A lovely lovely week of food, art, walking and lots of good chat.
Well that is after a really tiring day in Biggleswade on Monday (it’s such a glamorous jetset lifestyle I lead – not!!?! – Sleazyjet Madrid to Luton and back within 24 hours – not fun). But it was good to meet mum and dad at Luton and travel back to Madrid with them.
It was such fun to have them here and to do a combination of showing them my favourite places and discovering new ones with them.
Highlights of the week included Lots and LOTS of great food.
We had a great tapas supper when we arrived back in Madrid (10.30pm) at Santa Barbara No.8 with the magic green salted pimientos (1 in 20 is s’posed to be spicy hot so choosing one is meant to be like Russian roulette!).
We ate a fabulous traditional hearty lunch in La Latina (Casa Lucio was full unfortunately, but the maitre d’ directed us to another great restaurant full of Spanish people having ‘proper big lunches’ – it was a Wednesday!). We somehow managed to have heuvos rotos, suckling pig and albondigas (meatballs) before rolling out of the restaurant at 5pm. A lovely man caught me looking at his pudding and trying to work out what it was, so with a big smile, he walked across the restaurant to come and offer me some (it was a bowl of fresh cherries). He did it with great drama, grace and much laughter from everyone, including us.
Breakfast of course was at the Café Commercial everyday (café con leche, zumo, churros, croissant & tostada de tomates). Fernando my lovely waiter (we’ve finally got to the stage of our relationship of exchanging names… you don’t want to rush these things!) was full of chat and banter and as always completely charmed us all.
We had a great lunch sitting on stools at a bar in Atocha (famoso por las bocadillos de calamares). It was fun to take mum and dad because it’s not the kind of place you’d go into in England (photos of the food on the walls, slot machines and everyone throwing their paper napkins on the floor – very madrileno!). But the food is great and it’s SO Madrid.
Plus a beautiful supper at Nina’s on Calle Manuela Malasana (just up the road). It’s a modern Spanish restaurant, uses beautiful fresh ingredients, cooked and presented with real style, and has a nice relaxed atmosphere. We even had a nice chat with Nina herself (bit of a character in the Madrid restaurant business I hear) who showed us her other place around the corner.
We did lots of walking. We walked from Seranno (where we found some shoes that I bought mum for her birthday in the Camper store), down through Retiro parque to Atocha. We did lots of wandering from Sol up to Plaza Major and around that area; from Opera through to La Latina and back to my flat; and then on Friday around Chueca. But of course with plenty of diversions on route.
We went to the Palacio Real, which I enjoyed much more than I expected. It’s a really exuberant display of wealth and status. It has a wonderful big staircase to swish up in your long skirts, huge chandeliers, and the most amazing wall coverings, carpets and mirrors.
It’s a series of chambers, each decorated completely differently from the next so it’s like walking through a children’s picture book, where every time you turn the page you get a instant hit of colour and shapes and mood that’s different from the last. So you go from rich dark red velvets with candles, through to bright blues and florals, then into soft warm golds with a Chinese influence, and then into decorated Spanish tiles that are bright and shiny but cold.
It gives you a little thrill of anticipation as you go through each door, which doesn’t disappoint. It’s really vibrant and opulent, but done with a sense of fun rather than just imposing. My favourite was the chinoiserie room with hand-embroidered wall coverings, huge mahogany mirrors and a crazy ceiling with 3D vines and flowers all over it and enormous chandeliers. Gorgeous. Might work in my flat in Putney… will give it some thought!!
We also found a brilliant (huge) dance shop that sells flamenco dresses. I have a real thing about wanting one at the moment. You know, for parties, Sunday best, shopping at Sainsburys, that kind of thing. Imagine how fun it would be to do my first crit in January back in Camberwell in a full-length flamenco dress. I imagine myself nonchalantly leaning against the wall in the studio, brushing down my ruffles, a plastic rose behind my ear, saying… “yes, well obviously being in madrid last term has had a profound affect on the development of my practice…” in a proper ‘art school’ pretentious way. It would be so good!
The trouble is that they are stupidly expensive. I tried a couple on in this shop (unfortunately not allowed to take photos – like wedding frock shops!) so I can’t share the full brilliance of it with you, but I found one that I completely LOVED! It was black with huge primary colour spots on it. Huge ruffles on the shoulders and from the knees out. It was gloriously, marvellously, totally over the top and it looked wonderful.
“Why, oh why,“ I hear you cry, “did you not purchase it on the spot?”. Kind readers I share your sense of wonder. Unfortunately the slight issue of €480 stood before me and this utter gorgeousness. Mum and dad did of course offer to contribute so I could have it for Christmas (yes I know I’m 34 but they did!). However sense prevailed, and although of course I could wear it for shopping at Sainsburys, I had to be honest about how often I really would… I think the ruffles might get caught in the wheels of the trolley and I’m not sure it would be warm enough in the frozen peas aisle.
So for now it will remain as a beautiful image in my memory, of the kind of haughty gypsy girl that I must have been in another life. Sometimes things are better that way.
We did that night go to a Flamenco show. And it was amazing. Not what I expected at all. The girls weren’t in big fancy dresses and it wasn’t the kind of choreographed touristy thing I imagined we’d get. It was really raw and emotional and I found myself quite taken aback by it.
It was like jazz improvisation in a way. There was so much interaction between the musicians and the dancers and so although the songs were obviously from a genre (ie: some were tragic, some were boisterous, some seductive in their style), the music and the dancing evolves throughout the song – playing off each other. Both the singers and the dancers seemed like instruments and it was like they used their bodies to make sound and music. The dancers were the percussion and were setting the beats, but the singers and musicians were driving it forward at times, and responding to the dancers pace at others.
There was lots of calling and encouragement from the dancers sitting watching each other when it wasn’t their turn – for both the dancers and the musicians. And there was real appreciation of a good move, or a particularly emotional moment. There was a real sense of teamwork, and as if it’s about group participation to make something happen between you all, rather than someone standing up to show off. Although of course each person's talent was extra-ordinary. The skill of the footwork particularly was stunning! It wasn’t pretty or prissy at all. It was tough and aggressive and proud and intense. They were banging at their chests, and pulling at their clothes as they danced. Two of the girls’ hair clips flew out because they danced with so much energy, and by the end of the songs, they were sweating, panting and their hair was all over the place.
I really loved it, and want to find somewhere more ‘authentic’ to see it again. It felt very real to me, but we were in a flamenco club where you sit and have dinner and then watch the performers, so although we didn’t go to one of the big touristy places, it was still probably half Spanish, half tourists there.
This week I’ve seen loads of art, and that’s been great too.
Although I did have a bad hour in the Thyssen-Bornemisza. I went to meet mum and dad there at 4pm, straight from a drawing class which had once again upset me. I was very annoyed at myself. The teacher liking my structure, came over and started showing me how to shade “properly” by shading in huge sections of my drawing, which I then carried on for an hour. At the end of the class I realised that my picture now looks just like everyone else’s, which felt AWFUL. Suddenly it wasn’t my drawing any more and I was so annoyed at myself for having just done what I was told rather than think about what I wanted to be making. I hated it.
Two girls in the class only realised after an hour that they had the wrong drawings and they had been drawing on each others’ picture for an HOUR!! Emma and I thought it was funny at the time – but it’s also tragic!
Anyhow, going from that into the Thyssen and looking at someone’s weird personal collection of 18th century still lifes, and dutch and American and then impressionist paintings, all looking the same and displayed in the same kind of fancy gold frames in an uber-formal way. I decided that the whole world of art is fucked and just becomes like a collection of shoes for rich people and is a stupid thing to waste your time doing.
Poor mum and dad, it being their first day (AND it was raining on them – the first time it’s rained since I’ve been here!) found me close to tears and we had to leave and go for a wander (in the rain!) instead, while I ranted about how stupid Spain is.
Fortunately a couple of things re-engaged me with art having a point (or at least some joy!).
Andy Goldsworthy in the Palacio de Cristal in Retiro Parque was first stop on my rehabilitation programme! It’s a stunning location. In the nineteenth century glass house in the middle of the park. He’s ‘borrowed’ scots pine logs from the forests to the north of Madrid that are on-route to become commercial products and has made these wonderful huge domed structures from them. After the exhibition they will continue on their journey to become everyday products.
