Detournement under the sky of Paris
To the person who taught me what love is....
1.
Take my hand firmly. Close your eyes and let yourself go. Trust me, but above all trust yourself, trust in us and in the beauty that remains in this monstrous world. Do you feel now the light body, the feet anchoring themselves on the ground? Fly, fly with me. Come with me to the most beautiful city in the world. Come with me to the city of poets and bohemians.
Who fans the morning with his tameless wings,
Skims over life, and understands with ease
The speech of flowers and other voiceless things.
(Charles Baudelaire: "Elevation")
Come with me to Paris, city of dreams. Paris, where Modernity was born, and where it will one day find -- perhaps soon -- its deathbed.
The modern has to be in the sign of suicide, stamp of the heroic will that concedes nothing to the attitude that's hostile towards it. This suicide is not renunciation but heroic passion. It is the conquest of the modern in the sphere of passions.
(Walter Benjamin: "The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire")
And in our transformation, let's be heroes or at least let's try to be. Let's raise ourselves up over the human ruins of this ownerless city. Heroes, or villians...we can still choose, but I'm afraid that time is running out. Run with me now while we still have time!
The night of the oath-bound,
all of us dancers know the day and the hour,
since the reason was over-justified,
in the immense amount of human suffering
(Leopoldo Maria Panero: Contra Espana y otros poems)
Let's throw ourselves, like phantoms in the heavens, against the wind, flying higher and farther. Look, down there, the bonfires are lighting up the road. We don't know where it will take us, but be aware that there are only two possible paths: the one that ends in the abyss and the one that turns our dreams into reality. No matter what, it's the bonfires that will consume the remains of a century that's already old. What road will events take? I don't know, but why not the one that we ourselves believe in?
Wanderer, your footsteps are
the road, and nothing more;
wanderer, there is no road,
the road is made by walking.
By walking one makes the road,
and upon glancing behind
one sees the path
that never will be trod again.
Wanderer, there is no road--
Only wakes upon the sea.
(Antonio Machado: Proverbios y cantares)
We're here. Descending slowly. The city without a name opens out under our feet, the ungovernable city, the city that will love itself on its ruins.
2.
Can you smell the oder of revolt? Can you feel it? Me too. It's like nothing else. That's certain. It's hate, what they have inside. A deep, wounding, painful hate. It's the fury, the fury of not finding a place in this world, and instead of bearing it they'd rather see it burning, consuming itself to its very foundations. Don't criticize them, at least not right now, but think -- we all carry hate inside. If we'd never hated anything, ever, could we ever really love anything?
(Robert Walser: "Children and little houses")
Hate has moved the world for centuries. Hate against the old has created the new. But often hate has been blind, deaf, tremendously stupid and has only engendered more hate, more irrational and violent. How to use it? How to build the new over the old without sweeping with fire more than was already burning?
We must conquer desperation
more uncompromisingly
in order to arrive at the harder and emptier forms
in order to build our castle.
(Leopoldo Maria Panero: Teoria)
It's necesary that we search for an answer. To make our disenchanment talk. But time is running out. Every instant that passes is on more link on our chain. The wound continues bleeding, a threat that we may bleed to death, on the pavement of this city of the dead.
Alas! Alas! Time eats away our lives,
And the hidden Enemy who gnaws at our hearts
Grows by drawing strength from the blood we lose!
(Charles Baudelaire: "The Enemy")
Let's continue, then, on our way through the human ruins, along with the burning cars, symbols of a society that consumes itself, and perhaps we will find an answer, a possible meaning that will elevate us over the ruins of our lives.
For the masses in their most profound existence, unconsciously, carnivals of joy and fires are only a game in which they prepare themselves for the enormous instant of the moment of ripeness, for the hour in which panic and carnival, recognizing one another as brothers, after a long separation, hug each other in a revolutionary uprising.
(Walter Benjamin: "Sombras breves")
Take my hand again. Let's go to the center of the revolt. We'll try to understand it abandon yourself with me in the center of the storm, letting ourselves be carried away by its fury. It will make us remember in order to elevate us on top of History. Follow me!
3.
Old city, you know much. Do you remember those times we never lived? Do you remember the days of wine and roses? Do you remember the thousands of tears, enough to fill an ocean? Beautiful days, sour memories!
Papa tell me again about how after all those barricades,
and after all those raised fists and all that spilt blood,
at the end of the game you couldn't do anything,
and underneath the paving stones there wasn't any beach.
(Ismael Serrano: "Papa cuentame otra vez")
I too have them present in my memory. I feel their impulse guiding me along the avatars of my existence, showing me how to raise myself every time I fall. But today memory fades away, dissolves itself in the lies of history. The muse of history, Clio, is as infected by lies as a street prostitute is by syphilis.
(Arthur Schopenhauer: "Metafisica de lo bello y estetica")
Some secrets
of the future
are not in the present
nor in the past
they are
strangely
in the future
(Mario Benedetti: "Conjugaciones")
But despite everything, there is a future that is still unwritten, even if its writing often shapes us, we can still overcome it, retaking it into our hands. But we don't dare confront this task. We stealthily approach its door because it doesn't belong to us now, it has been missed, replaced by the dictation of the present.
(TS Eliot: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock")
They no longer count on the past or the future, only the now exists. It is the distinctive sign of our epoch. For this reason they are children of their time. They reclaim their now, they repudiate their past and they don't believe in our future. Therefore their revolt teaches us more about ourselves than we want to know
The man without horizons fears his death so much that without god he digs his own grave.
(Tristan Tzara: El hombre aproximativo)
1.
