Music meme

Who does Knickers think she is!? She has given me homework! What a nerve!

"List ten songs that you are currently digging...it doesn't matter what genre they are from, whether they have words, or even if they're no good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying right now. Post these instructions, the artists, and the ten songs in your blog. Then tag five other people to see what they're listening to."

I´ve been listening to three types of music lately: driving music, African music, and bellydancing music. So there we go:

Shukran Bamba - Youssou N'Dour.
Mupepe - Zap Mama
When you're gone -The Cranberries. Yes, it´s embarrasing. But I need to sing along when I drive, right?
Nil Si i Gra - Capercaillie.
Drive - R.E.M. I experiment, I go to Africa and China and anywhere in between, I learn new things but R.E.M. and Automatic For The People are home, and I like to come back home after exploring.
Nar- Hakim. Hip-drops forever!
The Wild Goose - Kate Rusby. I need to write a short story based on its lyrics.
Oran Marseille- Khaled.
How it Got There -Martyn Bennet.

Traffic

This is a perfect example of the attitude towards traffic regulations in the small towns of Southern Spain. It happened to me yesterday just as I tell it, I swear it’s true.

I ask a small group of old women for directions.

ME: Can you tell me the way to F Street?
Old Woman 1: You have to turn right, and then….
Me: (seeing the Must Turn Left sign): I can’t turn to the right.
Old Woman 1: But you have to, if you want to go to F Street!
Me: Have you seen the sign?
Old Woman 1: But everyone ignores that sign!
Old Woman 2 to Old Woman 1: Yeah, but she (meaning me) is new in town.

the hughpage and the eternal conflict on jewel prices

Hugh has had a sudden attack of niceguyness and he has created a wiki for bloggers to advertise whatever they please. Isn´t he great? He sees it as a way of letting the little bloggers (example: me) be known without the need of being linked by the bigger bloggers. I don´t see it like that; if people connect through Hugh's wiki they still need him. Anyway.

I cannot let the opportunity go to remind the world that I make really cute, original, good quality, colourful jewelry, using primarily coloured glass, Murano glass, and semiprecious stones. And now that I have moved back to Spain, I face again the conflict about the prices. It´s simple: the sort of stuff I do, exact same quality, can easily cost three times as much, if you are stupid enough to look in the wrong shop. But in my town there is a tradition of independent, occasional designers who maybe go to a crafts market once a year and spend the rest of the time selling just to friends, and the competition keeps the prices low. In the year that I have lived in Ithaca, NY, I took a look at the local shops and I saw that the only sensible thing to do was to double my prices. Now that I am back at home, I have to cut them in half again. My American prices are too high for my town.

I still have the online shop. So, what do I do? Do I keep an online price and a lower real-world price? What if an online price that's too low discourages prospective buyers? Even so, I think that having two prices isn't fair. So, it´s going to be a single price for everyone, reasonable low for my area and wonderfully cheap for everyone else.

Now that you know everything there is to know about the pricing, you can go to the jewelry website and choose a pair of earrings, or two, or three.

Movies on heroism, both sides of the Atlantic.

I have just seen an Irish short film on Sonnie Murphy, an Irish athlete from the early 20th century. He died young, but inspired other Irish men to practise long-distance running. The movie made evident a point in which American and British-style filmmaking are different.

Everyone loves a story of personal achievement. We all love to see Scrooge reformed, the underdog vindicated, or the Ugly Duckling transformed. In American-style movies, the achiever is some sort of Chosen One. I’m thinking of Jerry Maguire, Shine, Good Will Hunting, Finding Rochester, Save the Last Dance. Sometimes there is a godlike figure, a mentor. Sometimes there is a blindly worshipping wife/girlfriend (mind you, no blindly worshipping boyfriend or husband, ever). What is always clear is that the protagonist has to fight alone against The System, against society, although the same people that scorned him will quickly become his fans as soon as it is clear that he is A Winner. The Chosen One transcends earthly limitations. The alternative is failure, being labelled as A Loser (booo, baaaad).

