Week 4

Last week seemed to go really fast. Emma and I decided on a whim to go to Barcelona for the weekend and to bunk off Thursday and Friday to make a long weekend of it. Jolie decided to join us too.

The Wednesday night before we left I met up with Sally who’s just starting her MBA at Empresa here in Madrid. We had a great night. Good chat and tapas at La Musa and then some of her MBA gang joined us so we had some drinks there, then at the bar next door (I loved how they served a bowl of nuts and a bowl of harribo sweets with every round!). Then on to a party in some club in a swanky old building on Calle Fortuny. It was good fun with a nice crowd of people (Irish, Italian, Belgian, English and later on Spanish) and lots of chat about living in different countries, plans for the future and politics.

I rather embarrassingly ended up being provocative and rising to everyone around the table agreeing what a good thing Sarkozy is going to be for France by abolishing the 38hr working week and reducing the power of the unions. I really don’t know much about it, but the rebel in me couldn’t help herself, and I had to argue that perhaps the rampant consumerism our culture encourages, and the arrogant assumption that capitalism and democracy are the only positive ways of running things, might not necessarily be making the world a better place. Perhaps only working 38 hours is a good thing. It was kind of funny since I’m guessing that a bunch of new MBA students are probably pretty into the concept of international capitalism, and they were a very bright and experienced group of people, so I did suddenly feel a little like Daniel heading into the lion’s den. But after some initial surprise at my fevered outburst we had a good-humoured discussion about what having choice really means and I escaped pretty much unscathed!! At any rate I didn’t get home till 5am having been plied with plenty of vodka and promises of future nights out, so no offence caused, me thinks.

Staying out so late didn’t seem such a smart idea when only 3 hours later I was on the train to Barcelona (especially when the train broke and we had to do half of the 6 hour trip by bus!).

But Barcelona was lovely. We stayed at a great but very cheap hotel (£20 each a night in a triple room) just off the Ramblas, and had a proper city break holiday.

It’s a really different city from Madrid. It’s much more international and much cooler. It’s got lots of small shops selling innovative stuff (Emma bought a great ring from someone who puts dolls house objects onto jewellery. Hers is a ring that’s a plate - it’s fab). The bars and restaurants are much more contemporary, and it’s got a much more culturally mixed feel to it (Pakistani kids playing cricket in the squares, Muslim women wearing headscarves – whom I realise I’ve not seen at all in Madrid). And a real mixture of architecture.

We did lots of the sights (Las Ramblas, the Bari Gotic, Montjuic, la Catedral, the beach, Gaudi’s Casa Batllo and la Sagrada Familia – both very wonderful), had a very funny large night out with some Spanish guys who we met in a bar, and did masses of art galleries!!

Although it was impressive I have to confess I didn’t warm to the Picasso Museum. It was so heavily curated that I found its insistence on the importance of Barcelona in his development, irritating. Plus I had to laugh that I found myself looking at the fragments of his early work as if they were fetish objects, ie: “oooh look, Picasso drew this scribble when he was 12… wow you can see his thumb print” etc. Which is such an odd thing to do. Rather disappointingly I think the thing I’ll remember most is a small very graphic cartoon sketch he did of a fat man being given a blow job by a prostitute. Very schoolboy but pretty descriptive! I’m sure that’s not what I’m s’posed to have taken from the great genius.

What I loved was the MACBA (Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona) which was packed with goodies and had a great exhibition of Joan Jonas a performance and installation video artist. It was set up so well. You really had the unnerving feeling, when walking through the pieces, that you get with live performance art (ie: that you keep looking over your shoulder because you’re not sure what’s happening when to whom).

She’d done some work called ‘revolted by the thought of known places’ inspired by Seamus Heaney’s Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish. I loved this Heaney quote she had printed on the wall:

His brain convulsed,
His mind split open,
Vertigo, hysteria, lurchings
And launchings came over him,
He staggered and flapped desperately
He was revolted by the thought of known places
And dreamed strange migrations.
His fingers stiffened
His feet scuffled and flurried
His heart was startled.
His senses were mesmerized.
His sight was bent.
The weapons fell from his hands
And he levitated in a frantic cumbersome motion,
Like a bird of the air.

I love the idea of being compelled to leave what’s known and yet it’s like a battle to escape, or it’s something way beyond his control that has to wrestle him away.

The other wonderful gallery was the Fundacio Joan Miro. A beautiful white modernist building on a hill overlooking the city, housing fabulous big bold bright paintings, sculptures and an amazingly huge textile piece. It all seemed so optimistic and idealistic – an all encompassing confidence in the restorative power of painting. Even the titles were great. One large abstract painting was called: ‘The lark’s wing ringed in the blue of gold meets the heart of the poppy asleep on the field adorned with diamonds’, Miro, 1967. How brilliantly confident!

