Monalia’s World

MONUMENT ON PLAÇA DIAMANTE TODAY

I am speaking enough Catalan to get by and read it fluently. I like to watch the TV3 Càtalan channel and I also read the local news. I noticed an article about ” Refugi Antiaeri de la Plaça del Diamant en Gracia” (aerial bomb shelters of Plaça Diamant in Gracia) with some poorly lit photos, much like these:

The article provided a number to call to make an appointment for a tour. It took all my courage, but I was intrigued enough to dial and converse with a lady who only speaks Catalan but understands Castiliano. It went well. She gave us a booking time and date on Saturday morning in three weeks. She warned me that the tour would be in Catalan, but I assured here this was fine, that we lived nearby and were curious to see these underground shelters, which were constructed during the Guerra Civil (Civil War).

We met at the designated spot at Plaça Diamant, along with a handful of Catalans who were equally curious. I learned a lot, even though the tour was in Catalan. Barcelona was the first city systematically bombed in battles and the first major city to be bombed by air. During the Spanish civil war when Germany and Italy were funding the Spanish facista rebels Hitler decided to use Barcelona to practice and develop what later became known as the blitzkrieg.

Barcelona was also the first city to develop bomb shelters and sent engineers to London during World War II to help design and build their bomb shelter systems. There are 1300 shelters such as the ones we were walking through, but in Gracia alone there were over 90 shelters.

The smell and temperature as we descended the 12 meters of steps was indescribable, like stepping through an energy field into times past. I tuned out our guide as the aroma and sensation of warm dampness, ancient bricks, vague quasi-memories triggered by following tactile sensations deeper, down another maze of steps, through another connecting tunnel. I could imagine having to hide there
as bombs blasted above, the ground quaking, people screaming, women and kids first …

The humidity and temperature of the shelters under Plaça Diamant makes it one of the best preserved. At the peak of the Guerra Civil about 200 people could descend the 12 meters to safety, however I was told many refused to used the shelters. “Life will never stop in this city, ” was their slogan. (”La vida no se paró nunca en esta ciudad”). One thing you can say of all Spaniards; they are passionate in their convictions.

I caught up with the group again at an intertwining corridor intersection which enabled me to follow the tour for a bit, imagining scenarios as the sound of our soft spoken Càtalan tour guide explained - this cave for girls, that cave for boys, this cave for fuel … and how ingenious they were in illuminating the passageways and getting water down to those hiding below. She pointed out some rust colored relics that we would have otherwise passed without noticing - gauze clothing, journals, cans. cooking utensils, miscellaneous objects of survival from time past.

What’s curious to me is how life goes on above on the Plaça, kids running around, old people sitting on benches, an outdoor cafe, no indication whatsoever of the caves directly below.

PEACEFUL ACOUSTIC GUITAR STRUM

Dr. Marta is one of my favorite Catalan girlfriends. She is also a horse surgeon and apparently a very good one as she is constantly traveling to different countries to perform surgeries and/or give lectures about operating on horses.

HORSE WHINNY

She often zips off to perform a horse surgery when she’s on call, but this does not stop her from going out and partying with her friends. If she gets an emergency call she’ll have to drop what she’s doing to go perform the operation, but she’ll return to the fun afterwards if it is still going on. Although Marta is a horse surgeon by profession, she is also the producer and organizer of a popular annual film festival called ‘Festival de Cortos’. Cortos is Spanish for short films. The films in Marta’s Corto festival have a limit of 1 minute. With film it is sometimes much harder to express what you have to say in one minute than in one hour. Keeping to that one minute parameter is very difficult, resulting in some clever and unusual results.

Marta loves to dance, and takes African Dance and Samba Dance classes a few evenings a week. She is always a fun accomplice. She collects percussion instruments, so everyone can find something to bang or shake at the parties holds at her country ranch, which is a 35 minute train ride from where we live.

The actual road to the Marta’s slice of paradise is rough and unpaved, often overgrown. To get there you drive over a bumpy road, past a valley of poppy fields which are impressive in the spring, when the farmhouse is surrounded by lush tree covered hills.

Marta’s Masia is a large two-story farmhouse built in 1500. Inside, the ancient beams in the ceiling are dark roughly hewn trees. The beams on the top floor that hold up the roof are long and at some point a metal girder was added to reinforce the old wood beams. The floor of the second story is simply planks of wood laid across the old beams with square clay tiles added on top of the planks. The kitchen is large and has a big fireplace that has a couch in it. This is one of the cozier reading/napping areas of the house. There are rusty big hooks jutting out, which I imagine they used to hang fresh killed meat on a few centuries ago.