Seeing the logs inside the glass is strange when you’re standing amongst still growing trees in the park. As you walk in you’re hit by the smell of freshly chopped wood (smell isn’t used enough in art I think – it has such an immediate impact that it instantly conjures up lots of memories and associations, in a deeply personal way). The structures are beautiful (both inside and out) and they reminded me of log cabins (they have a pioneering optimism to them) and made me feel as I walked inside like a baby bird in a nest (quite protective). And yet as you look up and realise that all of these logs above you are all just balanced it also feels really quite precarious. Like a game of jenga where if you pulled one out the whole lot could fall. It’s obvious how it’s all made, and yet there’s such a wonder in it because of the scale and the patience required to do it. Maybe that’s kind of like nature itself.
Annoyingly (and very Madrileno!) they were very strict about not standing in the wrong places and had lots of ‘security’ telling you off if your toes were on the line marking the no-go areas!
Perhaps that’s why I loved Sherri Hay’s show “Disasters” at Begona Malone which we kind of stumbled upon (looking for another gallery that’s now closed down). It was definitely the thing I’ve loved most since I’ve been in Spain.
She had made about 20 crystal ball-sized snow storms and each one was displayed on it’s own shelf around the gallery. You picked them up and gave them a good big shake and then watched it all settle. In each one was a collection of little figures, cars, train wrecks, bridges, houses with roofs destroyed, trees etc. As you watched them settle you saw the devastation you had created. Cars landing on top of people, trees landing inside houses.
It was like being responsible for the cyclon in Wizard of Oz. Or like seeing your actions result in the Madrid train bombing carnage. All in miniture inside a bubble world. Like being god it was wickedly joyful. You shook really hard and smiled at your sense of power as it all got stirred up and then watched with a guilty kind of horror as it settled in a specific way, forcing you to imagine if it were real. It was unnervingly fun being so evil. And completely addictive.
Downstairs she was showing intricate charcol drawings that similarly put you as the audience in the role of semi-passive but culpable witness. They were like nightmare-dream narratives, very Goya-esque. All focused around the circle of a circus ring. And all shown from the perspective of a member of the audience. Someone sitting near the back. And in the circus ring were terrible terrible things.
In one, 3 people had been set on fire and there was a queue of volunteers of people who clearly wanted to be next to partake in the spectacle.
In another people with strapped on wings were throwing themselves from high up in the circus tent and falling. Like Icarus (with his wax wings), or like Lucifer (fallen angel), it wasn’t clear whether they were being told to jump or whether they were actively participating, but they were all falling not flying.
In a third a circle of people stood around the edge of the ring with rifles shooting out at the audience (some of whom had guns and were shooting back) and in the centre was someone dressed in a fluffy bunny outfit, standing very still.
In another, in the ring children were having rides on unicorns at the front, while at the back a large tree with many branches was full of hangman nooses and people were climbing up and hanging themselves.
They were very dark and terrible. Very dreamlike. A commentary on celebrity perhaps and the need we have for spectacle. I couldn’t help thinking of Big Brother when people say “but you chose to be in it, you should have known” while we all relish people self-destructing for our entertainment.
I loved that in her work you cannot be passive. You have to pick up and shake the peice to make the work in the snow storms. Or in the drawings, you cannot escape being placed within the audience of the action (because of the perspective it’s drawn). And therefore you become responsible for the cruelty because you have the sense that without a witness it wouldn’t be happening.
Today Emma and I went down to La Casa Encendida and saw the Warhol sobre Warhol show that opened on Friday. It was better than I thought it would be, and connected with this sense of the tragic in celebrity. It brought to my mind the problem with trying to represent someone and separating out ego from "the truth". It’s interesting what happens when you try to distill something (or particularly perhaps, someone) to an essence. There was a tiny Polaroid of Mick Jagger taken in 1976 (looking young, sexy, cocky and vulnerable) and then a series of prints and drawings distilling him into an icon. And of course while something interesting happens, it also becomes empty and just the abstract idea of someone. We think so much about ourselves as being not about our bodies (ie: we’re really deep down about our souls not the outer stuff). But in trying to get a distillation, in simplifying you also lose so much vigour and realness and it’s the complexity and the NOT oneness that actually makes us, I think. It was surprisingly thought-provoking, since I’ve never really connected to Warhol before.
The other lovely art thing this week was seeing mum so excited about seeing Guernica. She loved it, and had to go back to see it again, before we left the Reina Sofia. It was a real pleasure to witness how much it moved her.
I’ve done a bit of work this week (well I’m thinking of this blog as work too now). Yesterday having spent the day writing, thinking, reading (finished my ‘On Cubism’ book that’s been the weighty tome I’ve been working through for the last couple of weeks) I realised that I needed some fresh air, so got the metro to Casa de Campo (think it’s kind of like Hampstead Heath – city countryside!) and after a bit of a walk discovered the zoo.
I decided on a whim to go in, and although I usually hate zoos (I find them depressing) I actually really enjoyed it. My camera was out of battery so I went to the shop and bought a zebra pencil and an elephant sharpener, and did a whole load of quick (had to be because nothing would stay still!) sketches of the animals.
I really got into doing sketches of the gorillas. One was very funny and kept readjusting, but it was as if he was a life model and he got into strange positions and held each pose for about 3 minutes. It was really good. Because they are SO human like, and yet have such different proportions you really have to look carefully rather than draw from your mind. Plus because their bodies work differently to ours (eg: the feet curl all differently), the drawings actually look very much like my strange distorted body parts that I was doing from my odd objects last term. It was funny but nice to find a connection there in such a strange place (the gorilla house in Madrid zoo!).
I’m continuing to stay pretty chipper about what unknown work will come from all of this. I read (in about 48 hours) a great modern gothic romance this week (The Thirteenth Tale) and in it a Miss-Havisham-type novelist explains how her creativity works. I rather liked this approach, and intend to take it as my own (although maybe without the lonely and bitter old dame thing):
“Life is compost. All my life and all my experience, the events that have befallen me, the people I have known, all my memories, dreams, fantasies, everything I have ever read, all of that has been chucked onto the compost heap where over time it has rotted down to a dark, rich, organic mulch. The process of cellular breakdown makes it unrecognisable. Other people call it the imagination. I think of it as a compost heap. Every so often I take an idea, plant it in the compost, and wait. It feeds on that black stuff that used to be a life, takes its energy for its own. It germinates. Takes root. Produces shoots. And so on and so forth.”
Off now to the Yelmo cinema in Tirso de Molina to see Elizabeth (VO ingles, con subtitlos en espanol). Looking forward to seeing those dastardly Spanish attempting to invade with their armada and bring their strange Spanish ways to British shores, but being kept in their place by the heroic English…! Ole!
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Week 7
Now that I’m past the half way point, time seems to be speeding up and there suddenly doesn’t seem to be enough time in the week!
This has been a week of visitors which has been brilliant. Rups was over for a couple of days. A visit of two halves I think it’s fair to say… first 24 hours rather out of sync with each other and so full of frustrations and misunderstandings. It's probably inevitable when we only see each other every 3 weeks and are relying on phone and email to stay connected. But then the last 18 hours, back on form. We had a really good evening out in my neighbourhood, hopping from bar to bar, having a ‘vino tinto’ in each, and a nibble of something lovely. We found a brilliant bar on Calle Colon. It was dark with tiled walls, jammed with people, shelves to the ceiling full of dusty bottles and smokey old adverts. The guys at the bar wore white collarless shirts and black braces (very 1940s), and were carving jamon from huge legs with the hooves still on. To get to the other room we had to literally crawl underneath the bar on our hands and knees. I loved it!
We ended up at a jazz night at Barco. It seemed like everyone else in the place had brought an instrument and after every song the band changed composition… the saxophonist left and was replaced by a fluteist, the girl who played the bass guitar two songs before was back with her bongos, someone else came on with their violin etc. Everyone was very friendly and really getting into it.
It was a bit tantalising to have him leave just as we were getting on well again… but guess that’s the way it has to be. He’s in LA now with Izzie (his sister) for a couple of weeks so we’ve got a 10 hour time difference to try to manage too. But hopefully nothing we can’t cope with. Only 4 weeks till I’m back anyhow so I think best not to fret about it, and try to make the most of talking/emailing when we can.