The British-style movie is a bit different. In it, the protagonist will have community support; the fight is partly against The System and partly against the protagonist’s own limitations. I’m thinking of The Commitments, The Van, Brassed Off, Billy Elliot (only to an extent), Little Voice, and superhero movies. The British-style achievement movie will include a scene in which the whole community sides with the hero in making some sort of collective effort to help him (for example, collecting money so that s/he can go to a far away competition). And someone will always tell the hero, “we need you to do this so that we feel special, so that we have a reason to be excited”. The hero’s community transcends mediocrity through him. The alternative is not being a loser: it is boredom, predictability. Eventual success is irrelevant; the important thing is to have tried.

Some British movies are done in the American mould. Bend It Like Beckham is one: the protagonist is a Chosen One, in need to fight against The System symbolised by her parents, who give in when she proves to be a star. Billy Elliot is halfway between the two schools: Billy is The Chosen One, even from birth, and he has to fight against the system, symbolised by his family, ad there is a mentor-figure, but his success is important for the community that eventually gives him support, and the problem is not Success vs. Failure, but the satisfaction of following one's true calling vs. apathy. Neither model is superior to the other (they are like all formulas: good if used skilfully) but I think moviegoers benefit from the existence of as many ways as possible of constructing stories.

A new haiku

It is a relief that after one week at home, shuffling my books and reading half a page out of at least ten or fifteen of them in five days, I’ve composed my first back-home poem.

Hojas caídas,
se parecen a lápidas.
La acera llora.

The fallen leaves,
resembling tombstones.
the sidewalk weeps.

It is my first haiku in three months! It wasn’t a real, scary writer’s block, only the need to be in familiar surroundings so that I could process a feeling that had been sitting there for very long.

For anybody interested in the gossipy, autobiographical bit: I’m thinking of dull brown autumn leaves in Seville, not bright red Ithacan leaves. The tombstones are the ones in St Machar’s Cathedral in Aberdeen (North Campus), whose grounds weren’t very well kept. The feeling is not simply sadness, but mourning.

Whatever you do, don't mention the "P" word

The Deconstructionist critic Barbara Johnson has the theory of “the difference within”. She suggests that when Group A assigns characteristics to a Group B as defines itself as different to it, as it happens in racism or sexism, Group A is trying to exorcise its own fears about not being always coherent and unchangeable. Unable to accept “the difference within”, Group A constructs “the difference with”. That is how stereotypes are born; for example, if a society wants to see itself as controlling over its feelings, calm, responsible and hardworking, it tries to see itself in the mirror on another culture to which the opposite features can be attributed.

“Passionate” is shorthand for the stereotyping of, erm, people who speak Spanish as a first language, either South American or Spaniards (I’ll say it again: Spaniards are not Latinos). I don’t like stereotypes, and I don’t like things that belong in different categories to be put together, and I don’t like the current American stereotype on “Latinos”.

What the hell does passionate mean? Sometimes it applies to love, and we are back at the Latin Lover myth, which is every bit as racist as the Asian-woman-as-pleasure-giving-submissive-geisha myth. Sometimes it means we get very easily carried away by our feelings, and then it is extremely condescending. Besides, it shows poor vocabulary and a lazy train of thought. Say that I am enthusiastic, opinionated, extrovert, expressive, emotional, quick-tempered. Just by a lucky coincidence, I am all those things. I am not “passionate”. That label is so overused it doesn’t mean anything any more.

There is also the idea that Spanish-speakers share one culture. We don’t really, no more than English or French speakers worldwide do. Someone from León shares with someone from Venezuela as much as someone from Yorkshire would have in common with someone from Seattle.

And the funniest thing of all is that when I was living in the US, and to a lesser extent when I was living in Scotland, the locals tried to see in me the features they expect in their idea of a Spaniard/Latina. But when I am at home, I don't really fit in easily. A number of personal traits I won't go into make me very different from the Southern-Spanish stereotype on ourselves!

