Barcelona

Madrid to Barcelona. It is a pleasant four hour journey and if I amnot mistaken, the same train journey that Manuela takes after the death of her son Estaban in Almodovar´s acclaimed film ¨ All about my mother.¨ Almodovar amongst many others, was a film maker from la movida period following the death of Fascist dictator General Franco in 1975. During his reign public displays of affection were prohibited and the story goes that shortly after his death a young couple entertained a crowd with a strip tease in the Plaza Mayor. This behaviour captured the rebellious spirit of the movida movement which was adventurous and hedonistic. Almodovar´s movies engender this spirit through his outrageous characters and unconventional settings, but meanwhile in Barcelona....

When changing cities there is always a brief ( though at times not so brief) period of disorientation and the hostel hunt that goes with it. What struck me immediately about Barcelona is the contrast of its city streets from regal appearance of Madrid. The streets are wide and the building strongly remsemble the downtown streets of London. It is a bustling city with on the coast and the atmosphere is imedaitely more relaxed and casual. People walk around in slippy slops and jeans and tend to have a more inviting manner.

Hugo, Hostel Life in Barcelona

This time I would be staying in an apartment converted to a hostel with the ultra friendly Chilean host - Hugo. Hugo takes a genuine interest in his guests and on that day I am told in is Salsa and Tequila night. Soon after dancing and a few drinks myself and a bunch of girls headed out to catch some of the SPanish night life. The bars however, are mostly dodgy, filled with unappealing Spanish men, until we reach a more traditional Salsa bar. Armed with about two Salsa classes I tried to pick up what I could but ended up having a pretty awesome time. The metro was closed by the time we made it back to the station which mean´t wainting for an hour in the cold for it to start up again at five. It sounds dismal but infact the streets were full of party goers waiting for the trains to start again.

Inside the Segrada Familla

I spen the next few days exploring the streets of Barcelona with a few friends from Paris that I would later be staying with once I made my way up there. There were really charming, easy going and nice to be around. We walked for hours to see Gaudi´s Segrada Familla which is a Cathedral that he designed whic has a peculiar phallic beauty. It will take another ten years to finish and despite Gaudi´s death there are still constructions under way. Gaudi´s architecture can be seen throughout Barcelona. It has an enchanting, mysterious and modern gothic feel.

After that I found myself at the Museu de Picasso which is an impressive collection of most of his earlier works. It has always amazed me that even the most impressive Avant Garde artists go through a period in which their focus is classical. As if they need to master the conventions of the visual elements before they can break them. The gallery is divided chronologically which makes it easy to see how he was influenced by his fellow contemporaries. Time spent in Paris with Lautrec involves numerous sketches of naked Parisian women in a similar style to Lautrec and similiarly time spent with Matisse reveals the same.

Barcelona is a comforting place to explore on your own as their is nothing about the city which implies loneliness. I draw the Jo´burg Cape Town comparison between Madrid and Barcelona in that Madrid appears to bustling with industry and work whereas Barcelona is bustling with anything but such activity. From here I retire from the big cities a bit and head to the Costa del Sol, to sunbathe a while.

Art and Evolution.

The provocative ideals of the Avant Garde movments of the twentieth century seem somewhat misplaced amidst the violent power hungry politics of their time. And yet with the benefit of perspective we can see that Art responds to the historical context in which it finds itself. Their intense and burning desire to discard the artistic conventions of the preceeding centuries was no doubt complementary to the downfall of Aristocratic governence, and Aristocratic ideals with them. Atleast these are my conclusions as I am stare dumbstruck at Picasso´s towering ´Guernica´ at the Museu de Art de Reina Sofia which has a remarkable collection of Spanish Art from the late 19th Century until the present Day including extensive works of Picasso, Dali and Miro.

´Guernica´ is a grotesque masterpiece of daunting size. It is a startling recollection of the bombing of the northern Spanish village called Guernica during the Spanish Civil War in which several civillians and livestock were killed. But more so it is a brief and horrendous moment of destruction which encapsualtes the first half of the 20th century. Infact with current waging wars in Iraq it is an image which has striking relevance even today.

The first time that I ever encountered this image is on the cover a borrowed copy of my father´s ´Iron in the soul´ by Jean Paul Sartre. However, up close there is detail that was not apparent before - the obvious tear shaped eyes, the knife shaped tongues and paint dripping from the teeth of a horse. The collection contains several of Picasso later works, most of which are in Paris. There is also a portrait of his sister looking out the window which my brother once bought me a print of when he was in Spain two years before. I looked at it for a long time, in fond nostalgia.

