|
"The mind is like a city," wrote Sigmund Freud,
but to which metropolis would the good doctor have compared
Harold Liebow, the latest recruit Ibiza History Culture? To the latter's
native New York, that centre of excellence in so many areas
of human endeavour? Or to ancient Athens, acme of pocket-sized
capitals, where mind and body were so closely interwoven?
Or maybe to an oriental city medieval Baghdad or Cairo in
whose myriad alleyways the everyday goes hand in hand with
the search for the divine? Or would Habsburg Vienna, cradle
of western music, have been selected by the great psychoanalyst?
Whatever his choice, Harold Liebow would undoubtedly have
been completely at home in any one.
Our subject was first pointed out to me
at a Christmas party as a formidable expert in hi-fi and broadcasting.
Looking across the room, I saw a tall, distinguished-looking
man with a fine head of grey hair whose features hinted (but
only hinted) at sternness like a prophet tired of telling
the Chosen People to get their act together. Languid Brooklynese
drifted over, laced with an occasional piece of chutzpah.
After that, I remember glimpsing him at SYP with his charming,
frail-looking (but only looking) Finnish wife, Anja. The pair
were putting a wayward and heavily-laden trolley through a
complicated manoeuvre. Only after did I discover that Liebow
dinner-parties were on no account to be missed. A year or
so later I heard by chance that he was an accomplished artistic
photographer (the book he co-wrote and illustrated about Ibiza
is profiled in Weekly Edition 057 Saturday 30th March 2002),
and thought I had him pigeonholed until a friend mentioned
a musical evening devoted to Jewish music, during the course
of which Harold's learned commentary dovetailed with a selection
of examples spanning continents and centuries. It then transpired
that he was an authority on tennis, as well as a former businessman,
and ex-educationalist; and finally that he had worked at several
stages as a journalist. I stopped being surprised whenever
a new career or area of specialization popped into the conversation.
Harold was well, Harold.
The story all began, appropriately enough
in ‘Utopia', the summer camp for children set up by his
parents in the Pocono Mountains of western New York State.
Three thousand acres of virgin forest, rushing streams and
wildlife, with a crystalline lake like a gleaming diamond
at the very centre. Twenty odd bungalows housed the boys,
all of them overlooking the lake and a similar number of girls,
lived in a parallel set of chalets on the far side of the
shimmering water. Utopia was more than just a recreational
retreat: it was more of a Platonic republic with its own secretariats
of health, security, commissary and culture. The four hundred
youngsters spent two months learning about aspects of life
which tended to get swept under the carpet in the Big Apple.
There was fishing, canoeing, teamwork and semi-professional
dramatics. The young Herbert Brodkin, first cousin to Harold
and later a leading TV producer, directed the cream of the
current Broadway crop. Hits like Waiting for Lefty and Bury
the Dead! played to audiences of as many as a thousand, made
up of the children, their visiting parents, staff and fascinated
locals.
Amateur drama left Harold with two abiding
loves. The first was the written word: he went on to read
English Lit. at NYU (whose English faculty was one of the
finest in the country) and might well have continued into
the dense groves of academe had not other roads proved more
beguiling. This profound identification with literature was
to surface later though in contributions to prominent monthlies
such as Off Duty (for ex-servicemen) Lookout and D'Oro (an
article on Pablo Casals), as well as specialist journals like
Hi-fi News and Record Review and Speakers. The second passion
was music, initially roused from deep slumber by a Utopian
staging of Odet's 1935 masterpiece, Awake and Sing! In this
Harold played the part of a young man for whom a Mozart piano
duet brings back powerful memories. A novice to the Viennese
magic, Harold was so moved by the opening bars that he broke
down on the stage and wept. The audience, unaware they were
witnessing real life, went wild.
The summer camp to which minesweeping Lieutenant
Liebow returned after the Pacific War were no longer the Ransomesque
playgrounds of the thirties: teenage girls now spent entire
days in dorms primping themselves for the night ahead while
the boys no longer quite the same either. After two years
of increasing disillusionment, Harold decided to sell out
and enter the world of Manhattan business.
Fast forward to 1960: Harold's financial
career takes a quantum leap when he starts a life insurance
business with a nest-egg, and starts burning the midnight
oil by the barrel. So successful is it that he works himself
into a hospital ward and has a lawyer drawing up the final
will and testament. Time to exit the rat race, fast. Bought
out by his partner (it has since become the largest independent
life insurance company in America) he decides to look around
for a different way of earning a living.
Two years down the road, the self-taught
photographer was beginning to sell pictures to mainstream
journals when the really big break drifted along. He heard
on the grapevine that educational giants McGraw Hill were
looking for a writer/photographer team to do six photobooks
about children across Europe. Harold and second wife Gina
were born for it. The editorial board loved Harold's children's
portfolio and they were engaged on the spot. (Readers can
follow the story further in the 30th March issue as well as
the Harold's piece in this one) After the Paris book Harold
arrived in Ibiza in late December 1964. The Ibiza book was
finished six months later. A final stint in Finland ended
badly. The photography was completed, but Gina didn't write
the book. Instead, she went back to the States for good and
Harold returned to Ibiza, and has since remained. Both he
and Anja, were in the final stages of divorce when they met.
There is much more to the Liebow story:
the house he reformed on the outskirts of Ibiza town, the
changes to the island which he has witnessed over the past
four decades and the cavortings of colourful local characters
for which he has enjoyed a front-row seat. For privileged
Ibiza History Culture readers, the lights have dimmed and the curtain
is about to rise.
Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for
thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out
the dead.
Isaiah 26:19
|
|
Harold Liebow and al fresco
lunch |
|
Pig-slaughter feast,
Can Rieró, Atzaró, 1965
|
|
|
Pictures Courtesy of Harold Liebow
These pictures are also published in an excellent anthology
book,
Eivissa-Ibiza: A Hundred Years of Light and Shade
|
Martin Davies
martindavies@ibizahistoryculture.com
| |
