You're an expatriated man

"You’re only a newspaper man. An expatriated newspaper man. You ought to be ironical the minute you get out of bed. You ought to wake up with your mouth full of pity.’
‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Who did you get this stuff from?’
‘Everybody. Don’t you read? Don’t you ever see anybody? You know what you are? You’re an expatriate. Why don’t you live in New York? Then you’d know these things. What do you want me to do? Come over here and tell you every year?’
‘Take some more coffee,’ I said.
‘Good. Coffee is good for you. It’s the caffeine in it. Caffeine, we are here. Caffeine puts a man on her horse and a woman in his grave. You know what’s the trouble with you? You’re an expatriate. One of the worst type. Haven’t you heard that? Nobody that ever left their own country ever wrote anything worth printing. Not even in the newspapers.’
He drank the coffee.
‘You’re an expatriate. You’ve lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see?"

Ernest Hemingway, Fiesta: The sun also raises.

Mi agüita amarilla

Y creo que he bebido mas de 40 cervezas hoy
y creo que tendré que expulsarlas fuera de mí
y subo al water que hay arriba en el bar
y la empiezo a mear y me hecho a reir
sale de mi una agüita y amarilla cálida y tibia
Y baja por una tubería,
pasa por debajo de tu casa,
pasa por debajo de tu familia,
pasa por debajo de tu lugar de trabajo,
mi agüita amarilla, mi agüita amarilla.

Y llega a un rio,
la bebe el pastor,
la beben las vaquitas,
riega los campos,
mi agüita amarilla, mi agüita amarilla.

Y baja al mar,
juega con los pececillos,
juega con los calamares,
juega con las medusas
y con las merluzas
que tu te comes.

El sol calienta mi aguita amarilla,
la pone a cien grados,
la manda para arriba,
viaja por el cielo,
llega a tu ciudad
y empieza a diluviar.

Moja las calles,
moja a tu padre,
tu madre lava, lava con mi agüita amarilla.
Moja el patio del colegio,
moja el ayuntamiento.

Y creo que he bebido mas de 40 cervezas hoy
y creo que tendré que expulsarlas fuera de mí
y subo al water que hay arriba en el bar
y la empiezo a mear y me hecho a reir
y me pongo a pensar:
dónde irá, dónde irá.

Se expandirá por el mundo,
pondrá verde la selva
y lo que mas me alegra
es que mi agüita amarilla será un liquido inmundo.

Los toreros muertos, Mi agüita amarilla.

Un olor intenso

-En los pies has salido entero a tu padre. Cuando te descalzas, te huelen igual que a él. Un olor intenso, fuerte; yo casi no puedo respirar.

-¡Gloria! Tráeme una cerveza.

-No hay.

-Pues vino, casera.

-Tampoco hay. Sólo queda coñac.

-¡No querrás que tome coñac con la cena!

-Madre, déjeme una botella de agua de vichy.

-En eso estoy pensando.

-Estoy todo el día trabajando como un cabrón. Llego a casa, tengo que comerme un pollo medio quemado y ni siquiera puedo tomar un vaso de vino, ¡joder!

-No me chilles, que se me sube el azúcar.

-Pues no, si no me deja una botella de vichy, no le dejo chupar los huesos.

-Qué vergüenza hablar a una madre.

-Venga, se la compro, si es para no bajar.

-Treinta.


Pedro Almodóvar, Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto.

Rathenau und Speer

"Erich Ludendorffs ärgste Sorge war, dass er nicht genug Soldaten haben würde, um den Krieg zu Ende führen. Das hatte Walther Rathenau schon bei der heftigen Diskussion um die Annexion Polen mitbekommen. Also macht er Vorschläge, die Ludendorff in diesem Punkt entgegenkommen. So rät er am 16. September 1916 zu einer Vorgehensweise, die in der Obersten Heeresleitung sofort Aufmerksamkeit erfährt: Um das durch Druck von Ober-Ost aufgelegte Hindenburg-Programm, die totale Mobilisierung aller verfügbaren Kräfte für die Rüstung, besser voranzubringen, sollten 700,000 Zwangsarbeiter im besetzten Belgien ausgehoben und nach Deutschland gebracht werden. Ursprünglich war nur von 100,000 bis 200,000 Mann die Rede gewesen. Doch in einem Brief vom 23 Oktober 1916 machte Rathenau sich für ein weit grösseres Kontingent stark - und nicht nur in Belgien, sondern auch in Polen.

Das war ein Verstoss gegen die damals geltende Haager Landkriegsordnung, die Zwangsdeportationen für die heimische Rüstung verbot. Zum Glück scheiterte dieses Projekt schon daran, dass das gloriose Hindenburg-Programm sich als Flop erwies. Dennoch hatte Rathenau mit diesem Vorschlag eine Line überschritten. Er hatte nicht mehr nur die friedliche Wirtschaft zum Kriegsdienst umorganisiert, was man ihm noch verziehen hatte, er wollte nun - wie später auch Albert Speer - Menschen mit Gewalt zur Arbeit für Deutschland zwingen.