The kitchen is rustic and basic but with inspiring collections of spices in jars and all kinds of things in the pantry to use as a starting kit. It is fun to cook as a team in this kitchen while people sit around and watch and talk or play music. The walls of the farm house are approximately 3 feet thick. The windows are few and small. This makes for a very cool place lie around in the extremely hot summers here. The walls are made out of lots of cement (or what they used as cement in 1500, which happens to be the same ochre color as the dirt outside) and whatever rocks, stones, and bricks happened to be laying around the house at the time it was built (at least that is what it looks like). Inside the thick stone walls have been painted in a thick, cream colored paint that makes the walls appear cavernous. They have fabric draped lamps and lanterns hanging from them. The doorways use large smooth blocks of cement around the opening which gives it sort a Roman ruin feeling. There is a large corral behind the house where the horses stay, blocked in by an electric
fence.

HORSES RUNNING BY

The house is full of couches and comfortable chairs. She has a painting of a horse coming into what appears to be a lit room and a poster that says’ Teatre Romea” of a horse with a Catalan flag draped over it in the living room. Also there are a growing number of colorful naif style paintings sent to her by her boyfriend in Senegal.

Outside the front door is a neglected vegetable garden skirting the front of the house.
The front yard has a big picnic table and a weedy, rocky path down to a small open-air shack with a grill, where feasts are cooked for her musical summer barbecues. There was a big outdoor pit, a bit like the Maori hangi, where they cook all kinds of meat. This is a popular hang out spot for the all the dogs, who also have their own big doghouse/shed to sleep in when things quiet down.


DOG BARK

In her house, upstairs, en route to her bedroom there is a big harem room with about 6 mattresses laid out side by side with fabric, sheets, pillows, blankets, rolled up sleeping bags, all intended for guests who are too drunk or tired to drive home. At the first Masia party Mark and I attended about a year and a half ago, we knew few people, Mark spoke no Spanish, and we were the first to bed upstairs in the harem room, but when we woke up in the morning there were about 10 other people asleep, everyone curled up in one of the provided blankets. Fabric is draped over the big sleeping area like in a brothel or bedouin tent, but no shenanigans took place; just a bunch of drunk Catalan friends (plus me and Mark) sleeping it off. Since then Mark has picked up the language, learned how to play flamenco guitar, and we have connected with many of Marta’s friends. We play music at their parties.

Last year we attended and participated in the third annual Cortos Film Festival, held at Marta’s Masia. There were about 40 or so flim corto entries (including Mark and my 3) which were projected onto a big screen (a huge sheet if the truth be know) draped over the front of her house. It was exciting to see all our films projected onto such a huge screen. They looked great! People paid 15 euros to attend this film festival, eat the food, camp out in tents or in the harem room. There was music and dancing and eating all night long. However too many people showed up, too many didn’t pay, too many stayed too long, so next year it will be held at another, larger venue, a more official one.

I love Marta’s parties because they always evolve into a great jam session. Her friends are varied and interesting; a few veterinarians (who happen to be astounding musicians) but mostly artists, film makers and musicians from all over, though mostly Catalan.

THE SOUND OF AFRICAN DRUMS AMONG CHEERING, DANCING FRIENDS

Mark got a call on his cell phone from a British bloke who is an acquaintance of a friend. The guy’s name is Clive and he claims to be an out of work musician living nearby, in Gracia. Our friend Lee gave him our number, told him to call us because maybe we could distribute his music. He seemed harmless enough so Mark and I agreed to go meet him at Plaça del Sol, 2 blocks from our place. I was expecting him to be tall, skinny and with black hair. I had no basis for this. The guy was meant to recognize us, Mark being tall and wearing a hat.

We walked to Plaça del Sol and waited a few minutes when an unassuming older man approached. He looked like Anthony Hopkins in a slightly down and out role, wearing a non-descript wrinkly shirt and pants. He looked to be in his 60’s but might actually be in his late 50’s; its hard to tell when a man has a balding grey head. He was nice enough but a bit pathetic looking, like someone who’s been beaten by life. We went to his favorite nearby bar for a drink to see if we had anything in common.

Clive’s been living in Spain for about 20 years and has been working odd jobs in that time. He says he left England because he was getting in debt. He moved to Spain to start a new life, got married, has been working in different businesses, creating music for the fun of it. “I’m a music inventor. I can’t read or write music but I ‘invent’ it’ as I play.”

