Issue 65

Noel Lee was an engineer at the Lawrence-Livermore Laboratory and a drummer when he  started his company Monster Cable in 1979, thus becoming one of the founders of the US audiophile cable industry (along with the Cobra Cables imported and sold by Polk Audio, the garden-hose-sized Gold and Brown cables sold by Fulton Musical Industries, and the braided cables from Kimber Kable). The company grew massively, largely due to extensive marketing, a large, well-trained salesforce, and extensive penetration into mainstream retail outlets. Many veterans of the audio industry have done stints at Monster at one time or another.

In the early 2000s, the company became notable (or notorious) for its willingness to sue anyone and everyone using the name “Monster”, all the way from Disney’s film Monsters, Inc., down to Monster Mini-Golf in Warwick, Rhode Island. The company’s actions led to a public perception of Monster Cable as a bully, and somewhat ridiculous (ironically, in recent years Monster Energy Company—makers of the vile energy drink—have continued down the litigious path). In the last decade, Monster—now known as Monster Products to reflect the diversity of their product lines—has been best-known for fostering the Beats headphone line, and then losing it.

At its peak during the Beats years, Monster revenues supposedly  neared $1B.  Last fall, the company made an implausible attempt to enter online gambling; even more implausibly, in May the company filed an S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, stating the company’s intent to offer $300M in cryptocurrency. Close reading of the offering made “Monster Money” sound more like gift certificates than a legitimate cryptocurrency—if there is such a thing.

According to the S-1 filing, the company lost $29M in 2016, and nearly $27M in 2017. At the end of 2017, an auditor’s report expressed “substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern.” in Q1 ’18, the company lost nearly $20M—this after spending millions on a single Super Bowl ad.

In response to the S-1 filing, the SEC released what is called a “Bedbug Letter”—a letter indicating that a filing is found upon first reading to be so grossly deficient that the Division of Corporation Finance (colloquially known as “CorpFin”) will not engage in the usual practice of a detailed examination of the filing.

Football fans: what’s the most “Hail Mary” plays every thrown by one team? I suspect that Monster is headed towards that number—if they haven’t already exceeded it. Did I mention that Lee fired most of the board, including the President and COO who had been the partner in the online gambling play? And that the CFO resigned? As usual, our friend Ted Green has all the grisly details.

It will be interesting to see what transpires next in Monster World. Bring popcorn.

____________________________________________________________

In Copper #63 we wrote about the likelihood of Sonos having an initial public offering (IPO) of its shares. Since then, such has come to pass: on Thursday, August 2, the stock began trading on NASDAQ. Pre-trading estimates set the share price at $17-19, but the stock actually opened at $15. After briefly hitting $21, trading closed at just under $20 at the end of the opening day.

We mentioned a number of risk factors mentioned in the S-1 filing which were somewhat offputting, but pre-launch press was nearly all upbeat. Since trading began, the stock has remained essentially flat, staying around $19—and media coverage of Sonos and its future prospects has become increasingly skeptical. Digital Music News expressed concerns that Sonos would follow the path of Fitbit and GoPro— tech companies which started strong, but whose limited product offerings quickly reached market saturation, and crashed. CNBC’s “Mad Money” host  Jim Cramer loudly compared Sonos to Fitbit: “…Fitbit’s stock has been a total, unmitigated disaster…I got burned by that one. I’m not going to make the same mistake twice.”

We’ll keep an eye on Sonos’ progress—or lack thereof.

Customer: “There’s a violin in it.”

Sales Manager: “What did you say?”

“I just heard a beautiful piece of music on the radio. It had a violin in it. I want to buy it.”

“Do you remember the name of the radio station? Was it the classical music station? If so, we can look it up on their playlist or call the station…”

“I don’t know. There was a violin in it.”

“OK. Was it a solo violin?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Was it a violin with another instrument? Perhaps a piano?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Was it part of a small group of instruments? A violin with an orchestra?

“There was a violin in it.”

“Without more information I can’t really help you…”

“I guess you don’t have it. Thanks for checking.”

