Should Have Known Better

Yesterday a friend asked me if I dream.

And boy, do I dream.

Sadly, like most of us, I don't remember them most of the time.

But when I do, boy do I dream.

I moved mountains, started and ended relations, written books, stayed awake all night.

Just because of some dream.

Sometimes I wake up with an insurmountable feeling of indescribable loss.

Like today, for example.

I felt like that not because the dream was sad, but because it was happy.

I found there some source of lasting happiness, redemption and bliss.

And now it's gone, in the seas of memories of things that never happened I so carefully treasure.

So much is lost in the mornings.

But why am I dreaming this way about that particular chick I banged once?

What does it mean to me?

Maybe I just had a dream and put a face on it.

And then I started to think.

And disconnected memories started to pour in.

A long time ago I met someone, someone I knew even more time ago.

It was a girl.

I hope that says a lot.

We talked and talked, about nothing of importance. 

I sensed there was actively something we were not talking about.

She had been absent for a time. 

I felt similarly during that time in my life.

I wouldn't say "broken" necessarily. Just gone.

And I mean, she was there. A bit too much there, actually. Some of her smile was gone.

I had never known someone with that kind of energy, when she was like fifteen.

We didn't ever hook up or anything, but we had a kind of complicity.

The kind you hide behind energy and enthusiasm. 

A precious kind of engaging bubbling sexualized frailty. And many other words.

Evident in both spirit and body itself.

I guess she sensed I could see through it and wanted to double down.

And she did the same with my playful indifference.

I remember her running to my arms every single time she saw me in highschool.

I would lift her to the skies.

And hug her very close. 

Passing my hand firmly through the soft skin of the back of her neck. 

As if it was the most delicate thing in the world.

Between half a dozen of my incredulous friends and talking to me a centimeter away from my face.

Who had always known me by my serious, not very affectionate, not romantically involved persona.

And I would laugh, and play the game we liked to play.

In which she pretended to want me and I pretended I did not.

And at the same time, that lie masked the reverse one. And so on and so forth.

Fucking funny, isn't it. 

How highschool meant nothing and was a simulacrum and a bunch of ridiculous nonsense.

And at the same time contained the whole world itself.

And felt more real than what reality feels like now.

So, no. This wasn't just "a chick I banged once".

In fact, properly deconstructed, I don't think I have any of those.

The case with this one is that, by some miraculous chance, she didn't become an obsession back then.

Just the phantom of one. The idea of one.

Maybe because during that time, I already was getting everything of girls I wanted to.

So time passed, meeting less and less, and when doing so, both were with other people.

Almost parading a funny assemble of girlfriends and boyfriends to each other.

Both more important that the stupid game we liked to play.

And also just another part of it.

We had a story.

Which is difficult to convey, because I have to insist on it's importance while at the same time.

Dismiss it as a cosmic children's game.

To say it another way:

We have kissed during very important moments in our lives with other people.

Which is weird, because we have done so very rarely.

Two different times we made out the same night I started a long relation with someone else.

And one time it ended one. 

The magical think is I didn't even remember this stuff before right now. To me, it didn't "count".

As if we had a weird platonic thing going on that had nothing to do with the rest of the world.

No matter how hard I would try to explain.

An inside joke understood only by us two and a nonexistent God.

It wasn't even sexual. But at the same time, it was in it's purest form.

We would play lots of games. 

Reverse roles.

Fall in love for a night.

And actually forget about it the next one.

I remember, I used to go with her family during Christmas and play cards with them.

The whole extended family was there.

No explanation, no context.

I don't even remember how it started. We just did it. It lasted a well four or five years.

During which I assumed I was some sort of constant unofficial boyfriend to her family.

That kind of masked the erratic and bewildering life she actually had.

But I don't think she actually invited me for any reason in particular.

Also I didn't go for any particular reason. Really. I just though it was funny and somehow made sense.

I wouldn't even want to play cards with my own family. 

I didn't even like them very much.

And the game was very not funny.

But the farce seemed so natural. So weightless.

Somehow we both understood how to play costumes.

And how we are actually fleeting dust very hard trying to be someone.

So I accompanied her to the bus station.

There was time to kill, so we decided to get a coffee.

She talked to me about how now she was studying again, and how she wanted to study physics.

To solve the universe and build a time machine.

It reminded so much of me when I was eighteen.

Well, without the dark connotations about regrets and guilt.

At some point, for some reason, the conversations really took off. 

Maybe it's because I am quite a different person with caffeine than without.

And she said.

"I don't want to leave so early, but if I stay I would need a place to stay."

Which I hope says a lot.

After going back to my place for a couple of hours.

We went to a girl friend of his to eat something and watch TV.

We got lost in the forest going there, because the direction was wrong.

And you would think, "I understand a direction being wrong, but how do you get into a forest."

And I, to this day, think the same.

But it felt so natural back then.

Then we went to my place again, watched a Harry Potter movie, and slept.

I still have some photo of her standing on my floor mattress.

Pierced by morning light from the giant crystal windows that covered the whole room.

And then she left.