On Thursday after Rups left in the morning, I had Spanish class with Feli, and then went to college for Pintura Mural, before heading back to the airport to meet Sue (my wonderful sis) and the two babies: Louis (who’s 3 and loves to tell you that fact!), and Rosie (who’s 7 months).
I still can’t really believe that they came. She decided on a bit of a whim to jump on a plane with the two little ones to come from Basel and see me in Madrid (Phil’s away with work in Bankok for the week). It was so great to see them all, and we had a really fun time. Considering we had said we’d keep it pretty low key, we managed to do masses (must be something to do with the kids waking up at 6am – poor Sue!).
Obviously we managed to sqeeze in watching Shrek, Tractor Ted and several episodes of Charlie & Lola on DVD, but also on Friday we did plenty of wandering around Malasana to the various kids playgrounds (there are so many of them – it really is very child-friendly here!). We bought croissants at the Panaderia and went to Café Commercial where we managed to cover most of the table with sticky hot chocolate. My favourite waiter was fab and as friendly as always. He’s just had his 2nd baby and nothing was too much trouble.
We tried to go to a gallery but poor little Louis was a bit frazzled and he had a bit of a tantrum about not going the way we were headed. It was fine in the end (but tough at the time – it does break your heart to see him so upset!!). Mostly it was fine because we just stopped and waited, but it was opportunely helped by a nice old Spanish man who flashed a sweet at Louis as he walked by as a temptation to come, which Louis in the end decided was a good way out of the impasse we’d reached! Smart kid.
People were most taken with the gorgeous kids (not surprising as they are adorable!) but it was funny how many people kept saying “guapo” (“gorgeous”) and wanting to stroke their cheeks. I guess the blue eyes and blond hair really stands out here. Or maybe people here are just more open with each other’s children.
We had lunch by another playground (in fact Louis ate his lunch on the slide) and then in the evening I went out to the market to buy the ingredients for one of the recipes in the cook book Rups bought me (“recipes inspired by the markets of spain”). I impressed myself by my ability to converse with all 3 stall holders that I bought from: the chicken man (yes ONLY sells chicken), the olive man, and the fruit and veg lady (from whom I managed to discover the words for ‘rosemary’, thyme and ‘mint’ which were not on display so I couldn’t use my usual pointing approach!). It tasted pretty damn good though I do say so myself! (chicken with onion, garlic, herbs, sherry (although had to substitute red wine), lemon and olives).
On Saturday we headed down to Sol, and walked up to Plaza Major. Discovered on the way a FANTASTIC ‘Articulos Religioso’ shop. Its windows full of figurines showing (kind of) biblical scenes. Most of which have a single moving part (eg: forward and back hoeing the field). There were some brilliant chickens going up and down feeding, and a rather peculiar ‘Churros’ maker with a magi-mix machine (don’t remember that particular scene in the bible… “blessed are the churros makers…for they make our breakfast?!?”). I imagine this is prime season when all the churches kit out their nativity scenes. Can’t wait to see them in situ!
After more hot chocolate for Louis in Plaza Major, we headed over to Retiro park where we watched a kids open air puppet theatre (reckon the Spanish was pretty much at my level… it seems I’m already speaking as well as a two year old which I think is a pretty good achievement in only 7 weeks!).
Following lunch and the purchase of a special push along helicopter, we went rowing on the lake. Sue was by far the better rower… but Rosie (tied to Sue’s front) didn’t much like the motion so I rowed us - mostly in circles - while Louis captained from the front.
One of the things that was so lovely about having them here was the excuse to play imaginary games all day. I loved it. Louis and I played trains on the high stools in my flat (he was the driver and we went up the mountain and down again, and then to the seaside where we climbed onto my breakfast bar and caught imaginary fish from the side of it. We spent a lot of time doing make-believe tyre changes and various mechanics on a kids seesaw motorbike in the playground. We played at being turtles in the ocean (Louis got to be the shark), and did lots of pretend fishing when in the boat – catching octopuses and jelly fish as well as scary sharks. And then we played nests on the sofa. I was the baby bird and had to lie upside down in the nest that Louis made for me out of all the cushions in the apartment and he fed me lots of imaginary things to eat. Brilliant! I love that the most important thing is to keep the game going and to be able to create a world. Logic doesn’t come into it one jot. You just have to make things seem real through words and acting stuff out, and making silly sound effects.
It was hard to wave them off. Especially when Louis (wearing his monster hat and pulling his little red Maisy Mouse suitcase) on the metro to the airport looked very glum and explained “Me not happy. Me want to stay”. We had to do more nose licking to cheer ourselves up (mine tastes of strawberry apparently, his is definitely banana).
Needless to say with so many visitors I didn’t do too much work during the week (although I like to think that acting like a three year old has to be good for one’s creativity!). Perhaps it was, as all day Sunday I spent doing some paintings, writing in my log book and taking photos. I’m not sure it’s exactly thought through work, but it felt good to be doing stuff.
The paintings are sort of memory paintings. They’re of things that I’ve seen here that I have painted from memory. They are kind of clunky. I think that maybe they’re a reaction to having to do so much work direct from life and observation – and for such long detailed poses (15 hours). It means that I’m quite interested in what one remembers about things and how unreliable that is. I guess it’s like I was saying about lostness last week – noticing details is an inconsistent thing.
I’ve been trying to paint the Virgin Mary altar piece that I saw in the church during the Bach concert a few weeks ago. I have the image of it very vividly in my mind, and yet trying to recreate it without something in front of you is difficult.
I think it’s because you don’t remember all of the elements equally. So for example, I seem to remember quite vividly the pattern on her dress and the light on her halo, but have no sense of her face at all. It makes for a peculiar painting because different parts have different amounts of detail. But then maybe that’s more true to the experience of life. Some parts are rich and full of texture, and others pass in a blur. That’s why things like maps are an odd way of representing space. They are so uniform and consistent which isn’t how one experiences a place at all.
I think that the idea of experiential art is an interesting one. By that I mean people like Francis Alys (his work keeps bugging me and I can’t leave it alone). Like Richard Long, the work is really an action which is then documented. Like him I’ve been making patterns from maps of Madrid (patterns based on the suburbs of the city). I think that perhaps they’ll form walks, in which I’ll discover or collect things. It’s odd marking routes on the maps of places that you don’t know. I can’t help but imagine what the place will be like and use all sorts of instinctive ways of planning the walk. For example street names become important to give a picture in your mind of what a place might be like (even though I know they are usually chosen so arbitrarily). Without knowing anything about these places, I already have quite a strong idea in my mind about what they will be like. I almost don’t want to go, as I know that my picture will be instantly erased when I’m actually there.
Emma and I have been talking about souvenirs and photographs and why one feels the need to make memories tangible. I know that I have quite a mania for collecting evidence of my experiences. I love to take photos (especially with me in them!!) to somehow ‘prove’ that I was there. And I always keep the tickets and leaflets and flyers of places that I go (even in London). This blog is a classic example of how I need to give my experiences some kind of form. Maybe it’s about sharing the experience. Perhaps it doesn’t feel real unless it’s acknowledged by someone else. Or possibly I doubt my ability to remember accurately, and believe that I need triggers to hold onto an experience in my mind. Yet there is not reason why today’s recollection would be more reliable (or ‘true’) than the memory I’ll have in 10 years time.
Inspired by our Pintura Mural class, and a conversation Rups and I had about graffiti, I went out for a couple of hours to photograph the streets near where I live. Sunday afternoon is a great time for it, as all the shops are closed and so the shutters are down showcasing some really impressive work.
It’s an interesting spectrum from grubby, messy tagging with pens, to big bold visual grafitti, to independently commissioned (or permission granted) street art, through to corporations appropriating street art and turning it into advertising.
Interestingly I find either end of the spectrum annoying, but love the middle territories (huge value judgements inherent there!).
The messy tagging is interesting. There is MASSES of it, and it is very intrusive. And yet, although visually it’s not attractive, I am intrigued by two aspects of it. Firstly the need that it reflects. Why do people feel they have to make their mark on public space? Is it anger at being disenfranchised? Is it a marking of territory to give you a bigger sense of yourself? Is it leaving a souvenir of your having been here (like my photos are)?
