jueves, 29 de septiembre de 2011

Carry that weight

Todos tenemos en la cabeza la imagen del cruce de Abbey Road con los Fab Four caminando, pero siempre me pregunté cómo lo hicieron a la hora de la sesión, la gente que pudo pasar por ahí y encontrarse con Lennon & co, etc...
Este momento me parece sublime.
Atención a las chanclas de Paul.

viernes, 23 de septiembre de 2011

Urban Lyrics




Desde hoy y hasta el 11 de diciembre una de las grandes fotógrafas norteamericanas del siglo XX -Helen Levitt- será la protagonista del Fotografiska Museo de Estocolmo.
La obra de Levitt destaca por su mirada especial de la vida urbana, especialmente de las calles de New York. ¿El clásico imaginario de b/n con niños riendo y homeless llorando? Ése.
Instantes de la vida cotidiana, momentos que parecen normales y son primordiales.
Hablamos de 125 imágenes muy poderosas de una de las musas de la llamada "street photography", que logró fijar el movimiento de la vida de las personas en fotografías casi perfectas. MUST.


Res no és mesqui


Qué bonic és que et regalin una edició facsímil de la "Poesia completa" de Joan Salvat-Papasseit, i l´obris i tornis a adonar-te de lo bó que és. Gràcies, S.M.
Aquí Ovidi Montllor declamant. Meravellós.

Res no és mesqui
ni cap hora és isarda,
ni és fosca la ventura de la nit.
I la rosada és clara
que el sol surt i s´ullpren
i té delit de bany:
que s´enmiralla el llit de tota cosa feta.

Res no és mesqui,
i tot ric com el vi i la galta colrada.
I l´onada del mar sempre riu,
Primavera d´hivern-Primavera d´istiu.
I tot és Primavera:
I tota fulla verda eternament.

Res no és mesqui,
perquè els dies no passen;
i no arriba la mort ni si l´heu demanada.
I si l´heu demanada us dissimula un clot
perquè per tornâ a néixer necessiteu morir.
I no som mai un plor
sinó un somriure fi
que es dispersa com grills de taronja.

Res no és mesqui
perquè la cançó canta en cada bri de cosa.
-Avui demà i ahir
s´esfullarà una rosa
i a la verge més jove li vindrà llet al pit.

Lord of the Flies



Bueno, bueno, bueno... se acerca homenaje, revival, reediciones, charlas y fastos varios para William Golding. Repaso aquí varias cubiertas -algunas más afortunadas que otras- de sus cientos de ediciones en bolsillo.


Y, algo muy bonito de leer, el prólogo a la edición especial del centenario de su publicación escrito por el insigne Stephen King. Enjoy it:

Of course, there was no town library, but in the deserted Methodist parsonage about a quarter of a mile from the house where my brother David and I grew up there was one room piled high with mouldering books, many of them swelled to the size of telephone directories. A good percentage of them were boys’ books of the sort our British cousins call ‘ripping yarns’. David and I were voracious readers, a habit we got from our mother, and we fell upon this trove like hungry men on a chicken dinner. I grew up in a small northern New England farming community where most of the roads were dirt, there were more cows than people, and the school housing grades one through eight was a single room heated by a woodstove. Kids who were bad didn’t get detention; they had to stay after school and either chop stovelengths or sprinkle lime in the privies. There were dozens concerning the brilliant boy inventor Tom Swift (we used to joke that sooner or later we’d surely come across one titled 'Tom Swift and His Electric Grandmother'); there were almost as many about a heroic World War II RAF pilot named Dave Dawson (whose Spitfire was always ‘prop-clawing for altitude’). We fought the evil Scorpion with Don Winslow, detected with the Hardy Boys, roved with the Rover Boys.There was no library, but in the early 1960s the library came to us. Once a month a lumbering green van pulled up in front of our tiny school. Written on the side in large gold letters was STATE OF MAINE BOOKMOBILE. The driver-librarian was a hefty lady who liked kids almost as much as she liked books, and she was always willing to make a suggestion. One day, after I’d spent twenty minutes pulling books from the shelves in the section marked YOUNG READERS and then replacing them again, she asked me what sort of book I was looking for.I thought about it, then asked a question – perhaps by accident, perhaps as a result of divine intervention – that unlocked the rest of my life. ‘Do you have any stories about how kids really are?’


