Hotel Joma

Right now I am sitting in the reception of Hotel Joma in Jerez, with my good friend Junquerita on my right, trying to figure out the technicalities of blogspots.

Tomorrow I am traveling to Barcelona and hopefully, please cross fingers, pray, light candles, incense, meditate, rosary, etcetera, but mostly pray that I can finally see Antonio Agujetas Chico and his family in Girona.

I´m sitting in my very warm room in Jerez, debating whether to write or not.

I´m sitting in my very warm room in Jerez, debating whether to write or not.  I have been sitting in front of a blank computer screen for well… three days.  I can´t seem to beat Lorca. 

El sur es mi ensueño
no son tus ojos niño.
Pero con que me sigues mirando
cambio mi sueño por el tuyo.

Luz de tu mirada, chiquillo
son como los farolas del Arenal
que me siguen despertando
anteayer, hoy y mañana

Si tu compañera es tan buena
dime, primito, porque te regañe.
Tus palabras son aguita fesca
pa el calor que no se me quite.

I am stumped with the question of gesture.  It seems to me, that the question of gesture (as defined by Agamben) and as understood by both Walter Benjamin and Ortega y Gasset.  This is perhaps a leap that I cannot make.  Gesture is defined by Agamben as humans in the medium of communication.  It is not necessarily communication itself.  My dilemma is that the process of communication is defined by gestures—each act of communication itself becomes a gesture.  By looking at the structure of the communication, the past the meaning of the words into the organization—a jump Foucault would love—each speech, each essay becomes in itself a positioning, a human in the act of communication. 

At the turn of the 20^th century, many of the artist vanguard communities offered their own take on the events of “modernity”.  As many argue, art itself is political.  However, these artists took the relationship between art, literature and politics to the next level.  The act of producing art was a manifiesto.  The artist at the turn of the 20th century saw themselves as Foucault´s “universal intellectual”; “derive[ing] from the jurist or notable and find[ing] his fullest manifestation in the writer, the bearer of values and significations in which all can recognize themselves” (Knowledge and power, 128). 

A prime example of this are the manifiestos produced by various groups of artists at the turn of the 20^th century.  These manifiestos go beyond the scope of the production of art in itself, and are direct interventions in the political environment of the time.  Read the Futurist Manifiesto, written in 1909 and the political aspect of in this case poetry cannot be more clear.  (Point 3, “Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.”) A manifiesto is necessarily political, but in the futurist vanguard the poets revolt openly against Italy’s  cultural “gangrene of professors, archaeologists, tourist guides and antiquaries.”

In the Surrealist Manifiesto, written first by André Bretón in 1924, the poet stands against the cultural “realism” of the published word as much as the culture which produced it.  In his introduction, Bretón founds his philosophical process in children’s literature—the sense of the marvelous.  “Poetic Surrealism, which is the subject of this study, has focused its efforts up to this point on reestablishing dialogue in its absolute truth, by freeing both interlocutors from any obligations and politeness. Each of them simply pursues his soliloquy without trying to derive any special dialectical pleasure from it and without trying to impose anything whatsoever upon his neighbor.”

The question of manifiestos and Lorca is one that perhaps isn´t as obvious.  The uniting concept that ties these manifiests together is the concept of gesture.  Each manifiesto necessarily offers a similar gesture—each manifiesto places itself at a critical position with relation to society.  

By placing the artist/intelectual/writer at the crux of cultural preservation.  In all cases, the manifiesto attempts (at least) to reinstate a critical aspect of culture that has been lost.  With the Futurist Manifiesto, the question of newness, freshness, and growth.  With Surrealism, wonder and amazement.  Lorca does the same.  The Concurso of 1922 is his manifiesto against the loss of the "viejísimo elementos nativos."  

"A ellos debemos, pues, la creación de estos cantos, alma de nuestra alma; a ellos debemos la construcción de estos cauces líricos por donde se escapan todos los dolores y los gestos rituarios de la raza."

What is more, García Lorca places the conservation of these songs, of this soul of Spain's soul, within the realm of active political engagement.  As he ends his conference in 1922, García Lorca concludes with a reiteration and direct appeal for the value of cante jondo en contemporary Spanish society. 

Señoras y Señores,

A todos los que a través de la vida se han emocionado con la copla lejana que viene por el camino, a todos los que la paloma blanca del amor haya picado en su corazón maduro, a todos los amantes de la tradición engarzada con el provenir, al que estudia en el libro como al que ara la tierra, les suplico respetuosamente que no dejen morir las apreciables joyas vivas de la raza, el inmenso tesoro milenario que cubre la superficie espiritual de Andalucía y que mediten bajo la noche de Granada la trascendencia patriótica del proyecto que unos artistas españoles presentamos.

