bill Clinton previously held forth with his
saxophone) in 1993. And also, most memorably, in the cavernous crumbling
old Yiddish theatre known as the Roxy, near the Mala Strana section of
Pragues Old Town Square. Let me tell you. . . .
It was an unusually hot (for Northern Europe), stifling summer of
1995. I had been summoned to Prague by a fellow musical eccentric named
Richard Mader, who goes by the name of Faust, himself an underground
rock legend in Czech progressive music circles, and the owner of his own
label Faust Records. Faust had proposed to record a collaborative album
with me and his band Urfaust on the theme of The Ghosts of Prague,
after seeing me play solo in Prague earlier that year. He had been full of
praise for what he enthusiastically described in a letter to me as
my`ghastly guitar stylings. To that end, he had secured me several nights
at the Roxy performing The Golem to pay for my trip to Prague, and had
secured a good print of the film from the Goethe House archive for me to
play to.
This gig was fraught from the beginning.
Faust, a 6-foot gentle giant of a fellow with a perpetually cheery
outlook (a good counterbalance to my own mercurial weltanschaung),
arrived at noon at my Dresden hotel the day of the first scheduled Golem
show, having driven the normally 3 hour trip from Prague to East Germany
in his battered Skoda to come and personally fetch me there. He excitedly
showed me the Czech newspapers full of previews for my Golem
engagement, and mimeoed flyers announcing the same, chattering on in his
charmingly fractured English about the crazy album we were going to make
together and the stellar gig I would perform solo that evening.
Its gonna be a sold-out house, of that I am sure! Because we work on
promotion! We work on publicity! Faust exclaimed. We meaning Faust
Records, his pride and joy which consisted solely of him and his long-
suffering assistant and mistress Marta. They had come to me visit me in
New York City that spring and had spun grandiose plans of Czech music-
world domination.
After stuffing the boot of his old car to capacity with my guitars and
my dreaded, cumbersome Monster Case full of electronic effects (which he
christened The Flying Mary the scourge of many a European tour
manager), we were off on hot, sweaty, endless journey to Prague. The trip
took a maddeningly slow seven hours to complete, due to massive road
repairs on an East German highway infrastructure which had been built
before the War and hadnt been upgraded since. Additionally, Fausts
propensity for circuitous shortcuts, unfailingly put us back on the highway,
after much time spent stopping to consult outdated maps, in front of the
shortcut exit we had just taken.
Bool Sheet! he would invariably spout, commenting on his own
handiwork. Boool Sheeet!
We arrived, finally, literally by the seat of our pants, at dusk in Prague.
The Magic City glistened in the fading light like a fairytale. It is the most
beautiful city in the world, with the spires of the St. Vitus Cathedral
pricking the sky. Rising over the green Petrin hills, the lights of the Charles
Bridge winked at us as we raced past the imposing stone edifice of the
National Museum, past the faded elegance of the old Railway Station,
roaring up onto the elevated highway above the bustling thoroughfare of
Wenceslas Square, epicenter of the Velvet Revolution.
Faust frantically gunned our red bomber filled with my magicians
wands and bag o tricks, past the late Saturday crowds of tourists and
shoppers, into the heart of the old Jewish Quarter. We finally came to rest
in front of the fabled, run-down, Roxy Theatre. We had less than an hour
before showtime. In great haste, I set up my gear in front of the old screen,
a remnant from the venues Yiddish Theatre days. I checked the projection,
tested the amps, all the while cursing Faust and his unerring tardiness, then
stumbled solo out of the Stygian depths of the empty cinema into Pragues
magic night.
Picking my way down the twisting twilight streets, I had to make a
homage and pay my respects to someone very special to me. I made my
way to the celebrated Jewish cemetery, nestled nearby the Roxy in the old
Jewish Quarter at the foot of the Alte Neu Synagogue, which, legend has it,
10
is the final resting place of ... the Golem.
They sell postcards of the Golem all over Prague. A definite Favorite
Son, no doubt about it. My brother, the Orthodox Rabbinical student,
swears that he resides there still, in that Old New synagogue. Stowed away
in a locked attic room, it was rendered immobile until needed again. A
special inscription on his brow writ by an Unseen Hand (Emeth, as in the
Golem film I love and play to, the Hebrew word for Truth), or the
rendering of certain obscure Kabbalistic rituals (reciting the Hebrew
alphabet backwards, perhaps, as suggested in several scholarly tomes Ive
consulted), or through some recondite
ritual unknown to current scholars
the Golem will rise, must rise, again.
Its said that during the Nazi
occupation of Prague, when German
SS officers entered the holy taber-
nacle of that Synagogue one night to
desecrate the ancient Torah scrolls
and pilfer the wealth of the holy
relics displayed there, the Golem was
awakened from his 400 year old
slumber. In the morning light that
shone through the stained glass
windows of the Alte Neu Synagogue
the following day, the bodies of the
Nazi soldiers were discovered,
literally ripped asunder by some malevolent Goliath with superhuman
strength. My brother, the Harvard graduate, swears by this tale.
