The Dead Sea - Woke Up Alive Travel Notes, 2006
A collection of writing from the filmmakers

The Dead Sea is surreal. There's desert all over and the brown
hills of the Great Rift Valley over in Jordan but then there's this
big, sapphire, salt-water lake, smack dab in the middle of it.
Refreshing fresh water springs are all over the place. You have
to watch the sinkholes though. Agriculture and industry are
drying up the Sea and as the water rescinds, sink holes form
that can suck you right in. Someone said the Dead Sea is
rescinding something like fifty feet a year. This is where Dead
Sea beauty products come from. Everyone sees Israelis selling
Dead Sea products in mall kiosks back home.

The En Gedi falls oasis is incredible. There's a rumor that the
falls run year round because of Israeli plumbing ingenuity but
King David spent some time there pondering life a couple
thousand years ago and at least part of the year, the falls are
definitely real. We met Ori, one of the guides from the Judean
Desert trip, at the field school and he showed us around. The
Dead Sea is the closest to the 1960's I'm ever going to get.
Weird, wild, free people. At a small cafe near the "lowest spot
on earth," we met this fiery, redheaded, Hungarian woman
who I nicknamed Apricot. She took us all over. We even saw
a sign with the famous Ram Dass quote, "Be Here Now"
painted on it. We danced under laser lights, met Rainbow
people who travel all over the country on donkeys and talked
to the owner of the hippy bus yogurt stand that sits right next
to a military check point. Great contrasts.

I'm getting into the spirit of the desert. I can't even imagine
what it was like when Moses stumbled around for years, not
so far from here, down in the Sinai. My hair's growing curly
and I have a nice beard. I lost some weight too. It's hot and I
mean hot. We're drinking Gold Star, the Israeli lager, and it's
really good. We are free and living a dream. Jesse shoots almost
everything that happens but has no clue what this movie is
about.

The film isn't the purpose anymore but it certainly does give us
an aura of cool. Doors are opening that wouldn't have opened
without the camera. Most people generally like to be on camera
and people definitely think the two wild-looking Americans with
the camera are worth getting to know. Even if you don't want to
make a movie, but you really want to be treated differently than
your average tourist, it's a good idea to act like you're making one.
We are not average at this point. We roll into these desert towns
and people know we are there. They treat us so well it's
overwhelming sometimes. We very well could be pretending we're
making a movie. We don't know what we're doing half the time.

Skinny-dipping in desert springs, donkey riding, singing, dancing,
hanging out with all kinds of creative and interesting people.
Somehow we even got involved in a botched hashish deal in Eliat
and had to leave town in the middle of the night. I was just joking
around at a pub talking like Marlon Brando in the Godfather and
the owner of the place took me seriously. He pulled out about five
pounds of hashish and was convinced we were the guys sent there
to pick up the stash. We were very tempted to take it - this is a
no-budget project after all - until the real guys showed up. They
looked like Russian mobsters. It got tense and we split, fast. Too
bad we couldn't have filmed all that drama.

Today, we stopped by this house that a young woman constructed
close to En Gedi. She wove hundreds of reeds together into a series
of igloo type dwellings. She's totally self-sufficient and even has
a solar toaster. Her place seems to be some sort of hub of desert
counter-culture. There are people stopping by day and night.

I'm supposed to go with Apricot to a Purim party tonight. Purim's
the Jewish version of Halloween. Everyone, even the holiest of
Rabbis, is required by sacred edict to get drunk. Good holiday.

-Mark Blacknell
director, executive producer

Photo by Eyal Bartov