The most beautiful thing though perhaps was the Mercat de la Boqueria, just next to our hotel. A fabulous food market that was a riot of colour and stunning displays of gorgeous fruit, vegetables, fish, hams, cakes, sweets, olives and oils - even the tripe looked beautiful. Cheap as chips we stuffed ourselves with figs, persimmons, nuts, pastries and chocolate truffles at various different times throughout our trip.

Coming back to school again yesterday though was a bit of a downer. I thought quite a lot while in Barcelona about what I need to do to try to make myself happier in Madrid. I think there’s 4 things: flat, work, Spanish and going out more. I need to find a flat for myself where I can relax, be myself, have people come over, and do some of my own work in my own space. I’ve bought a load of materials and I need to start making my own stuff (not just going to classes). And I need to continue Spanish lessons.

Yesterday I arrived at my anatomy class to be invited privately into the professor’s room (big formal wood lined room with big desk). He’d found someone to translate and explained to me that he was very worried because I clearly didn’t know how to draw and that I would have to work extremely hard and he would have to take extra time to teach me and that even then he wasn’t sure that he would be able to pass me at the end of the course. I was so embarrassed and kind of shaken by it! But managed to explain that although my drawing is probably very bad, I’m only here until Xmas and that since my school doesn‘t care about the credits, if he doesn’t mind me sitting in his class and doing what I can, then I don’t mind if he doesn’t pass me. He was mightily relieved and said that it put his mind at rest and now he wouldn’t worry about it.

But it was really rather depressing. I know that I don’t know how to draw in the way that they are being taught (very detailed shading of 15 hour poses – which you then hand in to be marked), but part of the reason my drawing last week was so very bad was that I really don’t want to be able to draw that way. Well, obviously my pride would love to be able to draw that way, but they are not the kind of drawings that I ever want to make. They are not the kind of drawings that I like to look at, and so I get bored and frustrated after about 6 hours – and then the more I fiddle with it the worse it gets!?! And then the more I think the whole thing is a crazy waste of time. 15 hours to draw a rubbish picture that I didn’t even want to make in the first place. Pointless!

However I do have some nice Spanish people that I sit with in the class who have befriended me and always chat lots (I do my best in my broken Spanish). They like to give me lots of advice which is kind and useful.

I was told today that I was using the wrong kind of paper (!) and so went to the school shop to buy the right kind. You have to ask for it from behind a counter (obviously in Spanish). I asked “¿Tiene las papels por el class d’anatomia?” and was shown the kind that the others were using – which is thick and a pale buff colour. The man in the shop showed me 3 VERY slightly different shades of this pale buff colour. He then asked which professor I have… when I told him it was Pedro Sierra Martinez he checked with his colleague and then gave me the exact shade that you have to use to be in his class. It’s all so controlling I don’t know whether to laugh or cry!!

But at least today the teacher said that he liked the way I’d drawn the bottom of the model’s left leg (his calf). The rest apparently was all wrong… but hell it’s a start!

I will still keep going to the classes as I’m sure I will learn stuff (and I’m bloody stubborn – no fucker tells ME I’m going to fail!!) but I do need to be doing other work that’s just for me or else I’ll get ground down by the constant mortification!

The flat’s not that easy, and isn’t somewhere that I can do any painting, but I think that I’ve found somewhere else in the same area that I can move into pretty much straight away. I spoke to Elena about it last night and she seems to be OK if I move out (maybe it suits her too). So hopefully I can get that sorted this week. I hope it’ll help to have somewhere with internet access & mobile phone reception so that I can stop spending evenings in the dingy internet place to pick up documents for the cereals project that I´m still working on from here, or hanging around on the street to be able to have conversations with people!

Today we met Feli (short for Felizia = ‘happiness’) in Café Commercial (my favourite local place) and she’s going to teach us Spanish twice a week in the mornings, before our art classes, which I’m sure will help too. We start at her flat tomorrow (which is also just around the corner from Bilbao). She seems cool. She’s a freelance translator and currently translating a graphic design book, and is a friend of a friend of our previous teacher (I’ve been following quite a trail to try and find someone good who can teach around our art classes).

I do want to turn this thing around, to sort out the problems, and start having some more fun… so far it’s been far too tough for my liking! I feel like I’m constantly moaning (which is NOT an attribute that I admire!) and poor Rups is still on the end of occassional tearful phone calls. Even if I know I’m doing OK and learning lots, I’m not really happy.

I’m just not laughing nearly enough – which is something I usually do lots of, and so I don’t quite feel myself. Rups has reminded me that I can come home… which maybe I will do if it these things don’t make a difference… but I would really like to make it work well for me, plus soon visitors start arriving and it would be a bit sad if I’m not here to hang out with y’all.