Story teller

Have you read my last paper? He asked rethorically
Paper? I questioned with displeasure
Of course you have, everybody has. He interrupted.

And it is true, everybody have read that book, even nowadays. I was just upset with him calling his book “a paper”, “what an idiot” I thought, “he is demonstating false humility while there is a glow in his eyes with each dollar earned”.

I could not get used to that presumptuos talking, it was always the same, after a pompous speech about how he was brought up by his aunt after his parents died and how he overcame adversity against the odds. He signed books for the attendees and made a toast to all those unknown writers, the literary world and his of course his publishers.

Please don’t misunderstand, he was good, indeed and to honor the truth, he was brilliant, the greatest I dare say. Each sentence, each metaphor totally makes sense, the arguments, the dialogues, even when the crew finally reach the top of the hill just to discover the horror caused by the slaughter, you can hear orchestral music inside your head. I am telling you, you’ll burst in tears in the last pages, listen to me, you will.

I have read that book twenty times, I read it even when it was less than rough work and I also did it before it was finished and during each reading I’ve cried. That used to bring out the worst in me. Once, while he was in the middle of his work, he was completely blocked, dry of ideas, as much as never. I won’t deny that his frutration made me feel bit at ease. Even you could have seen how I slightly smiled, not frontwards of course. That would lead in to my immediate dismissal. Nevertheless I was a very efficient assistant, those feelings never interfered with my professional performace.

As his assistant, I was there to indulge any desire that the budding great contemporary writer had. However, back in those days all that he asked for was whiskey, cocaine and occasionally prostitutes. Although he always claimed to have the finest taste in what women concerns, he was always totally wasted and often on cocaine so that he never noticed that I picked up the cheapest girls. Yes I was also resposible for the money.

He couldn´t be more contradictory. Despite boasting about his love affairs, I saw the way he trembled before a beautiful woman, and also saw how his marriage fell apart. I saw him destroying himself with drugs and alcohol as a sort of way of handling his failures in life.

However he came over the adversities. He had a mysterious way of sorting things out, even now I can’t completely understand how sinking ones sorrows in alcohol can actually help. The point is that, somehow he finished the book and became the good writer he was, but nobody but me was the one who made him great, memorable; tragically memorable.

After the success it was just matter of time for him to get back to his abusive and selfdestructive way of life, the fame and it’s implied commitments he couldn’t deal with. As soon as he won prestige and money he got back to embrace the alcohol and drugs using again.

I said that i made him memorable and I did. He was a tormented mind always chased by his own demons and his unconsciousness. A genius, just what all great creators are like, always on the fence between life and death, living on the edge. I knew he should be among the greatests , I believed and I still believe it, I did rigth I am convinced. His talent belongs to all of us now, just the way it should be at the first moment. And, believe it or not would it be just matter of time, one more drink, one more snort, the end wouln’t have changed.

It was easy I must admit. Doing it needed just the right pills in the right place at the right time, a loaded gun either beneath the pillow or besides the Johnny Walker bottle, brought them one after another by his loyal assistant. Finally, one cold December night the unavoidable happened. I don’t feel guilty, the ends justify the means Machiavelli once said.

So young!!, the critics and the press complained, With a great future!, they cried. I know they won’t understand the value of his absence, the value of my actions. However, as you can see I am not looking for comprehension even less for empathy or recognition. I did what I had to do and now, after years and endless post mortem awards and tributes for just one written piece, here you are the story of the greatest among the greatests, the story of the story teller.

Por que hay momentos

Hay momentos, siempre ha habido momentos, y ejemplos bastan y hasta sobran. Homero para empezar relata el mejor ejemplo de la importancia de la relación entre el tiempo y el espacio. Homero, lo hace en Troya, así es, que hubiera sido de ese caballo de madera cargado de soldados si no hubieran estado en el espacio y el tiempo adecuado; es decir en el momento.

Pero el momento no trabaja para todos- para fortuna de muchos-, si no recuerden lo que le pasó a Napoleón en Waterloo marchando en contra de las fuerzas aliadas (holandeses, alemanes y británicos), o al mismísimo Tercer Reich al invadir Rusia en el crudo invierno Ruso.

Momentos hay y cuan burdos suenen esto ejemplos, sirven como herramienta introductoria a esto que viene. Es decir, este es el momento para esta catarsis. Dígase bien, una vomitada de mis mas profundos adentros:

Como agua que ha sido filtrada
Limpiada por rocas y siglos
De manantial la verdad ha sido hablada
Que de mi obra, no soy el que mueve los hilos

Que como a Roma todos los caminos
Fueron son y serán dirigidos
Sin reparo y expreso declaro
Que mis pasos siempre irán buscando tu mano

Incluso me fue revelado
Que sin conciencia ya he avanzado
Que ignorante con dragones he peleado
Y algún que otro mar ya he cruzado

Por que la senda que camino
No es ni corta ni expedita
Más tiene alegrías y desánimos
Y no tiene un fin a la vista

Pero aunque me tome varios lustros
Y se me consuma el corazón
A tu puerto va, dirigido por los vientos
Este barco, sin capitán ni timón

Las vicisitudes del Liffey

Como amante de la música soy propenso a identificarme con las canciones que escucho, soy de la creencia de que la música y la letra de las canciones se fusionan para formar un elemento único con identidad propia y que este elemento se aplica a circunstancias o lugares específicos formando un todo; letra, música y su background aplicables a las realidades tanto del autor como de los que se identifican con estas.

Vengo con esto justo en estos días en los cuales dos canciones aparecen repetidamente en mi reproductor, esas dos canciones, ambas de Radiohead vienen de un mismo lapso de tiempo, y de circunstancias similares, las dos al ser terminadas fueron descritas por el mismo Thome Yorke como la mejor grabación que habían hecho.

Estas fueron escritas también en uno de los momentos más difíciles para Radiohead. Thom Yorke pasaba por un bloqueo creativo que estuvo a punto de romper con la banda y estas fueron la válvula de presión que liberó la tensión de aquellos días.

Sin duda (los fans de Radiohead no me dejaran mentir) estas dos canciones son de las composiciones mas hermosas y emotivamente cargadas que la banda haya creado, pero también son unas las canciones mas tristes que he escuchado en mi vida.

Ambas hablan acerca de un río, una específicamente del río Liffey pero casi estoy seguro que viniendo del mismo lapso de tiempo y evocando sentimientos tan similares, las dos fueron inspiradas por este mismo río que atraviesa la ciudad de Dublín.

¿De que sentimientos hablo? Pues los mismos sentimientos que me evoca una caminata por el mentado río Liffey: añoranza, dificultad, algo de impotencia y una fuerte sensación de irrealidad, de estar y no estar, de ser y no ser. Pero también hay un dejo de omnipresencia, superación pero sobretodo una fuerte sensación de libertad.

Es para mí un réquiem a los miedos y a las dudas que nos ataron ayer y que hoy libres de estas les rendimos solemnemente un pequeño homenaje.

Como una probadita las siguientes lineas:

(Pyramid song)
I jumped in the river and what did I see?
Black-eyed angels swam with me
A moon full of stars and astral cards
And all the figures I used to see
All my lovers were there with me
All my past and futures
And we all went to heaven in a little row boat
There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt

(How to disappear completely)
That man
That's not me
I go
Where I please
I walk through walls
I float down the Liffey
I'm not here
This isn't happening
I'm not here

Aquí la música: