Thursday, December 28, 2006

(maybe im more dogmatic than i thought)

Leave everything.
Leave Dada.
Leave your wife, and your mistress.
Leave your hopes and your fears.
Sow your children in the corner of a wood.
Leave the prey for the shadow.
Leave if need be an easy life, what you are
offered for a future situation.
Hit the road.

André Breton

Friday, December 22, 2006

A Steel Man


I was driving in the city and the stereo was playing Sufjan Stevens' Illinois, oh man, you made my day with this song, oh man you raised the dead...







Only a real man can be a lover
If he had hands to lend us all over
We celebrate our sense of each other
We have a lot to give one another

Took my bags, Illinois
Dreamt the lake took my boy
Man of Steel, Man of Heart
Turn your ear to my part
There are things you have said
Raise the boat, and raise the dead
If you take us away
Still can we say:

Only a steel man can be a lover
If he had hands to tremble all over
We celebrate our sense of each other
We have a lot to give one another

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Poblana en Shock

Estaba a punto de irme a dormir, cuando tomé la revista Código 06140 que estaba sobre mi mesa. No pude mas que pararme a escribir en este blog para reflexionar en voz alta sobre unas llamadas listas negras de unos escritores mexicanos, uno portugués y un arquitecto.
El articulo propone la lista negra como un sitio donde ubicar aspectos negativos de que se registran en la vida cotidiana. (Si no mal recuerdo esta revista se distribuía gratuitamente en la Ciudad de México, pero ahora tiene un costo de 50 pesos).
Un tal Guillermo Fadanelli pone lo siguiente en el octavo lugar de su lista negra:
"El auge del narcotráfico debido a la prohibición inútil de ciertas drogas." ¿De verdad un tipo que es editor, narrador y ensayista se atreve a simplificar tan chabacanamente un asunto como el narcotráfico en México?
Si hubiera leído esta lista negra en una revista como la Vice, que se regala en Londres y otras partes de Europa, y que se mofa absolutamente de todo (menos de la moda)me hubiera hasta reido. La Vice me gusta porque es tan cínica y tan inteligentemente estúpida que no puedes mas que amarla -ajá Andy.
Como poblana me llamó la atención leer la introducción a la lista negra de un tal José Castillo, que es un arquitecto mexicano:
"Quizá lo peor del sexenio fue el costo de oportunidad que tuvo, para la ciudad, la animosidad entre los dos políticos más provincianos que hemos visto en años."
¿Es en serio lo que dice este arquitecto que, supongo yo, se asume como "no provinciano"? ¿Se da cuenta de lo que está diciendo? O, ¿se da cuenta de su chauvinismo?
Otro aspecto que me llamó la atención fue que más de uno de estos hombres (así es, no hay ninguna mujer incluida)señala el terrorismo islámico en su lista negra. Creo que si un periódico como el Evening Standard de Londres, que tiene una reputación bastante mala, por ser lo más conservador e intolerante, (y por tener pésimas críticas de teatro)hiciera su lista negra pondría en primer lugar el terrorismo islámico.
De verdad me pregunto cómo se atreven estos hombres, a hablar tan chabacanamente de cosas serias. No sé. Pienso que Código tiene una línea un poco indefinida. Incluye articulos interesantes que toman en serio al lector y eso se agradece, pero tienen algunas cosas muy desconcertantes.
Es curioso, tengo un shock cultural con mi cultura ahora mismo. Una amiga mexicana que vive en Londres, me decía que nuestra cultura era muy infantil. Al principio me pareció una afirmación muy negativa y exagerada, pero ahora estoy entendiendo un poco a lo que se refiere. Hay mucho miedo en la gente a ser seria, por ser considerada arrogante, y ese miedo hace que algunas personas se vuelvan no sólo infantiles sino superficiales. El famoso ninguneo se vuelve un instrumento de esta actitud.
No puedo publicarrrrrrrrrr grrrrrrrr

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Happy Days

End Game

Waiting

For

Embers

Ghost trio

Ghost knocking on the door

Ghosts

August baby

My Swedish affair

The only one

I ever

Fell for

All that Falls

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Joan Baez made me cry in one hundred bars. So I'm not the only one who's not the one. Babe, you wanted me to follow you until the end of the world, but it wasn't me you were looking for. Despite the lonely nights. Despite the lonely mornings. What can I do? I am who I am.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Estoy muy cansada, creo que tengo anemia. Hace más de un par de años que estoy así, por indisciplinada, por no tomar las medicinas chinas ni la medicina homeopática ni la alópata... necesito comer barro y así obtener un poco de hierro. Acabo de ir a Bellas Artes a ver la exposición de Gabriel Orozco. Está enorme, me gustó mucho............................................................

Tengo sueño. Escribí un poema pequeño miestras esperaba la visa:


I liked your freckles
And I liked your tummy

I even thought
I knew your heart's anatomy

A mystery
You heard me crying

When with a knife
you opened all my arteries

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Romeo and Juliet a Universal Play?