As the sky grew darker, and the midsummer night came on strong, I
threaded over the winding stone pathway of the old Jewish Cemetery,
through the thicket of ancient graves, pushing past some straggling Dutch
tourists struggling with their guidebooks. Here at last, I had reached what
Id been searching for.
Jutting up from the earth, there they were. From the vaulted caverns
below, sepulchers mouldering in this haunted burial ground, running twelve
or so levels deep, caskets stacked up one atop the other because the original
Jewish population were denied a decent plot of land to bury their dead.
Instead, they had to make do as always as best they could. Jutting
skyward, all weathered black granite with nearly indecipherable inscrip-
tions, looking like the broken, rotting teeth of some fallen giant, were the
tombstones. I made for the biggest, blackest one.
Festooned with yellowing paper messages, like the tattered prayers
stuffed between the cracks in the Wailing Wall, Rabbi Jehudah Loews
gravestone had become a repository for the hopes and dreams of all the
wandering Jews who had made their way to his final resting place in
PraguePlease, Rabbi Loew, heal us as a nation, Please, Rabbi Loew, let
little Rachel walk as normal children
do, and I too had a message for
him.
Hastily I scribbled my prayer on
the back of a printed flyer announcing
my evening performance Please,
Rabbi Loew, let the Golem rise again.
I placed it reverently at the foot of
the weathered stone marker. The wind
that sprang up then almost blew it
away, but I caught it just in time, and
tucked it firmly between a crevice in
the headstone base and the rich,
loamy earth of the old graveyard.
You never know.
My show that night was one of
the wildest, most maniacal Golem performances I ever delivered this was,
after all, Prague and I played as a man possessed, a madman, full of the
scorn and fury of the ancient Hebrew patriarchs. I literally became as one
with them, as in Der Golems famous film-within-a-film sequence, wherein
Rabbi Loew summons up a vision of the Jews in exile trekking across the
desert, their grizzled Moses-like leader striding angrily off the screen into
Hapsburg Court to wreak vengeance on the terrified throng of skeptical,
laughing spectators, my three guitars summoning a host of wraiths and
malignant phantoms from the Kabbalah and Jewish lore to rise anew
Azrael, Astaroth, Lilith, Metatron, Habal Garmin a/k/a Breath of Bones
all filling the empty vessel of the old theatre with their shrieks and
11
imprecations, spirits of the earth and air, writhing once again, to dance
triumphant in the flickering shadows.
And then it was over. The giant Star of David symbol came up
superimposed on the films final shot of the old Prague Ghettos shuttered
gate, as my last harmonic guitar flourish, a strange dischord which is my
signature Golem motif, rang out in the packed, airless theater. Dont you
wish you had a Golem? I shouted into the mic my stock line at the films
finish. I got no answer this night, not the usual tumultuous, rapturous
applause. The lights were raised, dimly. The audience, what I could make
out of them, looked numbed, shell-shocked. And thats how I felt, too.
In a trance, in the kind of hypnotic daze my own playing sometimes
puts me in, I began to slowly pack up my guitars, operating on auto-pilot.
Usually at this point I take questions about the film, the music and the
Golem legend from the audience but not this night. I vaguely became
aware of a crowd of people gathering at the lip of the stage where I had just
performed, and where I customarily sell CDs of my music after the show.
Hey man, your music was louder than the movie, some wisecracking
American student smirked. Do you know what I mean? he went on,
covering his ears.
Cool, I replied, a little pain is good for you. (I am nothing if not. . .
loud. I want to make you sweat with my music. I want to give you an
orgasm with my guitar.)
Most of the crowd that had gathered (basically a motley assortment of
Bohemian art intellectuals and various foreign tourists) were genuine fans,
extremely enthusiastic in their response to both the film and my music, and
I sold them many copies that night of my Skeleton at the Feast album,
which contains my Golem score. There were a few cuties there as well,
including one pouting zaftig blonde in a purple leather getup that seemed
molded to her skin, with holes strategically placed over and under her hefty
Czech breasts, but I was too drained to do much about it.
There was one face in that crowd though that really got my attention.
A skinny, prematurely wizened kid with sunken, haunted eyes, a
severe, near-skinhead buzzcut, and a crimson slash of a mouth, kind of like
Klaus Kinskis. He looked about eighteen going on eighty. He fixed me with
his beady stare, and beckoned me over to him at stage left where he had
positioned himself in the front of the crowd of onlookers.
Meester Geddy Loookis he spoke directly to me in that strange,
deliberate mittel-European Czech intonation that always reminds me of
Peter Lorre. I come from a family whose mutter and fadder were both kilt
inda kemps. . . .
Instantly my heart went out to this strange apparition. A landsman, I
thought.
