Earthlings

This is a highly disturbing but terribly true video...

From the heights

This post was supposed to have been published while I was still in Madrid. However, the usual lack of time has made me finish it while already being in Geneva.

A habit I've now picked up in my new flat in the centre of Madrid is to sit in the terrace at night overlooking the Plaza Mayor and watch passersby. Doing this, I have noticed something that I've specially noted in people from Madrid, that is: they don't look up. Maybe it's just the inhabitants of the huge capital or, more likely, in my opinion, it's related to big cities.

I remember coming back from Berlin and looking at the buildings and the sky of the Spanish capital with awe. I realised then how the anonymity of the city had made me slowly and silently turn my head from the heights and focus on the far more mundane floor, minding my own business, reaching my destination as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Now I have learned to look up, to take life less stressfully and contemplate the quiet beauty that awaits us in the heights. To stop and think, stepping back for a few minutes from the everyday routine that tends to engulf us and belittle our world, makes us grow personally. We are so focused on the tasks the society places before us, that many times we forget to take our time and dedicate it to the contemplation of ourselves and the life we're living. I guess that, since most of us are unhappy with who and what we are, we fill our days with many nonsensical activities to avoid these thoughts. However, it is only through introspection that we can really say that the life we live is our own.

Everyone should lift that heavy weight from their shoulders that makes them look down and let themselves, if only for a short while every day, admire the unbounded heights.

No te salves

y de nuevo la vagancia o el calor, como yo quiero pensar, hace que copypastee un poema en vez de escribir una entrada propia. Ya puestos a culpar de cosas a la vagancia, pues hasta escribo en castellano, que para algo es mi lengua materna, a veces...

Pues eso, no te salves.

No te quedes inmóvil
al borde del camino
no congeles el júbilo
no quieras con desgana
no te salves ahora
ni nunca
no te salves
no te llenes de calma
no reserves del mundo
sólo un rincón tranquilo
no dejes caer los párpados
pesados como juicios
no te quedes sin labios
no te duermas sin sueño
no te pienses sin sangre
no te juzgues sin tiempo

pero si
pese a todo
no puedes evitarlo
y congelas el júbilo
y quieres con desgana
y te salvas ahora
y te llenas de calma
y reservas del mundo
sólo un rincón tranquilo
y dejas caer los párpados
pesados como juicios
y te secas sin labios
y te duermes sin sueño
y te piensas sin sangre
y te juzgas sin tiempo
y te quedas inmóvil
al borde del camino

y te salvas
                   entonces
                                    no te quedes conmigo.

- Mario Benedetti (1920-2009)

The sound of spring

If there's something that's really unique in Spain, it's the sounds that you can hear in the streets. You know when spring has come when you hear the sound of children playing in the squares, even if they're not the best of playgrounds, one can say with no doubt that children here spend most of their time outdoors. Maybe it's something cultural that dates from the time when the big cities were mere villages where, due to the heat of the summer months, people were nearly "forced" to spend their afternoons and evenings outside.

I can't say I can identify myself with many Spanish traditions, but this urge to go outdoors during the sunny months is something that not only do I share, but also adore. Many of my childhood memories take place in a park right next to my flat. There I learned how to ride a bike, was kissed for the first time, spent the summers with water balloon fights, had my favourite tree and met my first friends.

Another sound that plagues Spanish streets when the weather is nice is that from the "terrazas". The idea of putting chairs outside and watching the people in their slow strolls without any specific destination is something that I've always loved. The rhythm of the city seems to slow down in summer. People take their time and the meaning of the word haste seems to be diluted in the heat. 

Auguries of Innocence

Listening to The Doors, I discovered that one of their songs (End of the Night) is based on this poem by Blake. Here it is.

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.

A dove-house fill'd with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell thro' all its regions.
A dog starv'd at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.

A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.

A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipt and arm'd for fight
Does the rising sun affright.