And then I like the fact that it’s not stopped. I love the fact that there’s no CCTV in Madrid. That despite all the controlling elements of this culture, there is also a sense that public space is really public (which we don’t have in the UK). Perhaps it's because people spend so much time out of doors, walking around in the evenings, that people do feel that the streets belong to them. There is something very liberal about allowing (or at least putting up with) the tagging. Perhaps here no-one really owns the outside walls of buildings. Something I don’t think we share in the UK where graffiti is seen as destruction of private property, and therefore a crime. Although if you think about it, it doesn't actually take away any of the building's space it just adds a layer - taking from the air space around building.
At the other extreme I find myself angry at the sanitised, corporate use of graffiti for advertising (trying to borrow some cudos of the 'cool' area which the big brands are targeting). And yet why should it be OK for a small independent shop to hire an artist to paint their shop front (it’s charmingly unique!) and not a big business? Likewise why should I love the old Farmacia covered in patterned tiles advertising products from the turn of the century, and hate the slogans in the Sfera mural? Surely advertising is advertising? Or maybe not…
So as you can see my work is not really following a specific theme but developing in a number of directions. Emma and I have agreed to write our wish-list of all the things we want to do in our last few weeks in Madrid. To be honest I think that’s the best way to continue. Get stuck into as much as I can while I'm here, and absorb as much as I can from this experience and digest it when I get home at Christmas. Suck the marrow now, and sort out the bones later.
This has been a week of visitors which has been brilliant. Rups was over for a couple of days. A visit of two halves I think it’s fair to say… first 24 hours rather out of sync with each other and so full of frustrations and misunderstandings. It's probably inevitable when we only see each other every 3 weeks and are relying on phone and email to stay connected. But then the last 18 hours, back on form. We had a really good evening out in my neighbourhood, hopping from bar to bar, having a ‘vino tinto’ in each, and a nibble of something lovely. We found a brilliant bar on Calle Colon. It was dark with tiled walls, jammed with people, shelves to the ceiling full of dusty bottles and smokey old adverts. The guys at the bar wore white collarless shirts and black braces (very 1940s), and were carving jamon from huge legs with the hooves still on. To get to the other room we had to literally crawl underneath the bar on our hands and knees. I loved it!
We ended up at a jazz night at Barco. It seemed like everyone else in the place had brought an instrument and after every song the band changed composition… the saxophonist left and was replaced by a fluteist, the girl who played the bass guitar two songs before was back with her bongos, someone else came on with their violin etc. Everyone was very friendly and really getting into it.
It was a bit tantalising to have him leave just as we were getting on well again… but guess that’s the way it has to be. He’s in LA now with Izzie (his sister) for a couple of weeks so we’ve got a 10 hour time difference to try to manage too. But hopefully nothing we can’t cope with. Only 4 weeks till I’m back anyhow so I think best not to fret about it, and try to make the most of talking/emailing when we can.
On Thursday after Rups left in the morning, I had Spanish class with Feli, and then went to college for Pintura Mural, before heading back to the airport to meet Sue (my wonderful sis) and the two babies: Louis (who’s 3 and loves to tell you that fact!), and Rosie (who’s 7 months).
I still can’t really believe that they came. She decided on a bit of a whim to jump on a plane with the two little ones to come from Basel and see me in Madrid (Phil’s away with work in Bankok for the week). It was so great to see them all, and we had a really fun time. Considering we had said we’d keep it pretty low key, we managed to do masses (must be something to do with the kids waking up at 6am – poor Sue!).
Obviously we managed to sqeeze in watching Shrek, Tractor Ted and several episodes of Charlie & Lola on DVD, but also on Friday we did plenty of wandering around Malasana to the various kids playgrounds (there are so many of them – it really is very child-friendly here!). We bought croissants at the Panaderia and went to Café Commercial where we managed to cover most of the table with sticky hot chocolate. My favourite waiter was fab and as friendly as always. He’s just had his 2nd baby and nothing was too much trouble.
We tried to go to a gallery but poor little Louis was a bit frazzled and he had a bit of a tantrum about not going the way we were headed. It was fine in the end (but tough at the time – it does break your heart to see him so upset!!). Mostly it was fine because we just stopped and waited, but it was opportunely helped by a nice old Spanish man who flashed a sweet at Louis as he walked by as a temptation to come, which Louis in the end decided was a good way out of the impasse we’d reached! Smart kid.
People were most taken with the gorgeous kids (not surprising as they are adorable!) but it was funny how many people kept saying “guapo” (“gorgeous”) and wanting to stroke their cheeks. I guess the blue eyes and blond hair really stands out here. Or maybe people here are just more open with each other’s children.
We had lunch by another playground (in fact Louis ate his lunch on the slide) and then in the evening I went out to the market to buy the ingredients for one of the recipes in the cook book Rups bought me (“recipes inspired by the markets of spain”). I impressed myself by my ability to converse with all 3 stall holders that I bought from: the chicken man (yes ONLY sells chicken), the olive man, and the fruit and veg lady (from whom I managed to discover the words for ‘rosemary’, thyme and ‘mint’ which were not on display so I couldn’t use my usual pointing approach!). It tasted pretty damn good though I do say so myself! (chicken with onion, garlic, herbs, sherry (although had to substitute red wine), lemon and olives).
On Saturday we headed down to Sol, and walked up to Plaza Major. Discovered on the way a FANTASTIC ‘Articulos Religioso’ shop. Its windows full of figurines showing (kind of) biblical scenes. Most of which have a single moving part (eg: forward and back hoeing the field). There were some brilliant chickens going up and down feeding, and a rather peculiar ‘Churros’ maker with a magi-mix machine (don’t remember that particular scene in the bible… “blessed are the churros makers…for they make our breakfast?!?”). I imagine this is prime season when all the churches kit out their nativity scenes. Can’t wait to see them in situ!
After more hot chocolate for Louis in Plaza Major, we headed over to Retiro park where we watched a kids open air puppet theatre (reckon the Spanish was pretty much at my level… it seems I’m already speaking as well as a two year old which I think is a pretty good achievement in only 7 weeks!).
Following lunch and the purchase of a special push along helicopter, we went rowing on the lake. Sue was by far the better rower… but Rosie (tied to Sue’s front) didn’t much like the motion so I rowed us - mostly in circles - while Louis captained from the front.
One of the things that was so lovely about having them here was the excuse to play imaginary games all day. I loved it. Louis and I played trains on the high stools in my flat (he was the driver and we went up the mountain and down again, and then to the seaside where we climbed onto my breakfast bar and caught imaginary fish from the side of it. We spent a lot of time doing make-believe tyre changes and various mechanics on a kids seesaw motorbike in the playground. We played at being turtles in the ocean (Louis got to be the shark), and did lots of pretend fishing when in the boat – catching octopuses and jelly fish as well as scary sharks. And then we played nests on the sofa. I was the baby bird and had to lie upside down in the nest that Louis made for me out of all the cushions in the apartment and he fed me lots of imaginary things to eat. Brilliant! I love that the most important thing is to keep the game going and to be able to create a world. Logic doesn’t come into it one jot. You just have to make things seem real through words and acting stuff out, and making silly sound effects.
It was hard to wave them off. Especially when Louis (wearing his monster hat and pulling his little red Maisy Mouse suitcase) on the metro to the airport looked very glum and explained “Me not happy. Me want to stay”. We had to do more nose licking to cheer ourselves up (mine tastes of strawberry apparently, his is definitely banana).
Needless to say with so many visitors I didn’t do too much work during the week (although I like to think that acting like a three year old has to be good for one’s creativity!). Perhaps it was, as all day Sunday I spent doing some paintings, writing in my log book and taking photos. I’m not sure it’s exactly thought through work, but it felt good to be doing stuff.
The paintings are sort of memory paintings. They’re of things that I’ve seen here that I have painted from memory. They are kind of clunky. I think that maybe they’re a reaction to having to do so much work direct from life and observation – and for such long detailed poses (15 hours). It means that I’m quite interested in what one remembers about things and how unreliable that is. I guess it’s like I was saying about lostness last week – noticing details is an inconsistent thing.
