Future

What will be, will be

I am surrounded by things that are going to happen rather than things that have.

            Today I heard from Ignacio Acosta who is the great-grand-nephew of one of the artists that I have chosen to write my mini-thesis on for the end of my OU course.  Ignacio is mounting an art exhibition based on his experience of his great-grand-uncle Alvaro Guevara, which has opened to positive reviews.  The press release can be seen here www.wildpansypress.com and, if things go according to plan then a version of the work that I will produce for the course will find its way onto the website devoted to the exhibition.

            A lot of work has to be completed before that can happen, but it is a goal worth aiming for.

            More pressing is the essay that I am supposed to be writing for the end of April.  This seems like eons away at the moment but I am not going to be fooled by that trick time has of melting away just when you need it most and I am reading my last textbook with avidity bordering of desperation!  I am already reading chapters that we should not have started until April – but as I will be in the UK on the date in April that the essay should be handed in I need to give myself some sort of buffer zone of knowledge before that date.

            We are, it’s true, given a week off for good behaviour for Easter, but I am looking to be writing the essay during that week so that I can concentrate on the masses of work necessary for the piece on Hockney and Guevara.

            All of this is in the future and all my work at the moment is the potential rather than the realization.  Still, bit by bit.

Beware!  An ‘early start’

There is always something a little daunting when the opera you are going to see is scheduled to start a clear hour earlier than the normal starting time!

            It perhaps comes as no surprise to learn that the opera in question is one of Wagner’s, and is the latest offering of the Liceu as part of the realisation of The Ring Cycle.  We have now made it to Siegfried.

            As far as I can tell, the setting for the story has been updated from the Mythic German Folktale to a more industrial and 30s Austrian faux-schloss modishness.  So far I have enjoyed the productions and, apart from my rear end going to sleep, I am sure that I will enjoy this one!

            I will attempt to write a review of the production in the next couple of days, with the real problem trying to find secure photos of the production that will not slip away to blank squares after a day or so!

            I have not had the courage to discover just how long we are going to be in the theatre and I might just consider buying myself a meal for one of the intervals to make things bearable.

            I have also booked myself a room in an adjacent hotel so that I can collapse with the least possible effort and not after a drive.

            The cost of the hotel room has gone up 33%!  That, if nothing else, is an indication that the winter months have gone and Barcelona is eager and ready to fleece the tourists who flock to the centre.

            The one thing I object to is that everyone who stays in Barcelona is subject to a 72c ‘tourist tax’ or ‘city tax’.  I mean, come on, I live here, why do I have to pay!

           

Poems keep flowing

I have recently had a crisis of confidence in my writing.  The last two poems I have written, I like.  I enjoyed writing them.  But.

            It’s that ‘but’ that disturbs me.  There is a sort of arrogance in writing poetry, especially poetry that one is prepared to share.  You are saying, in effect that you have something worth saying and that people would benefit (in some intangible way) by reading it.  It’s that last bit that I am not sure about.  Nor come to think of it, the first bit!

            If you are writing a story there is a distinct narrative to keep you and your readers going.  One plot device follows another, there is character development, things happen and then they come to an end.  Some of my poems are, I think, like that – other are most distinctly not.  Some poems I think I know what I was hoping would be the end result of writing them, other poems I read through them and wonder.  I know that could be a good thing, but I sometimes wonder about the quality of what I have to say.

            Some people writing about ‘big’ subjects and use vocabulary that I shrink from.  Not out of prudishness, you understand, but because I do not think that my poetry is strong enough to take such loaded words.

            The last poems I have written have made me think about what I am doing and wonder if I am going through some sort of phase in my development which may mean that I write in a different way in the future.  Put like that, my questioning seems quite positive.

            I like that approach and I will watch what I write with interest and hope for something new to come out of it.

            If you want to accompany this voyage of discovery (which isn’t going to be much of a voyage if I continue to use clichés like that) then do check out http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es and leave a comment to help me on my way!

            Wednesday will see the return of Kate, the group leader of the Barcelona Poetry Workshop after her extended visit to the USA and that usually means that another poem will be squeezed out of me.

