B is for
 |
| Jerome David Salinger |
I´m in Bilbao, after a wonderful day yesterday walking from San Sebastian to Orio, where the albergue was full and I was directed to another cheap hotel, which was among the worst hotel experiences I have yet encountered. The room stank of dead mouse, and dogs barked outside all night. I laid awake pondering my shortcomings and failures all night long, breathing through my sleeping bag with my head near the open window, hating the dogs, who kept it up steady until about 4 am. It was a beautiful, incredible walk, and a horrible, terrible night, and this morning the fresh suco (OJ) and cappuccino and sticky croissant, the bright café and the counter lady in her white Crocs and loose baker´s pants were such consolation; mornings are my favorite anyway.
It was gray and misty all day yesterday, and this morning a fine rain fell, and I had determined that if it was raining I would not keep walking but would take a train to Bilbao, so I did, and once here I got everything I wanted (realistically wanted). I got a bed in the hostel (only 9.50, and a large clean room with almost no one else in it, an ensuite bathroom, a large clean common room, and not a trace of death smell; it is a big urban hostel furnished entirely in Ikea, with two completely working compùters, one of which I am now ecstatically typing on). I got a plate of pasta with olives and feta and sundried tomatoes and eggplant and zucchini, for only 6 euros, and white wine, which is so damn good here. I got my laundry done (well, it is still in the dryer but it is almost done and it was foul). The train ride cost 6 euros and was completely beautiful, more of the countryside, the rocks and cliffs, greenness, forests, copses of dark pines, blue breakers when sea was visible. I stared out from my window seat at the landscape blurring past and got over the miserable night. These were what I wanted. I was so hungry for these things. The food was a blessing too, I have been so hungry, and walking to the Guggenheim I passed exactly the right place and went in and got exactly what I wanted and it was so damn good.
Jeff Koons´s sculpture "Puppy," a massive dog-shaped garden, sits in front of the obviously boat-shaped silver Guggenheim museum, but it gets new plants every May and October, so it is obscured now by scaffolding, which I found funny after my beautiful lunch.
Inside, the first exhibit I saw was installations by Esther Ferrer, born in San Sebastian in 1937. On the wall an artist´s statement:
"I absolutely do not seek the absolute, if you´ll forgive me repeating myself. I just try to work on a reality while deforming it as little as posible, but at the same time try to find a different way of observing or understanding it."
("No busco el absoluto en absoluto, valga la redundancia. Intento solo trabajar una realidad deformándola lo menos posible, pero a la vez descubrir una forma diferente de observarla o comprenderla.")
The first piece was "Laugh Lab," a bunch of laptop-sized screens suspended from the ceiling at staggered face-heights, showing different mouths. Painted on the floor underneath was a world map. You walked around on the world among the mouths and when you stood in front of one it would start to laugh. It was fucking awesome. There was a place you could record your own mouth laughing too and be part of the exhibit. It was wonderful. I laughed because when people are laughing you laugh, also it was so random with random people standing in front of the screens and getting laughed at. Later I wandered by the door of that gallery and saw that lots of people coming out had smiles on their faces, which was nice.
Upstairs were some Anselm Kiefers that knocked my socks off. Huge, impasto-y ones, two next to each other that both had a guy laying down at the bottom just like the marble saints in the cathedrals. One was looking up at a huge skyful of stars. "The Renowned Order of the Night," it is called. Those stars, I could look at that all day. The other was called "Sunflowers" and had the guy at the bottom looking up at these huge sunflowers, that one was in black and White and was woodcut, acrylic and varnishy stuff, really beautiful, huge, huge, I could look at that one all day too. >It was lovely. On the wall it said that old Anselm studied an English occult philosopher named Robert Fludd from the 16th century, who believed every plant in the world had its corresponding star in the firmament, and there was a connection between the microcosmic reality on earth and the macrocosmic realm of the heavens. That is so cool to me. Yesterday I saw the most amazing plant life, these wonderful weird yellow flowers like multicompartmented spaceships, and little bell flowers, and at one point on a Cliff high above the sea, some waving long grasses that made me feel like I might someday remember how to love to dance, again. God, those were cool. Also yesterday I passed several farms that have been farms since medieval times, they were donated to the Catherdal of Pamplona in the 12th century. Lovely farms. Brown cows, llamas, black and White herding dogs that didn´t bark at me but wagged at me; sheep I could see and sheep I couldn´t see because it was so weirdly misty but I could hear their clanking bells; goats, a couple horses; some burros, one with its ass right up against the fence; some farmers doing farmer stuff, driving tractors around; lots of fruit tres in full flower; grapevines. Part of the walk was on a centuries-old cobblestones, which were smooth and nice a little bit but also a huge ankle-twist hazard and I wasn´t real into that. And yeah I met some nice other walkers, Peter from Czechoslovakia who lived in Colorado for awhile, but mostly I got to be alone which was nice. It was a long walk, about 20 km, yesterday. If all the plants are stars maybe the cows and horses and people are planets.
Also at the museum was a big exhibit of Works on Paper by Henri Michaux, all of which was ugly and boring, a bunch of ugly drawings that I would not want to look at at all, that he did on mescaline in his mid-fifties, and are all just variations on the asshole´s interp of vaginas, if you ask me; the garbage on the wall interpreting his "`phantasms" was utter bullshit. I have no interest in trying to figure out what this asshole was all about, it´s plain as day, and everyone in there looking thoughtful was a moron.
Anyway. I´ll never stay in another room that smells at all like dead mice. I had a horrible apartment for awhile in Pocatello that smelled like that, and it was a horrible apartment. I guess there are people all around who live with that smell all the time. I´m a lucky, lucky planet that I don´t have to. So glad I am here like this now. I love all you who read even though you probably do not even exist; no offense to you.
Also, please pardon if I am being annoyingly blessed-feeling. Seriously, I wanted to kill myself last night, and also, like, I can´t help it if sometimes things are just really awesome and I wanna talk about it.
Also, to continue in the art-critic vein, I heard there is, meaning, I read a review in Spanish in a newspaper the other day, of a new biopic about JD Salinger, with fucking Kevin Spacey as Whit Burnett, and I knew it was coming but it’s another ironic shittiness. Anyone who’s read him knows it. He was a movie buff sure but he hated them too, hated the phoniness, and this movie is sure to be the kind of love-centric Hoñlywood crap that’s making people stupider with every manufactured sentiment, every engineered emotional tug, and I hate all that, FUCK THAT. The goddam movies are fuckingvstupid and that’s why I loved old Holden to start with. Duh. It was inevitable but god it´s so fucking, like, depressing, and all.
If anyone ever read “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut” and liked it, they should read it again before Amazon rewrites it or something. A movie got made of it; I forgot the name. Apparently Salinger hared it. How I wish we could just leave things alone sometimes.
Comments
Post a Comment