�The
mind is like a city,� wrote Sigmund Freud, but to which metropolis would
the good doctor have compared Harold Liebow, the latest recruit to
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
Pig-slaughter
feast,
Can Rier�, Atzar�, 1965 |
|
Harold Liebow and
al fresco lunch |
|
Pictures Courtesy of Harold
Liebow
These pictures are also published in an excellent anthology book,
Eivissa-Ibiza: A Hundred Years of Light and Shade |