            It is also an opportunity to put pressure on a few of my possible collaborators on Flesh Can Be Bright whose publication is galloping nearer and nearer!

The Future

 

Book to edit; text book to read; essay to write; research to be finalized; abstract to be written; poems to be produced; lengths to be swum; bikes to be ridden and . . .

            Talking of swimming I have downloaded an app for my watch.  I am a great supporter of Pebble smart watches (Kickstarter and all that!) and I have just managed to use a swimming app which is supposed to tell me everything about how and how long I swim.  It does seem to me to have all the qualities of Black Magic (and I don’t mean that in a chocolaty sense) as I am nowhere near my mobile phone (which is necessary for my smart watch to operate) when I have my swim and yet, my watch told me how many yards I had swum.  I think.  I have set nothing, not even the length of the pool – but I long ago surrendered to the power of gadgets beyond my ken and I simply accept what they say.  I have no idea how to access what I saw on the face of my watch when I pressed some button or other at the end of my swim.  Presumably the information is somewhere, probably waiting for me to download it to a computer where a bewildering array of graphs and statistics will be presented for me to ignore.

            This is something to work on.  Or wait for.  There is another app that I downloaded which is supposed to monitor how far I walk in a day.  I don’t quite know what happens, as I do nothing.  But when I wake up in the morning the watch face that I have selected (you can do that sort of thing at the touch of a button) has gone to be replaced by a very technical looking dial.  Which I ignore.

            One day I pressed the wrong button and I was suddenly presented with a graph showing how long I had slept for the last week!  I think this is the approach I will take with the swim app, wait for a fortuitous accident, and then marvel at what a wristwatch can do nowadays.

            Technology, after all, is a belief in the future!

At least the hoover works

Well deserved

The major advantage to studying is not a belief in the idea that ‘to live is to educate’, but rather the relief that you feel each time you complete an exercise or essay.  It is like a headache; you don’t realise how delightful normality is until pain shows you what non-normality can be like! 

However much you enjoy the learning process, there are few things to beat the sheer relaxation that comes when the proof that you have completed a unit of learning has been sent off to the powers that be and there is nothing further that you can do except wait.

            I am now in that honeymoon period of waiting for a response and I am going to make the most of it.  I am ahead of myself as far as the reading that we have to do is concerned, so I can give almost my full attention to my poetry.

Poetic justice?

In what I am sure could be seen as a fairly grotesque metaphor for something or other, our robot hoover ate its own power lead.  At least it tried.  There is, luckily, a fail-safe system that kicks into play when the machine tires to consume something more substantial than dust.  So, when Toni came back from his walk the poor machine was bleeping plaintively in the middle of the living room with the power lead firmly in its innards.

            Don’t worry, I rescued the poor thing, disengaged the lead and it is now feeding quietly and will roll into renewed operation when we go off for lunch.

            This time I will put the power leads well out of its way – and check the receptacle at the end of its time to check that it has actually been doing what it is supposed to do.

Beyond a joke

In the lead up to the Spanish election, the bunch of morally bankrupt thieves and liars that have hijacked the government have sunk to a new low.  The Minister of Justice (sic) has decreed that people will no longer be termed imputado when they are accused of a crime, they will be termed investigado instead.  Why?  I hear you ask!  Well, a large section of the ruling PP party are totally and completely corrupt, as are their friends and paymasters in banks and businesses.  So many of them have been imputado that they have had to find a way to make it sound a little less, uh, criminal in the run up to the election that they have resorted to the desperate expedient of changing the word: semantic hiding of criminality.

            The unspeakable horror who has come out of retirement to stand for PP as a possible candidate for Mayor of Madrid should be ashamed to be seen in public.  She is a hit and run driver and virtually all her past colleagues are either in prison or are awaiting prison.  She, however, remarkably, astonishingly, unbelievably, alone-ly amongst all her erstwhile criminal colleagues is pure and untainted.  As if!