After working as the sales manager at a classical music store for 17 years I’ve met wonderful customers and had the satisfaction of helping many enthusiasts find the recordings they were looking for.

I’ve also had to deal with arrogant customers, litigious customers, and customers who think they are entitled to impose their own rules on everyone else. Like the customer who raced into the store and announced that her husband had presented her with a gift certificate to the classical music store even though she had told him she didn’t want to shop there. After finding some discs to buy she threatened to sue me personally because I wouldn’t stop what I was doing to ring up her sale (I was still helping the customer ahead of her). I explained that only one employee works in the store during each shift and I would be happy to help her in a moment. She positioned herself near the counter, phone in hand with her lawyer’s number prominently displayed, and complained in a loud voice to anyone who would listen how she was being forced to wait while I finished helping the person who preceded her.

One customer who always behaves badly asked me to look up a very esoteric recording. After searching about a half hour I located it and asked her if she wanted me to order the disc. “Oh, no, I just wanted the information. I’ll buy it on Amazon. Do you have a pen and paper?” Another time I was playing a popular disc of arias and show tunes sung by an opera singer. The same customer screamed at me from the only place in the store that doesn’t have an acoustic dead spot: “You’re crazy! That music and singer you’re playing is horrible! You should see a psychiatrist!” Of course everyone in the store turned around to look at me—the guy with such poor taste in music he was in desperate need of therapy. I now make sure to play the disc every time I see her enter the store.

Then there was the customer who grabbed a handful of CDs and took them out of the store to show her friend who was sitting at a nearby café. She didn’t ask if she could borrow the merchandise. I didn’t say anything because I was able to watch her from the counter. When she returned she replaced the CDs and grabbed some more merchandise to show her friend. At that point I intervened and explained in a friendly manner (a major accomplishment since I hadn’t been to see a psychiatrist yet) that merchandise had to stay in the store until it was paid for. Nothing personal. It was a store policy. She admitted she knew the policy, apologized for removing the discs without asking, and had her friend come into the store to look at other selections.

A week later a “letter to the editor” written by that customer appeared in a local paper. She said she would never return to a certain music store because one of the managers accused her of stealing. She neglected to mention in her letter that she had told me she was aware of our policies and was wrong not to talk with me first. Or that I trusted her when she removed discs the first time. Or how I politely explained our policies without accusing her of anything.

We have customers who gather an armful of discs, decide they don’t want any of them, and drop them anyplace. It’s hard to locate a Mozart quartet if it has been filed under Stravinsky. Kind of like finding broccoli mixed in with the breakfast cereals. Decided against a disc? Hand it to anyone who works in the store and we’ll file it for you. And there are customers who seem to enjoy the hunt more than the catch. They ask for a particular disc, start inquiring about other CDs before I’ve had a chance to show them the first disc they asked for, race around the store looking for the next title they think of, find but don’t examine it because they’re already asking if we carry yet another CD (repeat this action several times)… then exit without considering any of the discs they were so anxious to look at.

My most entertaining customers are the ones who are intimidated by classical music. They march into the store eager to buy music and stop dead in their tracks. You can see them thinking “Whoa! It’s classical music! Which circle of hell is this?” When they realize we only sell classical music they pivot and run out, horror-struck, looking as if they had just seen an alien burst out of an astronaut’s stomach.

And so it goes. Come visit us anytime. Buy a disc of show tunes and you, too, can terrorize your family and friends. Looking for something else? Just remember to tell me if it has a violin in it.

HELLO! In this installment of “Hand Picked” we’re going to do a little bit of the ol’ “Cross-Promotion.” Over on her “Off The Charts” column this issue, Anne E. will be discussing some of the deeper cuts from The Who’s canon, so, I thought that I would do MY business to one of my faves from them, “Who Are You?” A classic Townshend song and story.

The Who By Numbers had been released in 1975. It moved some units, but didn’t REALLY feature a stand-out “Smash Hit” amongst the tracks. Once released, the band, as always, hit the road and toured the world promoting it, something that they had done numerous times, and would continue to do until present day. Upon their return, however, it was back into the studio and time to record ANOTHER album. If you haven’t already, I urge you to pick-up and read Townshend’s autobiography Who I Am. It’s a brilliant tome that illustrates perfectly the amount of pressure that he experienced as the Principal Songwriter in the band. The Who By Numbers had been written during a particular rough bout of Writer’s Block. And, now, here he was again. Back into the breach, lads!