End I just wanna say dat in your museek for dis film, I hear murder!!
I hear violence!! He went straight for the jugular, eyes popping at me
accusingly. He self-righteously spat, End we Jews, you know. . . we. . .
we just dont need this!! Not no more! Not after de kemps! We haf to heal,
you know? We haf to heal the world! Not by this!
Trumped by his survivors status, fatigued from playing a wild,
heartfelt show to a strangely lackluster crowd, stifled by the airless cinema,
and momentarily at a loss for words, not at all my usual glib self, I
mustered a subdued reply:
My European relatives were killed too during the war, in a pogrom in
Poland. . . I play what I feel. And I feel angry about it still. And this film,
I gestured back towards the looming screen, mirrors my feelings exactly.
We don need it here, unnerstand me?! Not your anger! Not your
hatred!
He shook his head, turned his back on me, and walked off slowly in
disgust.
Profoundly depressed by this excoriation of my art, my life, my raison
detre, from someone whom I otherwise sensed an underlying deep kinship
with, I packed up the rest of my gear as hurriedly as possible in the now
nearly-empty cinema. I went looking, unsuccessfully, for Faust, in order to
collect my fee for the nights performance. I told one of the theatre
managers to keep an eye on my guitars and the Flying Mary for me, as I
needed at that moment to escape the oppressive tomb of the Roxy as
quickly as possible, to be alone with my shattered thoughts. I slunk,
deflated and dejected and fighting successive waves of dizziness, out the
rear stage door and into the oppressive Prague night.
I found myself in a darkened alleyway of slippery cobblestones,
choking on the stench and the overflowing clotted refuse of open trashcans.
I could barely see where I was going, there was very little illumination, no
streetlamps shone back here, and I stumbled forward bumping into a slime-
coated wall, rounding what seemed to be a corner in this warren of alleys,
groping my way towards a glowing ember hovering in the distance inching
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towards what I thought was the end of the alley.
The ember was the tip of a lit cigarette. Its owner stood not at the
entrance to the street, but in front of a blackened wall, a cul de sac.
A dead-end street.
Excuse me, I blurted, I dont speak Czech. Can you please show me
how to get to the street?
The smoker, a shapeless black hulk in
the dark, took a drag on his butt.
Do you know how to get to the main
street? I said again slowly, plaintively.
Like I said, I was a little bit dizzy. Street
is dat way. . . come, I show you, the
phantom said in a harsh, low voice. He
tossed his cigarette, deliberately, like a
spark shooting out of a crackling fire
then suddenly a convulsive movement and
my arm was gripped by a relentless,
tightening claw.
The lout rasped at me as I recoiled
from his fetid drunken breath, You Jew
musician from New York. . . I know you
play here. . . tonight. . . I see newspaper. .
. Go back America!! I tried to tear away
from his manacle-like grasp, to wrench my
arm away, managed to take a swing at him, connecting only with air
there was a short, brutish struggle and then I was seized by his sharp
pincer-like fingers and hurled down onto the slimy cobblestones, a sharp
pain lancing through my right forearm as I put my hands out rigid in front
of me to protect my head. I heard the click as of a knife blade opening, then
felt the whistle of cold metal tearing through my loose jacket shoulder,
seeking my flesh. The knife rent right through the fabric, narrowly missing
my shoulderblade, ripping through the flimsy summer jacket before striking
the stone pavement.
Goodbye, Jew...
I closed my eyes. I prayed to Yaweh. I prayed to Rabbi Loew for my
deliverance. I heard him laugh and whisper maniacally, I am Breath of
Bones!!! I heard him sing out exultantly,
again, felt his shrouded form pounce on my
back, pinning me down, hot breath on my
neck, stabbing through the noisome air,
clutching the knife. Up for the downstroke
Suddenly a sound of heavy boots.
A feral, guttural growl.
And I felt my phantom assailant literally
torn from my back.
And with a whooping, echoing scream
dissolve into the night sky.
I opened my eyes to discover Faust
standing over me with a flashlight.
Gary, Gary my friend, I been lookin all
over the theatre for you. . . my God what are
you doin kissing the ground like dat? Did
you slip or trip or somethin? Bool Sheet!
Bool Sheet! Come on, I got your money, lets
get the guitars and the Mary and get the hell
outta here. . . .
I whispered one last prayer, mentally, to Rabbi Loew, then let Faust
help me up from the pavement where I lay. Gingerly cradling my right arm,
I let the big Czech drag me, limping, down the street, his boots beating a
mighty tattoo in time with my heart.
You never know. . . .
Me and The Golem © Gary Lucas, 2002, is featured in the forthcoming 2003 anthology Kabbalah: The Magic of Solomon edited by Jack
Dann and Edward E. Kramer. All rights reserved.
13
Gary Lucas will be performing The Golem live on Saturday
evenning at 7:00 pm in the Hyatt Centennial Ballroom.