I honestly didn't think much of the whole thing. 

It was something I had dreamed about for years. And for some reason I assumed it was a one-off.

Which turned out to be a luck.

Fast forward a couple of weeks.

I was back in my hometown for some reason. And had not much to do left.

For some other reason, it occurred to me to send her a message, without much pretensions.

Something like, "I'm around, btw."

And to my surprise, she immediately answered. Something this kind of girl usually doesn't do.

My theory is that the two weeks in which I said nothing and then just appeared.

Were in fact the perfect timing: enough to be forgetful but not enough to forget.

There was a pool and we messed around a bit there.

We decided I was going to stay the night.

She was living in her parents house, again. Which was suspicious for someone so independent.

So we just talked a bit, then smoked some weed (I decided to make an exception).

And played an old Harry Potter game in a playstation one, in a daze, well into the night.

Her room was very telling. As most girl rooms are.

Not much stuff. White stuff. Medications scattered in an small table.

Some interesting magical things here and there. A book in a corner. A handmade drawing.

The old tube TV we were playing on.

I know this room.

I've been in this room before.

The "I have been living in a psych ward and then I am back home" room.

Which I guess says a lot about how bizarre my sentimental life was at that time.

We talked some more. 

We talked about how we desired each other, all this time.

How in the end, the game played us.

But very fast it came clear to me this wasn't the end of it. It would just change a little.

Now she wanted to play "normal boyfriend" with me.

In the sense that kids play house sometimes.

And I was willing. But another games that intrigued me were more like:

"Let's be broken together but pretend we're not until we are, for some reason, not."

"Or else live for a while in a world of fantasy we can sometimes create for us."

"In which you want to reach the stars and I am still a happy man."

"Or just play whatever and fuck to try for a second not to think of drugs."

"Let's have a game with the twist that actually in the end it isn't a game."

Oh boy, do I dream.

But crazy with crazy doesn't usually work. And dreamers wake up when their fantasies clash.

I was not someone to play normal couple with.

She was talking with some other boyfriend on the phone.

And either thought I was dumb enough to not notice, or just didn't care.

The first one is more offensive.

For a moment I though: "who cares."

Like, what's a relation anyway. We can do whatever we want.

So I decided to do the same and also started talking with another girl.

But I was just trying to get her jealous so she would pay attention to me.

It kind of worked at first. Until she started to ignore me, and went to the bathroom again.

She did it, from that point on, about once every fifteen minutes.

My best guess was that she went to take nudes to sent to whoever she was talking to on the phone.

And I have the intuition I'm not wrong.

Why did she though I would be fine with that, I can only guess.

I was thinking about what to do. What so say. To drop the nuke and ask her what was going on.

But I guess I didn't want to seem controlling, so I didn't.

Which you may find absurd. But probably you haven't ever been gaslighted into thinking you are.

Also I didn't ask any of the other questions I should.

What happened to her.

What did she saw.

What did she do.

Where did she was.

What did she wanted.

But I wasn't getting what I wanted, so I just didn't want to play anymore.

Not like that.

I didn't even want to fuck (that's a lie) or her to pay attention to me.

The original plan seduced me already, a night of slow perfect cinematic soft decadence.

Together.

To me, the game was over. We had won. Now we could just love each other, however flawed.

And the, like, fourth time she went to the bathroom to take hot pictures of herself.

I decided I had enough, and made the smart sensible thing.

I left and waited for about three hours the next bus to take me home while in the freezing cold.

All while muttering to myself with anger.

What a day and hour I had chosen to have pride.

I remember, before I left she told me:

"Do you really want to leave?" And her words are still in my mind. She looked at me in the eyes.

She wasn't asking me to stay. It was the most honest, piercing question of all time.

I thought "No." and I said "Yes."

It's not possible to me to know if to her, this story meant anything at all.

If she remembers it at all.

And if she does, if she remembers as a nonsensical thing that happened with another crazy guy.

Probably. 

But maybe I was one of the last strings she had from his past life.

The light in her bedroom was still on. And remained on for hours.

I know because I wandering around the park under her window in the middle of the night.

I guess only to hope she would see me and beg me to come back.

It didn't happen, obviously.

It never does.

The problem about us, eternal childs.

Is that the ultimate goal of our infinite games is not to win. But to play forever.

By leaving, I had left the game.

Didn't talk much after that. We have met a handful of times since, all by chance.

I hope that she feels about that adventure that, it's very funny how we are the worst couple of all time.

And that adds to our strange distant occasional intense friendship.

But a part of me knows it would have been better if it never happened.

I guess sometimes we just like to destroy beautiful things.

Corrupt them with our oppressive humanness.

It's in our nature, somewhere.

It's been like, five years since that.

So why, why did I dream about her today.

About meeting and embracing each other.

With a deep understanding and comprehension of our deep flaws.

And living together a single moment that was so beautiful I woke up "with the heart in my fist". 

And I couldn't shake off the dazing sensation of that dream all day.

Hell, I am writing about it right now. I should be sleeping, or preparing my bag.

I have a flight in the morning.

But this whole thing is burning inside.