The sessions for Who Are You? were fraught with problems. Two different studios were used. Firstly Ramport, and then RAK, and then back to Ramport. The producer, Glyn Johns, had to abandon the recording before it was finished in-order to go and start a Joan Armatrading album, leaving Jon Astley to try and get it across the finish line. Keith Moon was virtually incapable of playing due to his diminished health from the drugs and alcohol that had become a routine part of his life. He would pass away a mere 3 weeks after the album’s release—an event that leant a weird poetry to the cover photo that featured him sitting on a chair with “Not To Be Taken Away” stenciled on the back of it. Roger Daltrey, already concerned about his recovery from throat surgery, knocked Glyn Johns unconscious during an argument over a rough mix of one of the tracks. John Entwistle confessed to being un-inspired by most of the material and disappointed in the condition, and performance, of his close friend Moon, who was also disgusted at his own state. And, hanging over the entire proceedings, was the band’s concern and insecurity, over the emergence of Punk Rock, and the feeling that they were now a dinosaur act that was rapidly becoming irrelevant.

But, a record was needed. Got to feed The Machine.

After a particularly arduous, 13 hour, royalty meeting with Allan Klein, hence the “11 hours in a Tin Pan, God there’s got to be a better way!” lyric, Townshend headed to the nearest “local” to seek some respite and something to drown his sorrows. It was whilst at said “local” that he ran into Steve Jones and Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols and was pleasantly surprised to find that they credited him, and The Who, for being the percursor, and honorary Fathers, of the Punk Movement. They trio proceeded to REALLY celebrate the meeting and Townshend got so hammered that he, literally, passed out in a Soho doorway only to be roused from his stupor by a policeman asking the question that would go on to be the title of the song in question. They DO say, “Write what you know”, after all.

Personnel:

Drums – Keith “Moonie” Moon

Bass – John “The Ox” Entwistle

Keys – Rod Argent (of The Zombies and Argent)

Guitars – Pete Townshend

Vocals – Roger Daltrey

As I mentioned earlier, Moon was in a terrible condition for the making of this album. “Who Are You?” was the only track that didn’t require him completely re-tracking the drums in the last two weeks of the recording. It’s quintessential Moon: his entrance is marked by the some of the grooviest 16th beat hats ever recorded and then SMASH! he’s in and the pocket explodes. Firework tom-fills, cymbals crying out for mercy, and the sloppy precision of his playing as the song vacillates from extreme to extreme under the direction of the skeletal guitar layer from Townshend. It’s EPIC. It’s Moon. There’s never been another. The kick-drum pulse of this track holds the entire thing together. He’s as good as there ever was and his death is one of the real tragedies of Rock.

Pete always said that we only heard the stories, but that they were all his FRIENDS that died in this period. Something to think about. So much loss.

One of the greatest “Engine Rooms” of all time is that of Mooney & Entwistle. This track is a beautiful example of the two of them driving the track onwards and DAMN THE TORPEDOES! Entwistle drops into the song with a descending, off-kilter, series of notes that are COMPLETELY unrelated to anything else that is occurring in the song at that time, one of his signature tricks. As Moon grooves the hats, Entwistle provides a pulse that wraps around the keyboard arpeggio and lays down the pocket that all of the other instruments will be built on. Quite a foundation. His choice to let the piano and guitars handle “The One” in the verse and him coming in on “The Push” of the “And” inside the bar-structure is another ridiculous choice that highlights him NAILING the down-beat into the chorus and allowing it to EXPLODE on arrival! Listen to the attached audio to hear what I am talking about. It’s SO simple, but it’s also everything. Simple. Complex. Simple. The bloke was a Master. RIP Ox. The subtleties of his choices alongside the barrage of the guitars and drums is what set him aside from all others. A Badass. He took what Macca had pioneered and increased its weight considerably. Go on YouTube and watch footage of him playing live. “Stoic” is the perfect word, except from the wrists down. It’s like two little octopuses are hanging out of his cuffs.