She thought about it, then went to the section of the Bookmobile marked ADULT FICTION, and pulled out a slim hardcover volume. ‘Try this, Stevie,’ she said. ‘And if anyone asks, tell them you found it yourself. Otherwise, I might get into trouble.’The book, of course, was the one you are now about to reread or perhaps (oh, lucky you) to experience for the first time.
Imagine my surprise (shock might be closer) when, half a century after that visit to the Bookmobile parked in the dusty dooryard of the Methodist Corners School, I downloaded the audio version of Lord of the Flies and heard William Golding articulating, in the charmingly casual introduction to his brilliant reading, exactly what had been troubling me. ‘One day I was sitting one side of the fireplace, and my wife was sitting on the other, and I suddenly said to her, “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to write a story about some boys on an island, showing how they would really behave, being boys and not little saints as they usually are in children’s books.” And she said, “That’s a first-class idea! You write it!” So I went ahead and wrote it.’

Eventually – around the time John Kennedy became President, I think – we came to feel something was missing. These stories were exciting enough, but something about them was . . . off. Part of it might have been the fact that most of the stories were set in the twenties and thirties, decades before my brother David and I were born, but that was not the greater part of it. Something about those books was just wrong. The kids in them were wrong.

I had read adult novels before, or what passed for them (the room of water-dampened books in the Methodist parsonage was full of Hercule Poirots and Miss Marples as well as Tom Swifts), but nothing that had been written about children, for adults. I was thus unprepared for what I found between the covers of Lord of the Flies: a perfect understanding of the sort of beings I and my friends were at twelve or thirteen, untouched by the usual softsoap and deodorant. Could we be good? Yes. Could we be kind? Yes again. Could we, at the turn of a moment, become little monsters? Indeed we could. And did. At least twice a day and far more frequently on summer vacations, when we were often left to our own devices.

Golding harnessed his unsentimental view of boyhood to a story of adventure and swiftly mounting suspense. To the twelve-year-old boy I was, the idea of roaming an uninhabited tropical island without parental supervision at first seemed liberating, almost heavenly. By the time the boy with the birthmark on his face (the first littleun to raise the possibility of a beast on the island) disappeared, my sense of liberation had become tinged with unease. And by the time the badly ill – and perhaps visionary – Simon confronts the severed and fly-blown head of the sow, which has been stuck on a pole, I was in terror. ‘The half-shut eyes were dim with the infinite cynicism of adult life,’ Golding writes. ‘They assured Simon that everything was a bad business.’ That line resonated with me then, and continues to resonate all these years later. I used it as one of the epigrams to my book of interrelated novellas, Hearts in Atlantis.

This is the farthest thing from a scholarly introduction, because there was nothing scholarly or analytical about my first reading of Lord of the Flies. It was, so far as I can remember, the first book with hands – strong ones that reached out of the pages and seized me by the throat. It said to me, ‘This is not just entertainment; it’s life-or-death.’

Flies wasn’t a bit like the boys’ books in the parsonage; in fact, it rendered those books obsolete. In the parsonage books, the Hardy Boys might get tied up, but you knew they’d get free. A German Messerschmitt might get on Dave Dawson’s tail, but you knew he’d get away (by putting his Spitfire in prop-clawing mode, no doubt). By the time I reached the last seventy pages of Lord of the Flies I understood not only that some of the boys might die, but that some would die. It was inevitable. I only hoped it wouldn’t be Ralph, with whom I identified so passionately that I was in a cold sweat as I turned the pages. No teacher needed to tell me that Ralph embodied the values of civilization and that Jack’s embrace of savagery and sacrifice represented the ease with which those values could be swept away; it was evident even to a child. Especially to a child, who had witnessed (and participated in) many acts of casual schoolyard bullyragging. My relief at the last-minute intervention of the adult world was immense, although I was angry at the naval officer’s almost offhand dismissal of the ragtag survivors (‘I should have thought that a pack of British boys . . . would have been able to put up a better show . . .’).