A single moment pierced the whole experience like no other.

That smile.

It's embarrassing how I dream much more about transcendence linked to casual gestures.

Than I dream about sex.

One time, I told it to a friend and he said "That's fucked up."

When we were in the pool (in real life) in certain moment I made a bad insinuating joke.

And she looked at me like she looked at me before. Like she used to be.

How you can only describe with contradictions.

Innocent sensuality. Premeditated surprise. Carefree gravity.

I saw a glimpse of her. 

Still there, still alive, still accessible.

That's the moment I dreamed about today. That moment of unspeakable connection.

I mean, we were half-naked and making out and all that; but that's besides the point.

Physical intimacy always have powerful emotional connotations. 

Love has aesthetics.

I always fall through memories, through stories.

I fall with potential, even with lost potential.

And what are we, if not the remnants of tragedy.

If not the buildup for a good story about our rise and fall.

The friend that asked me about if I dream, also said something about how he has always wanted to:

"Save the whole world."

And wouldn't be nice if we could save even one person.

And for a second, that idea seduced me.

And for a second, I was willing to sacrifice my whole life to that task.

I was in the dream, and I was in real life.

I was then, and I am now.

Beautiful, isn't it.

There's just a problem. Apart from the obvious disfunctionality of the whole thing.

I lied.

Not about everything. Everything I said did happen. I just left out a little detail.

She didn't just ask me to stay the night. 

She also asked me if I had some coke.

And I said I didn't, but we could get something between the two if she knew someone around.

That time we went to his friends house to eat and watch TV?

Her friends boyfriend was the seller.

We watched Harry Potter because I was so fucking high I couldn't sleep.

She needed it to.

The next day, when all went to shit, I had nothing. Because I don't usually do that stuff.

She wasn't working, so I can only guess where she got the drugs from.

Maybe slightly related to the whole "photos in the bathroom" stuff.

I don't think she was in a psych ward.

I think she was in rehab.

The exact moment I which I started suspecting it, I don't know. I don't want to know.

Was it the day after we fucked?

Was it when I saw her room?

Was it when we were lost in the forest?

Was it the moment I first saw her?

Did I knew and did what I needed to do to get what I wanted?

Perpetuating the problem I were myself pose as the savior of was part of the fantasy?

Maybe she was just the result of a lifetime of people that took what they wanted and left afterwards.

Didn't I just do the same, after fulfilling my own fantasy?

And then promptly forgot about it, until I had this dream?

Like I said:

I don't want to know.

Maybe it was none of those things.

But one thing is clear:

I should just have known better.

Like I always do.

One day, doing a well enough job to recreate who I used to be, I was playing basketball.

And saw someone familiar at the other court behind the curtains playing volleyball.

Same smile, a lot of energy. 

Laughing. Does anybody remember laughter? I do. I dream about it.

And waited a couple of weeks to casually glimpse better so see if it was actually her.

And one day a ball went off the court and I was alone, and she came to pick it up.

And I said her name.

She turned to me, very surprised.

"What?"

I looked at her better and kind of smiled, now it all made sense.

"Sorry. I have mistaken you for someone else."

My best guess is that it was her sister. She must got that a lot.

From the people that met her when she was young.

She's probably around. Somewhere. Maybe not that far.

Probably doing better than me, and would she ever read this she would probably think: "wait what?".

And this will all come full circle and end as it started: Just a dream I had.

Maybe I just had a dream and put a face on it.

And that's all there is to it.

And what I'm doing now is recreating what happened based on what, in a way, makes sense.

What I "remember" being just another story I make up.

Forever blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, past and present.

Shielded from truth by the forgetful sands.

Of sleep and time.

idontcareidontcareidontcare

I don't think or care about what others think of me, maybe with the exception of a handful of people that are important to me, at most. Anything else is just teenage stuff.

Yeah, no.

Your life is so dependent on what others think of you I can't even start to describe it. Your whole world would fall apart if you couldn't communicate normalcy and intention through gestures, customs, established behavior, a painfully curated speech. You depend on what your clients and providers assume of your lawfulness. You depend on not being perceived as creepy or strange by passersby and loved ones. Of course you care, your life depends on it. There is an endless list of small adjustments in your tone, the movement of your feet, distance between people, orientation of your face while you wait in line in a supermarket that communicate more than you could talk about in a lifetime that aren't casual; all this is not decided but learned, by trial and error, mirror neurons and cultural assimilation. And it's not devoid of "content" by any stretch of the imagination —is precisely the collective of those gestures and movements what contains (or is derived from) most of the cultural and ideological information you are; much more than any rationally constructed though and personality.