I’ve been trying to paint the Virgin Mary altar piece that I saw in the church during the Bach concert a few weeks ago. I have the image of it very vividly in my mind, and yet trying to recreate it without something in front of you is difficult.
I think it’s because you don’t remember all of the elements equally. So for example, I seem to remember quite vividly the pattern on her dress and the light on her halo, but have no sense of her face at all. It makes for a peculiar painting because different parts have different amounts of detail. But then maybe that’s more true to the experience of life. Some parts are rich and full of texture, and others pass in a blur. That’s why things like maps are an odd way of representing space. They are so uniform and consistent which isn’t how one experiences a place at all.
I think that the idea of experiential art is an interesting one. By that I mean people like Francis Alys (his work keeps bugging me and I can’t leave it alone). Like Richard Long, the work is really an action which is then documented. Like him I’ve been making patterns from maps of Madrid (patterns based on the suburbs of the city). I think that perhaps they’ll form walks, in which I’ll discover or collect things. It’s odd marking routes on the maps of places that you don’t know. I can’t help but imagine what the place will be like and use all sorts of instinctive ways of planning the walk. For example street names become important to give a picture in your mind of what a place might be like (even though I know they are usually chosen so arbitrarily). Without knowing anything about these places, I already have quite a strong idea in my mind about what they will be like. I almost don’t want to go, as I know that my picture will be instantly erased when I’m actually there.
Emma and I have been talking about souvenirs and photographs and why one feels the need to make memories tangible. I know that I have quite a mania for collecting evidence of my experiences. I love to take photos (especially with me in them!!) to somehow ‘prove’ that I was there. And I always keep the tickets and leaflets and flyers of places that I go (even in London). This blog is a classic example of how I need to give my experiences some kind of form. Maybe it’s about sharing the experience. Perhaps it doesn’t feel real unless it’s acknowledged by someone else. Or possibly I doubt my ability to remember accurately, and believe that I need triggers to hold onto an experience in my mind. Yet there is not reason why today’s recollection would be more reliable (or ‘true’) than the memory I’ll have in 10 years time.
Inspired by our Pintura Mural class, and a conversation Rups and I had about graffiti, I went out for a couple of hours to photograph the streets near where I live. Sunday afternoon is a great time for it, as all the shops are closed and so the shutters are down showcasing some really impressive work.
It’s an interesting spectrum from grubby, messy tagging with pens, to big bold visual grafitti, to independently commissioned (or permission granted) street art, through to corporations appropriating street art and turning it into advertising.
Interestingly I find either end of the spectrum annoying, but love the middle territories (huge value judgements inherent there!).
The messy tagging is interesting. There is MASSES of it, and it is very intrusive. And yet, although visually it’s not attractive, I am intrigued by two aspects of it. Firstly the need that it reflects. Why do people feel they have to make their mark on public space? Is it anger at being disenfranchised? Is it a marking of territory to give you a bigger sense of yourself? Is it leaving a souvenir of your having been here (like my photos are)?
And then I like the fact that it’s not stopped. I love the fact that there’s no CCTV in Madrid. That despite all the controlling elements of this culture, there is also a sense that public space is really public (which we don’t have in the UK). Perhaps it's because people spend so much time out of doors, walking around in the evenings, that people do feel that the streets belong to them. There is something very liberal about allowing (or at least putting up with) the tagging. Perhaps here no-one really owns the outside walls of buildings. Something I don’t think we share in the UK where graffiti is seen as destruction of private property, and therefore a crime. Although if you think about it, it doesn't actually take away any of the building's space it just adds a layer - taking from the air space around building.
At the other extreme I find myself angry at the sanitised, corporate use of graffiti for advertising (trying to borrow some cudos of the 'cool' area which the big brands are targeting). And yet why should it be OK for a small independent shop to hire an artist to paint their shop front (it’s charmingly unique!) and not a big business? Likewise why should I love the old Farmacia covered in patterned tiles advertising products from the turn of the century, and hate the slogans in the Sfera mural? Surely advertising is advertising? Or maybe not…
So as you can see my work is not really following a specific theme but developing in a number of directions. Emma and I have agreed to write our wish-list of all the things we want to do in our last few weeks in Madrid. To be honest I think that’s the best way to continue. Get stuck into as much as I can while I'm here, and absorb as much as I can from this experience and digest it when I get home at Christmas. Suck the marrow now, and sort out the bones later.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Week 6
Last week in Madrid once again flew by. School continued much the same (but fine). Went to the private viewing of film called ‘Spinning’ at the Madrid Gay Film Festival with Sarah (a first film made on shoe-string budget, by her old landlord about gay men having children). Reckon I understood about 10% of the dialogue but got the story pretty well and it was beautifully filmed in Madrid (fun spotting familiar places!) and was bright, optimistic, and quirky.
This week’s blog comes from about 30,000 ft above France (I guess) as it is written on the way back to Madrid after a weekend in the UK.
Having met up with Rups at Gatwick for a couple of lovely hours on Friday afternoon, I spent the weekend with Emma and the girls in Chichester for her hen. Lots of chat, mad Everest-climbing stories from Anna, champagne, a bike ride, spa and masses of food (not to mention the extremely handsome young piano-playing owner of the country house who ended up accompanying our terrible singing on the white Steinway grand until 3am). It was really great.
But I found it very odd going home for a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon to pick up a few things.
Weirdly everything looked wrong and different when I walked in. It was quite bizarre and unsettling. The proportions of the rooms looked like they had changed, which obviously isn’t the case, but it quite shook me at the time. How could it seem so alien after so little time (only 6 weeks)?
It’s very odd the way that you trust your sense of your memory so much when it’s such an unreliable and changeable being. It was an actual physical experience – kind of like lurching, as my mind tried to marry up what it could see with what it obviously expected. If I were trying to recreate it I’d use a sudden zoom in-out mechanism on a hand-held video camera… something that makes you feel quite off-balance. A very strange sensation.
Last night I hardly slept at all. I really don’t know why. Dozed but felt as if I was awake all night. I had a dream where I was in a lecture theatre and the teacher made me stand up and ask in Spanish who spoke English. I was very pleased with myself that I remembered the verb “teneis” (“to have” in tu-plural). But I had to repeat it several times because it wasn’t loud enough and eventually when I shouted it, I realised to my horror that I’d been tricked into getting people to expose each other… so suddenly people in the lecture hall were standing and pointing at others and shouting “them, it’s them, they do” as if speaking English was a crime. Weird.
The meeting in London went really well though. It was good to see the group again, and to see the packaging and advertising ideas. It makes me feel that we’ve done a really great job getting them to a place where there’s a clear and inspiring brief that the agencies all seem really excited about. I’m really proud of my team and what we’ve achieved – it’s a real buzz.
So being back in the UK was a bit strange, but a positive side-effect is that I’m really excited about getting back to Madrid. Something that I don’t think I would have said 10 days ago (maybe helped by the fact Rups is on the plane too coming over for few days!). It’s definitely a good feeling.
Talking to Rups and to Anna and Emma on the weekend, I was surprised that people say “oh god you poor thing, it sounds awful” from reading this blog. I mean, I’m not saying that it isn’t fucking hard at times, but to me it’s a genuinely mixed bag. Lots of ups and lots of downs! I’m not sure whether it’s because I’m usually pretty chipper and cheerful about things therefore people assume it must be really bad if I’m moaning. Or whether actually I’m using the blog as a bit of a release mechanism so I write most about what’s upsetting me. Or maybe it’s the difficult things that I find the most interesting so that’s what I focus on. Probably it’s a combination of them all. I get the sense it’s difficult for people who know me well to read about the tough bits, but I want this account to be warts-and-all. I guess ultimately I’m writing this for me and not really for anyone else.
If it really was terrible, I WOULD be packing my bags and going back to Blighty (no qualms about that!). I’m here because it is where I want to be at the moment, and I’m learning masses, some of which is great, some of which is a struggle.
One of the things I’m really keen to do, is get on with is some of my own work.