 The aforementioned soul is now the living jewels of the race; the immense and ancient treasure that covers the spiritual surface of Andalucia, so as to meditate on the patriotic transcendence of the project that some Spanish artists present. By dressing the epic and spiritual history of the Spanish race with a patriotic jacket, García Lorca is effectively mimicking the goal of the manifiesto.  Mimicking in gesture, what he does not mimic in format.

The view from my bed in Jerez de la Frontera.

Duende

Flamenco lives on the knife’s edge.  The discipline or the study of flamenco doesn´t have a clear resting place within the faux-marble halls of Academia. Neither completely literature, nor dance, it also borders cultural studies, history, anthropology, sociology, perhaps even tours Medicine or the natural sciences.  In a word, flamenco is transient. 

Literary Philosophy, too, is passing through a series of foster homes.  Not quite at home with literature after Derrida read Lacan and declared the word itself to be unstable.  Recently, though not too recently I can say I have just discovered a new philosopher, the quest for stability found the figure of the gesture.  Gesture, physical gesture, gesticulación, gesto.  The use of the body to express an emotion or meaning.  Giorgio Agamben offers a fascinating study of the gesture in the book Means Without End; A study in which the theory of gesture itself is placed as central to the study of meaning.  What a tickling thought, the semiotics of gestures. 

Giorgio Agamben proposes that gesture is “mediality” of being-in-action: the embodiment of being a means of communication. In gesture, we enter into ethics, because the gesture is being in the moment of being in the moment of speech. “The gesture is, in this sense, communication of a communicability. It has precisely nothing to say because what it shows is the being-in-language of human beings as pure mediality” (Agamben 58,9). 

Is the idea of the gerund, or the "ing" in "communicating", "walking". The gesture is meant to collect the meaning, before the spoken or written word. This is why the presentation of Federico García Lorca studiously presents duende. The duende is the time of delivery, to change the "what?" the "aha!!" of the "how?" to "olé!!". You could say, perhaps, that the idea of duende itself is alien to the actual presence of the duende.

The study of duende is like that of British biologist arriving in Tibet, dangling from his lips the question, "Have you seen a yedi?" Yet, while many people in Tibet claim to have seen a Yedi, whether they can be proven to exist is an entirely different question.  For the spectacled British biologist just as for the modern Myth-Buster, the Yedi functions within the Tibetian society by means of spiritual necessity—it allows the supernatural to communicate with the natural world.  They must exist, there is a need for them to exist.  Yet physical existence aside, a Yedi simply is. 

To ask a flamenco performer about duende will provide a variety of answers. In one of my interviews, I spoke with a performer in Barcelona, an excellent dancer and well-known internationally, who said to me that he learned about flamenco from Cuba, Cuban Santería to be exact. My knit brows questioned him as he described the embodiment of spirit in flesh in the ceremonies of Santería and Palo Monte, his breath quickened as he moved on to flamenco.  For this artist, flamenco itself is as spiritual as, well, a religion.

In 1931, Federico García Lorca describes the concept of duence in his conference Teoría y Juego del Duende.  Quoting Paganini, García Lorca describes duende as a " 'Poder misterioso que todos sienten y que ningún filósofo explica'. Así, pues, el duende es un poder y no un obrar, es un luchar y no un pensar."

(Mysterious power that all feel and no philosopher explains. So, as it is, duende is power and not working, it is fighting and not a thinking.)

If it is, in itself, unable to be described, why does Lorca continue? If it cannot be described, what can a poet give that a philosopher cannot? 

Return to Agamben, slightly out of context, and apply him to García Lorca's study is revealing.  Perhaps we have been mis-interpreting duende.  As Agamben states, gesture has nothing to say in and of itself; it is the "being-in-language" of human mediality. Perhaps duende is the same.  Duende itself has nothing to say; no secret found in the stale stomach of a dancer; nothing particularly innovative in the sound from the cantaor's scratched voice.  Perhaps that is the secret.  Duende doesn´t say anything.  It just is.  It is the state where the gesture is no longer being interpreted.  The ra-ca-ta-ta doesn´t mean, "Hey!  Look at me!"  Nor is the ría-ría-pi-ta saying, "Hey, look at that gorgeous man!"  When the people say afterward that there was duende--that´s all you can say.  There are no words. 

If duende is when the mediality of the gesture is embraced and exalted; then without the klinking of glasses of watery sangría, the gesture is not limited to the performer.  The camarero, the bar-tender, the old grandmother with her face powder, and the young naïve couple in the audience forget.  They forget to speak.  The plates and forks stop fighting each other, and gesture triumphs over speech.  "[Duende] is, in this sense, communication of a communicability. It has precisely nothing to say because what is shows is the being-in-language of human beings as pure mediality" (58,9). It is a gag, in the true sense of the word--it impedes... no, it stops language.  

