En el vacío

AirBnB art, Roberto Bolaño & Barcelona bookstores

Arte callejero

Greetings from Barcelona! I’ve been here a little over a week and have more or less gotten over my jet lag. Apologies for all the typos in last week’s Message from the Underworld. I typically write it in one session and proof it in another, but I was in worse shape during the proofing session than I was when I wrote it. Basically, I took a rough draft and made it worse. Lo siento.

Also, before I move on, I was on NPR in Wisconsin talking about Corporate Rock Sucks last weekend. You can listen to the audio on the website where there’s also a great overview with some interesting SST-related YouTube clips.

As I mentioned last week, I’m tagging along on Nuvia’s work trip and we’ve stayed in two different AirBnB units: one in Poble Sec and another in Sant Antoni. I don’t like AirBnB. Stay in enough of them and you notice a certain sameness to the décor.

Right now, I’m looking at a massive photo printed on canvas of a long rope bridge extending across a misty chasm and I’m positive the same image hung in a hotel room in a Valle de Guadalupe that we stayed in many years ago.

Long Rope Bridge by Skip All

Memory is strange so who knows (Nuvia thinks we saw it at a friend’s house in San Francisco) but I was able to find the image on the Internet in about six seconds so perhaps we’re both right. It’s by Skip Nall, by the way, and was photographed in Vietnam.

I am, however, absolutely certain the same pop-art image by Deborah Azzopardi that is hanging above our bed here in Sant Antoni was also in the living room in Poble Sec. This isn’t a great mystery since her images are sold internationally at IKEA. Still, a strange choice for the bedroom, no? Never mind, don’t tell me.

Sssh by Deborah Azzopardi

Hotels aren’t any better, by the way. They typically purchase the art that decorates its rooms and hallways in bulk from marketplaces that can meet their design requirements, which is a depressing thing to think about.

What am I doing in Barcelona? Working. I’m working on a couple projects I can’t really talk about. I’m not being coy. Part of how I make my living as a freelance writer is work-for-hire assignments that I’m not at liberty to discuss. For instance, I’m currently the project manager for a nonfiction book that involves everything from securing and clearing photos to light research and editing. The work is fascinating, but it’s not my book so I can’t discuss it here.

The other project is a book proposal, which I really enjoy. For me, it’s the place where all my experience interviewing bands, writing profiles, generating ad copy, and collaborating with artists comes together in an unholy marriage of craft, creativity, and commerce. A lot of people hate writing book proposals, but I happen to love it. (If you need help with a book proposal, my schedule is opening up next month.)

I’ve also got a novel cooking, but I’ve had to turn it down to a simmer until I finish these other projects. While it’s great to be in a place like Barcelona, I’m not on vacation and the time I spend working isn’t all that different than when I’m home in San Diego. What about my free time, you ask? A lot of things factor into how I spend my free time in a new city:

1. Have I been here before?
2. How likely am I to return?

If I’m in a new city and don’t anticipate ever coming back, then I put on my tourist hat and try to see as much as possible. If it’s a city I know I’ll be returning to, like Mexico City or Belfast or New York, then I’m much more relaxed.

This is my second time in Barcelona. The last time I was here I came on a work trip with Nuvia and then stayed a few extra days so I could spend some time with Bad Religion in Barcelona and Bilboa, which was like visiting two different countries.

Brian Baker warming up backstage at Poble Espanyol, Punk in Drublic, 2019.

As near as I can tell, I’ll probably be back in Barcelona soon. So while I’d love to take a trip up the coast to the Salvador Dali triangle, I’m not going to shell out a ton of money to make it happen this week, not when I suspect I’ll be returning soon.  

Salvador Dali is one of my heroes. The Secret Life of Salvador Dali is one of my favorite autobiographies by a visual artist. It’s so bold and so strange. For my money, it’s right up there with The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh and Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings.

I’m also enamored with Roberto Bolaño who lived both here in Barcelona and farther up the coast in Blanes. So why sit on a tour bus for several hours going to Figueres when I can walk a mile to the apartment building in El Raval where Bolaño lived?

Stalking the ghost of Roberto Bolaño

I’ve spent part of each day roaming around the city, stopping in various bookstores and libraries, and asking, “Tienes Roberto Bolaño?” like the anxious little bird in Are You My Mother?

So far, the only Bolaño I’ve bought is a collection of stories in Spanish called Llamadas Telefónicas (Phone Calls) from a bookshop that’s 250 feet away as the crow flies from our flat. As near as I can tell half the stories were published in English in The Return and the other half in Last Evenings on Earth.

I finally finished the bilingual edition of Tres I’ve been carrying around all summer and HFS “The Neochileans” blew me away. It’s “about” a rock band that gets in the van and heads north in the same way that Apocalypse Now is “about” a boat ride. It’s a magical, mysterious poem that absolutely crushes:

And what lesson can we
Neochileans learn
From the criminal lives
Of those two South American
Pilgrims?
None, except that limits
Are tenuous, limits
Are relative: reeded edges
Of a reality forged
In the void

Goddam. Reminds me of the penultimate chapter of Ulysses, the Ithaca section.

The phrase “reeded edges” comes from Laura Healy’s translation of “gráfilas,” which is a tricky word in that I’ve found all kinds of definitions for it, from patterns on corrugated steel to a small border, possibly in a design element. I’m not knowledgeable enough to be able to guess what Bolaño was going for here, but it’s so much fun to think about.

I told Nuvia that I wished “The Neochileans” was a novel instead of a poem, which means I now have to write that novel.

“Yeah, right,” she said.

And just like that the gauntlet has been thrown. Who’s ready for a punk rock “The Neochileans”?

Bolaño, Simenon, Pettibon

In a secondhand bookstore in Poble Sec I bought a Georges Simonen novel in Spanish for one euro. Simenon wrote hundreds of novels but as far as I know those that have been translated into English are either part of the Maigret detective series or his so-called “hard novels.” Simenon was a libertine who famously slept with Josephine Baker so I’m hoping this is one of his trashier efforts.

I also bought a copy of Raymond Pettibon’s Plots Laid Thick. It’s not in the best shape but I almost never see this one for sale and when I do it’s out of my price range. Books are machines and a little wear and tear didn’t put me off. This book has a ton of text, which is where I think Pettibon is at his most interesting, so I’m looking forward to digging into it.

The book that keeps calling out to me is an illustrated translation of James Joyce’s Ulysses. It’s a massive book and beautifully designed, but is that enough? In a few years I *might* be able to read a trashy Simonen novel or a Bolano stories that I know well, but Ulysses? I don’t think I’ll ever be proficient enough to read it in Spanish, hence my hesitation.

Biblioteca Sant Antoni

I’ve also visited some really beautiful libraries. I took the train out to Sant Marti to see the new Biblioteca Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the Biblioteca San Antoni is right around the corner, which is also lovely. I worked for a couple of hours in both libraries (I may have also taken a nap).

I’m really looking forward to Sunday when vendors fill the San Antoni marketplace with books. I checked it out for a bit last Sunday but I didn’t realize the scope of the operation and there’s much more to see than I realized. When visiting a new place, isn’t that usually how it goes?

Biblioteca Sant Antoni

For more images from Barcelona, check out my Instagram. Thanks again for reading. I appreciate your support.