Libraries and influences

I have reorganised my library to set apart the poetry. I have about thirty books of poetry that are only mine (meaning that they don’t belong, even nominally, to other members of the family). They are a mixture of the bought-for-class, gifts, and my own choices, but the collection seems coherent as a carefully curated museum exhibition; a curious time traveller from the 31th Century could see my collection and have a have a very good idea of what sort of poetry mattered a millennia before.

I have a preference for complete works in a single volume (one third of my books are like that). It’s easy to see things are divided in three clear groups: English classics with a preference for Shakespeare and Romanticism (the Muses spent too much talent inspiring Keats, and then Spanish Romanticism was stuck with the awful, lousy, embarrassing Bécquer: it’s NOT fair). Modernism and free verse in any language (Spanish anthologies, Pedro Salinas, Adrienne Rich, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, e. e. cummings, Edwin Morgan, Alan Spence, T. S. Eliot, Bukowski). Haikus and other Japanese or Chinese poetry (Issa, Shiki, Zhang Kejiu, Li Po, Alan Spence, Sei Shonagon, anthologies without end)

I don’t particularly enjoy that my poetic vocabulary and artistic loves are so far away from my own culture. Sometimes I wish I could express myself fully in one language and one mode, instead of groping my way in the darkness of two different languages. But that would mean to choose Spanish only, and Spanish has very little excellent free verse so it is not enough for inspiration. And as I have said before, unrhymed poetry in Spanish that is not free verse is extremely rare. Unrhymed, non-free verse being my favourite metric pattern, I will have to keep finding my way in two languages and borrowing stanzas from any other that catches my attention.

If I was....

No poetry today. This is not a personal, diary-type blog, but this questionnaire in Suskiin's blog is amusing.

If I was....

* A month, I'd be December. Because my birthday, and my favourite Holiday, which is Christmas, are near the end of the month.
* A day, I´d be Tuesday, or the day two days after a holiday. Full of energy and activity, but without the slowness and sadness of Mondays.
* A time of day, I´d be lunchtime. No doubt about it.
* A planet, I´d be Jupiter. A failed star.
* an animal, I´de be a tiger when I want to be alone and a penguin when I need lots of people around me.
* a piece of furniture, I´de be a bed. The bed of someone who likes to read and eat and talk on the phone in bed, a bed that doubles as sofa in the rare occasions noone lies down under the covers.
* a liquid I´d be... tea. Darjeeling, preferably.
* a musical instrument, I'd be hopefully a tabla or similar. A North-African percussion instrument.
* a feeling I'd be impatience.
* a food or meal I'd be curry with fruit in it. So much chili it makes you cry but enough sweetness to be nice. I hope.
* a number, I'd be 17. the number of syllables in a haiku.
* a body part, I´d be the tongue.
* a scent, I´d be cinammon.
* a geometrical shape, I'd be an oval.
* a country, I'd be... phew, no idea. Spain most likely.
* A poet, I'd be... I am a poet already.
* a movie, I'd be The Age of Innocence. I have never been in a love triangle like that, but my life feels a lot like that movie.
* somebody else I'd be... who knows?
* a plant or flower I'd be... something with red flowers. Hibiscus, maybe.

I´m home: I´m back to Alan Spence

When I´m away from home for a long period, I miss terribly my copy of Alan Spence's Seasons of the heart, a collection of haikus that goes through the seasons of the year. The weather and the constant references to the beach and the sea make me think it was composed in Aberdeen. Maybe that is why it has very few summer poems, and not a single one of them is dedicated to really warm weather. It is never hot in Aberdeen.

Looking carefully through the volume, I´ve selected two summery poems. Enjoy.

summer evening -
through the open window,
an old song.

A sweet peach
but the last bite
is bitter.

Noche de verano -
por la ventana abierta,
una vieja canción.

Un melocotón dulce
pero el último mordisco
es amargo.

Grice's Maxims 2: of politeness.

I willcontinue with the series of recommendations on how to apply Grice´s Maxims to the composition of dialogues in fiction. Grie's Maxims are four rules that we all follow (and expect others to follow!) in conversation.