More than not caring about others think of you, is almost as if you have already defined and integrated a particular set of personal identities (intersectional solutions to common social problems) inside the internalized social culture that surrounds them, and now you have no incentive to think consciously about the problem anymore —so you don't. But to affirm that has no effect or importance to you... my god; you construct your whole life around the idea of acceptability and moral shared values. How do you then explain that the overwhelming majority of your actions are not only accepted, but normal in the incredibly narrow scope on your particular zeitgeist (which is not that tolerant with divergence and much more defined and specific as we think it is)? What other reasons are there than explain why the ways you express your individuality bound by symbolic expressions to be understood by others, your art and appearance (that so come "from within") communicated through the understandable canons of preexisting tokens of expression? What an amazing coincidence, isn't it? It's almost as if you constructed your individuality bouncing around it's inner walls, being corrected every time you got a scratch, and now you proudly proclaim that the result is of your own invention and the result of your own unique personal journey. The obvious explanation is that you fucking care about what others think, but you shield from it in preconstructed packages and delusion, because admitting it would hurt your ego and make you think of something that was in your developmental process "already solved".

The only other explanation is that our behavior is normal because emerges logically from the correct normal ideology, which is even more narrow-minded, a form of cultural and temporal chauvinism.

So internalized we have it that "correct" behavior that makes us acceptable is not even "decided", it comes naturally, makes sense, deviance makes us feel an abject and irrational disgust even when we cant explain it (although we try, the most obvious being classism and racism, but that's just a posterization of a much more granulated phenomena).

We have limited the options for inadequacy (and the potential consequences of bad choices therein) by linking individuality to function and archetype, any inadequacy or wrongdoing cant then be pointed at the perpetrator but instead to the whole group, where we shield into the tribal logic and crowdfund defense of acceptability. Entire collections of small rituals and in-world traditions, where protected function serves as a counterbalance for potential imbalance. And you can be like "well yeah of course your environment and culture influences you of course this is not a groundbreaking discovery". No. You don't understand. It doesn't "influence you", it's the substrate itself from which the phenomenon of behavior and being emerges from. There's a reason to why the best possible way to predict someone's behavior (apart of previous one) are not personality, moral or intellectual values but age, country, occupation and gender. In that order. And if all this is about the whole "I just don't think consciously about this stuff" what can I say, I though we were over this.

You are not liberated, you are just dumb. The only real possible liberation from reality there is.

And I'm just jealous.

Selectively dumb so you can function. Which is pretty smart thing to do. So you can focus your analytical prowess in less holistic and more directly useful problems. I get it. It is me who can't let go. You can "choose to perform as if". Which is not so different from it being, specially if you forget that you're doing it. As a temporal measure "I don't care what others think" can be quite useful, like for example when learning something or when exploring possibilities of being that are not reachable by usual gradient. That's why we allow it to teenagers, even when evidently false. But c'mon. The phase of thinking you are not that sixteen year old dipshit that knew nothing and you must distance yourself from is over.

Even the smallest of the things you do, even the morphology of your face reeks of social interaction and content. Your limbic system cares, therefore you care. We have the eyes we do, with the white space and the visible iris (unlike for example orangutans) because that serves a social function of clarity of your intentions, with is advantageous in tribal societies. The showing of emotions, tears, yawns, posture, smiles. You thing there's a purely biological functional reason for those things? Expression is not an aesthetic axiom of reality. They exist to communicate intent, internal state, they are made to be perceived by others and elicit a response or a change in behavior. You live and die because of that stuff. And you could say, "well but the unconscious perception and reaction of emotions and social cues is a separate thing from caring about others think" and that where you are wrong; you cannot separate the aggregate of micro-stimuli from the overarching behavior itself; it's a product of that. Feelings like guilt, disgust (in the social sense) pride; they are deeply social, not only depending on the individual, but also to even higher constructs like family structure and political ideology. Even when you are by yourself, in your house, in front of a mirror; how you perceive yourself (even when not thinking about others) is dependent on how an almost transcendental "others" would perceive you, you yourself are a "transcendental other" and your aspect and style and clothes are interpreted in the symbolic language of the culture you are immersed into.

The funny thing is, who you are is not even relevant anymore. You are your function and have your instructions and your social identity derives from that, but it has no direct implication how creative, aggressive, perfectionist or whatever you actually are. Because unless you have a job in a cutting edge area everything is figured out and you have to punch the hours and it's your own problem how and nobody will tell the difference in the industrialized commodity it is you help produce. That makes exaggerated purely social forms of identity even more important, because they have to hide the fact that what they simulate doesn't exist anymore. It's an arms race out there. But because there's no real reference to actual content, the symbols we use are interchangeble —and do change, constantly. Everything is everything all at once, and the only difference between praise and ostracism (or worse, indifference) is the presence or absence of intention in your acts and presence. Intention goes around and around in circles of things we don't admit to ourselves that hide deeper motives but those are actually just rationalizations. It goes on and on and on and never ends and nobody does anything for any particular reason. So all personal characteristic coexists as a performance of what it is supposed to represent in the particular cultural context (and nothing out of it) and an ironic effortless nihilistic detached performance about that particular thing and also all the other things in the world. Which is obviously paradoxical, but not as much as the fact that not thinking about what others think of you is so important to your need for external and internal validation; which causes a loop in the cringe-based continuum of the universe. And none of it is (from the point of view of the youth) even linked to any idea of authenticity. His non-existence is taken as a given with a shocking indifference I preach about but can't possibly reenact myself.

