Tiene sentido
que nos de tanto miedo soltar el segundo brazo,
lanzarnos al
[vacío. ]
30.8.11
29.8.11
Ignorance by Philip Larkin
of what is true or right or real,
but forced to qualify or so I feel,
or Well, it does seem so:
someone must know-
Strange to be ignorant of the way things work:
their skill at finding what they need.
their sense of shape, and punctual spread of seed,
and willigness to change;
yes, it is strange,
Even to wear such knowledge - for our flesh
surrounds us with its own decisions-
and yet spend all our life on imprecisions,
That when we start to die
have no idea why.
24.8.11
Jazz Messenger By HARUKI MURAKAMII
July 8, 2007
I never had any intention of becoming a novelist — at least not until I turned 29. This is absolutely true.
I read a lot from the time I was a little kid, and I got so deeply into the worlds of the novels I was reading that it would be a lie if I said I never felt like writing anything. But I never believed I had the talent to write fiction. In my teens I loved writers like Dostoyevsky, Kafka and Balzac, but I never imagined I could write anything that would measure up to the works they left us. And so, at an early age, I simply gave up any hope of writing fiction. I would continue to read books as a hobby, I decided, and look elsewhere for a way to make a living.
The professional area I settled on was music. I worked hard, saved my money, borrowed a lot from friends and relatives, and shortly after leaving the university I opened a little jazz club in Tokyo. We served coffee in the daytime and drinks at night. We also served a few simple dishes. We had records playing constantly, and young musicians performing live jazz on weekends. I kept this up for seven years. Why? For one simple reason: It enabled me to listen to jazz from morning to night.
I had my first encounter with jazz in 1964 when I was 15. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers performed in Kobe in January that year, and I got a ticket for a birthday present. This was the first time I really listened to jazz, and it bowled me over. I was thunderstruck. The band was just great: Wayne Shorter on tenor sax, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Curtis Fuller on trombone and Art Blakey in the lead with his solid, imaginative drumming. I think it was one of the strongest units in jazz history. I had never heard such amazing music, and I was hooked.
A year ago in Boston I had dinner with the Panamanian jazz pianist Danilo Pérez, and when I told him this story, he pulled out his cellphone and asked me, “Would you like to talk to Wayne, Haruki?” “Of course,” I said, practically at a loss for words. He called Wayne Shorter in Florida and handed me the phone. Basically what I said to him was that I had never heard such amazing music before or since. Life is so strange, you never know what’s going to happen. Here I was, 42 years later, writing novels, living in Boston and talking to Wayne Shorter on a cellphone. I never could have imagined it.
When I turned 29, all of a sudden out of nowhere I got this feeling that I wanted to write a novel — that I could do it. I couldn’t write anything that measured up to Dostoyevsky or Balzac, of course, but I told myself it didn’t matter. I didn’t have to become a literary giant. Still, I had no idea how to go about writing a novel or what to write about. I had absolutely no experience, after all, and no ready-made style at my disposal. I didn’t know anyone who could teach me how to do it, or even friends I could talk with about literature. My only thought at that point was how wonderful it would be if I could write like playing an instrument.
I had practiced the piano as a kid, and I could read enough music to pick out a simple melody, but I didn’t have the kind of technique it takes to become a professional musician. Inside my head, though, I did often feel as though something like my own music was swirling around in a rich, strong surge. I wondered if it might be possible for me to transfer that music into writing. That was how my style got started.
Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won’t keep reading your work. I learned the importance of rhythm from music — and mainly from jazz. Next comes melody — which, in literature, means the appropriate arrangement of the words to match the rhythm. If the way the words fit the rhythm is smooth and beautiful, you can’t ask for anything more. Next is harmony — the internal mental sounds that support the words. Then comes the part I like best: free improvisation. Through some special channel, the story comes welling out freely from inside. All I have to do is get into the flow. Finally comes what may be the most important thing: that high you experience upon completing a work — upon ending your “performance” and feeling you have succeeded in reaching a place that is new and meaningful. And if all goes well, you get to share that sense of elevation with your readers (your audience). That is a marvelous culmination that can be achieved in no other way.