On the other side of the same floor is a hall dedicated to the surrealist painters Salivador Dali and Joan Miro. I sit, with sore muscles on a bench looking at Dali´s famed, ´The Masturbator´an intriguing montage of his sexuality. He described himself as a crazy man whose insanity was exalted by his knowledge of being, and that genius is a resultant force between the two competing components of our mentality - analytical intelligence and the effusive irrational sub-concious. Ofcourse, in which the latter tends to govern the mode of expression hece the state of the Artist.

I have been lucky enough in the Past to see a temporary exhinition of Magrite in Paris that included all of his most renowned work. The surrealists intrigue me. They managed to discard pre-occupations with moral concerns and visual aestheitc and focus on psych-automatism and without comprimising the visual complexity of their work. Magrite often created meaning through contradiction and Dali and Miro it seems try to perceive meaning theough the sub-concious. It is for me as if they are trying to trace the very root of meaning in the mind.

Cubism and later contemporary art applies the same intentions but aims to deconstruct form itself which can at times feel meaningless. Not meaningless in the semiotic sense, because a red line on a blank canvass has obvious meaning as a statement, but for me it tends to lack emotional impact. There will much more art to come as I leave in a few days and head to Barcelona and the Malaga, Picasso´s birthplace.

Hola Madrid.

So my journey atlast starts its humble beginnings in the capital city of Madrid. I don´t speak a word of Spanish which is making everything more challenging then I had expected. The flight was long and anxious and I arrived on the other side to find a Spain overcast in constant rain.

Strapped to my back are 16 kilo´s of belongings as I walk the streets of Madrid. Walking for hours with a heavy backpack is a stark change for my body which has been lounging languidly for the past three months, finding my only excercise on the dance floors of Jozi bars. Eina, my muscles hurt and I feel clumsy amongst the provocative Spanish fashionistas. Their sense of style is not as aenimic as Chanel chic but just as elegant with a touch of bright green, red or purple. Expressive Individuality seems to be the measure of fashion here although contained within obvious euro cenric trends like boots over the jeans. The streets of Old Madrid are narow and have a striking regal antiquity. The majestic architecture is unbroken by modern modern anomalies which makes me feel like I am walking through a postcard ( despite the fact that my shoes and halfway up my jeans are soaked).

I arrived unuaware that Spain and the surrounding countries are taking a one week vacation coupled with the May Day long weekend. Therefore the hostels are almost fully booked. Luckily a bed opened up in the charming and unusual Cat´s Hostel filled with not so charming and noisy Spanish tennagers on a group tour. I accidentally find myself in the Plaza Mayor while trying to locate my hostel. It is just infront of the the Puerta del Sol and marks one of the main tourist attractions in Madrid with an statue of Felipe II.

I walked the streets for a few hours trying to get orientated in the massive city. I overheard a Scottish girl speaking English on the telephone and felt keen to greet her considering I hadn´t spoken to anyone all day. As it turns out were room mates and ended up wondering around the city together in search of a good, cheap place to eat. We then met with a girl from Las Vegas from the couch surfing project who has been staying in Madrid for the past year to study Spanish. She explained that the Spaniards only have dinner around 10 so their nightlife is somewhat delayed by South African standards. The bars are open from eleven till two and the clubs and night life only start up at 2.ooam. She claims that anyone who leaves before 7.00am is scorned for leaving early, and somehow the Spaniards seem to maintain this hard core party life with their regular 9.00 - 14.00 and 17.00- 20. 00 again jobs with the a modest siesta in between. It is 1.30am on a tuesday night and I am exhausted, sleep deprived and unwilling to experiment with new cultural bio-rhythms tonight.

The Time has come the Walrus said...

In response to my announcement of my departure, many, many friends and members of my family have turned and blankly replied, "Why?"... 'Why travel at all?' -many of them implied - an unintelligible question to my liberal sense of logic. 'Why travel now?', a far more justifiable enquiry and one that I can only attempt to expand on.

I will admit openly to my conflicted state of mind, far too many contradictions for someone of my kind. My Roedean bred A type personality versus my kaalvoete hippie mentality, my conservative traditional Indian heritage versus my very expansive cultural identity, a homeland divided by the colour bar versus a very post modern rainbow nation reality. An east-west, brown white cocktail of commonality. Ying Yang, Ylang Ylang to soothe the universal bi-polar condition. So if anything I suppose that it is an oppurtunity of a lifetime, to opens one´s mind and gain exposure and insight through unconventional experiences. I is also time taken to introspect outside the usual routine of external factors and hopefully a time and space to intergrate my multifaceted and at times contradictory being.

The itenary has changed a dozen times. But now confirmed it starts in Madrid. Withouth a word of Spanish to back me up beyond "uno cafe por favor" I feel for the first time since I made this decision that I am entering uncertain waters. But Madrid has some of the most fascinating art musems in the world, and being and art musem junkie good things are bound to happen. So i suppose... down the rabbit hole I go...