fer-se gran

no fa massa i amb tant poques celebracions com vaig poder vaig fer trenta anys, així que em sento una mica més justificat de parlar d'aquestes coses que fa una temporada. tot i que realment res ha canviat. fa bastant de temps que em sento vell, i no crec que tingui gaire a veure amb l'edat. haver travessat més de mitja dècada de depressions i tornar a viure amb els pares no ajuda gaire amb la coherència de l'experiència temporal. mai m'he sentit més vell que amb vintitres ni més jove que amb vintidos. el cas és que últimament em dedico a fer coses, i entre pitos i flautes estic bastant actiu (amb resultats més o menys colorits) el que podria fer pensar a la gent que em veu fer coses que vaig tirant per algun tipus de camí que m'he plantejat i sembla en el fons ho tinc tot controlat.

res més lluny de la realitat.

bueno va, potser tampoc ho sembla tant.

estic en un limbo permanent; a mig camí fent voltes entre algú que vaig deixar de ser i algú que mai ha arribat a existir. totes les mandales sobre la maduresa sempre m'han semblat un grapat de tonteries, però crec que està bastant clar que algo sí que m'he deixat. el què i on i quan, ni idea. potser ha sigut la meva eterna reticencia a posar-me cap barret. l'altre dia ho parlavem amb en cristian: com pot ser que la totalitat de les nostres decisions, essent cada una d'elles un univers en si mateix, ens hagin portat de tornada a l'inici en el que sembla alhora algo completament fortuït i completament inevitable? no se, a mi em dona la sensació de ser la mateixa persona que quan tenia una catorze, i que realment s'aprèn molt menys del que es diu que es fa. al meu voltant, amb molt poca freqüència m'he trobat la aclamada sabiduria de l'edat: en el seu lloc només un grapat de frases manides i trucs de màgia que et fan semblar més... el que sigui, però que no diuen res en particular. si, s'aprenen coses, però la majoria son altament circumstancials. ajustaments tàctics. l'estratègia de fons es manté la mateixa. més de deu anys separen la foto del principi d'aquest escrit de la del final, i no hi ha gaire senyal en el meu rostre de la bastarda onada de temps que ha passat (fins i tot porto la mateixa samarreta). res ha canviat excepte totes les coses que son diferents. potser l'única cosa que si que ho ha fet es que en general tinc més por i menys gana. menys... velocitat d'escapada. més petrificat en una certa versió de mi mateix (que presento també als altres) que és alhora bastant convenient i se sent com a natural però que en realitat és bastant arbitraria. es perd un cert "potencial de transformació", amb l'edat. s'adopta una actitud emocional (aparentment) més sosegada, que no és més que un mer ajustament biològicament induït d'acord amb "game theory" aplicada a les probabilitats de risc i recompensa de les teves accions. no és maduresa, són els àngels podant l'arbre de probabilitats del teu destí cada cop que passa un hivern.

fem les coses que fem per tenir algun tipus de sensació de progrés, de no mirar al voltant i adonar-nos de com de despullats estem davant del temps. de com passen els anys i tot està més o menys igual però que som una mica més grans i patètics. pot ser qualsevol cosa. hi ha gent que busca progressar a la feina, tenir un cotxe algo millor, un pis algo millor, fer un viatge més impressionant. en el meu cas son els meus projectes pseudo-artístics intel·lectualoides, però no és fonamentalment diferent. ho fem perquè, sino què. però alhora, i què. algun dia algú va dir que el problema de l'home és que és incapaç d'estar-se en una cadira sense fer res. zugzwang li diuen els alemanys. com si hi hagués algo a fer, o algun lloc on anar. rarament és el cas. passa que som bons en mantenir-nos ocupats i després oblidar que era una decisió enlloc d'una obligatorietat. 

que ningú vindrà el dia que et moris a donar una puntuació, hòstia puta. 

baixa de la bicicleta estàtica, no t'enganyis, no estàs anant enlloc.

però probablement l'idiota soc jo, i hi hauria de pujar.

encara que sigui només per estar en forma.

llegia ara fa uns mesos sobre tot el concepte aquell psicoanalític modern de l'etern jove, i mentre ho feia podia anar veient com certes coses (no totes) anaven encaixant. fa molt de temps que l'univers em deu alguna forma de mort metafísica, algun tipus de transició de fase o ritual amb fogueres i àcid o una experiència propera a la mort o guanyar una champions o coneixer una noia ben maca que m'obligui a marxar d'aquí. el que sigui per sortir d'aquest estat de decadència i aburriment transcendental (del que sempre em salven a última hora els meus petits impulsos). però crec que aquestes coses les oloro de lluny o m'he tornat immune o algo, perquè no em passa mai res. i quan ho fa, me la suden. molta gent que conec està tinguent fills aquestes dies (va per modes) i alguns asseguren com, malgrat les nostres palles metafísiques sobre el sentit de la vida i el color de l'existència, aquesta és la verdadera transformació fonamental (i no una estratègia per fer "outrun" al buit existencial"), aquella per el que la nostre biologia tant física com mental conspira per realitzar. el sexe n'és només un adelantu, un incentiu inicial de la natura que potser està bé durant una època per sí mateix però que eventualment tornarà per demanar allò que se li deu. la necessitat: la gran simplificadora, que et fa deixar de ser una víctima del teu cap. el meu pare, el psicòleg de la seguretat social i la ceci (que mai hagués cregut estarien junts en una frase) tenen una versió encara més prosaica del problema, i asseguren que el que hauria de fer és deixar-me d'hosties i posar-me a treballar.