I had a really encouraging email from Jim (Erasmus tutor at Camberwell) following a rather stroppy outburst from me about feeling abandoned. He reminded me of the work that I was doing in my drawing elective (last January) about feet and walking and mapping. He made an interesting observation about the struggle that I have with drawing skills (what being able to draw means) and how I’m revisiting similar territory that I was debating a year ago. He was also really supportive about just getting on with stuff:
“You are a second year student. You must question everything and not be afraid of experimentation and to push your ideas forward in whatever direction, media or format you see fit.
You have settled into a new space and you must give yourself permission to have the confidence to start researching and playing with these ideas. Don’t let the lack of studio space at the University get in the way; the rest of Spain is outside the front door.”
Last week in Pintura Mural we agreed to continue with the theme of Lost-ness and navigation. We’ve set each other some assignments to do which will be helpful I hope. Jolie has set us the task of writing about ‘Lost-ness’, and I figure that maybe this blog is as good a medium for doing that as any.
I’m not sure that “Lost-ness” is a proper word. Although the vagueness of it seems appropriate. What I want to write about is being lost. I look back and feel I’ve spent much of my life feeling lost, and yet find it difficult to describe.
Being lost sounds as if it’s not knowing where you are. But in a way it’s the opposite. Right now, I’ve no idea about where I am in the context of Europe (just gone over the Spanish border – but no idea where). But I’m very comfortable where I am in terms of my physical space. The seat in front of me is blue with a orange squared pattern, the exit signs are in red, the fold-down tray on which my computer sits is pale grey, the safety instructions show how to slide calmly off the wing of the plane, and the duty-free magazine suggests you eat Pringles with your cup of Twinings tea. Everything about Easy Jet is designed to be familiar. So despite having no idea where I am, I do not feel at all lost.
Likewise I can have no idea of what physically surrounds me because I’m really not noticing it (I might be having a good conversation on my mobile phone, or am day dreaming and in a world of my own). I have no idea where I am, but again do not feel lost, because I am not aware.
Instead, feeling lost is about suddenly having an acute sense of the detail of the unfamiliar such that you recognise that it’s totally unknown. It’s noticing exactly where you are – but realising it’s not where you want to be. It’s when I’m walking down a street and realise that I don’t know those tall buildings with the pattered brick and the green painted balconies, or when the corner that I was expecting to come up on the left with the pastry shop that sells strawberry tarts, suddenly isn’t there – instead it’s a vodaphone store.
I realise that I’m lost through noticing unfamiliar details.
Oddly it also happens in places where I do know where I am. Driving down a road in Cambridge that I’ve been down many times before, I suddenly notice an old garage with a blue and yellow sign. I’m convinced that I’ve never seen that before. So I start to question whether I am actually on the right road. I think perhaps I took a wrong turn, because it’s impossible to believe I’ve not noticed that sign before. I carry that uneasy fear of being lost until I spot the church with the big gate 100 metres down the road that I recognise and feel quite buoyant (and slightly foolish) because I was on the right track all along.
This sense of lost-ness is definitely connected to having a purpose and destination. The concept of being on “the right track” assumes that there is a place that you’ve got to get to.
What’s so unsettling about being lost? It’s because you won’t get to where you wanted to be, so you’ll miss something that you think is good or important, or you’ll be late or will keep someone else waiting, or you’ll find yourself somewhere uncomfortable (eg: not “safe”, no metro nearby when you’re tired etc). The anxiety inherent in feeling lost is fear of missing something or the fear of the unpredictable.
I’m sure that’s why I feel I spent so many years feeling lost in my life. Full of fear that there was a right direction, but I didn’t know what it was. Feeling that I’d somehow missed an important turning. Or that by going around in circles that I was bound to miss something, because by the time I arrived it would all be over. Feeling baffled at how I had ended up in the place that I was.
The trouble with this feeling of lost is that I was always operating somewhere other than where I really was. Focusing on where I thought I should be (ie: in the future) or on the twists and turns that had got me to where I was (ie: analysing the past).
I have a slightly better idea of how I ended up where I am now (although finding myself living alone in Madrid is quite a surprise!) but if anything I now have even LESS idea about where I’m heading. And yet I don’t feel so lost any more. The less I worry about the destination and whether it’ll suit other people, the less lost I feel. The more I allow the unpredictable some space to breathe, the more interesting things seem to become.
Being in Madrid has been hugely disorientating. So much is unfamiliar that in many situations I’m totally lost as to how to respond. And yet it hasn’t made me feel as lost as I did when I was in an eight-year relationship and a safe long-term career.
I’m noticing the details of where I am in my life. The things I like. The things I don’t. The things that work for me. The things that don’t. I’m trying to focus on what’s around me, to explore the familiar and the unfamiliar. I want to look up and see the details on the balconies rather than have my nose in the map. Perhaps I am still going around in circles, but most of the time I’ve stopped feeling so lost.
This week’s blog comes from about 30,000 ft above France (I guess) as it is written on the way back to Madrid after a weekend in the UK.
Having met up with Rups at Gatwick for a couple of lovely hours on Friday afternoon, I spent the weekend with Emma and the girls in Chichester for her hen. Lots of chat, mad Everest-climbing stories from Anna, champagne, a bike ride, spa and masses of food (not to mention the extremely handsome young piano-playing owner of the country house who ended up accompanying our terrible singing on the white Steinway grand until 3am). It was really great.
But I found it very odd going home for a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon to pick up a few things.
Weirdly everything looked wrong and different when I walked in. It was quite bizarre and unsettling. The proportions of the rooms looked like they had changed, which obviously isn’t the case, but it quite shook me at the time. How could it seem so alien after so little time (only 6 weeks)?
It’s very odd the way that you trust your sense of your memory so much when it’s such an unreliable and changeable being. It was an actual physical experience – kind of like lurching, as my mind tried to marry up what it could see with what it obviously expected. If I were trying to recreate it I’d use a sudden zoom in-out mechanism on a hand-held video camera… something that makes you feel quite off-balance. A very strange sensation.
Last night I hardly slept at all. I really don’t know why. Dozed but felt as if I was awake all night. I had a dream where I was in a lecture theatre and the teacher made me stand up and ask in Spanish who spoke English. I was very pleased with myself that I remembered the verb “teneis” (“to have” in tu-plural). But I had to repeat it several times because it wasn’t loud enough and eventually when I shouted it, I realised to my horror that I’d been tricked into getting people to expose each other… so suddenly people in the lecture hall were standing and pointing at others and shouting “them, it’s them, they do” as if speaking English was a crime. Weird.
The meeting in London went really well though. It was good to see the group again, and to see the packaging and advertising ideas. It makes me feel that we’ve done a really great job getting them to a place where there’s a clear and inspiring brief that the agencies all seem really excited about. I’m really proud of my team and what we’ve achieved – it’s a real buzz.
So being back in the UK was a bit strange, but a positive side-effect is that I’m really excited about getting back to Madrid. Something that I don’t think I would have said 10 days ago (maybe helped by the fact Rups is on the plane too coming over for few days!). It’s definitely a good feeling.
Talking to Rups and to Anna and Emma on the weekend, I was surprised that people say “oh god you poor thing, it sounds awful” from reading this blog. I mean, I’m not saying that it isn’t fucking hard at times, but to me it’s a genuinely mixed bag. Lots of ups and lots of downs! I’m not sure whether it’s because I’m usually pretty chipper and cheerful about things therefore people assume it must be really bad if I’m moaning. Or whether actually I’m using the blog as a bit of a release mechanism so I write most about what’s upsetting me. Or maybe it’s the difficult things that I find the most interesting so that’s what I focus on. Probably it’s a combination of them all. I get the sense it’s difficult for people who know me well to read about the tough bits, but I want this account to be warts-and-all. I guess ultimately I’m writing this for me and not really for anyone else.
If it really was terrible, I WOULD be packing my bags and going back to Blighty (no qualms about that!). I’m here because it is where I want to be at the moment, and I’m learning masses, some of which is great, some of which is a struggle.
One of the things I’m really keen to do, is get on with is some of my own work.
I had a really encouraging email from Jim (Erasmus tutor at Camberwell) following a rather stroppy outburst from me about feeling abandoned. He reminded me of the work that I was doing in my drawing elective (last January) about feet and walking and mapping. He made an interesting observation about the struggle that I have with drawing skills (what being able to draw means) and how I’m revisiting similar territory that I was debating a year ago. He was also really supportive about just getting on with stuff:
“You are a second year student. You must question everything and not be afraid of experimentation and to push your ideas forward in whatever direction, media or format you see fit.