Maxim 2 is: Be polite. This is culture-bound. For example, Americans say “Have a nice day” as a standard form of goodbye and it sounds terribly phoney to foreigners (it is impossible to translate into Spanish, it just doesn’t sound credible). Your characters can skip courtesy formulas, or overdo them. In Jane Austen’s Emma there’s a spinster that Emma considers an awful bore, and you get the impression that the poor old lady never stops speaking, but her problem is that she is overpolite, thanking people over and over again. At the other end, consider the power of someone walking in a room and starting to talk without saying hello: there will be a hostility plain to your reader. Agressiveness can be communicated like that, discreetly.

Politeness includes not interrupting people, and letting them speak. If you want a character to be overenthusiastic, rude, violent, anxious, or something like that, they can cut everyone else in the middle of a sentence.

A definition of commedy of manners

Arvind said that this blog is anti-American and I already explained it's not. Then he said, in his teasing, Arvindish way, that I stereotype people. I don’t, I just like to write comedy of manners, which is a genre that I love to read. Picky professors would say that I should be more specific: it’s either novels of manners, or comedy of manners when it’s in a play. Since there are “blogs of manners” and “films of manners”, better stick to a single label.

Whatever its name, it is the lovechild of poetry and culture shock (I didn’t realise initially, when I named the blog). It is the place where fiction meets Sociology. In a novel of manners, customs and habits are important because they are used for characterisation. It is often associated with 19th century novels about the upper-middle class, but it is practised still: if you read a book in which you can infer a character’s social background and personality by the brand of his car and the make of his clothes, that’s comedy of manners. The first example (as of so many things) is Don Quixote: the very first paragraph describes Alonso Quijano’s lifestyle, what he ate, what he enjoyed, his possessions, so nowadays we need an edition with footnotes to explain that when it says “his table had rather more beef than mutton” it meant he wasn’t poor but he was definitely not rich. The best writer ever in this genre, with Cervantes’s permission, was Jane Austen, who started a novel saying:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a fortune must be in want of a wife.

Is this true? Is it a universal truth? Well, my friend Jane goes to describe through three pages of dialogue a mother who thinks that her new single neighbour should be introduced to her daughters, now. Is that stereotyping? Maybe. Is that true? Probably. Is it fun? Absolutely. The success of comedy of manners is that it can satirise without pain. Jonathan Swift, George Orwell, Arturo Pérez Reverte or Michael Moore (did I just name the Four Horsemen of Doomsday?) prefer satire: to take a flamethrower and setting the monster on fire. Comedy of manners is more gentle, more delicate, and tickles the monster so that you laugh at him. Beats a flamethrower any day.

Commedy of manners: "A ver si quedamos"

I´m still reclycing old posts.

I have been told that this blog is anti-American, and it was not said as insult or praise, just as fact. I don’t intend it to be. If this was a political blog it would definitely be anti-American, but I’m trying to write comedy of manners, which is a lovely, mildly satirical genre that pokes fun at things instead of setting them on fire, so you see the absurdity of everyday life. It is only for fun after all. Anyway, to show that I am not particularly anti-American I’ll tell you of Seville’s most hated absurdity (most hated by me, at least)

I know people from different cultures that think that theirs is the only one is the world to do something unpleasant. For example, many nationalities think they are the most unpunctual one. So, I don’t know if this will be characteristic of anyone else. I am talking about the inhabitants of Seville’s habit of saying “A ver si quedamos”: let’s meet some time. “Quedar” means “to meet, to go out, to make arrangements to meet in the future, to have a date”.

You know this person, someone who isn’t your friend. Maybe they used to be. You meet them by chance on the streets, or something like that, and just like anywhere else in the world you stop for a minute and catch up on how they are. And if you are in Seville, Spain, one of you will say goodbye by saying “well, we have to meet again some time soon”. No one makes a mention of when you’re free or makes sure of how you can be contacted.