[Christian breaks down “Who Are You?” here, track-by-track—enjoy!—Ed.]

Pete Townshend pulled off quite a trick when he convinced the World that The Who were a HUGE guitar band but based so many of their hits on a keyboard pattern or arpeggio. “Who Are You?” is a great example. The synth goes for almost the entire song and its “pulse” is the sound that all of the others bounce-off of. Townshend was a genius when it came to this. The original keyboard player, John Bundrick, broke his arm falling out of a cab on the way to the studio, so Zombies’ keyboardist Rod Argent was drafted in to pick up the slack and he provides a beautiful piano line to this track. The “Middle 8” is a complete left-turn that belies the robust, Rock’n’Roll, heft of the rest of the arrangement. Brilliant.

There’s not much that needs to be said about Townsehnd’s guitar playing. He’s an Icon. A Legend. The story of the instrument in culture is not the same without him. This track is a PERFECT example of why. There’s never been ANYONE who has been able to say more with less. His choices on this song are flawless. He flips from sinewy arpeggio to jagged power-chords and back again with the grace of coked-up ballerina. The acoustic shuffle in the bridge brings the entire song into this post-Americana, finger-picked, country location, that contradicts its SoHo doorway origins. This is followed-up by one his simplest leads ever that mimics the notes Argent is playing on the piano off in the middle-distance. There’s SO much drama…but also Grace. It’s a Master Class in precision, feel, and perfect choices. It also shouldn’t be lost on the listener that as the song begins to climax there’s a strange, sort-of, police siren aspect to the part Townshend rides out on. He has always had the ability, that I think is unique to him in Rock Music, to tell a STORY with his instrument. Many have come close, Hendrix is another example, and one of the reasons, I would guess, for their “Mutual Appreciation Society”, but it isn’t the SAME as Townshend’s version. His “voices” are different. Clearer. More focused. I LOVE his playing on this song. It’s ALL of him in one track. The Blues. Rock. Avant-garde. Jazzy flourishes. And the sound of a Punk hammering at the walls with his Weapon Of Choice! What kind of song IS IT!?

Daltrey confesses now that he took the plaintive, poetic, lyrics that Townshend had written and injected them with the sneer, and hint of violence, that we hear, because of his fear of the band being swept away by the youth-driven wave that was Punk in mid-Seventies London. Who were The Who NOW?! What did they mean at this point? Anything? Were they the victims, or the victor? And how?! It’s telling that Daltrey was the one who ad-lib’d the “Who the F*CK are you?!?” lyric. Townshend hadn’t written it that way. There’s even a sense that Roger is asking the Punks “Who the f*ck are YOU?!” Pete has always been the “sensitive” one of the two of them, Roger the scrappy, “Street Fighting Man”, and he is more than up for the task of screaming at the walls that have now begun to surround the band as it moves into its second decade together. It’s also telling that they chose to take The Clash on the road with them when they hit the States to tour. A friend of mine got to see the show at the Hollywood Bowl with the Clash opening. He said that it was one of the greatest live shows he’s ever seen and that BOTH bands held their own. Daltrey and the lads stood in the wings and watched every performance. What an AMAZING image THAT is. The mantle not “passed”, but, rather, shared. Roger had a particular fondness for Strummer all the way until his death in the 2000’s.

The Who’s career is unparalleled in music. There isn’t another band who has survived the tragedies, convolutions, and soap operas, of 50+ years in the business and remained as iconic as The Who have with only two remaining members. Their years without Moon are multiples of their years with him. They were never an “easy” band, either to be in, or to be a fan of. Pete is a complicated soul. A searcher. A thinker. And he’s struggled because of it. Roger is, by his own admission, a “simpler man”, and it’s also unique to The Who that the principal songwriter has spent most of his time in the band being heard through the voice of another. Complicated indeed, As complicated as the music. But, also, deceptively simple.

Check out Who Are You? Nobody makes records like this anymore. And only The Who made records like it at all. That’s why they are The Who! Still.

