Why I love the UK

Bad breath has been good to me. I write these words in the lobby of the Thistle Marble Arch, near Oxford Street right next to Marble Arch and Hyde Park. I'm on my way home in a few minutes, after five days dedicated to the two-phase mouthwash which I invented and help develop, first in Israel, then in the UK. As I write, the invention (Dentyl pH) has become a hit here. One out of every five (!) mouthwash bottles sold in the UK is Dentyl pH.

I walk into drug stores all along Oxford Street, and stand beside my mouthwash bottles, admiring them as if they were some kind of progeny. No matter that I don't own the patent (the university does). No matter that the millions of people using it have no idea who invented it. The important thing is that they are improving their oral hygiene, self esteem, and social lives, rinsing and gargling with a product that I nutured for so many years, in the face of criticism and nay sayers.

The mouthwash story is one of pure luck, happenstance and chance. Louis Pasteur, one of my scientific heroes of all time, said that "Chance favors the prepared mind". If that's the case, then the only credit I can take is cherishing the unexpected. Most of the turning points in the development of this product were born out of accidents and flukey experimental results. Only very few inventions succeed in becoming products, and among those few products, most fail commercially. So the success of the mouthwash is rare indeed. And as someone with quite a few patents, and less-than-successful products, I know just how lucky I am.

I'm attaching a picture I took this afternoon of the 'baby' at a Boots store on Oxford Street.

The UK success has made me even more of an Anglophile. I love London, the Queen, the royal family (I've heard that the Queen may have a breath problem, I'd love to help her out, why doesn't she just ask me?). After all, I grew up as a British commonwealth subject in Ottawa, I collected coins displaying the Queen and her predecessors. I sang the British anthem at movies and football games. Actually as a child, I got the words wrong, thinking that the second part went:

"Send her Victoria, Happy and Gloria…"

I thought that these were the Queen's children, missing during the Second World War.

I've had a good trip, meeting reporters, explaining how the mouthwash works (at least how I think it works). This included a fancy Japanese lunch overlooking the Thames, and tea at Claridge's (including, inter alia, lavender flavored chocolate sweets, in honour of the Chelsea flower show). And an overnight train trip to Harrogate, an enchanting spa resort in Northern England.

Most important of course, as always, is meeting up with the friends I've made here over the past decade. A lovely island.

Mel the Genie

Mel the Genie
Originally uploaded by Mel Rosenberg.

Rotem-The-Pink-Pirate drew my picture as a genie... pretty cool, right?

What Jazz means to me

Life is funny. Back in 1975 I had the chance to sit backstage at a Frank Sinatra concert in Jerusalem, and blew the opportunity. I guess I wasn't enough of a Sinatra fan at the time. What an idiot I was then! When I entered Hillcrest High School in 1964, I could have learned saxophone and played in the school big band. Instead I signed up for woodwork (a disaster for me and the poor remains of the trees I abused), and waited thirty years to start learning to play that divine instrument. By the way, the saxophone was invented in about 1840 by Adolphe Sax, who spent his life trying to convince people to play it, and fighting off imitators. The problem was, Adolphe invented the sax about 80 years before it found its ultimate cosmic role as the soothing melodic voice of jazz. Poor Adolphe Sax. He didn't live to see his great triumph. But if you go to Belgium, try to see his museum.

Tonight is remembrance day in Israel (all holidays and events start and end here in the evening, in accordance with Jewish custom). One of the great friends I lost here over the years is Gaby Ben Artsi (Friedlander), who was killed in a military exercise thirty years ago, this very month. He was one of the most brilliant people I ever met, cut down at 21. He was an airplane pilot (navigator), loved bridge, basketball, and mankind. About six weeks before he died, I helped him buy a Yamaha saxophone. He was making progress on it when he died. After his funeral, his parents asked whether I wanted to play his sax. I couldn't bear to. It took me almost twenty years to hold a sax in my hands. But as soon as I did, music started to come out. And it hasn't stopped since.

I started playing classical piano in grade three, but didn't find out about jazz till I was about twenty. Classical music is great, but it involves a sort of bondage to the composer, however brilliant, who wrote the piece. You are limited as to how much leeway you can take with a classical composition. But jazz is all about leeway. You take a 'standard', or 'blues', or original composition, or whatever, and go with it where it takes you. In jazz there are also some forms and rules, but if you break them in an appealing way, then you may be on your way to stardom. I love the way that playing and singing a jazz standard frees you to put a lot of yourself into it.

Jazz, like many music and art forms is a language, and wherever you travel around the world, you find others who speak it. You might not be able to exchange a sentence, but you can play a whole tune together. One of the great things is walking into a place with a horn, and 'sitting in' on a tune or two. I've done this in London, Vancouver, Washington, Tokyo, Brussels, etc. and it's a great feeling (actually it feels even better when you play well).

Jazz is also about teamwork and sharing. Good jazz occurs when the musicians are attentive to each other's playing, and inspired by it. I've met some great and wonderful jazz singers who have shared their knowledge freely (Sheila Jordan who's in this picture with me, and Anita Wardell), and have jammed with some really super sax players with true camaraderie for greatly inferior players (such as myself), Ian Ritchie, for example, who tours with Roger Waters.

More on music on a future posting.