When someone from Seville says they’d love to meet me again and they don’t immediately suggest a time, a place, a plan, and make sure my mobile is still the same number, I know they don’t have the least intention of calling. Everyone hates being told “let’s meet”. Everyone says it anyway. Dammmmm it, even I say it, whenever I can’t say “I’m glad to see you” with a straight face. Besides, I spend so much time away from Seville that indulging in very Seville-like vices reassures me that I still belong there.

Some people from the South with spontaneous, warm behaviour think that people from the North, who are apparently colder and more distant, are more sincere in their personal relationships. Less smiles, more real care. Seville’s art of the “oh, yes, we have to meet” hypocrisy seems to prove it. Does anyone disagree?

Leaving Ithaca

Leaving Ithaca is a contradiction, we don’t leave Ithaca, we come back to it. But the truth is that I’m leaving Ithaca to go back home! It will necessarily bring changes to this blog, since there will probably be few chances for culture shock. I will pay more attention to my surroundings, and write comedy of manners about University life, and about Seville. And there’s always the poetry, of course.

So. I came to an Ivy League school to do research on domestic violence, and these are some of the things I ended up doing:

- I’ve learnt to bellydance. I have danced in public for a couple hundred people (not including the massive crowd that watched the Ithaca Parade).
- I have learnt tai-chi (although I gave up)
- I have gone vegan for weeks and months, and stayed healthy.
- I’ve eaten blue potatoes.
- I can make my own sushi.
- I’ve used the word “queer” in class and in an exam.
- I’ve used my knowledge of (Catholic) Canon Law in a term paper seven years after dropping out of Law School.
- I’ve studied Socio-Psychology.
- I’ve seen a Bollywood film, a Norwegian one, and a handful of African ones.
- I have visited Niagara Falls, Washington DC and New York City.
- It must have been love, but it’s over now.
- I have seen performances by Michel Camilo, Paul Winter, Eugene Friesen, Jessica Lange, Christian Slater, Balinese dances, a Filipino vaudeville show, a madman that performed (not recited: performed) Finnegans Wake, and also more bellydancers that I can remember.
- I’ve had my head shaved.
- I’ve survived Ithacan weather, including walking from East Hill to Greenstar during a snowstorm (that would take 50 minutes in good weather).
- I’ve taken a massage class (Swedish, Shiatsu and Thai).
- I’ve been a extra (an actress with one line, heh!) in a student film.
- I’ve gone tubing (because waterski looked too difficult).

Isn’t it a miracle that I also had time to do the work I came here for!?

Grice´s Maxims 1 (How to Write)

A very quick review: I have said before that all artists that stop to write a guide to creativity say “Art should be what I do”. And then I made my own manifesto, in negative form: things that any poet/writer should not do. This is my first try at positive, constructive theory, and it’s not “Art should be what I do” because I’m talking about dialogue, which isn’t a strong point with me. What I’m going to say is indebted to Juan Pablo Mora, professor at the University of Seville, and Robert Millar, professor at the University of Aberdeen, who made the very dry subject of Linguistics relevant to me.

When they teach you grammar in school, they teach you how to analyse isolated sentences. Grice and others realised that sentences are in connection with each other, and developed the analysis of those relations. That part of Linguistics is called Pragmatics. On the sentence level, when you write dialogue you may consider “Do people speak like this?” But then, you have to think of how they relate to each other. Example: Oliver Twist says “Please, sir, I want some more”. And because he is not supposed to ask for more, the action of the novel starts. Don Quijote is funny because he talks to ordinary people as if he was a character in one of his favourite novels. Here is where Grice comes in: he devised four rules that we all follow when we talk, unless we break them with a purpose. These maxims mean that your characters don’t need to talk straight and help you advance plot, but talk differently to help you show their personality. I’ll make one entry for each maxim so that you don’t fall asleep.

