Meir1c - Where Melodies Became My Home: An Autobiography

Where Melodies Became My Home: An Autobiography
(לחצו כאן לעברית)

"I, Meir Cohen (Meir1c), was born in 1969 to Jewish Iraqi parents who had built their lives in Israel long before I arrived.
I grew up a Sabra, surrounded by sounds that shaped me more than words ever could.
At weddings and celebrations, my parents would place me near the musicians, and I remember feeling as
if the instruments were speaking directly to me.
Music didn’t just fill the room — it filled me.

When I was eighteen, my world broke apart. My mother died suddenly at forty-three, and the silence she left behind was unbearable. My father turned toward religion, searching for comfort in prayer and ritual until he eventually became a rabbi.
I turned toward music. It was the only place where I could breathe, the only place where grief didn’t swallow me whole. I began collecting records obsessively — Israeli vinyl, CDs, music books — anything that kept me connected to the sounds that had shaped me.
That archive became my anchor, my identity, my way of surviving.

My father never understood my devotion to music. He wanted me to follow him into a religious life, and the distance between us grew until it became a quiet, painful emptiness.
Yet when my father died suddenly in 2025, at eighty-seven,
grief hit me with a force I didn’t expect.

Food has always been another language of mine — simple, honest, comforting.
Because of my Iraqi roots, I had favism as a child and couldn’t eat fava beans. Now they’re one of my favorite foods. I soak them for hours, cook them plain, and eat them while watching movies, getting up again and again to refill my bowl. There’s something soothing about their simplicity, something that feels like reclaiming a part of myself I once had to avoid.

My greatest loves are meat and potatoes — French fries, roasted potatoes, cold potato salad with hot pita, shishlik, kebab, arayes, steak. These foods follow me through the day like old friends.
Sometimes I return to childhood memories with rice, lentils, and garlic,
or with the board games and children’s card games. Games - I still play (not only) when nostalgia calls.

Every Friday, I buy the only green salad I truly love: Fattoush. Often maqluba too. Sometimes malawach or falafel.
I never use salt or sugar, and my popcorn is always pure.
I rarely eat sweets, except for coconut ice cream — my small, regular indulgence.

Control has always been a quiet fear in my life.
I’ve never touched alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs, and I avoid anything with two wheels. Yet I’ve spent more than ten years driving a taxi through the
chaotic streets of Petah Tikva, where sirens echo day and night.
I don’t drive for pleasure — I drive to survive. To pay rent. To buy records. To afford good meat.

Sometimes my work and my passion meet. Famous singers have sat in my taxi over the years.
Once, Ilanit was a passenger. I didn’t recognize her until she began rehearsing her own songs.
Even though I’m shy, I couldn’t stay silent.
I spoke to her about her music — the same music that had carried me through so many chapters of my life.

Music has always been the thread that holds me together. It still is."

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תקליטים, ויניל, אוסף תקליטים, דיסקים וספרי תווים - אספן התקליטים, מאיר כהן מיירסיס