I cannot possibly expect anyone who ever read this blog to even become aware of my return. Those generous souls who would now and then glance at the website for a peek into whatever oddity I would decide to indulge my keyboard into by now have probably given up all hope. Yes, lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’entrate. You would do the right thing by refraining from trusting an erratic author. Life is much more beautiful when you do not have to be surprised by other people’s changing moods.

If I were a good writer, I would be able to summarize in a concise text my whereabouts since I decided to put this blog in the freezer. Oh, well…I don’t think I can do that. Therefore, I will speak about the future, about new horizons, about uncertainty itself. Houston beckons, this time for a more permanent contract. What this means is a lot and nothing. It means I still have a job, and new challenges, but it does not bind anyone to anything — including myself. A few years ago, Houston had also seemed to be the place where I would be residing on a longer term basis. However, neither life nor I were ready for the jump, so the whole fantasy only materialized in a short story I wrote at the time and which I named “Letters from Houston”. It was written in Spanish…and I’ll never know why. Houston was on hold, and in a very particular fashion, I was coming out of my own personal limbo of indecision and non-living. Many things changed in the two years that passed since a first door to the US was closed, partially by H1-B quotas and partially by myself. I plunged into my own abyss, emerged half-victorious and wounded, and created my own re-birth, as Sylvia Plath would say beautifully at the end of that prodigious scene of The Bell Jar. I played around the limits of desire and succumbed to the demons of dysfunctional relationships, I naively believed it was possible to set free a repressed love and not pay the high cost of its loss, but I also learned to let go. I learned that letting go is the only way of healing, and the hardest.

Yes, I miss her sometimes…her laughter, her friendship, her beautiful eyes, and I secretly know there will be no letters from Houston, and no Copacabana Palace. We are no more anything, and it scares me to think that I always knew…because I wrote the end of my own story throughout the summers of her absence and my pain and I was right, even before she severed the bond to escape a friendship that now she feared.

Oh, but this posting was supposed to be about my future. Well, nothing is really about the future unless it comes from our own past. So I will raise a symbolic glass of champagne and toast to us, to the land of no regrets, to the bitter taste that time will turn into sweet vignettes of a youthful Paris…the world we knew before, dont je ne regrette rien

The next night, she forced me out of my worked-up slumbering endeavor, furious with me and insistent on the manifesto she wanted me to put on virtual paper. I agreed. There would be no escaping her. I had to get up, put on the hotel bathrobe, and sit at the ample desk to write her statement onto a clean Word document. Mind you, this is just a voice. I have no means of fighting her, or perhaps I no longer want to. Perhaps it is time, the great leveler. Aging makes you face some of your choices more boldly.

I have always wanted to keep French at a distance. Deliberately, as if the language, once it had taken over my Zelig-like self, would annihilate me, empty me of the animal English identity I have always treasured. Now it seems both coexist musically, blurring each others’ borders until I have to think hard to tell the difference (and cornering their Torquemada descendant into a lingua franca precariousness).

Here it is, the voice. I will let her speak for herself.

Reviens-moi. Comme la première fois, inévitable, toi et personne. C’est vrai, le vide m’accablait autrefois, quand je ne connaissais pas la puissance de mon être. Maintenant les extases maitrisées, la vie ordonnée comme un jeu de cartes auquel on triche très bien, je suis prête au nouveau défi de toi. Viens plus près de moi, lance-toi à ma conquête, comme si je n’avais jamais été acquise, et donne-moi la preuve que rien n’a changé. Je t’attends, même avant que tu ne sois partie. J’ai traversé les rivières, j’ai porté mes chaînes et m’en suis libérée pour être prête à jouir avec toi et pas derrière. Encore une ou plusieurs fois, je veux t’entendre gémir au dessous de mon corps, je veux sentir ta peau s’élargir à ma touche, un univers nouveau se générer entre deux esprits qui ont toujours dessiné leurs propres visages. Laisse-moi me perdre dans la mer de ta bouche, l’immensité de notre propre création, le calme de notre ancienne connaissance. Ne t’inquiète pas pour moi. Je saurai me retrouver à la fin, quand tu commenceras à fuir. J’ai déjà surmonté l’espoir de toi. N’hésite pas, il n’y a rien à craindre. Reviens-moi.

There are quite a few people at the bar. A threesome at the table next to mine are engaged in passionate platitudes, and make a raucous scene once every five minutes, startling my pen off the lined pages of my Moleskine…I can even smell the salami of the sandwich the bulky boy next to my chair is having. But that’s part of the deal in this place, so I find it somewhat charming.
The book tour so far is proving hard. I walked similar streets to those I prowled over ten years ago. Zivals is now a tango store as well, and the classical jewels I used to marvel about in the old nineties are now dusty leftovers of those days, when you could choose between at least two different versions of Wagner’s Der Ring. Unknown singers now beckon from their dim-lit racks, offering exciting — and challenging — renderings of Schumann’s lieder.
I crave for rarity. Where is that book that will bring me a glimpse of the odd, magical city where you could find the weirdest things, like a postcard of Patty Duke’s 1960 TV show? Where is the city in which Bolshevik-oriented youngsters would flock to see Streisand’s On a Clear Day instead of a Fassbinder’s retrospective that played in the next room? Where is the all-encompassing Buenos Aires, apocalyptic but shining with the charm of rare movies? Where is the unexpected pleasure, the purpose of the quest? It seems I belong now to the small group of outcasts left to ponder and waltz around our own thirst for more.

One more hour is left to my wanderlust to see a hopeful outcome. I have the hunger inside. The hunt will go on.

In my life, I have made two wonderful discoveries at Gibert Joseph: Brad Mehldau and Jan Dismar Zelenka. Mehldau happened first, back when he was relatively unknown to the inexperienced Jazz ear. It was on the occasion of the launch of his CD Songs: Art of the Trio III, which remains my favorite by far. I remember ambling around the Classical section of the store, putting on the headphones and transporting myself in time and space into wherever Brad took me. I bought the CD and listened to it hours on end as I was preparing myself for the big test of France.

The second discovery took place much later, in 2005. I was there for work reasons, having long got back to Buenos Aires. I entered Gibert, browsed through the DVDs (which is what I normally do, in that order), and headed for the Classical section at the end of the corridor. At first, I did not notice the peace and the magic around me. It was only minutes later that I was caught into the spell of the wondrous Zelenka. My first guess was Bach, of course. I would have even stretched it to Vivaldi. But there was something that seemed both unheard of and familiar in that work. It was the first time in my life I had felt that ambiguity. I mean, we have all listened to Baroque music, and it seems OK to work, cook, and even make love to it. But this…this was something different. There was a quiet hunger in those sounds.

I went to the counter, for the first time in my decades of music-loving indulgence, and asked the shop assistant to tell me what we were listening to. Zelenka was the name he gave me. I thought, at first, that he might be one of these modern freaks who decide they can compose like Bach. If it was the case, this was a good one, because he even sounded better than Bach — he was different. I decided to buy the set of three CDs with his Orchestral Works.

There are no photographs or drawings of Zelenka. He remains — to this day — an unknown virtuoso. In the 1960s, a group of people with an ear for passion decided to bring him back to life. It turns out to be that Zelenka is, as a matter of fact, a real genius, and musicologists worldwide dare to place him on a same level as Bach. He was probably unlucky, as fortuna does exist, much to the dismay of working souls. Some years from now he will be known for his unique talent. After more than 300 years, there is something new to emerge from Baroque music. Zelenka was just living in the wrong times.