What’s going on?

To all those people heeding the media when it blows things out of proportion with its irresponsible way of conducting business, I want to remind them that what happened in Florida between a “white Mexican” (as he is being called by these clowns) and an African-American kid happens on a regular basis in California; and it does not matter who kills who, or whether the killing is racially motivated (which it is in most cases). 

     You see it all the time on the streets of Los Angeles; Hispanics being killed by Blacks and Blacks being killed by Hispanics, and nobody makes such a stink about it. Why? Maybe because black kids in California wouldn’t look like a president’s son; or maybe because there are no “white Mexicans” in LA; or maybe because --and this makes even more sense-- bringing something like that out to the public’s attention would not be of much use to all the free-loaders --are you listening Al and Jesse?-- who jump on the band wagon as soon as they get a whiff of profit, because they don’t really care about the problem, they just want their piece of the pie and the limelight. 

     From Vietnam years to Watergate, from Iran-Contra affair to Clinton’s well-publicized sex escapades, and anything before, after, and in between, the media has always exploited everything sensationalistic or with the potentiality of scandal just to sell more, without considering ethics (for the most part) or the casualties that reckless journalism produce. A good movie to watch along these lines is “Absence of Malice,” with Paul Newman and Sally Field.

     And, in the mean time, I want to post the lyrics of the song “What’s going on,” by Marvin Gaye, as a reminder (you might want to consider the song “Ebony and Ivory,” also) that things don’t have to escalate if we are cautious about them. Can we all get along?

Mother, mother

There's too many of you crying

Brother, brother, brother

There's far too many of you dying

You know we've got to find a way

To bring some lovin' here today, yeah

Father, father

We don't need to escalate

You see, war is not the answer

For only love can conquer hate

You know we've got to find a way

To bring some lovin' here today

Picket lines and picket signs

Don't punish me with brutality

Talk to me

So you can see

Oh, what's going on

What's going on

What's going on                                                                                 

What's going on

Right on, baby

Right on

Right on

Mother, mother

Everybody thinks we're wrong

Oh, but who are they to judge us

Simply because our hair is long

Oh, you know we've got to find a way

To bring some understanding here today

Picket lines and picket signs

Don't punish me with brutality

Come on talk to me

So you can see

What's going on

What's going on

Tell me what's going on

I'll tell you ya, what's going on

Right on, baby

Right on, baby

Right on, baby

Authors: Benson, Cleveland & Gaye  

Serrat y lo significativo de lo insignificante

Tendría yo algunos siete u ocho años cuando mi hermano llegó con el disco de 45 revoluciones. La canción era Señora, de Joan Manuel Serrat: “Ese con quien sueña su hija, ese ladrón que os desvalija de su amor, soy yo, señora…” Eso fue todo, y a pesar de ser un niño no necesite oír nada más para pensar que el que cantaba era un tipo petulante; y si hubiera sido yo argentino hubiera pensado que Serrat era un boludo atorrante.

     El lado B constaba de la canción De cartón piedra, pieza que, al igual que Señora, llegaría yo a amar algunos años más tarde.  Y es que para el joven de diecisiete años, ejercitado en el arte de soñar y de querer ser, Joan Manuel Serrat ya no era un tipo petulante, sino un guía de sueños y conjeturas juveniles. Porque fue a los 17 cuando me reencontré con su música, y esta vez llegó para quedarse conmigo, aun cuando no la escuche. Porque las letras de sus canciones son poemas recitados constantemente, como parte de mi amor por el idioma español.

     Cuando escuchamos una canción de Serrat son muchas cosas las que apreciamos: la poesía de sus letras, su voz enérgica, su fraseo y su forma de tratar las notas musicales. Elementos que se conjugan para darle magia y poesía a su descripción de actos aparentemente insignificantes de la rutina y a las cosas simples de la vida; y el amor en sus mil manifestaciones cobra preeminencia.