Have a great couple of weeks.  See you at the next one.

Stay Golden,

cjh

…did I actually write it?

There is a catchy phrase, “Perception is Reality”, which is often thrown about as a pithy epithet, although at times it shows up as a surprisingly profound truth.  The underlying notion is that if you perceive something to be so, then it doesn’t matter what the underlying reality is … only the perception ultimately matters.  The unspoken sneer is that perception is an inadequate proxy for reality, and is polite language for “fooled into believing …”.  However, a scientific approach to the issue can lead to more rigorous and useful definitions of what comprise Perception and Reality.

For example, I perceive my loudspeakers to be standing in the room in front of me.  That’s generally good enough for me to be satisfied that they are actually there.  There ought to be a difference between my perceiving them to be there, and the loudspeakers actually being there.  After all, if I head off to the kitchen where I am no longer able to perceive them, would they in fact no longer be there?  Would they cease to exist as soon as I cease to perceive them?  As a scientist I can provide a number of independent steps I could take to determine whether or not the speakers disappear when I head off somewhere else, and I am confident that those steps will confirm that my speakers do indeed continue to exist when I am no longer perceiving them.  But even so, to this day there are whole branches of philosophy that deal with existential questions such as these.

Even more interesting, there are branches of science which deal with these issues at a profound and elemental level.  Quantum Physics, for example, is very happy to throw at you any number of odd and bizarre experimental observations that appear to be at odds with a rational, conservative view of reality.  And no matter how counter-intuitive these things can appear to the lay person, what we see is that time and time again experimental evidence sides with the weird science against the otherwise “rational” and “logical” positions.  So that, yes, bizarrely enough, there is good science behind the notion that my loudspeakers in reality do not exist until such time as I either perceive them, or perceive the consequences of some other system (or observer) which interacts with (or “perceives”) them.

But a different kind of perception is at play when we come to actually listening to loudspeakers, or more generally to the system as a whole that plays music through them.  The net result is that the system causes the air to vibrate.  Those vibrations impinge on our ears, and our brains set about trying to make sense of those vibrations in the context of the world in which we live.  And that’s very important, because what we perceive is not the vibrations themselves, but rather what our brains are able to make of them.

That may sound like a “pithy epithet” all of its very own, but it is in fact a critically important concept.  Take, for example, a binaural recording played over headphones.  If you clamp your head in a vise you will often find that you can hear a clear and highly detailed three-dimensional sonic image.  But if you free up your head so you can move it – even if only slightly – then the three-dimensional aspect of the image will usually collapse in an instant, and can be frustratingly difficult to re-establish.  In this example, the sound waves being presented to our ears is not being changed one iota.  Only our brains’ interpretation of those sound waves is changing.  It is an extreme example, but it is a good one with which to introduce the general issue here, which is that we hear only what our brains allow us to hear.

I have two audio systems in my home.  One is a no-compromise audiophile stereo setup used for serious music listening.  The other is a 5.1 surround sound Home-Theater system, which is used only for watching video content.  The HT system is massively compromised, and can in no way be described as having audiophile pretensions.  It has four in-ceiling speakers, a center channel of a different brand, and a subwoofer of a third brand.   It is all powered by a cheap mass-market receiver.  The sound is pretty dreadful by any audiophile standards.

Here’s the thing, though.  I have a number of DVDs of live music performances, from opera through rock concerts.  When I am watching the video content I am generally completely unaware of any limitations in the audio quality.  I find I am completely immersed into the performance, and if anything, I would go so far as to say I perceive the audio quality to be rather good.  But if I put a CD in the player instead of a DVD, the result is pretty much unlistenable.  What is going on here?

The answer relates to how the brain works.  And I feel I should point out straight up that for exactly this very reason the specific results I get may not be the same as the equivalent results you’d get.  But that’s fine, because it’s not the specific result that matters here, rather it’s the understanding of the mechanism(s) at play.  When our brains interact with the world at large, they seek to understand what they are seeing and hearing in terms of their experiences.  Our brains have ‘templates’ (for want of a better word) of experiences that they want to try to fit things to.  So, for example, when we see photographs of people in the famous Ames Room, our brains perceive a rectangular room, containing people of unexpected sizes.  But people from primitive cultures, who lived in round rather than square structures, when shown such images perceived an odd-shaped room containing sensibly-sized people.