ONE: Be truthful. In human speech, lies can happen because the listener assumes the speaker is truthful, but this rule isn't only about lies. This rule means “Say what you mean”. Irony, exaggeration, and understatement break this rule. When a character ignores this rule in a coherent way, you can make them seem dry, detached but still with a sense of humour. “This guy knows more than he says he does”. Even if it’s just mild irony, your character is powerful because s/he knows the truth, but doesn’t say it.

Hairdressers' Names

I am still recycling the oldest posts, among other resons because in my last days in Ithaca I want to give extra doses of culture shock posts.

In Spain most hairdresser’s are called like the owner. A last name tends to indicate a man, while women use their first names. There are very few exceptions. Here in Ithaca there is another ongoing theme.

Hair A’ffayre (or some other horrible spelling). The Mane Event. Hair It Is.

Knickers told me that she knew of another one called Curl Up and Dye. Is there an end to the amount of very bad puns you can do about hair?

Hairdressers' Names

I am still recycling the oldest posts, among other resons because in my last days in Ithaca I want to give extra doses of culture shock posts.

In Spain most hairdresser’s are called like the owner. A last name tends to indicate a man, while women use their first names. There are very few exceptions. Here in Ithaca there is another ongoing theme.

Hair A’ffayre (or some other horrible spelling). The Mane Event. Hair It Is.

Is there an end to the amount of very bad puns you can do about hair? And, does this happen in the whole country or just here?

the Ginkgo Tanka

Ginkgoes are beautiful trees. I love them since I was surprised by one in Aberdeen’s botanical gardens. They have perfectly elegant leaves, but the branches grow anarchically. A lot like free verse.

There are many ginkgoes in Collegetown and in the Cornell campus. There is also one in my garden at home, in Spain.

And this is dedicated to Stephanie; thank you for a beautiful day.

Along my streets,
The ginkgoes spread their branches.
They greet me, my friends,
Elegant ladies with fans.
Children throwing arms for hugs.

En estas calles mías
los ginkgos extienden sus ramas.
me saludan, estos amigos míos,
elegantes damas con abanicos,
niños que quieren abrazos.

A company from where?

This is just out of a cartoon, seriously. I bought a blender, and the box had a small sticker that said AN AMERICAN COMPANY. There is of course a little American flag on the sticker, too. I look in disbelief, turn the box upside down, and see something a lot more familiar, next to a New Jersey address:
Made and printed in China.

Heh heh. Is the average US shopper supposed to feel better by knowing that their grocery shopping is making someone from New Jersey a millionaire, while the actual work is done in the other side of the world?

On seconds thoughts, the blender's brand has a French-sounding name, and the fact that it is a sticker and not actually part of the box’s design makes me think that the company needed to clarify that they were not French at the time that France decided not to take part in the invasion of Irak, and some people threatened to boycott French products. Still, ridiculous.

I google love.

No, it's not "I love Google". It's I google love. Let's sing the praises of Google, and its glorious incorporation into postmodern love.

Tien Tran from Cornell's MFA program in Creative Writing wrote this tiny beauty last autumn:

So I googled you.
I'm not obsessed I swear.

And a bit more than a year ago, I wrote:

Feeling fresh and new.
She thought she'd never need him.
Now she googles his name.

Un sentimiento nuevo.
Ella pensó que nunca lo necesitaría.
Y ahora busca en Google el nombre de él

No, it's not autobiographical. I've no idea if Tien's poem is or not, and I don't care. The point is not whether Tien or I are stalkers, but the fact that we could be if we wanted to, and also, that two poets with drastically different cultural backgrounds wrote such similar poems.

Google is here to change the way we deal with the end of any relationship. No ex-lover will ever be really, truly, definitely over and gone, because you know that if you wanted, you could just google for him (or her). And they never have to know about it, which is the best part.

Confess. You are dying to google someone's name right now. Go ahead.

Shakespeare, Sonnet 130 as haiku.

Mi amor, tan bella,
No está hecha de versos.
Es imperfecta.

My lovely lady
Is not made out of verses.
And she’s not perfect.

The Spanish version goes first, because I composed it first. Exceptionally, both of them scan (if I’m maiming Shakespeare, I might as well do it with care).