     Como dato biográfico principal usaré el comienzo de la canción A quien corresponda, que abre el álbum En tránsito, uno de sus mejores: “Un servidor, Joan Manuel Serrat, casado, mayor de edad, vecino de Camprodón, Girona, hijo de Ángeles y de Josep, de profesión cantautor y natural de Barcelona. Según obra en el Registro Civil, hoy, lunes, 20 de Abril de 1981 con las fuerzas de que dispone atentamente expone dos puntos…” en éste disco Serrat se presenta también como un denunciante de desaguisados ambientales e injusticias sociales. “El mundo es de peaje y experimental, que todo es desechable y provisional”, dice, para luego agregar hacia el final de la canción: “Se sirva tomar medidas y llamar al orden a esos chapuceros, que lo dejan todo perdido en nombre del personal”.  En otras palabras: “imbéciles, están usando el mundo como un laboratorio y alguien tiene que tomar cartas en el asunto, antes que los rufianes con licencia acaben con todo”.

     Fue Serrat el gran complemento a la música de Los Beatles y Moody Blues, y a las lecturas de Herman Hesse, Benedetti y, desde luego, Antonio Machado, de mi temprana juventud.

     No tengo una canción favorita de Serrat porque cada una de ellas tiene su momento; Penélope, Mi niñez, Aquellas pequeñas cosas, Las malas compañías y tantas otras que aun hoy, en la edad madura, asisten a la memoria en su revirar hacia a los mágicos momentos de la niñez y de la tierna adolescencia.

     Para cerrar este pequeño reconocimiento, quiero enfatizar que la música de Joan Manuel Serrat es parte esencial del lenguaje y cultura hispanos, y que sus canciones interpretadas por él mismo son referente obligado para los que en verdad disfrutan el idioma español --y el castellano, desde luego--, sean estos mexicanos, centroamericanos, sudamericanos y… tal vez hasta los españoles.

On the road again with Jack Kerouac

“I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won’t bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split up and my feeling that everything was dead. With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road…” And off Jack Kerouac went, to begin the saga of one of the most influential cultural movements of 20th century: The Beat Generation.
     Of course, he didn’t do it by himself, because there are two other main perpetrators: Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, along with some other writers, artists and characters that have been considered to be of a beatnik persuasion along the line. But it was Jack Kerouac the most charismatic of all, and the one that would cause a bigger impact, with a following that would evolve into what we can call “the cult of the beatniks.” Kerouac was the handsome one, the athlete, the mystic, the stylish one, the compulsive writer with his spontaneous, free-flow style.
      The beatniks were the real fathers of the sixties counterculture; the ones that started writing more openly about drug use and experimentation; the ones who were open about alternative lifestyles --to include religion and sexuality, of course--; and the ones who, before Timothy Leary was able to enunciate the phrase that would become his slogan ("turn on, tune in, drop out"), had already withdrawn from the established society of their times. And, although I am not glorifying them --God forbid--, I want to acknowledge something about the beatniks that made them look real good in my eyes: their disavowal of the hypocrisy of conventional middle class mentality.
     Kerouac set out to meet his goals of hitching a cross-country ride, and write about it. He also made it a goal to meet some of his cultural idols, and that’s how he met Celine, his literary hero, and Salvador Dali, who said of Kerouac: “He is more beautiful than Marlon Brando.” Of which Kerouac thought that maybe Dali said it because they both had blue eyes and black hair, and according to Kerouac, “when I looked into his eyes, and he looked into my eyes, we couldn’t stand all that sadness.” 
     Jack Kerouac’s writing style had the combination of three main elements: jazz music, characters, and religion (on both sides of the spectrum, eastern and western world converging); with the former at the core of his free flowing prose method. His experience on the road brought him in contact with places and people that would be essential part in the writing of his Benzedrine-fueled anecdote-testimonial accounts that could go from a sublime spiritual quest to the most mundane of pursuits, handled always with the same youthful candor.
     This year marks the 55th anniversary of the publication of On the Road, which is probably why I’m writing about it; or who knows, I probably am writing about it because I just wanted to feel young and energetic.

Itinerario

Después de su prolongada travesía por el túnel, el sicario Martín Corpus no encontró lo que le habían platicado; sólo sombras y más sombras. La última luz que había visto fue el fulgor de la pistola en su cara.