I stayed angry about that until I remembered – this was weeks later, but I still thought about the book every day – that the boys were on the island in the first place because a bunch of idiotic adults had started a nuclear war. And years later (by then I was on my fourth of fifth reading of the novel) I came across an edition with an afterword by Golding. In it he said (I’m paraphrasing): ‘The adults save the children . . . but who will save the adults?’

To me, Lord of the Flies has always represented what novels are for, what makes them indispensible. Should we expect to be entertained when we read a story? Of course. An act of the imagination that doesn’t entertain is a poor act indeed. But there should be more. A successful novel should erase the boundary-line between writer and reader, so they can unite. When that happens, the novel becomes a part of life – the main course, not the dessert. A successful novel should interrupt the reader’s life, make him or her miss appointments, skip meals, forget to walk the dog. In the best novels, the writer’s imagination becomes the reader’s reality. It glows, incandescent and furious. I’ve been espousing these ideas for most of my life as a writer, and not without being criticized for them. If the novel is strictly about emotion and imagination, the most potent of these criticisms go, then analysis is swept away and discussion of the book becomes irrelevant.

I agree that ‘This blew me away’ is pretty much of a non-starter when it comes to class discussion of a novel (or a short story, or a poem), but I would argue it’s still the beating heart of fiction. This blew me away is what every reader wants to say when he closes a book, isn’t it? And isn’t it exactly the sort of experience most writers want to provide?

What I keep coming back to is Golding saying, ‘Wouldn’t it be a good idea to write a story about some boys . . . showing how they would really behave.’ It was a good idea. A very good idea that produced a very good novel, one as exciting, relevant and thought-provoking now as it was when Golding published it in 1954. Nor does a visceral, emotional reaction to a novel preclude analysis. I finished the last half of Lord of the Flies in a single afternoon, my eyes wide, my heart pounding, not thinking, just inhaling. But I’ve been thinking about it ever since, for fifty years and more. My rule of thumb as a writer and a reader – largely formed by Lord of the Flies – is feel it first, think about it later. Analyse all you want, but first dig the experience.

Wet Illustrated

Wet Illustrated : Satellite Kids from robbie simon on Vimeo.


No sé si me gusta más la canción o el vídeo. Cool!

miércoles, 21 de septiembre de 2011

London 1903



Thomas Edison fue, entre otras muchas cosas que le dieron mucha fama, un viajero impenitente que vio medio mundo a finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX. Estuvo en Paris para la exposición universal de 1900, captando con su cámara el fervor de una ciudad en pleno crecimiento. Aquí tenemos su propia filmación de la ciudad de Londres en 1903, casi nada. Atención a la vida en las calles, los taxis, la entrada de Hyde Park, los barcos del Thames, el espíritu de Dickens all around. Se ve también la Abadía de Westminster, el Big Ben y el tráfico. ¿No es maravilloso?

Paul Laurenzi



Me gustan las mujeres de Paul Laurenzi, qué le vamos a hacer.

lunes, 19 de septiembre de 2011

Centro Penitenciario

¿Está Javi disponible? We´ve got a situation right here!!!!

Amante como soy de los anagramas y los palíndromos y todos los juegos de y con palabras, no podía sino flipar con el regalito casero DIY de Javi Follable. Javi es un hombre del renacimiento que siendo niño se perdió en una fábrica de game boys y no quiso salir. Luego marchó al desierto de Arizona pasando por Galicia y así se quedó. Lo que hace es para verlo y escucharlo con atención. Y sí, lleva ya un tiempo en esto, pero todavía tiene mucho por decir. Atentos a sus tentáculos, está en todas partes. Lo conocemos por Javi, pero se le conoce también como Néboa, Fluzo, Dúo Cobra, Dj de la muerte, etc...
Sonar, LEM, Primavera Sound, cientos de salas y bares, cientos de horas de música, dibujos de otro planeta, ruiditos y texturas maravillosas. Queremos a Javi.