I say diplomatically, “We sell music for composers who’s music fills a market we don’t already have covered. Do you have a recording we can listen to?”

“No, I don’t have anything on tape or CD, but I have recordings that could “easily be mixed by someone”.

We said “we don’t do that.”

“I could bring over my 4 track recorder and drum machine to show you what I do”.

“No, we need a CD or a tape”

“I don’t have any of that fancy technical stuff to make a CD, I’m not sure how to mix the music but I’m sure someone who knew what they were doing could do a good job.”

Mark says “We only sell music that’s ready to go. We don’t mix or separate into loops. We expect our composers to do that.,”

“Huh?” he says. Clearly he was expecting we’d want him to bring his boom box over, play us all his tunes, we was hoping we’d pick a few and want to magically release them through our site.
We told him to check out our website, that he’d understand better what we want if he did some leg work and listened to what we are selling already. He replied that he has a computer and he has ADSL at home, but he doesn’t know how to use any of it.

What do you say to someone like this? Clearly all we have in common is living in Gracia, nothing else. it turns out he hardly even knows Lee, who gave him our number.

I felt for the old fellow, sitting there pitching his music to us - I suppose every musician hopes someone with a record company will some day discover them. The funny thing in this scenario is that our company, Partners In Rhyme, is in the position to make something happen for anyone with a viable “camera ready” product. Lots of composers approach us by sending CDs to us in the mail, which we listen to and some of which we see market potential for and negotiate the standard 50/50 deal, which is a solid industry standard. But never has anyone approached us wanting to bring their box over to play their tunes for us to audition. Clive is already a fond memory for me. Who knows, maybe he writes the most brilliant and original music we’ve ever heard… but even so if a composer doesn’t hand us a camera ready product, we certainly don’t have time to create *their* product. Even more, if a composer doesn’t have it together enough to simply play his music to the people he is trying to pitch it to then he is definitely a lost cause, no matter how empathetic we might be towards him from having been in his same position quite a few times ourselves in the not so distant past.

For a while we were eating at only very authentic Catalan restaurants. One called Su Casa is very interesting. From the front it looks like just another local cervesa y tapas joint but once you walk through to the back it opens up into a large cafeteria style restaurant. There is a kitchen with one cook and there is usually only the one waiter who is a bit beyond his expiration date as he has trouble with the larger trays of dishes and the occasional accident with a hot bowl of soup. The menu is very Catalan, we know what most of the dishes on it are now and once you know one Catalan menu you pretty much know them all. We were both on a mission to understand the menu. I would bring a tiny pocket dictionary and we would look up what words we could. Mark made it a point to try only the dishes that he had no idea what he was ordering. It worked for a while. He found some great dishes; stews, lentil beans, casseroles. I didn’t have as much luck. I once ordered the plate of ‘verduras’ (which literally means green and is supposed to be vegetables) and got a big plate of boiled potatoes, cabbage and beans, nothing green. The same meal I got my “verduras” Mark tried something called Pies de Cerdo y Caracoles. He thought it would be a stew with pieces of meat in it but what he got of course was ‘Feet of Pig and Snails’. The feet were basically just pig fat and tough skin, they were covered with empty snail shells just to make it a little more tantalizing I guess. He did his best, ate what he could, but when he turned his plate and saw a fully formed toe with what looked like a fingernail on it he had to stop. For some reason the image of eating his dog’s severed paw kept popping into his head and he lost his appetite. He sucked on a snail shell but nothing much happened. He has since learned to avoid this dish, although some locals have told us they just love it.

MASSIVE FIREWORKS BANG


Monday night we went roaming the streets of Barcelona with some friends visiting from New Zealand. St Joan Day 2008. This holiday is one of the biggest in Barcelona. Everyone is on the streets armed with fireworks and explosives, there are no rules or regulations, it is complete anarchy; there are old ladies throwing M80’s at little kids with a look of glee in their eye. There are home made bottle rockets filling the skies.

FIREWORKS AND MUSIC WITH CROWD SOUNDS:

MASSIVE FIREWORK BANG WITH CHEERING

There are huge bonfires in the streets, people are throwing pieces of furniture, old books and more fireworks directly into the bonfires.

The streets are lined with tables and all of the neighbors are out drinking and eating, bands are stationed at the end of most streets and people are dancing to live music until early in the morning.

According to tradition you have to swim in the ocean after midnight, So we all headed for the beach. When we got there we could not believe our eyes and ears. The beach was filled with what seemed to be every person who lives in or is visiting Barcelona. There were tents and bonfires, people carrying torches, lots of music. Looking down the coast we could see miles and miles of people partying; chutes of fire and smoke, sparks, bangs, coming from the crowds. It looked like something out of a Peter Jackson film, with an almost medieval cast to it. The sound of the surf pounding to shore made it distinctly Barcelona.