Perhaps this is why, for so many duende is described in spiritual terms.  It is poetically given a form that travels through space and time. Metaphorically, poetically, Lorca concludes his conference with a image of duende.  Is a wind that travels through the cemetary, resting only temporarily in certain places, constantly looking for new landscapes and ignored accents, it can be found within the crushed herb, a child's spittle, a jellyfish. It heralds the constant baptism of the things newly-created. 

"El duende... ¿Dónde está el duende? Por el arco vacío entra un aire mental que sopla con insistencia sobre las cabezas de los muertos, en busca de nuevos paisajes y acentos ignorados: un aire con olor de saliva de niño, de hierba machacada y velo de medusa que anuncia el constante bautizo de las cosas recién creadas."

Ser o Estar??

Dad, this is my boyfriend.

Estar de molestia. Ser una molestia.

Listen

Read phonetically

"Being in trouble." Be a hassle. Being in the way.

"I feel I´m in the way in the house." "I do not want to be a nuissance, ma'am ..." "Sorry for the bother, but I have a question."

It's what I've felt here in Madrid discomfort. Yesterday we saw a… , well a "life-lesson" as Dad loves to say.   

Felipe IV, y el culo de su caballo.

Jeannete and I were walking slowly from Puerta del Sol to the Parque de Retiro slowly, giving little turns and hiccups when we saw a man selling books on the street. The next manzana we found a church with beggars in front.  We found the library, a huge Corinthian building with 8 columns rising from a massive granite staircase, statues of Olympian gods, and almost completely barricaded by stone and iron fences. An building not quite sure of itself--a little insecure, perhaps overcompensating.    

And then we found the Parque del Retiro.  Huge park, stamped with little ponds, lakes and fountains and crested with hedges and green grass.  It is a haven in the city--exactly as the name leads you to believe: Refreshment, Retirement, Withdrawal, and definitely not "job" related.

We finally arrive at the iron gates of the Parque de Retiro. Little retirement or refreshment. We were welcomed by a gypsy from Dos Hermanas, Seville. "Come here pretty! Rosemary. A little rosemary!" I knew it then. I know it. I knew it, but the gypsy Susana had an amazing art. That rosemary cannot be ignored. That rosemary brings luck. That is a gift. Five minutes later, I walk away with a lighter wallet and three sprigs of very expensive and superstitious rosemary.  In five minutes, the sing-song lullaby of the gypsy Susana told me of my long-suffering life, the pains in my heart, the curse of the evil-eye, the future boyfriend (dark-skinned--olé!), the two months time before I come back to Madrid and tell her, the good heart of Jeannete, that I must trust Jeannete as she is trustworthy, that I will have a long life, that I will have a happy life… oh yes, and that Jeannete gets a blond boyfriend.  The most amazing part of this street performance was the both the consistency in rhythm and intonation, but also the rhymes. Each third sentence seemed to rhyme.  And as we spoke with several gypsies that day, each gitana, María, Susana, and Ana (or was her name Isabel) had their own songs.  “Mi nombre es María, ya verás que de mi se fía.”  Or the ever classic: "Como me llamo Susana, dinero no me darás con mala gana.”. La Susana left with 30 euros. And the worst part is that I knew it, I knew it beforehand.

Despite the various protests, the uncomfortable hand-grabbing, and the awkward hand-extraction, I wed this Madrid-uncomfort with the ancient, primitive, and perhaps barbaric Spanish tradition tradition involving the free (humph!) exchange of money with gypsies for the purpose of superstitious cleansing.  Interesting ritual, and a Spanish custom that has taken, at minimum, three hundred years to form.  The gypsies of Borrow, those of Delacrois, those of Smith, Bird, Valera, Sender, Onetti, to be included in such an illustrious list, even out of stupidity, makes the experience a little sweeter.  Eiko, she didn´t say anything about blue eyes.  But according to María (and this time not Susana), I will have three children.  Gory, aren´t you happy for me!

 

Stuck II

La Chicuela

Flamenco friends and colleagues, I am stuck.

Costumbrist literature in Spain as early as the 1840s describes a typical festival, the sweet wine, sweet oranges, beautiful sunset, sweet women... But always in Costumbrist literature describing the South of Spain there is a very unique role, afforded to those who are somewhat displaced.