Ah, perdón, sí, su regalo, el Teniente Capricornio o Centro Penitenciario. Un librito cosa fina, muy fino, muy poca cosa, pero lo dicho: cosa fina. Para muestra, un botón:

Cretino, ápice interno
Canon, reticente ripio
Retiro con penitencia
Pon retiro, cenicienta
Tierno repite canción
Aprieto criticón nene
Cítrico pariente neón
Ni percance ni tiroteo
Tónica, ricino repente

viernes, 16 de septiembre de 2011

Playlist Klaus & Kinski


Vuelvo a las listas, me encantan, no puedo/quiero evitarlo.
Radio 3 entrevistó a Marina, cantante del dueto murciano Klaus & Kinski, y así quedó su top ten de desamor posveraniego:

El link para Spotify:



1- "Pink Moon", de Nick Drake.

2- "Comment Te Dire Adieu", de Françoise Hardy.

3- "Hopelessly Devoted To You" (B.S.O. Grease), Olivia Newton John.

4- "La Playa", de Los Planetas.

5- "Since K Got Over Me", de The Clientele.

6- "Walk In The Park", de Beach House.

7- "Trains And Boats And Planes", de Burt Bacharach.

8- "Al Siguiente Nivel", de Javiera Mena.

9- "Commuter Love", The Divine Comedy.

10- "Autumn Sweater", de Yo La Tengo.

lunes, 12 de septiembre de 2011

Melancholia



Lars Von Trier ha vuelto con su nuevo film, estrenado este pasado festival de Cannes.
Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alexander Skarsgård, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlotte Rampling y John Hurt. Pedazo de casting. A ver, a ver...

Evidence

Las declaraciones oficiales, los conferencias de prensa, los testimonios, el "yo estuve ahí", bla, bla, bla...

jueves, 8 de septiembre de 2011

Malabares oníricos


Soñé con escapadas inocentes e innecesarias a la naturaleza, luego me sobrevino una canción centroeuropea mal cantada y más tarde recordé un discurso certero que asusta un poco.
A media noche escuché un avión y pensé en un bombardeo a discreción en medio de un éxodo en masa. Cuando me desperté todo eran marionetas y tacones cercanos.
Alguien me dijo: "no bebas más esa ginebra". Y le hice caso pues.

miércoles, 7 de septiembre de 2011

Juxtapose

Me gusta lo que hace Jasper James con las personas que miran ciudades o las ciudades que miran personas. Siempre que miro desde las ventanas pienso en lo embobado que me quedo no sólo por lo que miro sino por cómo lo miro y lo que ello en mí provoca. Hay una yuxtaposición del momento, una suspensión del yo cuando dejas ir la mirada desde la oficina, un hotel, tu casa o la de tu amante.







lunes, 5 de septiembre de 2011


"Samuel Cramer, que en el pasado firmó con el nombre de Manuela de Monteverde algunas locuras románticas -en los buenos tiempos del Romanticismo-, es el produto contradictorio de un pálido alemán y de una oscura chilena. Agregue a este doble origen una educación francesa y una cultura literaria, y estará usted menos sorprendido -cuando no satisfecho y edificado- por las extrañas complicaciones de este carácter."

Así comienza la única novela que Charles Baudelaire escribió en su vida: "La Fanfarlo", editada por Backlist. Perdón, maravillosamente editada por Backlist, debo decir. Portada, guardas, paginación, impresión. Precioso, vamos.

Gravíssimo


Gravedad vocal

La cosa va de voces graves, de tipos cuyas cuerdas vocales pueden hacer desaparecer plagas de hormigas o de ratones. Grandes voces.