When we found our spot on the beach we took of our clothes and ran into the water which was warm and inviting. It as an absolutely amazing night and I will never forget it.
Barcelona certainly knows how to party! Unlike in USA or New Zealand, where such an event would be contained to a few hours, this party (complete with fireworks) goes on until 10 am the next day, when the beach control comes around and chases everyone off the beach to clean it.

Yesterday was a gorgeous 28 degree (about 85 F) Sunday here in Barcelona so Mark and I improvised an afternoon at the beach. It is so simple here, with no car but living so close to bus stops and 2 metro stations; in this case we walk down the block and around the corner, where we catch the number 39 bus. It takes about 10 minutes to get to Barceloneta beach on the bus. (It takes me 6 minutes on my bike if I go non-stop). The number 39 drops us off right there, and the final stop lets us off across the street from our favorite beach - the “anything goes” beach full of (mostly Spanish) naked people. There is a chiringuito (shack that sells food) directly on the beach where the bus drops us off, pumping out surf, reggae and techno grooves, but we walk along the sand to the right for a bit to get to Anything Goes Beach. Lots of naked, not gay men. Lots of older women too, of all body shapes and sizes. it is great for people watching - but not for everyone. There was a skinny and very dark naked lady who looked to be about 92 years old, wearing only a thong and a turban like scarf on her head who reminded me of a lizard. She was an evenly baked dark brown on every inch of her wrinkly body. There was a handsome, mahogany color man walking along the beach, no clothes at all but he is talking on a cell phone. I decide he must do all his business from this beach, because he is the same mahogany shade from head to toe.

Another couple walked by, looking to be in their mid 30´s, with no clothes but carrying backpacks. They were Spanish, but probably from Madrid or somewhere with no beach. Catalans have a lot of conviction. A plump family of 3, all naked, playing with a beach ball, plopping in the water to retrieve the ball every so often. There were also plenty of gorgeous, young bodies interspersed, with a total “live and let live” vibe. There were a variety of skin colors too, from the extremely tan (completely tan literally all over) to the English translucent white to the Senegalese purple/black. There were a few ‘giant’ men, completely naked with white skin weighing over 300 pounds, splashing and flouncing in the water like they were 9 years old.

One man, possibly a tourist, kept sitting in the sand just near the edge of the water directly in line of where people walk up and down the beach. He was completely naked and had a full erection. He would sit there with a silly look on his a face as people made their way around him and past his erect penis. He seemed to be quivering and shaking as well. Very strange.

On the way walking back along the sand to our bus stop we noticed a legless man, naked, standing on his one good leg, rinsing himself in the beach shower. This is a disturbing image in and of itself, but in the context of Anything Goes Beach its just another detail and ultimately part of the beauty.
Looking down the coast of Barcelona the mix of beautifully modern architecture, old roman era buildings and 70’s style apartment blocks seemed to match the wide variety of people gathered on the beach.

At one point, as Mark and I lay there, marvelling at what a charmed life we have, a beach vendor came up to us holding a tray of fresh coconut meat on ice. We bought and devoured the two remaining pieces he had and were transported back to memories of our little cabana in Fiji where a native would come and crack open a fresh coconut from a nearby palm tree for our breakfast every morning.

Barcelona is a city that thinks on its feet. It listens to the needs and is in touch with the rhythm of its people. On weekends and holidays the metros run frequently, and all night. On Sundays there are fewer metros because many people don’t use the metro on Sundays They stay home or walk or take a car somewhere else. I like riding my bike around the city on Sundays because there are not many cars cluttering up the roads. The pace of a city is somewhat reflected by public transport, and Barcelona has a very human rhythm.

Here are some thumbnail shots from my bike ride through the city.

I’ll start making this a regular feature of my blogs; thumbnail photos from my outtings.

Last night we had dinner with friends and then went to a bar in in our neighborhood, Gracia, that Marta invited us to, which was debuting an animated short film by her friends, whom we had met at her parties. Our Ethiopian meal was superb, and the short walk to the bar playing the film was laden with good conversation.