Here is an example of costumbrist;
Washington Irving, Cuentos de la Alhambra, "The Journey"

While we were supping with our Drawcansir friend, we heard the notes of a guitar, and the click of castanets, and presently a chorus of voices singing a popular air. In fact mine host had gathered together the amateur singers and musicians, and the rustic belles of the neighborhood, and, on going forth, the courtyard or patio of the inn presented a scene of true Spanish festivity. We took our seats with mine host and hostess and the commander of the patrol, under an archway opening into the court; the guitar passed from hand to hand, but a jovial shoemaker was the Orpheus of the place. He was a pleasant-looking fellow, with huge black whiskers; his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. He touched the guitar with masterly skill, and sang a little amorous ditty with an expressive leer at the women, with whom he was evidently a favorite. He afterwards danced a fandango with a buxom Andalusian damsel, to the great delight of the spectators. But none of the females present could compare with mine host’s pretty daughter, Pepita, who had slipped away and made her toilette for the occasion, and had covered her head with roses; and who distinguished herself in a bolero with a handsome young dragoon. We ordered our host to let wine and refreshment circulate freely among the company, yet, though there was a motley assembly of soldiers, muleteers, and villagers, no one exceeded the bounds of sober enjoyment. The scene was a study for a painter: the picturesque group of dancers, the troopers in their half military dresses, the peasantry wrapped in their brown cloaks; nor must I omit to mention the old meagre Alguazil, in a short black cloak, who took no notice of any thing going on, but sat in a corner diligently writing by the dim light of a huge copper lamp, that might have figured in the days of Don Quixote.


The role of the foreigner, as expounded in 1841, hasn´t changed much.  "We ordered our host to let wine and refreshment circulate..."  We are in fact, the patrons.

The patron or señorito was the rich, landed gentleman, often characterized with the debonaire mustache, slight yet contagious smile, and pressed slacks who circulated money and favors among the artists.  The artists are always the working class; the bar maid, the basket-maker who sings while he weaves, the single daughter of a muleteer who is known for her spirited tongue and her beautiful dancing.  But the patron is always a foreigner.  An exile from the city life, a semi-prosperous noble with a taste for country pursuits. A foreign transplant fleeing from the bleak ticky-tack of New York, London or Boston.

What do we do with the modern exiles? The cultural exiles?

The 60s saw American women, made passionate by flamenco singers and dancers, throwing themselves at the first bed they found.  Such is the case of Ramón Sender's La tesis de Nancy, or the autobiographical novel Returning to A, by Dorien Ross.  The men, it seems, found in their plaintive guitar strings, a newly re-discovered masculinity--a world of blood feuds, of chauvinism, and of passion.  Hence, The Wind Cried: An American´s Discovery of Flamenco, or the better known The Flamenco Academy, by Sarah Bird.

Cristina Benítez

The latter novel was published in 2006.  But the story is the same.  Where does an black-red-polkadot-California-ABD-smoker-and-currently-really-trying-to-be-a-non-drinker have to do with flamenco in Barcelona?

I am rematando today with a letra.  Instead of the lover seeking out his beloved, this is the AUGH! of a Californiana al mundo flamenco.

Cuando paso por tu casa
Compro pan y voy comiendo;
Pa que tu gente no diga
Que con verte me mantengo.

Stuck

Roadblocks. Construction. Street light outages. Metro stops. Bus Drivers. The street noises filter through the mustard yellow drape of my rented room.  I am currently lying face down, chin fighting with the pillow over the better view of my computer screen.  I have found the (il)legal sight for watching US tv shows-and I am now more caught up on my series than perhaps any of the other suckers. Such is the week.  Cuevana sounds like a cave in Monty Python and the Holy Grail--not an illegal internet site to view pirated copies of US movies.  It sounds like the Insula of Quijote, or the Utopia of Moore. Welcome to globalization.

The appropriation of non-Spanish products into the Lexicon of well, Spanish is fascinating.  Yew-tuve, Cólgate, Escaype, Kleenex, Weefee, Cesi, or the most popular choice, guiri.

Guiri, is a colloquial term used to refer to tourists in Spain.  And, despite the etimological studies placing its origin in the Civil Wars of the Queen Christina in the 19th century, (please see footnote), the term actually has a less exotic history.  Guiri is a mispronunciation of the American term Greeny--referring to the Green Party and to the now environmentally safe cleaning products.  Greeni--> Guiri.  There is also a possible though less accepted origin of the word, referring to the 1862 American First Legal Tender Act.  In 1862, in the Civil War, the US Government issues its first paper notes--"Greenbacks".  Given the intimate relationship between Americans and the Spanish nation through tourism, an American tourist was also known as a "Guiri".

Footnote:
Nombre con que, durante las guerras civiles del siglo XIX, designaban los carlistas a los partidarios de la reina Cristina, y después a todos los liberales, y en especial a los soldados del gobierno. (DRAE)