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so right now i’m in paris staying at the amazing apartment of my dear friend cecile. this morning i woke up at 6am in the tiny pueblo que se llama Vejer De La Frontera, where i stayed for two days with my new friend (and big dance theater alum) Ally.
Vejer is one of a handful of towns on the southern coast of spain that has some of the only virgin beaches left in the world. no hotels. no boardwalks or amusement parks. just sand, surf, rocks and a couple of amazing bars and restaurants.
here are some shots of sevilla en route to the estación santa justa - aka big train station. another view than the beautiful catedral…
yesterday i visited the largest gothic cathedral in the world, right here in good ole’ sevilla.
this place is mind-blowingly huge and ornate. i highly recommend stopping by if you are in the area…
[some words in seville]
i was hooked up with a big dance alum, Ally, via other company members before heading to sevilla. Ally lived here for years (she’s a flamenco dancer) and now lives in cádiz, apparently the oldest city in europe, and a fabulous beach town. i will be visiting her there on sunday for a few days before heading back to france (paris, to be exact). she suggested i meet up with Samantha, a dear friend of hers, who was taking a flamenco masterclass this morning with andres pena, this amazing flamenco dancer.
i haven’t seen much flamenco and so it was fascinating to watch a class. andres actually sang the songs as he was teaching, and there was a live guitar player. afterwords, i hung out with Samantha and some of the other dancers and spoke to them in broken spanish about what i loved about watching them dance. i told them that the contrast between the fluid upper body and the lower body’s rhythm and percussion was amazing. also the eye focus. they said that it was natural for them, and it was funny that i found it fascinating!
it was 1pm. we drank beer.
then i wandered into town and had a sandwich and another beer. and i wrote this poem :
________________________________________
WRITINGS TO ASSIST IN THE SWIFT DOWNING OF BEER IN SPAIN
VOL. I
Alas there is still beauty in white, translucent ceramic bowls holding soup.
And choppy bits of mutual understanding.
And in the unison of an expert flamenco class that one is inappropriately privy to.
Time and step and stomp.
And contrast between upper and lower body. Serpentine and solidity.
“For us it is native.”
I’d say I still have about 17 sips left.
En Español : diez y siete trajos.
The immaculate camisa of a waiter. Eager and alone.
. . .
I just ate a fuck load of olives.
In just a few weeks, I’ll be in jamón withdrawl.
. . .
The ways that vowels at the end of words make awkward combinations simple.
“Hielosol” –> ice sun.
I have to stop for a second. I think it might be time for a siesta.
________________________________________
then i headed to the cathedral. fear not, friends, pictures coming soon. in the plaza outside in my tipsy state, i let this street urchin woman read my fortune and give me some herbs. i gave her a bunch of change even though she demanded “papel, papel moneda!” from what i could understand, i will receive an important phone call and live very long. praise Him on high.
after an hour or so in the largest gothic cathedral in existence, and a quick nap, i headed out to recharge my phone minutes - to receive my important phone call, of course. in the street i encountered a large festival for some saint. marching bands, processions of people, minstrel types, and a liter with a cross draped in white on it. then i went to burger king for the first time in years. it was comforting in a weird way. on the way home i saw a bunch of teenager break-dancing in an alley.
passion.
my hostel plays an american radio station in the lobby at all times. i just heard “born in the u.s.a.” weird.
during my camino en sevilla yesterday i couldn’t help but notice all of the massive shopping areas and kiosks plopped in the middle of various monuments and plazas. above: a kiosk in the center of plaza de españa.
this is an italian clock store. how creepy are these things?
this is the most amazing thing i’ve ever seen. where are dunkin donut’s copyright lawyers when you need them?
yesterday i strolled around sevilla for hours with my map and camera just snapping photos and exploring. is it me, or are the skies in spain just so much more vibrant than anywhere else? i won’t caption each one, but shots include the largest gothic catherdral in the world (which i will hopefully explore the inside of today or tomorrow), various streets in el bario santa cruz, plaza de españa, la alameda de hércules and el rio guadalquivir (which, as i remember from spanish class, is the most navigable river in spain). if you have any questions about what’s what, email me or write a comment.
i like a city with a river - i live in one that’s got two. but in order for the infrastructure and aesthetics to work, the idea of the waterfront must be taken advantage of. lyon for instance is another city that does this successfully. prague is one that doesn’t. a few shots down you can see a little floating cafe that rents paddleboats on the river. i had the worst cup of coffee in spain there, but it was still nice. yay for accessible water systems.
“there’s something about a city on the beach.”
that was my quote of the day as we walked down this street in barceloneta on monday, my last full day in barcelona. apparently, twenty years ago there was no beach. barcelona was just a massive port of trade, but now the beach is a draw and augments the city’s debaucherous reputation - giving a daytime leisure equivalent to bcn’s world class nightlife. it’s like los angeles but spanish - and with more art. cities are like cake batter. you add various elements to affect sweetness, texture, etc. the addition of hollywood to any beautiful beach town will inevitably lead to a kind of sourdough, bitter, fluffy cake. in other words - barcelona is like the los angeles you can actually live in.
but would i actually live there?
that’s the question i ask whenever i go to a new city. barcelona was kind of my main reason for coming to spain at all. i had heard so much about it and i wanted to see if it lived up to all the hype. as you may have read here, my first impressions of barcelona were not necessarily the best. thankfully i was able to meet some amazing people that showed me an amazing time, and now i have a markedly higher opinion of the city. as for permanent residence, i can’t really say. madrid seems to still be my spanish love, but the art scene in spain definitely lives in barcelona. as a designer, it would absolutely be the most fruitful place for me to be in spain. from the galleries and shops in el born, to the contemporary art museum in el raval to poble nau’s open studios, barcelona is a perfect climate for new and innovative design.
my new friends in barcelona include print-makers, painters, documentary film-makers and dj’s and they all absolutely rock. from lovely dinner parties to tapas to all-nighters at razzmatazz, every social interaction i experienced was genuine, non-pretentious and fascinating. if by any chance any of you are reading this : you’ve got a place to crash in nyc! (that means you, clare, becks, tom, james, dix, ninian, john, hiroshi, steve & all you other awesome folk!)
at long last, here are my pics from our visit to ‘temple expiatori de la sagrada familia,’ the unfinished masterpiece of catalan architect antonin gaudí. they’ve been working on it for over 100 years and it should be finished in about 20.
i’ll be back when it’s done. promise.
so we got to barcelona yesterday, via ryan air from madrid to girona - a small airport about an hour and a half south of barcelona - and then a cheap bus ride. apparently it’s very expensive to fly directly to barcelona (which of course has it’s own airport) so most people fly to girona or reus.
yesterday i was in a pissy mood for some reason. maybe it was our frat-house hostel, homesickness or worries of spending my last dime on tapas and having to sell my body on the street to get back to lyon at the end of the month. in order to ease my pain, jess and i had dinner with the gays in the gay-borhood of barcelona which has a catalan name that means “left of the example” at this fabulous and cheap cafeteria that was packed. an injection of gayness got me through the night and today, after doing some much-needed laundry, i booked it over to casa mila by gaudí.
learning about this building in high school got me pumped, and i gotta say, the slides just don’t do it justice.