You have settled into a new space and you must give yourself permission to have the confidence to start researching and playing with these ideas. Don’t let the lack of studio space at the University get in the way; the rest of Spain is outside the front door.”
Last week in Pintura Mural we agreed to continue with the theme of Lost-ness and navigation. We’ve set each other some assignments to do which will be helpful I hope. Jolie has set us the task of writing about ‘Lost-ness’, and I figure that maybe this blog is as good a medium for doing that as any.
I’m not sure that “Lost-ness” is a proper word. Although the vagueness of it seems appropriate. What I want to write about is being lost. I look back and feel I’ve spent much of my life feeling lost, and yet find it difficult to describe.
Being lost sounds as if it’s not knowing where you are. But in a way it’s the opposite. Right now, I’ve no idea about where I am in the context of Europe (just gone over the Spanish border – but no idea where). But I’m very comfortable where I am in terms of my physical space. The seat in front of me is blue with a orange squared pattern, the exit signs are in red, the fold-down tray on which my computer sits is pale grey, the safety instructions show how to slide calmly off the wing of the plane, and the duty-free magazine suggests you eat Pringles with your cup of Twinings tea. Everything about Easy Jet is designed to be familiar. So despite having no idea where I am, I do not feel at all lost.
Likewise I can have no idea of what physically surrounds me because I’m really not noticing it (I might be having a good conversation on my mobile phone, or am day dreaming and in a world of my own). I have no idea where I am, but again do not feel lost, because I am not aware.
Instead, feeling lost is about suddenly having an acute sense of the detail of the unfamiliar such that you recognise that it’s totally unknown. It’s noticing exactly where you are – but realising it’s not where you want to be. It’s when I’m walking down a street and realise that I don’t know those tall buildings with the pattered brick and the green painted balconies, or when the corner that I was expecting to come up on the left with the pastry shop that sells strawberry tarts, suddenly isn’t there – instead it’s a vodaphone store.
I realise that I’m lost through noticing unfamiliar details.
Oddly it also happens in places where I do know where I am. Driving down a road in Cambridge that I’ve been down many times before, I suddenly notice an old garage with a blue and yellow sign. I’m convinced that I’ve never seen that before. So I start to question whether I am actually on the right road. I think perhaps I took a wrong turn, because it’s impossible to believe I’ve not noticed that sign before. I carry that uneasy fear of being lost until I spot the church with the big gate 100 metres down the road that I recognise and feel quite buoyant (and slightly foolish) because I was on the right track all along.
This sense of lost-ness is definitely connected to having a purpose and destination. The concept of being on “the right track” assumes that there is a place that you’ve got to get to.
What’s so unsettling about being lost? It’s because you won’t get to where you wanted to be, so you’ll miss something that you think is good or important, or you’ll be late or will keep someone else waiting, or you’ll find yourself somewhere uncomfortable (eg: not “safe”, no metro nearby when you’re tired etc). The anxiety inherent in feeling lost is fear of missing something or the fear of the unpredictable.
I’m sure that’s why I feel I spent so many years feeling lost in my life. Full of fear that there was a right direction, but I didn’t know what it was. Feeling that I’d somehow missed an important turning. Or that by going around in circles that I was bound to miss something, because by the time I arrived it would all be over. Feeling baffled at how I had ended up in the place that I was.
The trouble with this feeling of lost is that I was always operating somewhere other than where I really was. Focusing on where I thought I should be (ie: in the future) or on the twists and turns that had got me to where I was (ie: analysing the past).
I have a slightly better idea of how I ended up where I am now (although finding myself living alone in Madrid is quite a surprise!) but if anything I now have even LESS idea about where I’m heading. And yet I don’t feel so lost any more. The less I worry about the destination and whether it’ll suit other people, the less lost I feel. The more I allow the unpredictable some space to breathe, the more interesting things seem to become.
Being in Madrid has been hugely disorientating. So much is unfamiliar that in many situations I’m totally lost as to how to respond. And yet it hasn’t made me feel as lost as I did when I was in an eight-year relationship and a safe long-term career.
I’m noticing the details of where I am in my life. The things I like. The things I don’t. The things that work for me. The things that don’t. I’m trying to focus on what’s around me, to explore the familiar and the unfamiliar. I want to look up and see the details on the balconies rather than have my nose in the map. Perhaps I am still going around in circles, but most of the time I’ve stopped feeling so lost.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Week 5
Well this has got to be a good sign… I can’t be arsed to write this week’s blog! Hurrah! I think it’s a good omen that things are on the up.
Biggest and best news of the week is that I’ve got a new place to live… and I LOVE IT!!!
It’s a fab flat right on Calle Fuencarral (v. trendy don’t cha know!) and while it’s costing lots, it’s worth every penny to have my own space (and a very stylish space it is too!). Far better to be happy than have money in the bank!
It’s only about 5 minutes from where I was living before, which is brilliant because it means that I can still go to my favourite café for my coffee in the morning and I know the nice places to shop and drink around here.
Getting the flat sorted was a bit of a scramble last week so took up a fair bit of time, but it really feels like a fresh start being here now. There’s internet access AND mobile reception – hurrah! I really feel I’ll be able to do some work in the apartment (there’s 2 big double door windows with little balconies, so it’s really light and the sun streams in throughout the afternoon). In fact I started a painting this morning… It will be brilliant when people come to stay and it looks like the sofa bed is set to have it’s springs tested!
I’ve got a veritable queue now lined up for the next few weeks. Rups is coming back with me after Emma’s hen-do next Monday for a few days. Then my sister and the babies are coming for a 2 day flying visit from Basel (Louis who’s just turned 3 is guaranteed to generate plenty of laughter). Then there’s a string of people coming out for birthday celebrations: Mum and Dad for hers, Anna for her birthday weekend and then Matt and Sarah for the weekend after his. Plenty of good times me-thinks!
Last Thursday was a bank holiday (la dia del meurte – day of the dead). It’s the day that people take flowers to the cemeteries, tend the graves and have a big family meal. Elena and I went to see Kate and her family. Kate’s recently moved about an hour outside Madrid to a lovely house with amazing views of the mountains and it was hard to believe it was the 1st November as we ate lunch on the terrace in the sunshine wearing only t-shirts. Lovely!
It was great to see her and we had lots of good chats exchanging news about old friends. It did shock me a little though seeing her ‘Interno’s’ room. She has a Paraguayan “chica” (“girl” – but she’s 26) who lives with them from Monday until Saturday morning every week. She helps take care of the 2 kids and does all the cooking and cleaning and washing and ironing. She has a small room downstairs by the garage. Apparently by working for Kate for two years she’ll be able to afford to buy a house in Paraguay (because they’re only €15,000 there). Kate was funny because she was talking about how this girl goes down to the internet café in the village in the evening and chats to her friends back home on-line. “Some people” Kate said “don’t even let theirs go out at night… can you imagine!”. I had to chuckle and felt rather a bond with her ‘Interno’ having spent plenty of evenings myself over the last few weeks in crappy internet cafes full of south Americans!
On Thursday night Emma and I went out with her new flat mate and his friend (both Spanish psychologists in their 30s) in La Latina (her new ‘hood). Was another really good night, bar hopping, eating the famosa heuvos rotos at Casa Lucio Taberna. It’s basically eggs and chips (!) but translates as “broken eggs” – apparently a phrase to be used with caution because in different circumstances it can mean “I’m going to break your balls”. Could be a handy thing to know! There was plenty of banter and we were given a Spanish wine lesson. Apparently Rioja has the best marketing but Somontano and Ribera del Duero are much better! After a few glasses we couldn’t help but agree.
I moved home on Friday and Emma came over and we drank another good bottle of Ribera del Duero and watched a rubbish DVD fllm about Goya.
I went to a couple of contemporary galleries on Saturday which also cheered me up – seeing some good contemporary video installation work here in Madrid and some big and bold and jolly paintings.