és possible

tot i que continuo sense acabar de veure-ho clar.

no per cap profunda idea filosòfica. el que passa és que he descobert últimament que soc molt i molt vago. m'agrada el meu temps més ara que després, i les meves coses més que les coses noves.

una cosa és una mica l'altre (el tema progènie i el tema prolateriejar) o com a mínim, ho va ser per totes les generacions abans de que es fessin populars els anticonceptius: no folles sense matrimoni i no matrimoni sense patrimoni. o alternativament: merda he deixat prenyada una noia ara tinc una família que mantenir. com en aquella cançó den bruce springsteen que m'agrada tocar amb la guitarra. però no se. ja he vigilat de no fer aquestes coses per no trobar-me de sobte amb un nano que he de alimentar o cuidar.

total, que la meva germana i el seu fill de dos anys van venir a viure a casa d'un dia per un altre. imagino que hauria de dir alguna cosa irónica i intel·ligent sobre la futilitat dels nostres plans, però estic una mica cansat. em vaig preguntar si d'alguna manera això em despertaria algun instint amagat. potser alguna manera de re-dirigir la barreja de sexualitat i instint de protecció que normalment projecto a les meves relacions amb les noies. però que va. tot el contrari. si he de tenir fills algun dia, haurà de ser alguna versió de mi fundacionalment canviada qui els hi faci cas. no és tant que molestin (que els tiraries per un balcó) ni que portin molta feina (que la porten) sino que son exasperadament aburrits.

de fet, no em fa gaire res que "number go up". en tot cas, se sent bastant apropiat. de vegades crec que m'enganxaria tenir-ne un bon grapat més. no ho se, hi ha gent que no "pilles" fins que no te certa edat. rollo, com que no estan clar qui son fins que els veus en una franja d'edat particular. hi ha gent que te sentit als setze, als deu, als seixanta... potser el meu sentit es troba més endavant, on les coses més o menys encaixen o les linees del destí convergeixen o jo que se. cap a on queda això, pero, no està gens clar. mai m'he assemblat gaire a ningú, potser perquè no m'hi he volgut assemblar, així que no tinc gaires punts de referència. veig aquesta gent amb les seus problemes parlant de l'impost de basures i l'estat de les autovies i m'agafen basques. les úniques persones així rollo, grans, que he conegut amb vides intel·lectuals actives que puc respectar el que han fet és casar-se als vint i treballar durant dècades assentats en alguna institució acadèmica. no se a quina de les dues coses arribo més tard o em fa més mandra. similarment, mai he compartit gaire el mateix "moment de la meva vida" amb qui tenia al voltant desde que vaig deixar la universitat. hem coincidit, si; però més perquè eren en algun moment lleugerament compatibles, i la propia tendència natural ha fet que quan la tangencialitat s'ha fet obvia, ens separéssim pensant que era per els motius que fos que creiem que era. i de cop i volta ens vam convertir en estranys.

al meu veí de dalt (un senyor gran) el va venir a buscar un ambulància (està bé) i mentre esperàvem a que el traguessin i saber què havia passat, un altre senyor gran va creuar el carrer a fer el mateix que nosaltres. ens vam quedar parlant, i jo ja veia a venir que eventualment em diria algo semblant a l'ho de sempre de que "un no es pot fer gran". però en lloc d'això em va disparar un "quan arribis als seixanta, suïcida't" i crec que va ser una experiència molt bonica.

també amb un familiar que ja toca els vuitanta i les ha vist de tots colors i viu còmodament en una casa pairal o ves a saber què vol dir això, amb la seva dona i te fills i te nets i te internet i un hort i en general totes les coses que podria demanar, vaig tenir una conversa semblant. "sigues sincer. la joventut està lleugerament sobrevalorada?" em va mirar un segon i va contestar: "no".

pues vaia puta merda.

acte seguit va tornar a parlar de quan va comprar un pis per cinc mil pessetes i que treballava molt quan era jove i sobre com, un cop treballant a la construcció, ell sol va portar un tronc a l'espatlla. n'estava molt orgullós, de la seva antiga força, se li veia als ulls (deuria ser un tronc molt gran).

potser relacionat amb tot això (probablement no) és que allò que creia que era soledat potser no és tant simple. perquè sol no estic (almenys quan no ho vull estar). sino que més aviat el "problema" és que sento una fonamental desconnexió o alienació amb tota la raça humana. algo que ja estava allà en el moment en el que vaig despertar quan era petit i em vaig preguntar qui son tots aquests imbècils, però que he pogut més o menys navegar representant papers d'explorador o documentalista. i ara, que estic una mica cansat de fer aquestes coses, que la il·lusió de un mateix es va difuminant, l'únic que queda és que tu ets tu; i que estàs sol (i sempre ho has estat) i rodejat de marcians. i que a tothom li passa una mica al mateix, a la seva manera, i que les poderoses estatues en honor al teu excepcionalisme acaben sempre esmicolades a l'entrada del que solia ser el regne de tu mateix, aproximadament de la mida d'una calavera. potser és això fer-se gran.

tot i que se he de ser sincer, sona massa poètic com per ser veritat.

i a més, això ja ho sabia als quinze anys.