The Ames Room is a classic example of how we see only what our brains allow us to see, rather than what our intellects would prefer us to see.  I believe my experiences with my Home Theater setup are variations on the exact same phenomenon.

When I play a concert video DVD my brain sees the picture and attempts to match the sound to the image.  Because we are primarily visual creatures, the image, rather than the sound, is the primary point of interpretative reference.  I have a good, clean image on the screen, and so my brain adjusts its interpretation of the sound accordingly.  Not only do I hear a trumpet when I see a trumpet, but I perceive a better-sounding trumpet (perhaps what I really mean is a more satisfactory-sounding trumpet) than I would do if I were not actually seeing clean footage of the trumpet playing on the screen.  When our brain tells us we are seeing a more lifelike image, or hearing a more lifelike sound, what it is really telling us is that what we are seeing and hearing is a more accurate match to its internal ‘template’.

This, to my mind, illustrates a critically important phenomenon, and one I don’t see discussed as widely as I think it should be.  What we have here is clear evidence that how we perceive sound quality can be impacted – sometimes remarkably strongly – by factors unrelated to the actual sound quality itself.  This is something that we, as audiophiles, experience quite strongly, although it generally falls into the category of things we don’t like to admit to.  We tend to argue against the notion that sound quality is something that has to be perceived, because it inherently plays into the hands of those who wish to contend that we never actually hear those things in the first place.  But the fact that a given system can be perceived to sound anywhere from higher to lower quality according to unspecified or unknown factors does not mean that one system cannot sound better than another.  Nor is it inconsistent with an expectation that a better system will have the potential to deliver a better perceived listening experience.

In my mind, the most interesting question is as follows.  Can an improvement in the actual performance of one sonic attribute result in an improved perceived assessment of an otherwise unrelated sonic attribute?  For example, if we improve a system so that it delivers a high-quality three-dimension soundstage (for example, through improvements in speaker placement) can we thereby enable a listener to perceive a more accurate tonal palette?  I have a sneaking suspicion that this might actually be the case [although I do accept that in the simple example given, moving the speakers will affect both the imaging and the tonal balance].  Given that, as I mentioned earlier, humans are primarily ‘visual’ beings, I wonder whether the ability to ‘visualize’ a three-dimensional sound field will help the brain to better fit what it hears to an internal template, such that the listener will perceive a higher quality overall sonic picture?  I know that from my own personal experience, my overall listening pleasure is maximally enhanced when I perceive good, holographic imaging, although it is not clear to me whether under these conditions I also perceive a specific improvement in, say, tonal accuracy.  In any case, I must emphasize, this is pure speculation on my part.

But the other side of the coin is when people try to perform the dreaded “double blind test”, the bane of the audiophile world.  Because the factors governing perception of sound are still very much unknown, we do not yet have a scientific basis upon which to establish test conditions where what the subjects perceive is sufficiently well controlled.  It is not surprising, therefore, that the results of such tests are seldom satisfactory to the audiophile community, whereas the community of skeptics can continue to wave the perception issue in our faces and snort that we are all just fooling ourselves.

The muezzin woke us up with the Adhan (The Muslim call to prayer). It was dawn in Jerusalem and we had spent the night in my favorite hotel, The American Colony in East Jerusalem. We rose early to join our group for the ride down to Eilat, in the south of Israel, where we would pick up our transport, a 6-wheeled command car for the journey into the Sinai desert. There were about eight couples and three guides and after brief introductions, we set off into the Sinai. This was 1979, before Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt. Sinai was a fairly safe area to explore.

Our first stop was Nuweiba, on the Red Sea. In those days it was a sleepy beachfront with minimal facilities and the most glorious beach. We camped (meaning, we laid out our sleeping bags) on the beach and watched the sun turn the mountains in Saudi Arabia ochre, crimson, and purple as it set behind us.