Practically everything I know about writing, then, I learned from music. It may sound paradoxical to say so, but if I had not been so obsessed with music, I might not have become a novelist. Even now, almost 30 years later, I continue to learn a great deal about writing from good music. My style is as deeply influenced by Charlie Parker’s repeated freewheeling riffs, say, as by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s elegantly flowing prose. And I still take the quality of continual self-renewal in Miles Davis’s music as a literary model.
One of my all-time favorite jazz pianists is Thelonious Monk. Once, when someone asked him how he managed to get a certain special sound out of the piano, Monk pointed to the keyboard and said: “It can’t be any new note. When you look at the keyboard, all the notes are there already. But if you mean a note enough, it will sound different. You got to pick the notes you really mean!”
I often recall these words when I am writing, and I think to myself, “It’s true. There aren’t any new words. Our job is to give new meanings and special overtones to absolutely ordinary words.” I find the thought reassuring. It means that vast, unknown stretches still lie before us, fertile territories just waiting for us to cultivate them.
I never had any intention of becoming a novelist — at least not until I turned 29. This is absolutely true.
I read a lot from the time I was a little kid, and I got so deeply into the worlds of the novels I was reading that it would be a lie if I said I never felt like writing anything. But I never believed I had the talent to write fiction. In my teens I loved writers like Dostoyevsky, Kafka and Balzac, but I never imagined I could write anything that would measure up to the works they left us. And so, at an early age, I simply gave up any hope of writing fiction. I would continue to read books as a hobby, I decided, and look elsewhere for a way to make a living.
The professional area I settled on was music. I worked hard, saved my money, borrowed a lot from friends and relatives, and shortly after leaving the university I opened a little jazz club in Tokyo. We served coffee in the daytime and drinks at night. We also served a few simple dishes. We had records playing constantly, and young musicians performing live jazz on weekends. I kept this up for seven years. Why? For one simple reason: It enabled me to listen to jazz from morning to night.
I had my first encounter with jazz in 1964 when I was 15. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers performed in Kobe in January that year, and I got a ticket for a birthday present. This was the first time I really listened to jazz, and it bowled me over. I was thunderstruck. The band was just great: Wayne Shorter on tenor sax, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Curtis Fuller on trombone and Art Blakey in the lead with his solid, imaginative drumming. I think it was one of the strongest units in jazz history. I had never heard such amazing music, and I was hooked.
A year ago in Boston I had dinner with the Panamanian jazz pianist Danilo Pérez, and when I told him this story, he pulled out his cellphone and asked me, “Would you like to talk to Wayne, Haruki?” “Of course,” I said, practically at a loss for words. He called Wayne Shorter in Florida and handed me the phone. Basically what I said to him was that I had never heard such amazing music before or since. Life is so strange, you never know what’s going to happen. Here I was, 42 years later, writing novels, living in Boston and talking to Wayne Shorter on a cellphone. I never could have imagined it.
When I turned 29, all of a sudden out of nowhere I got this feeling that I wanted to write a novel — that I could do it. I couldn’t write anything that measured up to Dostoyevsky or Balzac, of course, but I told myself it didn’t matter. I didn’t have to become a literary giant. Still, I had no idea how to go about writing a novel or what to write about. I had absolutely no experience, after all, and no ready-made style at my disposal. I didn’t know anyone who could teach me how to do it, or even friends I could talk with about literature. My only thought at that point was how wonderful it would be if I could write like playing an instrument.
I had practiced the piano as a kid, and I could read enough music to pick out a simple melody, but I didn’t have the kind of technique it takes to become a professional musician. Inside my head, though, I did often feel as though something like my own music was swirling around in a rich, strong surge. I wondered if it might be possible for me to transfer that music into writing. That was how my style got started.
Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won’t keep reading your work. I learned the importance of rhythm from music — and mainly from jazz. Next comes melody — which, in literature, means the appropriate arrangement of the words to match the rhythm. If the way the words fit the rhythm is smooth and beautiful, you can’t ask for anything more. Next is harmony — the internal mental sounds that support the words. Then comes the part I like best: free improvisation. Through some special channel, the story comes welling out freely from inside. All I have to do is get into the flow. Finally comes what may be the most important thing: that high you experience upon completing a work — upon ending your “performance” and feeling you have succeeded in reaching a place that is new and meaningful. And if all goes well, you get to share that sense of elevation with your readers (your audience). That is a marvelous culmination that can be achieved in no other way.
