these (wellie) boots are made for dancing

Familia,

Vengo para deciros que me voy.

Y que, además de irme, iré a un festival.

Un festival en Irlanda.

En Irlanda y en Septiembre.

Un festival que a día de hoy se cotiza a 240€ y por el que yo voy a pagar - atención aquí, a ver si se me oye al fondo - cero euros (0€).

...

¿Estamos todos locos?

¡¡¡Sí, nena, sí!!!! :-D

En la maleta: botas de agua, chubasquero y ocho pares de calcetines (cuentan que el primer año del festival hubo acaparación y estraperlo, es decir, ¡peñita vendiendo sus calcetines secos a precio de oro!). Y llevo, atención, 180 toallitas. Porque, en un ejercicio de integración final, voy a seguir los sabios conejos de los indígenas, voy a introducirme en lo que vendría a ser su praxis más cotidiana, lo que constituye su esencia más esencial y no parangonable.

Voy a estar cuatro días sin pisar la ducha.

Rock'n'roll!

Electric Picnic. 4-6 September. Stradbally, Co. Laois, Ireland.

you go on ahead

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

ee cummings

in Austria at that

"Whilst only a few years ago German theatres and theatre publishers were extremely keen on having what they liked to call 'one of those small, dirty, new English plays' in their repertory or catalogue, the rsulting wave of productions is petering out at the beginning of the new century. When there's even an academic conference about it and in Austria at that, surely every wave in the world must be over and done with"

Michael Raab. "The End of a Wave: New British and Irish Plays in the German-speaking Theatre". CDE 9. Trier: WVT, 2002. p. 39

What a waste of life!

Ayer fui a ver The Last Days Of A Reluctant Tyrant, la ultima pieza de Tom Murphy. Premerie mundial en el Abbey, quiza el mejor dramaturgo irlandes que todavia vive, etc. etc. Pues todavia me duele la mandibula tras tres horas de teatro epico a la Brecht, dicciones extranyas, exclamaciones y preguntas tan beckettianas pero tambien tan absolutamente primordiales como 'y todo esto, para que? PARA QUE?'. A Marie Mullen se la ha cargado el Irish Independent porque, por lo visto, su actuacion es hueca, porque no insinua que Arina tiene una rica vida interior, reprimisima, torturada, porque resulta que interpreta a una tirana sin remordimientos, ni retracciones, ni dudas de ningun calibre, una tirana que repetiria cada una de sus acciones y negligencias, que es capaz de desoir a los fantasmas que la rodean. Y no es eso posible? Y no se trata - la tirania, digo - precisamente de eso?

Lo mas terrorifico, sin duda despues del magnifico epilogo de Arina, fueron las risas de la audiencia. Os juro que no hubo ni un segundo en el que sonreir fuera justificable. Quiero pensar que eran risas nerviosas. Porque Murphy habra tomado como inspiracion la narrativa rusa del diecinueve, pero aquello que yo vi anoche fueron, tambien, los ultimos dias de un tigre celta -reticente en el escenario y desencajado en la platea.


Marie Mullen as Arina. Pic by: Ros Kavanagh.

20. learning to fall

Sophia Gardens, 1102


After some little practice
In the proper method of walking,
Having thereby attained some knowledge
Of the art of balance,
The student should make up his mind
To learn to fall correctly.
No amount of theoretical knowledge
Will enable a student to accomplish this.
Actual practice is
Absolutely necessary.

Beat.

In order to fall without injury
The student must make injury
The very least of his worries.
He must occupy himself entirely
With the fact of having been thrown;
Of having lost the bout.
The anguish of loss,
Of physical and psychic defeat,
Is expressed in a sharp slamming of the arm
Against the mat, which should occur a fraction of a second
Before the body hits the ground.
Observing this expression of anguish-in-defeat
The universe finds itself unable to inflict
The further punishment
Of physical pain.
On witnessing the absolute defeat of person and spirit
The universe finds pyshical pain
A trivial and brute means of instruction
Which it then refrains from employing.
Therefore on all occasions
When you are thrown
You must express your defeat in the face of the universe
With this sharp slapping of the mat.
As hard as you can.
The harder you slap, the less pain you will then feel -

She experiences a sudden, unexpected pain.

It is said that in the dusty yellow mornings that follow
Great catastrophes
Only those whose minds are destroyed feel physical pain.
Those whose minds are intact
Wander in the ruins in perfect silence
And contemplate the scale of the crime committed against them.
The universe perceives that at this stage
To inflict mere physical pain would be crass
A distraction from the true horror.
It is only when horror does its job
And these bewildered minds finally crack
That the universe resorts to blunter tools.

Beat

It is wise to begin practice of the first break-fall
From a sitting position, on the ground.


Gary Owen. Ghost City. London: Methuen, 2004.

Howth (Co. Dublin)