Take my hand firmly. Close your eyes and let yourself go. Trust me, but above all trust yourself, trust in us and in the beauty that remains in this monstrous world. Do you feel now the light body, the feet anchoring themselves on the ground? Fly, fly with me. Come with me to the most beautiful city in the world. Come with me to the city of poets and bohemians.
Beyond where cares or boredom hold dominion,
Which charge our fogged existence with their spleen,
Happy is he who with a stalwart pinion
Can seek those fields so shining and serene:
Who fans the morning with his tameless wings,
Skims over life, and understands with ease
The speech of flowers and other voiceless things.
(Charles Baudelaire: "Elevation")
Come with me to Paris, city of dreams. Paris, where Modernity was born, and where it will one day find -- perhaps soon -- its deathbed.
The modern has to be in the sign of suicide, stamp of the heroic will that concedes nothing to the attitude that's hostile towards it. This suicide is not renunciation but heroic passion. It is the conquest of the modern in the sphere of passions.
(Walter Benjamin: "The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire")
And in our transformation, let's be heroes or at least let's try to be. Let's raise ourselves up over the human ruins of this ownerless city. Heroes, or villians...we can still choose, but I'm afraid that time is running out. Run with me now while we still have time!
The night of the oath-bound,
all of us dancers know the day and the hour,
since the reason was over-justified,
in the immense amount of human suffering
(Leopoldo Maria Panero: Contra Espana y otros poems)
Let's throw ourselves, like phantoms in the heavens, against the wind, flying higher and farther. Look, down there, the bonfires are lighting up the road. We don't know where it will take us, but be aware that there are only two possible paths: the one that ends in the abyss and the one that turns our dreams into reality. No matter what, it's the bonfires that will consume the remains of a century that's already old. What road will events take? I don't know, but why not the one that we ourselves believe in?
Wanderer, your footsteps are
the road, and nothing more;
wanderer, there is no road,
the road is made by walking.
By walking one makes the road,
and upon glancing behind
one sees the path
that never will be trod again.
Wanderer, there is no road--
Only wakes upon the sea.
(Antonio Machado: Proverbios y cantares)
We're here. Descending slowly. The city without a name opens out under our feet, the ungovernable city, the city that will love itself on its ruins.
2.
Can you smell the oder of revolt? Can you feel it? Me too. It's like nothing else. That's certain. It's hate, what they have inside. A deep, wounding, painful hate. It's the fury, the fury of not finding a place in this world, and instead of bearing it they'd rather see it burning, consuming itself to its very foundations. Don't criticize them, at least not right now, but think -- we all carry hate inside. If we'd never hated anything, ever, could we ever really love anything?
(Robert Walser: "Children and little houses")
Hate has moved the world for centuries. Hate against the old has created the new. But often hate has been blind, deaf, tremendously stupid and has only engendered more hate, more irrational and violent. How to use it? How to build the new over the old without sweeping with fire more than was already burning?
We must conquer desperation
more uncompromisingly
in order to arrive at the harder and emptier forms
in order to build our castle.
(Leopoldo Maria Panero: Teoria)
It's necesary that we search for an answer. To make our disenchanment talk. But time is running out. Every instant that passes is on more link on our chain. The wound continues bleeding, a threat that we may bleed to death, on the pavement of this city of the dead.
Alas! Alas! Time eats away our lives,
And the hidden Enemy who gnaws at our hearts
Grows by drawing strength from the blood we lose!
(Charles Baudelaire: "The Enemy")
Let's continue, then, on our way through the human ruins, along with the burning cars, symbols of a society that consumes itself, and perhaps we will find an answer, a possible meaning that will elevate us over the ruins of our lives.
For the masses in their most profound existence, unconsciously, carnivals of joy and fires are only a game in which they prepare themselves for the enormous instant of the moment of ripeness, for the hour in which panic and carnival, recognizing one another as brothers, after a long separation, hug each other in a revolutionary uprising.
(Walter Benjamin: "Sombras breves")
Take my hand again. Let's go to the center of the revolt. We'll try to understand it abandon yourself with me in the center of the storm, letting ourselves be carried away by its fury. It will make us remember in order to elevate us on top of History. Follow me!
3.
Old city, you know much. Do you remember those times we never lived? Do you remember the days of wine and roses? Do you remember the thousands of tears, enough to fill an ocean? Beautiful days, sour memories!
Papa tell me again about how after all those barricades,
and after all those raised fists and all that spilt blood,
at the end of the game you couldn't do anything,
and underneath the paving stones there wasn't any beach.
(Ismael Serrano: "Papa cuentame otra vez")
I too have them present in my memory. I feel their impulse guiding me along the avatars of my existence, showing me how to raise myself every time I fall. But today memory fades away, dissolves itself in the lies of history. The muse of history, Clio, is as infected by lies as a street prostitute is by syphilis.
(Arthur Schopenhauer: "Metafisica de lo bello y estetica")
Some secrets
of the future
are not in the present
nor in the past
they are
strangely
in the future
(Mario Benedetti: "Conjugaciones")
But despite everything, there is a future that is still unwritten, even if its writing often shapes us, we can still overcome it, retaking it into our hands. But we don't dare confront this task. We stealthily approach its door because it doesn't belong to us now, it has been missed, replaced by the dictation of the present.
| In a minute there is time | |
| For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. |
They no longer count on the past or the future, only the now exists. It is the distinctive sign of our epoch. For this reason they are children of their time. They reclaim their now, they repudiate their past and they don't believe in our future. Therefore their revolt teaches us more about ourselves than we want to know
The man without horizons fears his death so much that without god he digs his own grave.
(Tristan Tzara: El hombre aproximativo)
posted by eric. at 11:05 PM
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