Practically everything I know about writing, then, I learned from music. It may sound paradoxical to say so, but if I had not been so obsessed with music, I might not have become a novelist. Even now, almost 30 years later, I continue to learn a great deal about writing from good music. My style is as deeply influenced by Charlie Parker’s repeated freewheeling riffs, say, as by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s elegantly flowing prose. And I still take the quality of continual self-renewal in Miles Davis’s music as a literary model.
One of my all-time favorite jazz pianists is Thelonious Monk. Once, when someone asked him how he managed to get a certain special sound out of the piano, Monk pointed to the keyboard and said: “It can’t be any new note. When you look at the keyboard, all the notes are there already. But if you mean a note enough, it will sound different. You got to pick the notes you really mean!”
I often recall these words when I am writing, and I think to myself, “It’s true. There aren’t any new words. Our job is to give new meanings and special overtones to absolutely ordinary words.” I find the thought reassuring. It means that vast, unknown stretches still lie before us, fertile territories just waiting for us to cultivate them.
Rostro de la tragedia
La guerra será larga pero hemos comenzado a ganar algunas batallas. Como puede apreciarse en esta foto* el enemigo está sitiado. Sus fronteras y su valor se debilitan.
23.8.11
Cómeme si tienes huevas
Esta misma noche las he sorprendido abandonándome, caminando por el colchón ebrias de trementina y largos besos. Cerdas. Gordas. Ahítas.Tambaleantes. Borrachas de sangre. Vampiras. Incapaces de reaccionar han caído en la emboscada tendida por mi mano. Eso sí, estaban tranquilas, serenas como nunca. No saltaban, para qué. Qué podían saber ellas de la serenidad con marca registrada que me corre por las venas.
Cómeme si tienes huevas.
22.8.11
Pulgas
Me están comiendo viva. Empieza a parecer que tengo sarna. Me rasco, claro, pero es perverso. Uno empieza y entiende como los animales, carentes de sentido del pudor, son capaces de echarse una pierna a la nuca para lamerse los huevos o rascarse una oreja. No es que servidora haya llegado a ese extremo, pero ayer tuve que echarme Talquistina en los brazos para calmar el dolor. Esto empieza a parecerse a la varicela.
Una parte de la casa ya ha sido saneada, aunque confieso que casi me cuesta un pulmón. Como aquella vez que sólo se me ocurrió rocíar el matacucarachas hacia el techo para caer sobre mí segundos después. Hay que ser idiota. Y menos mal que estaba sola, que había que verme haciendo ruidos con la garganta mientras intentaba aliviar mi paladar con agua. IMbécil. Y ahora pulgas.
HOy espero poder hacerme fuerte en mi cuarto. Qué verano. Esto solo lo mejora una buena tormenta. Ay.
21.8.11
Travesuras estivales
Estamos en ello. Todos los superhéroes orbitan en torno a esta ciudad. Regresan las naves a los hangares como cada final de vacaciones. Una vez más me he quedado en tierra; como si no fuera capaz de subir las rampas de despegue a tiempo; como si, cada vez, lastrasen con plomos el vuelo de mis faldas. Me falta velocidad en la salida. Tocata y fuga es la consigna.
Debería contratar a un tatuador de mantras.
Insisto, lo creo, lo firmo: los superhéroes somos gente muy profesional. Una pequeña brigada de 3-4 miembros estamos haciendo pequeñas razzias en algo parecido al mundo del ocio y la risa. Travesseras travesuras. Pequeñas venganzas para zurzir una ciudad que se agrieta en un largo y cálido verano que hace solo unos días echó a andar. Casi por casualidad recuerdo que tengo caderas, espalda, nuca. Bailo y me dejo llevar.
Me decido a acercarme a la orilla. Dejaré que me arrastre esta corriente que ahora noto en torno a los talones y me promete una historia de la que no seré capaz de controlar el argumento. Hay que probar cosas nuevas. Y me pregunto si serás capaz de hacerme volar.