After dinner we walked to the Bar Helio Gabal to view what turned out to be an impressive 27 minute animated film, but not your ordinary ink and paper or slick CG animation; this film was done almost entirely with sand. To me it seems that the three guys who put this project together were complete masochists. Not only was the medium incredibly difficult to work with (I’m assuming here) but the images and camera moves they chose to portray would be difficult to film in the real world let alone one that was built entirely out of colored sand. The environments that the characters walked through were beautiful and stark, very film noir, with unseen sources of light creating hard rim lights on the characters faces. Gold highlights on faces that would fall of into darkness and shadow. Heads turn towards the camera as light and shadow plays across their face. Mysterious clouds of steam rise and part to reveal distant figures moving in a train station then are quickly enveloped by the steam again. As the character sits in his seat on the train he looks out the window, buildings pass by, some close and some distant. The parallax between the buildings as they pass by is perfect and we find it hard to believe they are doing this with sand. The camera turns back to the face of the man on the train seen through the window from the outside. Subtle reflections in the glass mix together with the light and shadow that is passing over his face. The camera then moves back into the train car, this time from 5 or 6 rows in front of the man sitting in his seat. There are people in the seats in front of him and the camera very slowly zooms through the people to center on the man in the seat. The parallax of the people moving past the camera is again perfect and I found myself wondering if they could have made this project any more difficult on themselves.

Mark talked to one the directors of the film afterwards and asked him a few questions. One thing he wanted to know was if they had used story boards to plot out the scenes and the look. The director replied, just the first part of the film was story boarded. There were three of them working on the concept of the film for about 6 months. There were two animators and a traditional artist, which helps to explain the seamless marriage of beautiful images and the brain numbing technical aspect of moving bits of sand to bring these images to life. They worked for another 6 months together in an isolated location in the hills outside of Barcelona and are such gluttons for punishment that they probably flogged themselves in between takes of these extremely difficult looking sand animations.

I just love the film and art scene in Barcelona. Its really fresh. There’s an optimism and energy reminiscent of Ginsberg, Neil Cassidy, Dharma Bums et al. Unjaded. Determined against all odds. Art for art’s sake.

BUSINESS GOALS FOR PARTNERS IN RHYME

Business is doing very well. We were in the mid-5 figures last month (!!!) and it looks like next month will be about the same. We now represent about 30 composers.

Our outsourced shipping went live and is working so far. We no longer have to ship anything ourselves; no more burning CDs and putting the packages together, no more trips to the post office with 300 euros in cash for stamps to last the month, no more daily frustration with our stupid printer, coaxing it to cooperate with both label and receipt print-out, no more endless trips to Cartridge World to refill our ink cartridges, no more picking up supplies downtown and taking the metro with a big Santa Clause bag overfilling with envelopes and mailers and bubble wrap for each CD. We are no longer complete slaves to the business we created. We’re setting ourselves up to be completely free to travel light and not worry too much if we are away from an internet connection for a day or two in pursuit of sounds and adventure.

Our next goal will be to locate an employee to handle the small customer questions and download issues that takes up too much of Mark’s time at present. Mark’s goal is to be able to go on a 51 day trip all over India for his 50th birthday ( he´s 47 now). We want to be able to leave all of the websites for that amount of time without worrying about them and without having to login to a computer at all.

St. Joan’s Day is a sound designer’s dream; It is unlike any other holiday I’ve experienced in any other country. Its a little bit like the 4th of July used to be in the United States back in the 50’s and a bit like Guy Fawkes Day in Wellington New Zealand, only it is more like controlled anarchy. The whole city gets into it. They sell firecrackers, big ones, at official sites. There are no restrictions or regulations when or where to use them. I have never seen Catalans so united in glee. There are designated pyres on certain intersections where a big bonfire burns all night. We recorded and videotaped all night, “multi-media sound design duo” out on the field. A 60 year old woman threw in a table, A kid tosses a handful of fireworks; feed the fire, feed the fire. The city sounded like a war zone. Persons of all ages lighting the fuse and running or hobbling away. Glee. Chaos. Anarchy in its purest form.

The fireworks are not as intricate and well choreographed as the 1 hour show on Guy Fawkes Day over Wellington Harbor in New Zealand, nor as patriotic and intense as 4th of July fireworks in USA, but I think its more fun than either of those two because it is so hands-on. its a festival for all ages - we saw grandparents lighting firecrackers, as well as young kids. Its a totally a multi-generational holiday, one of many in this country which does not discriminate against the old.

I have some great video footage of the event, will have to figure out how to get the images from my camera to my website in the future. (Actually, you can see images from Fiesta San Juan in the YouTube video “Burn It Down” of my last posting.)

From the local newspaper

In Barcelona, Sant Joan is a lively night of parties and celebrations across the city.