The Write Thing

Buenos Aires, Saturday afternoon, 6.00 pm:
La Giralda. Came downtown for a good walking exercise and a tour of bookshops along Corrientes Avenue. Nothing to die for, so far. Got hold of a copy of Bergman’s The Seventh Seal on DVD as a debt I had with the Swedish master. Stopped here, for a quick “cortado” at a cafe that seems to be one of the few traditional things still standing in this city where progress equals monumental tower buildings and sterilized glass-clad coffee shops. La Giralda is still one of the few places in town where you’ll pay five pesos for a sizable cup of white coffee…yes, perhaps I should have gone for the submarino con churros, a classic here.

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.

The key difference between Gibert Jeune and Gibert Joseph lies in the fact that the latter is a wider experience to the thirsty mind. Only a few years ago, to be honest, did Joseph expand its array of books and fanciful stationery (I have fallen in love with oh so many calligraphy sets…) to include DVDs and CDs, in one of the most amazing musical and movie selections ever. Another great thing is that you can even get hold of used items there, which both reduces the budget and expands the opportunity of finding real treasures.

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.

France: – The long walks along the Seine in chilly autumn nights, crossing the Pont des Arts to the Cour du Louvre, starting small in the esthetically harmonious lights that wet the walker’s appetite, only to enter the Grand Cour and lose my senses in synesthetic ecstasy before the pyramidal shape and the tones of light and shadow it casts on the quiet pool.

- The 67 bus to Pigalle, a metaphor to classical Paris, a place that would be so distant and so close to me as a student, walking down rue Lepic to her place, where a funny picture of a Michael Jackson-like friend or relative would preside over the table across which she would supervise the words to my thesis, as I got irreversibly lost in her perfume and stood only half an inch away from drowning in the nape of her neck.

- The day we knew it was meant to be, shortly after I pleaded to her to discontinue the use of French between us and caress my ears with her Sicilian accent, orgasmic in its essence and fugitive in its state, with her destined to be so far away from me, and love sentenced not to be. Est-ce que je t’ai gênée? I let her hand touch mine in simple complicity, knowing I had been the one to kiss her the night before.

- A picnic in spring, a good, cheap Côte du Rhône from Franprix to counterbalance the chilly breeze, a mix of pungent, hard and soft fromages of the best possible cru for the standard student pocket, and the hope that the moon would continue to shed its light on us, inexperienced souls convinced that Paris was a woman. Great futures awaiting and, behind the sharp angle of L’Ile Saint Louis, the distant foreboding of goodbye.

- The ride in Line 13 to Saint-Denis, the courses on Austen and the Brontes, Woolf and I, alone, as I returned to the small room at the Maison de l’INA, warmed dinner and plunged into other readings, battling against Orlando Furioso from an unkempt English translation, burying my nose in the secrets of Knole, and letting Sackville speak from her poems and her letters of her complicity with the genius at Tavistock Square.