There is nothing like the media. Hypocritical, self-righteous, arrogant. Lifting and kicking up only to wait and watch the craftsman drop down. Fly and then miss. Returning and then boring.
If it is a different, strange artist, he will be judged by his clothing, his unusual headgear. When he wins Eurovision, he probably succeeded for a moment. He just composed. If the media flatters, it’s always for a moment. If the artist is lonely and poor at the end of his life, he becomes the material for a long article in the weekend news. The media pity, sympathize, shed tears with him. Dying brings ratings. A stroke is a reason for slow in-depth interviews, in the living room of his home, with soft piano music in the transitions. It delivers the goods.
It is easiest to praise the one who dives. Along with his glorification, his privacy is invaded. The artist has no choice but to cooperate. Are you sick, injured? Get a two page article in the newspaper. More than his rise, we enjoy noting his fall, his dangers and his loneliness.
The pure pleasure is not in the report of reaching the peak, but in the reminder of how great it once was. The media has the easiest role: to find a topical current point and ride it, until the next period of time when it will be relevant. It doesn’t have to be coherent or consistent, on the contrary. She is ad hoc. Love, and immediately. Then she can hate. Grinds his poems until fine, then turns her back and ignores.
Therefore it is best for him to die as a nationalist. So he becomes the greatest of all, one of his generation. From Salav he became Zalav. There was and will never be like him. After his passing, Meir Ariel became a consensual poet. Zohar Argov became the national singer only after his death.
Tzvika Pick completed the musical revolution and received its recognition waited only this week, with his death. Now, more than ever, the media shows enormous appreciation for him. This time without reservations. He is mighty, he is mighty, he is David Bowie.
Along with exalting his name, in a slightly macabre way, the media enjoys and amuses himself with posthumous puns: now he has risen higher, with all the songs and melodies; They played the violins for him sadly; Peake died, and it was at the end of the summer; The soap cried a lot; Father died and Elul died and Hommam died, and Zvika Pick was gathered with them and only a dim ember remained.
Peak’s glory and peak were in the 1970s, well into the 1980s. Since then he has been mocked and claimed that he is trying to make a comeback. Each time he came back in a new form, being someone else. Once upon a time a maestro focused on himself in a reality show that was ahead of its time. Once as an extravagant judge in “Kohav Nold”. Once when he wrote “Diva” for Dana International, and the last time when he tried to perform again after the stroke, for a comeback that never happened.
Fick had a knack for inventing a catchphrase that would go with him for almost his entire career: “madness”. He would incorporate it into his performances, holding the microphone and looking up, in a mesmerizing, unique, interesting, sometimes esoteric, space or alien show.
When the audience adored and loved, the media and the elite had a hard time dealing with him. While everyone always loved to love Eric Einstein of the good old Land of Israel; And Shlomo Artzi, the ultimate Israeli troubadour, knew how to praise when the Jews of the country went to his concerts in Caesarea – it was customary to look down on Tzvika Peak.
He is not seen as equal among equals. As if he is not a composer at the level of Mati Caspi and will never receive a state hug like Yoram Gaon. He was not considered a first-class singer. He himself complained about discriminatory treatment. While all the artists with a corpus similar to his were glorified, praised and raised to the level of the Israel Prize or the torch bearer, Lapik was made a doll in the wax museum.
The Lifetime Achievement Award was given to him only in 2018, half a year after the stroke. He was the king of Israeli pop and disco, full of glam when they didn’t even know how to pronounce that word here. In black leather pants and a sequined vest, music critics looked on and wondered about the freak, the hippie who conquers the song charts with a non-stop hit machine.
The militant Israel of the 1970s and 1980s had a hard time digesting a man who wore make-up and looked like a foreign camp party. The mainstream media saw him as an outsider, a weirdo. He was a gentle and exciting pop star, who combines classical music with light songs. Just like Freddie Mercury, singing opera in the middle of “Bohemian Rhapsody”.
He was a great creator, a grandiose craftsman, a huge virtuoso who rose, flourished and worked most of the time when the country was not ready for him, and could not contain him. And when she wants to contain, he is no longer active.