            And she is not alone.  Every day there is a new scandal about the way PP are ruling (I use the word lightly) the country, or some new revelation about how the PP wealthy backers have been milking cash from banks and companies.  Few of them are in prison and I have little belief that Justice (whatever that word means in Spain at the moment) will prevail and that the droves of thieves and liars who daily parade themselves on our television screens will get their comeuppance.  But I live in hope and trust that Podemos will get a healthy showing in the election and force the established (and corrupt) political parties to pass laws which will bring some degree of transparency to political life.

Continuing lunch

Tomorrow sees Irene arriving to join us for lunch.  We will have to go somewhere different to boost Toni’s blog.  It’s hard work enjoying yourself.

There's always something worth working on

What?

Every teacher knows the look.  Eyes that stare and don’t see.  The look of blank incomprehension.  I know it too, not only from years of experience, but also from last night!

            It is one thing to have a class not know what you are on about, it is quite another to have fellow poets in your Poetry Group look at you in the same way.

            I was, I must say, quietly pleased with my effort from the freewrite, which was on ‘conflict’ and I had taken on board a suggestion from Maria, the group leader that evening, to think about the concept of whether the word or the sword was the more powerful.  This came out as a rather odd scenario in my writing where, in the poem, I burned a copy of Macbeth and then there were a few phrases from the play and . . . OK, I know it sounds a bit odd, but it seemed crystal clear to me when I wrote it.  Not crystal clear to the others and they were experienced poetry readers and writers.

            I brooded on the reception of my piece and I was loath to let it go.  This morning and this afternoon I have been working on it and, eventually I got something which I think is a little clearer than the original.

            A few changes, quite important changes, and I think it reads a little better.  You can read my present draft of the poem, Torture, at: http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es And I would appreciate comments!

Eating out again!

Lunch yesterday was a bit of a disaster, it was frankly awful, and we were not surprised that the restaurant is for sale.  I hope the sale goes through quickly and new management makes the eating experience rather better than it was!  I shall protect the guilty here and not name it, except to say that it is next to a waterfall on a roundabout – which narrows it down a bit!  I hope the owners succeed in their next enterprise because the restaurant trade is not for them.

            So, today we went to a tried and tested restaurant within walking distance of us (and if you know me, that means it is very near) and had an excellent meal.  This was in the restaurant that some friends will be staying in when they come for the United Nations Day Meal in October – The Solifemar.  For €14 each we had an introductory glass of vermouth, a three course meal, coffee and a shot after.  I also had a bottle of wine with Casera thrown in too.  Oh yes, with bread, olives and a few crisps too!  Now that is what I call value for money!

            You can check out a selection of restaurants we have patronized by going to Toni’s blog at: http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es

Freedom short lived

The brief relaxation which came with the sending in of the pro forma has now officially ended and I am deep in the theoretical justifications and explanations for Conceptual Art.  I will give you a flavour of what we have to read in one of the more approachable comments in our text book: 

But the development of Conceptual Art was in part impelled by a perception that the increasing co-option of art to a modernist culture of spectacle had been achieved at the expense of its critical and subversive content.  

So there!  Disagree if you dare!

            

          To be fair the books that we have to read, if taken in bits and read carefully, guide you fairly clearly through a minefield of pretention.  And you have to keep a firm hold of your sense of reality as you look at some of the art work that we are supposed to be considering.

            For example.  Take a piece by Lawrence Weiner.  The title of the piece is A River Spanned, 1969 and the photograph that we have of it is from the exhibition ‘When Attitudes become Form’ Institute of Contemporary Art, London, September 1969.  The exhibit takes the form of a card with: 116  LAWRENCE WEINER A River Spanned 1969 typed on it.  The curator of the exhibition took the decision, as he was fully entitled to do by the artist, not to realise the work but merely to put the card there as an indication of what might be done.  He could, as he suggested, have fired a line across the Thames attached to an arrow and therefore, spanned the river.  But he decided not to.

            So that is the sort of stuff that we are looking at now.  It makes André’s bricks and Judd’s metal boxes look positively fussy by comparison! 

            And I have to write an essay on things like this as well! 

           

            I’m loving it!