16.8.11
Un olvido imperdonable
copy: Gilliam Lambert
Yo soy la culpable y se me olvida. Todos lo saben, pero a mí se me olvida. Yo soy la culpable.
10.8.11
MI vida es otra
Para que engañarnos. Mi vida es otra. No es como la de mis amigos. En mi vida la música se incorpora poco a poco, crece lentamente, aprovecha pequeños espacios de tiempo para hacer los deberes. Mi vida se ha convertido en una asistencia constante. Hago de la autosuficiencia bandera, practico el juanpalomismo y yo me lo guiso y me lo como todo. Salgo poco, vivo en mi mundo. Comparto mi vida con mi madre. Lleva semanas alternando dolores varios que afectan a su movilidad. No tiene la culpa. Pero mi vida es otra. Sin embargo, comienzo a pensar que el hecho de que mi vida sea otra no significa necesariamente que sea una mala vida.
Ahora me gusta levantarme por las mañanas y durante las dos o tres horas antes de que ella se despierte aprovecho para leer o jugar o pintar o pensar. Después, cuando se levanta, empieza otra vida, tambien divertida, pero diferente. No siento rencor. Creo que uno tiene que vivir la vida que le toca vivir y aceptar lo que le toca, intentar incorporar lo que nos disgusta sin que nos haga infelices. Tampoco me veo en IBiza, desfasando. Quizá me hubiese apetecido unos días en una casita rural con piscina o en una playa tranquila, con buena compañía, horas de sueño y relax. Sin obligaciones ni responsabilidades. En vez de eso, he restaurado una mesita que encontré en la calle y tengo a Marcello enroscado en la nuca. Mientras tanto, mi madre cose una colcha para su próximo sobrino nieto mientras guarda reposo. Y esto tampoco está nada mal. :)
6.8.11
Monster
Tengo la boca llena de puntos y la extraña sensación de que me han cambiado el cielo del paladar por la concha peluda de un mejillón. Glamour a raudales. Tras la endodoncia de ayer y la nueva hinchazón de hoy me siento más sabia. Ahora sé que aspecto tendría, por ejemplo, si fuera un hombre. Ay Charlize, Charlize, tantafelicidadnoesposible.com.
5.8.11
Walk Like An Egyptian
Esta tarde me momifican. Lo sé, parecen las últimas palabras de un faraón pero no, se trata una vez más de mis muelas. La resistencia de mis huesos da prueba de la falta de homologación del cuerpo humano. En fin, qué se puede esperar de algo que salió de la costilla tumefacta (doy fe) del primer hombre en la tierra. Pues sí, esta tarde me momifican una muela para que no me duela. Suena a poema de Gloria Fuertes y es lo que hay. Ahora que tengo la cara como un pez globo y que parezco medio subnormal qué mejor para la autoestima que una pequeña momificación de la parte inferior. Me pregunto si me darán el nervio que me quiten en una vasija con la cabeza de un búho. Quien sabe si tendré que tumbarme en la camilla con dos bastones cruzados sobre el pecho como manda la tradición. Por si acaso, creo que me llevaré un par de monedas para los ojos por si tengo que sobornar al barquero. Porque a estas alturas de la historia eso de que las niñas bonitas no pagan dinero, sinceramente, con la imagen de Osiris en el pecho: ya no cuela.
4.8.11
Lomanotomía
cuánto tiempo? parece increíble todo lo que puede pasar en un mes y medio. Ahora estoy en Gijón, sola en casa de mis tíos, con el canal Cosmopolitan de fondo y el Mac de mi prima contectado. Furtiva. Estoy haciendo un poco lo que me brota. Me han operado la boca otra vez y tengo los pómulos hinchados, al más puro estilo Carmen Lomana. La clandestinidad hace esto complicado. Este verano nada es lo que había previsto que fuera así que sólo puede acabar bien. Ayer merendé un Danonino, comí el puré que sobró de la comida de mi sobrina de 20 meses. Cielos! Me quedo sin batería. Demoños. Intento disfrutar de los días aquí y estoy deseando volver para ver a mis amigos. Os echo de menos muchísimo de menos a todos.
besinos.
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