Every wolf's and lion's howl
Raises from hell a human soul.

The wild deer, wand'ring here and there,
Keeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misus'd breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.

The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won't believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright.

He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be belov'd by men.
He who the ox to wrath has mov'd
Shall never be by woman lov'd.

The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.
He who torments the chafer's sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.

The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother's grief.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the last judgement draweth nigh.

He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar's dog and widow's cat,
Feed them and thou wilt grow fat.

The gnat that sings his summer's song
Poison gets from slander's tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of envy's foot.

The poison of the honey bee
Is the artist's jealousy.

The prince's robes and beggar's rags
Are toadstools on the miser's bags.
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.

It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

The babe is more than swaddling bands;
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;

This is caught by females bright,
And return'd to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar,
Are waves that beat on heaven's shore.

The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes revenge in realms of death.
The beggar's rags, fluttering in air,
Does to rags the heavens tear.

The soldier, arm'd with sword and gun,
Palsied strikes the summer's sun.
The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's shore.

One mite wrung from the lab'rer's hands
Shall buy and sell the miser's lands;
Or, if protected from on high,
Does that whole nation sell and buy.

He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mock'd in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.

He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.

The questioner, who sits so sly,
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.

The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour's iron brace.

When gold and gems adorn the plow,
To peaceful arts shall envy bow.
A riddle, or the cricket's cry,
Is to doubt a fit reply.

The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.

If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.

The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding-sheet.

The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

We are led to believe a lie
When we see not thro' the eye,
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.

God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

- William Blake (1757-1827)

Blue-eyed death

This is a mathematical riddle that was posed to me 3 years ago. I thought it was quite ingenious so I'm going to post it here to get my few readers to think and, perhaps, leave a comment with a reasoned answer. Here it goes:

There's an island with an infinite number of people on it. These are, however, very special people; they are completely unable to communicate with each other in any sense (be it signs, sounds, writing...). The only person that can communicate with the inhabitants of the island is their president and they obey all his orders. Another important fact is that there are no mirrors on the island (and it's inhabitants cannot abandon it).

One day, the president of the island tells all its people that it's his command that all the blue-eyed ones must die and that the deaths must be performed at night. After making his will known, he disappears from the island never to return.

After 10 days, all the blue-eyed people from the island are dead. The question is, how many blue-eyed people were there to start with?

If any further explanation is needed, just ask!

I carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

- E.E. Cummings (1894 - 1962)

Thank you H for reminding me of this poem, though I will always associate it with F.

For the last time

Yesterday, with the "perfect storm" raging outside, we got to sing Beethoven's ninth symphony in D minor for, what is probably to be, the last time. Whenever I get to sing this piece I always remember the endless rehearsals, how high-pitched it is for us all and what sore throats we had after the intensive rehearsal weekend in Miraflores. However, when the orchestra gets to play the final part, with the frenzy of the beating of the kettledrums, a feeling of fulfillment invades us all and makes us want to jump out of our places. It is then that we realise that it's been worth all the struggle and we really appreciate the beauty of the ninth. We can raise our heads high and say to ourselves: "We were part of the magic, each one of us has contributed our grain of sand to make the music unravel and get to the ears and hearts of all present".

Some music gets to survive all ages. No matter how much times and musical tastes change, Beethoven's last symphony will always be loved. Some will like it because it's socially imposed, while others will appreciate the beauty hidden behind each quaver. Some will sing along with the worldwide famous rhythm of "Freude schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium!", while others will actually understand the lyrics of Friedrich von Schiller's poem "An die Freude", strange as they are (take for example the sentence: "Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben und der Cherub steht vor Gott" which in English would be something like: "Pleasure/Lust was given to the worm and to the cherub the contemplation of God").

Even though people don't applaud overjoyed between movements anymore (as was the case of the premiere) and Beethoven himself will never conduct this piece again, his essence will live through the ages combined with Schiller's words of joy every time and place his music is played.