After a night out in Chueca on Saturday with a variety of people I’ve met along the way (Spanish classes and college) I went to El Rastro on Sunday to the massive market there. It’s HUGE and absolutely crazily chocker with people. It’s mostly selling rubbish (bit like Camden market) but it’s a really good atmosphere and as long as you don’t need to get anywhere and are just happy to be carried along by the crowd it’s good fun. I bought some brilliantly tacky touristy fridge magnets to put my photos on my new fridge door!
I found that the church nearby had a free Bach Cantantas (choral) concert on so I went to that on my own last night. It was jammed to the rafters so standing room only. In fact I perched at the back on the steps of the confessional box. A lovely old man next to me kept joking about sneaking into it and watching the concert from behind the grill. Those are the times when I especially wish I could speak better Spanish, as even though I understood the joke and laughed along, I couldn’t really respond properly!
The singing was beautiful and the altar piece especially lovely. It was a very simplified virgin Mary with enormous halo sparks coming out from all around her, floating on a bed of flowers. I looked at it for an hour and a half and fell totally in love with it and with her, while the music filled the space.
Now the shocking news of today is that my anatomy teacher actually said he liked (yes “mi gusto”!!!) two of my drawings. He said (well kind of acted out for me, as I didn’t entirely understand the vocabulary) that I had got the structure right and that the structure is like the scaffolding… now I’ve just got to spend time building the house. Anyhow it cheered me up no end (funny how you draw better when you’re happier anyhow… must be a lesson in that!). So we went from 3 hours of anatomy drawing, straight into another 3 hour class of life drawing!
Emma was laughing at me today (what’s new!?!) because she says that I’m succumbing to their evil ways and have started emulating their cheesy style now, and am even talking about my drawings either being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. She’s fair to point it out, but I do also think that if I’m going to be in the class and have my work constantly criticised then I might as well try to take on board what they’re saying. I hope that if I learn a bit of technique then I can still hold onto a sense of individuality too…. I’m only here till Christmas!!! I think I can resist being totally brainwashed. It’s a bit of a change of view from last week I know – but then as all those who know me will recognise, U-turns have often been my speciality. This lady is definitely FOR turning!
And one of the great things about this weekend and today is that I’ve done quite a bit of laughing! Muy muy importante!
Spanish class tomorrow morning and I've not yet done my homework. Feli was great last week, so I think the classes are going to work well and she lives just around the corner which is nice and easy. So I think I should head to my lovely bed - “and it’s mine… all mine!!!!” [cue evil laugh… fade to close….].
Biggest and best news of the week is that I’ve got a new place to live… and I LOVE IT!!!
It’s a fab flat right on Calle Fuencarral (v. trendy don’t cha know!) and while it’s costing lots, it’s worth every penny to have my own space (and a very stylish space it is too!). Far better to be happy than have money in the bank!
It’s only about 5 minutes from where I was living before, which is brilliant because it means that I can still go to my favourite café for my coffee in the morning and I know the nice places to shop and drink around here.
Getting the flat sorted was a bit of a scramble last week so took up a fair bit of time, but it really feels like a fresh start being here now. There’s internet access AND mobile reception – hurrah! I really feel I’ll be able to do some work in the apartment (there’s 2 big double door windows with little balconies, so it’s really light and the sun streams in throughout the afternoon). In fact I started a painting this morning… It will be brilliant when people come to stay and it looks like the sofa bed is set to have it’s springs tested!
I’ve got a veritable queue now lined up for the next few weeks. Rups is coming back with me after Emma’s hen-do next Monday for a few days. Then my sister and the babies are coming for a 2 day flying visit from Basel (Louis who’s just turned 3 is guaranteed to generate plenty of laughter). Then there’s a string of people coming out for birthday celebrations: Mum and Dad for hers, Anna for her birthday weekend and then Matt and Sarah for the weekend after his. Plenty of good times me-thinks!
Last Thursday was a bank holiday (la dia del meurte – day of the dead). It’s the day that people take flowers to the cemeteries, tend the graves and have a big family meal. Elena and I went to see Kate and her family. Kate’s recently moved about an hour outside Madrid to a lovely house with amazing views of the mountains and it was hard to believe it was the 1st November as we ate lunch on the terrace in the sunshine wearing only t-shirts. Lovely!
It was great to see her and we had lots of good chats exchanging news about old friends. It did shock me a little though seeing her ‘Interno’s’ room. She has a Paraguayan “chica” (“girl” – but she’s 26) who lives with them from Monday until Saturday morning every week. She helps take care of the 2 kids and does all the cooking and cleaning and washing and ironing. She has a small room downstairs by the garage. Apparently by working for Kate for two years she’ll be able to afford to buy a house in Paraguay (because they’re only €15,000 there). Kate was funny because she was talking about how this girl goes down to the internet café in the village in the evening and chats to her friends back home on-line. “Some people” Kate said “don’t even let theirs go out at night… can you imagine!”. I had to chuckle and felt rather a bond with her ‘Interno’ having spent plenty of evenings myself over the last few weeks in crappy internet cafes full of south Americans!
On Thursday night Emma and I went out with her new flat mate and his friend (both Spanish psychologists in their 30s) in La Latina (her new ‘hood). Was another really good night, bar hopping, eating the famosa heuvos rotos at Casa Lucio Taberna. It’s basically eggs and chips (!) but translates as “broken eggs” – apparently a phrase to be used with caution because in different circumstances it can mean “I’m going to break your balls”. Could be a handy thing to know! There was plenty of banter and we were given a Spanish wine lesson. Apparently Rioja has the best marketing but Somontano and Ribera del Duero are much better! After a few glasses we couldn’t help but agree.
I moved home on Friday and Emma came over and we drank another good bottle of Ribera del Duero and watched a rubbish DVD fllm about Goya.
I went to a couple of contemporary galleries on Saturday which also cheered me up – seeing some good contemporary video installation work here in Madrid and some big and bold and jolly paintings.
After a night out in Chueca on Saturday with a variety of people I’ve met along the way (Spanish classes and college) I went to El Rastro on Sunday to the massive market there. It’s HUGE and absolutely crazily chocker with people. It’s mostly selling rubbish (bit like Camden market) but it’s a really good atmosphere and as long as you don’t need to get anywhere and are just happy to be carried along by the crowd it’s good fun. I bought some brilliantly tacky touristy fridge magnets to put my photos on my new fridge door!
I found that the church nearby had a free Bach Cantantas (choral) concert on so I went to that on my own last night. It was jammed to the rafters so standing room only. In fact I perched at the back on the steps of the confessional box. A lovely old man next to me kept joking about sneaking into it and watching the concert from behind the grill. Those are the times when I especially wish I could speak better Spanish, as even though I understood the joke and laughed along, I couldn’t really respond properly!
The singing was beautiful and the altar piece especially lovely. It was a very simplified virgin Mary with enormous halo sparks coming out from all around her, floating on a bed of flowers. I looked at it for an hour and a half and fell totally in love with it and with her, while the music filled the space.
Now the shocking news of today is that my anatomy teacher actually said he liked (yes “mi gusto”!!!) two of my drawings. He said (well kind of acted out for me, as I didn’t entirely understand the vocabulary) that I had got the structure right and that the structure is like the scaffolding… now I’ve just got to spend time building the house. Anyhow it cheered me up no end (funny how you draw better when you’re happier anyhow… must be a lesson in that!). So we went from 3 hours of anatomy drawing, straight into another 3 hour class of life drawing!
Emma was laughing at me today (what’s new!?!) because she says that I’m succumbing to their evil ways and have started emulating their cheesy style now, and am even talking about my drawings either being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. She’s fair to point it out, but I do also think that if I’m going to be in the class and have my work constantly criticised then I might as well try to take on board what they’re saying. I hope that if I learn a bit of technique then I can still hold onto a sense of individuality too…. I’m only here till Christmas!!! I think I can resist being totally brainwashed. It’s a bit of a change of view from last week I know – but then as all those who know me will recognise, U-turns have often been my speciality. This lady is definitely FOR turning!
And one of the great things about this weekend and today is that I’ve done quite a bit of laughing! Muy muy importante!
Spanish class tomorrow morning and I've not yet done my homework. Feli was great last week, so I think the classes are going to work well and she lives just around the corner which is nice and easy. So I think I should head to my lovely bed - “and it’s mine… all mine!!!!” [cue evil laugh… fade to close….].
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