Street Photography BCN 2024

Aquest és el meu primer intent de fer "fotografia de carrer". Es a dir, algun cop a la meva vida havia estat al carrer i fet alguna foto, però mai m'havia plantat enmig d'una ciutat concorreguda amb la intenció de disparar a persones que no conec de res. No soc gaire de fer "gèneres" de fotografia (sempre fent coses "càndides" una mica a l'atzar) però si algun m'ha cridat mai especialment l'atenció es aquest.

Vaig fer un cafè per el Born i vaig treure la càmera, sense saber què fer-ne d'ella, fins que em vaig creuar la noia amb el ram de flors (més abaix) i tot seguit em vaig girar per trobar una senzilla foto perfecte que ni tan-sols sembla que hagi fet jo. A partir d'aquell moment, vaig entrar en mode hipervigilancia visual i vaig començar a caminar com una furia en totes direccions, fent fotos sense que gaire gent se n'adonés a tot allò que em semblava interessant.

És curiós, en el sentit de que t'amagues entre multituds. No importa els gestos de facis, al final ets tu amb una càmera i el teu objectiu està a pocs metres de distància i no hi ha realment gaire res més que podries estar fotografiant. La meva estratègia era semblar un turista que s'ha mig perdut i que no acaba de saber com funciona la seva càmera; el que no se si va enganyar a ningú però que sens dubte em va mantenir a mi mateix una mica escudat. Però tampoc m'agrada fer de paparazzi, sortir corrents ni res semblant. Vaig saludar a tota la gent que havia de saludar i crec que no em va perjudicar passejar-me amb un sincer aire d'interès i genuïsme. La meva resposta preparada a què coi estava fent era algo semblant a "estic documentant el món", frase que em repeteixo de tant en tant (i que la meva esperança és que s'hagi filtrat del meu subconscient a la meva presència d'alguna forma) però que no vaig tenir (per sort) oportunitat de desenvainar. No soc la persona amb més energia social de la historia. Però no és només qüestió de "com", sino òbviament també una qüestió de "què". Per fer fotos a persones d'aquesta manera, un ha d'adoptar un rol una mica estrany: casi com si fos un alien (o el que és el mateix, un documentalista) i ha de desenvolupar una visió de la gent com algo summament interessant, re-considerar tot allò mundà que fan com la representació altament simbòlica que realment és. És llavors quan un prem el disparador. No simplement a gent "random" que un es troba pel carrer.

Les dues o tres hores que vaig estar fent kilòmetres a l'obturador em van drenar completament de tota energia. Tant, que vaig tardar una setmana en tenir valor per passar-les a l'ordinador i començar-les a editar. Dels resultats però, n'estic bastant satisfet; el que no acostumo a estar casi mai quan faig fotos.

Imagino que ho tornaré a fer, en algun futur, però de moment això és el que hi ha.  

The Power of Choice

This essay could be about a lot of things, and by that I mean, approachable through a lot of different medium and topics. However, once again, I choose this one. How quaint. 

How to begin?

Our lives are made of choices, constellations of them. Even the things we take from granted, they come from choices. Not necessarily choices we consciously make (a lot of times they come prepackaged with others, or disguised) but choices nonetheless. Sometimes they are "non-choices", which is what I call choices that we make seemingly at random to get out of making one and in themselves are just another option of choice. People instinctively flee from choices, because they perceive the grave burden they contain. I hinted at the topic before.

But that's WAY too abstract and difficult for today. Today I come to talk about about, you guessed it, AI.

Please hold your boos until the end.

It turns out, computers can do music. I don't give a crap if it's "real music" or not. It sometimes punches you in the gut when you listen to it, and that's all I care about. So, the same way I did when I figured out it can play chess, when it started writing, when it created visual art, I started to experiment with what it could do. In that space, I found very similar problems with the image creating ones. Styles converge into formulas, community seemingly cares only about making joke, meta or obvious content (pictures or girls, cats, and AI itself), it's somewhat easy to get beautiful things, hard to get meaningful things, impossible to get what you want. What infuriates me the most is not the cosmic belligerent attitude of artists (poor souls are trying desperately to preserve their livelihood with a crusade, or maybe because they see as something that pertains to the magical realm of human agency, even when every single one of their inputs pass in some way or another through transformative process linked to a machine) but the indifference of people interested in art. We have these "things", that very well could be aliens, in our hands. A bunch of cables and metal that is trying to understand the human mind through creating and listening to music. And we do nothing with it.