On a lazy Sunday afternoon

Today, I sit on my bed finishing Just Kids by Patti Smith. I rarely read books written by people that aren't professional writers, since they tend to be crap, at least in my opinion. However, my love for Patti Smith's music made me give this one a try and I was nicely surprised to discover a marvelously written novel full of poetry.

Much of the first half of Just Kids is dominated by how Patti Smith fell in love with Rimbaud and the countless mentions of the other important men in Smith's life, most of whom shared the principal attributes of being French, dead and terribly artistic. Baudelaire, Cocteau and Genet all merit frequent references and it is made clear that Smith had her mind on higher things than the factory she worked in. After giving up a child for adoption, she buys a one-way ticket to New York and disappears into an esoteric mist of artistic pretension. The friends she is hoping to stay with never show up so she is forced to take to the streets. When a tramp asks her, "What's your situation?" she replies, "On Earth or in the Universe?"

Fortunately both Smith and the book are saved from imploding with self-satisfaction by a chance encounter with a green-eyed boy called ­Robert ­Mapplethorpe. In Mapplethorpe, Smith finds her spiritual twin, a man as obsessed with artistic creation as she is. She describes the setting as the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn leads two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation. Patti Smith evolves as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe directs his highly provocative style towards photography. Bound in innocence and enthusiasm, they traverse the city from Coney Island to Forty-second Street, and eventually to the celebrated round table of Max's Kansas City, where the Andy Warhol contingent held court. In 1969, the pair sets up camp at the Chelsea Hotel and soon enter a community of the famous and infamous—the influential artists of the day and the colourful fringe. It is a time of heightened awareness, when the worlds of poetry, rock and roll, art, and sexual politics are colliding and exploding. In this milieu, two kids make a pact to take care of each other. Scrappy, romantic, committed to create, and fueled by their mutual dreams and drives, they prod and provide for one another during the hungry years.

For the next 12 years, against the vivid backdrop of 1970s New York, Mapplethorpe and Smith live together, support each other and share jointly in their burgeoning success as artists – Mapplethorpe as a photographer, Smith as a poet turned rock and roll singer who would become the mother of punk. They sleep together too, and although Mapplethorpe later admits he was gay, his relationship with Smith remains intimately aside from the outside world. As the title suggests, their lasting friendship is defined more than anything by its innocence and purity.

The relationship with Mapplethorpe infuses her writing with a necessary human warmth. The knowing references become less frequent and she concentrates instead on crafting a moving and delicately handled dual memoir, a love letter to the man who became her real-life Rimbaud. Living in a succession of squalid New York apartments, spending what little money they had on art supplies and surviving on day-old doughnuts and lettuce soup, both Mapplethorpe and Smith took their first tentative steps towards becoming the artists they so desired to be. Mapplethorpe, always the more focused and ambitious of the two, started to make collages by ripping photographs from male pornographic magazines. To save money, Smith suggested he take his own pictures. Some of the early portraits are reproduced here, Smith's gaunt elegance and dense-eyed gaze staring out of the pages in black and white. It was Mapplethorpe who took the iconic shot of Smith – at once both cocky and fragile – for the cover of her first album, Horses.

Although both Smith and Mapplethorpe eventually went their separate ways, their spiritual closeness remained. When she discovers that Mapplethorpe is dying of Aids in 1989, Smith writes with brutal poignancy that "every fear I had once harboured seemed to materialise with the suddenness of a bright sail bursting into flames". Shortly before his death, when Mapplethorpe ruefully comments that they never had a family, Smith responds: "Our work was our children."

And it is true that, in many ways, Just Kids is a compassionate portrait of an unconventional marriage; an intimacy forged through a shared artistic vision. Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists' ascent, a prelude to fame.

Americans are not stupid

Probably an exaggeration because I'm sure the interviewed people were specifically picked to make this video funny, but nonetheless, it's still amazing that people like these exist in the world.