Romeo and Juliet is a play that I always liked more as a text than as a staged play, until I went to see the Mokhwa Repertory Company last week at Barbican. And I have to apologize for being so simplistic in my writing sometimes. I mean, I tend to say this is fantastic or, this is horrible, and I live on praising and despising things, which I myself find a bit tasteless in other people.

Most assertlively, Oh Tae-Suk, the director of this Korean company, makes us laugh since the biginning of the play, creating a great sympathy towards characters like Mercutio and the Nurse in order to make the tragic end even stronger. The actors sing and dance gracefully on a colourful stage with a background of flags that, according to Master Oh, traditionally represent wishes of peace and well-being. Mercutio was played by Lee Do Hyun, an actor who's clearly trained in martial arts and who literally flies on stage. The lovely character makes us cry as he dies at Tybalt hands. The two characters fight in a bathtub, which is originally a fountain in Shakespeare's play. 'The bathtub is a metaphor of the mother' said Master Oh. Thus, Marcutio seeks and finds his return to the mother while fighting with Juliet's cousin.

Mater Oh makes us think about the socio-political situation of his country and though he doesn't say anything literal we understand the importance of the play in his time-space. Neighbours can fall in love with each other, but they can also kill and destroy each other. The acting techniques inevitably remind us of Brecht, as the fourth wall is not there. As I was watching the play I remembered that Brecht loved Chinese theatre and that he draw a lot of ideas from it and adapted them with the Berliner Ensamble.

Actors who have trained phisically would understand how difficult it is to do an action in slow motion. The Mokhwa company works in slow motion most of the time, creating image after image as well as working with the audience's imagination. After Romeo and Juliet die, the prince talks to his people, trying to lecture them. But they don't listen. The flags in the background move with the wind while the Capulets and the Montagues kill each other. Only death remains at the end.

In the workshop that I attended he told us that one of the principles that he worked on was that of skips and omissions. 'My theatre is like a man with missing teeth' he said, 'The audience needs to imagine the missing teeth of this man's mouth'.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

still awake and tired

One of the smells I most dislike in this city is that of Cornish pastries. I used to try to like them when I came to London but it didn’t work at all. Sometimes, when I get back home I get off in Liverpool Street station. Generally I’m really tired and pensive, -or just fucking depressed- and the smell wakes me up and I think: no, please, not again. It’s like passing by a stall of tacos callejeros in D.F.

Another thing that really annoys me is this cheap newspaper called Lite and another one called the London Paper. I’m convinced that those two newspapers are hiding something dirty and fat that’s going on in the politics of this country. But they give them for free in every corner of London, so, who can resist reading about big glasses and no bum and no boobs and no brain Beckham asshole. Or junkie baby face millionaire who’s dating babyshamble? Agh, it’s even worse than the smell of Cornish pastries.

I went to a bookstore today to buy a present for the person who loves art books and has a collection of them thanks to the lady who’s writing this. By the way, I was telling a well-recognised Mexican artist who doesn’t admit it –because he isn’t as well-recognised as he should be but, still, he’s well-known for god’s sake! They wrote about him in the last edition of Frieze magazine- that sometime ago, I had given that person a book of Alexander Calder’s house in the U.S. A lovely book and a lovely man with a lovely house he was. His wife used to decorate and create things for the house with him. I’m cancer, so…yeah, I know this is damned corny but I believe in having a house and a husband and decorating it with many many little babies, and flowers and nice hand-made things. Oh, when am I gonna stop being a girl from Puebla? Probably never.

So, I was in the bookstore and I saw this magazine that I really enjoy reading, Modern Painters. It was something like 6 pounds and I thought, damn it’s damned expensive! I didn’t have money, but I took it with me anyway. I want to know about the work of Gabriel Orozco that opened the new White Cube or about Abby Bakarr Mansaray, an artist from Sierra Leone who entitles his work with names like: A Nuclear Mosquito from Hell. I don’t think I ever heard about an artist from Sierra Leone. His work is quite different from anything I’ve seen before. He combines drawings of screws and structures of gears with space ships and other machinery.

Why should poor marginalized people like me be condemned to read about no brain no boobs and her new house in L.A.? No, I firmly oppose that.

---------


tengo sobredosis de dulces de regaliz que me compre en copenhagen y un baileys que me regalo mi hermanito..........................................ya siento los efectos de tanta azucar en mi sistema....veneno puro. Apenas y asi se puede sobrellevar la idea de regresar a mi pais. Oh, this must be a dream. Nunca en mi vida desee tanto estar en Mexico como este ultimo mes del anio que esta a punto de terminar.

Saturday, December 02, 2006

i woke up i woke up i woke up

(that night)
i was trembling
with fever
and you held me in your arms

for aphrodite, you tried
you tried
you tried
you held me tight

poor fools
we were looking for love

(the next morning)
i could hear you whispering:

thank you
but no thank you

i woke up
i woke up
i woke up

your eyes full of tears
i could smile
and I could feel

your eyes full of tears
i could wipe
all of your fears

but
-----------

mr honey
loving you was the greatest thing

but i didn't even know i did
im sorry
im so sorry

im a complete fraud