So I decided to do something with it (I always fail for the same trap).

Long story short, I sometimes make AI music now.

But do I really make it? I don't know. I input a bunch of stuff in a textbox and an audio file comes out. It surely doesn't feel like making music, playing music, or composing music. Some of the lyrics for the song are mine, others are from old poems and others are unapologetically stolen from songs I like (or what I call them, homages). But then, if the machine makes the sound, what am I "doing"? Easy, I am choosing. Every song in the world is, deep down, a combination and choices: both big and small. In this case, I am bypassing most of the small ones. The process is somewhat comparable (and equally bizarre at the beginning) of mentioning an idea for a song to a friend that is fiercely intelligent but don't quite understand social cues and has a loose grip on reality, only for the guy to send you an audio three days after with a fully (over)produced single that he has made following an amphetamine binge. And now he will be sleeping for a week so you can't make any changes ever. And the result is sometimes eerily beautiful, even if only he should just tone down a bit the autotune. But I guess a big artist giving the lyrics or a post-it with an idea for an album to her production company, and that outputting a fully fledged world tour is not that far off what happens inside my computer case.

But this is how it's done. How it feels is different. Because I do that stuff, and could be good or could be bad, but it feels somewhat mine. Like I willed something into existence. Something that was already there somehow, but needed to be teared from the collective musical unconscious into a form. I selected my words, I selected my styles, I listened to the results, and from all the songs, I have chosen one.

Ah, choice.

It feels like making a playlist. You know me, I make playlists. I decide a theme or a narrative, I mix some well known songs (well known to me, at least) with some other songs, with some obscure shit I found scraping spotify pages with less than a thousand monthly listeners. When you find one of those songs, it also feels like you are rescuing them from nothing, from oblivion; and putting it in a place to be seen, in a prominent place between Queen and some recent superstar, feels like a deliberate and transcendental choice. The result, even when I don't look for it, doesn't look like a list of songs (even when they are of a particular style), at least not to me. They always feel like something more, that they sort of converge into sense by the strings of some shadow puppeteer. And no wonder. That's me. That's what those songs have in common. Me. Not the instruments they use, not what they talk about. They talk to my individual experience as a human on earth, and if I make a good job out of it, I can hope that I expressed such experience in a way that, abstracted enough, is capable to make other people relate to it and feel that "it" too.

In a sense, by how AI works, those songs are "already there". Just waiting to be pop into existence (oh my god computers have made me into a transcendentalist). So, choosing them is akin to creating them.

Let's zoom out a bit.

Have you ever begin to known someone are got stuck in the "pass me some music or film" phase? I did. Surprisingly, to pick something can be unbelievably hard. Why? The song you send them is not only a song you like. I mean, it is, but it's much more. In that particular conjuncture of time and space, that song is you. Even if you don't try to send some cryptic message about the relation itself in the lyrics or song title (I am looking at you) the choice is always very significant. Through our choices (specially when it comes to art) we identify us, we individuate us. The cumulative of our choices contain us. Suddenly, every seemingly "accessory" or technical part of a song is of uttermost importance; it's rhythm, cadence, mood, feel, lyrics, riffs.

"Don't overthink it! Just pass me one, whatever, you like."

But we can't. 

It's the same with clothing, when we decide today to just wear whatever. That "whatever" contains an endless list of hidden constraints and conditionals. It's not really whatever, it's something that communicates that "whatever" in a very specific form. We enter the terrain of non-choice once again.

The same happens with photography. Sometimes you are "making" something, orchestrating it to output a product. But other times, specially the kind of photos I take (candid, for lack of a better word) what I am actually doing, more than "photography", is "to photograph" stuff. I am manufacturing an experience, when not recreating it. I am taking real life or reality or whatever and extracting from it a single frame that I think it's relevant, significant of the whole, that symbolically insists upon itself, and putting it in a pedestal for everybody else to see. In that process, I reveal myself. Not by showing myself (most instagrams have that backwards) but by the seemingly mundane choice of choosing what to pay attention to, what to see, what to listen, what to do. It baffles me that the barrier of entry to "do stuff" is near zero (well, that's a lie, you still have to pay time) and still we primarily communicate our identity through consumption instead of by creating. So, I input things in a computer, filter and choose from the results, put videos that I find fitting for some reason with a little bit of edit and upload then to youtube to create something that feels like mine and that existed but couldn't be accessible for humans before I clicked the button "create".

Sue me.

Choice (if an incredibly important piece of the puzzle) is not the only thing that matters. I do not aspire to put bidets in art galleries. That was clever but is already done. We understood. Now, what the choice contains is what is relevant. Because otherwise, who cares. The same people that would anyway care about you, if any. Remember, you are putting it there to see. It is you. The world is full saturated with irrelevant pedestals and noise in the name of a false "levity" or in an attempt to appear more genuine and authentic by being thoughtless. Reality TV and streaming were born in that spirit. But I don't care about your selfies, I care about what you choose. Make it good. Make it deliberate. Make it meaningful. Make it art.

But above all, make it.