The next day we set off for Wadi Feiran, sometimes called “the endless wadi (dry river bed).” At about 80 miles long, it is the largest in Sinai and even though we were in an open but covered command car, it was a long and arduous drive. The temperature was around 110 degrees and the reflected sunlight was draining. We stopped for lunch at one of the few overhangs offering shade. After eating I strolled a little and on looking up saw some graffiti high up on a ridge. Horrified to see desecration in such a pristine place, I climbed up for a closer look. There were about three words, but in a language I couldn’t recognize. It wasn’t Hebrew or Latin or Arabic, so I called down to one of the guides and asked him to look at it. He started to laugh.

“It’s Syriac,” he said. “It’s the script used by the Nabataeans over two thousand years ago.”

Some fellow traveller, over two millennia before me, had left his mark.

A few miles later after setting up camp and eating supper, we heard a strange sound. It was a splash. We all ran up to see a pool of clear water with palm trees all around it. Swimming after a long hot day in the desert was a welcome and entirely unexpected delight.

At the far end of Wadi Feiran, where we had set up camp, is the Sinai’s largest oasis and is believed to be the spot where Moses struck a rock in anger and water poured out so the Hebrews could drink. During our orientation our guides encouraged us to drink large quantities of water throughout the day, for most illnesses in the desert were due to dehydration. They were not wrong; quite a few members of our group (including my wife) were taken ill the next day. After that, they all drank water like crazy. They also told us that the dryness of the desert preserves things for the longest time, so that when we went to the toilet we had to bring matches, so we could burn the toilet paper after use. If we didn’t it would litter the desert for eons to come. Matches aside, the eeriest aspect of relieving oneself was the absolute stillness and quiet of the desert. There were no birds or insects, no wind and no rustling of trees. The loudest sound was your heartbeat. I enjoyed this solitude, but many found it disconcerting.

The following morning we woke up at 3 AM for the long trek up Jebel Musa (Moses Mountain), which we know as Mount Sinai. This is the place where, according to the Old Testament, God gave Moses the 10 Commandments. It was still dark when we reached the summit but very soon the sky began to lighten. As this early morning white light washed over the rocks and slowly illuminated the landscape I felt that there certainly was something mysterious about the place. Perhaps it was the light, or maybe its significance, but as I thought of Moses spending 40 years here I began to understand how religion could have had its genesis in these hills.

We then started our descent towards the Monastery of Santa Katarina, which lies at the bottom of the mountain. Legend holds that Moses encountered the burning bush at this site. The burning bush is a type of local bramble. As no fire was erupting from it as I passed, I was unimpressed.

Entering the Monastery can be tricky, as the monks are fickle, but on this day they granted us admission. The monastery, which is over 1500 years old, has the second largest assemblage of old manuscripts in the world. Inside the church was a massive door covered in a rich dark patina. Even though it was said to be over 1000 years old, it was in beautiful condition. This is testament to the constant low humidity of the desert. We also were allowed to see the Chapel of St. Tryphon, which exhibits the skulls of deceased monks. The monastery also has a wonderful collection of icons, some of which also date back over a thousand years.

From the monastery, we headed east towards the Red Sea. At one point, the trail ended at a wall of earth about 7-8 feet high. For the first time I lost confidence in our guides as they seemed to be amazingly competent and never lost. Thinking that we may have to back up, I was startled when our driver put the vehicle in very low gear and proceeded to climb the wall. The command car had six enormous wheels and they effortlessly eased their way up the embankment and onto level ground. We were now in Dahab, a fishing village consisting of a collection of huts and lean-tos. It is famous for its coral reefs and the “blue hole”—a sinkhole over 300 feet deep. Against the vastness of the desert, the coolness and serenity of the water was a welcome break.

Before we left the desert I once again pondered on the mysteriousness and serenity of the Sinai. If I had wandered these hills for 40 years, thousands of years ago, would I have become religious? Would I have believed in a god…?

From Dahab, we headed north to Eilat, and then to the van that would take us back to Jerusalem.

Our first stop? The wonderfully clean toilets of the King David Hotel.