Dies war sein grösster Fehler. Obwohl kein Mensch zu Schaden kam - Rathenau Zwangsrekrutierungsprogramm kam nicht einmal in eine Erprobungsphase -, kostete es ihn Jahre seines Lebens. Als der Krieg verloren war, wollte niemand etwas mit ihm zu tun haben, und die Alliierten dachten kurzzeitig daran, ihn vor ein Kriegsgericht zu stellen."


Wolfgang Brenner, Walther Rathenau. Deutscher un Jude.



(Quick Translation: Erich Ludendorff's worst fear was that he would not have enough soldiers to bring the war to an end. Walther Rathenau was aware of this concern since the discussion they held about the annexion of Poland... On September 16th, 1916, Rathenau suggested a new strategy that received a prompt interest from the Head of the Army: he suggested, in order to better apply the Hindenburg Plan, the complete mobilization for the arms industry of all the available manpower resources, to conscript 700,000 forced workers in occupied Belgium and move them to Gemany. Originally it was said that the required number was of about 100,000 to 200,000 men. Furthermore, on a letter dated on October 23rd, 1916, Rathenau supported an increase of the contingent [of slaves], and not only from Belgium but also from Poland. The deportation of forced workforce was a violation of the former Hague Convention. Fortunately, the Hindenburg project was cancelled because it was a failure. Nevertheless, Rathenau had crossed a red line. He had not only organized the [German] economy in war time - something that could be pardoned -, but he wanted now to force people to work for Germany - like later Albert Speer did . It was his biggest mistake. Despite that no person was harmed - Rathenau Forced labour program was not even tested -, it cost him years of his life [to correct]. When the war was lost, nobody wanted to do have any relation with Rathenau, and the Allies thought for a while to court-martial him.)

Young savage

"The Jekyll-Hyde of you
I can't survive the tide of you.
The vicious style of love, the whining.
Pits and pendulums of lying.
I don't see how you survive in.
Hard-line worlds you're advertising.
Sneaky features? Waiting.
City sex is so frustrating.

Young savage
Young savage
She's like a steel wall
Speaks like a dance hall.
Young savage
Young savage
Anything goes where no-one knows your name.

The mirror love of vixens
Gets over the mask of victims
Money rents you insulation
Tenderness, asphyxiation
Someone else's flesh to borrow
Sling it from your bed tomorrow
In the passport of our sorrow
Look behind the face it's hollow.

The broken heart of you
Who stole, who stole a part of you
Changing blossoms into piss
And taking bites from every kiss
The past is dead, tomorrow's too far
All the chemicals that bar us
Coloured hair, cheap tattoos
That tell you all their points of view.

Condemned to be a stranger
Subway dweller, dead-end danger
Peeking through the dust of friends
Who never gave, they'd only lend
Every sneer is thrown away
With practised gestures of disdain
The outlaw stance is so pedantic
Hate the world, it's so romantic."

Ultravox, Young Savage.

I found truth

"To the centre of the city where all roads meet, waiting for you.
To the depths of the ocean where all hopes sank, searching for you.
I was moving through the silence without motion, waiting for you.
In a room without window in the corner, I found truth.

In the shadowplay, acting out your own death, knowing no more.
As the assassins all grouped in four lines, dancing on the floor.
And with cold steel, odour on their bodies made a move to connect.
I could only stare in disbelief as the crowds all left.

I did everything, everything I wanted to.
I let them use you for their own ends.
To the centre of the city in the night, waiting for you."

Joy Division, Shadowplay.

The voice

"Native these words seem to me
All speech directed to me
I've heard them once before
I know that feeling.

Stranger emotions in mind
Changing the contours I find
I've seen them once before
Someone cries to me.

The look and the sound of the voice
They try, they try
The shape and the power of the voice
In strong low tones.

Forceful and twisting again
Wasting the perfect remains
I've felt it once before
Slipping over me.

The look and the sound of the voice
They try, they try
The shape and the power of the voice
In strong low tones

Sweetly the voices decay
Draw on the lines that they say
I'd lost it once before
Now it cries to me."

Ultravox, The voice.

Bigamist, pederast, dope friend, and plagiarist

"A great achiever and close associate of John Paul II, Marcial Maciel was also a bigamist, pederast, dope friend, and plagiarist. Maciel came from the fervently religious state of Michoacán in the southwest of Mexico, and grew up during the years of the Cristero war (1926–1929), a savage conflict that pitched traditional Catholics (Cristeros) in provincial Mexico against the anti-clerical government in the capital. One of his uncles was the commanding general of the Cristeros. Another four uncles were bishops. One of them, Rafael Guízar y Valencia, brought him into a clandestine seminary in Mexico City, where as a 21 year old who had not even taken his vows, Maciel created a new religious order that was intended to be both cosmopolitan and strict.
...

In 1997, a Mexican woman who was living in Cuernavaca looked at the cover of the magazine Contenido—a Reader’s Digest-y sort of publication—and saw on it the face of her common-law husband. She had been his partner for 21 years and borne him two children, and she knew him as a private detective or “CIA agent” who, for understandable work-related reasons, put in only occasional appearances at home. Now she learned that he was a priest and and that his real name was Marcial Maciel. He was, the magazine said, the head of an order whose strictness and extreme conservatism appeared to hide some vile secrets: the article, picking up information first brought to light in an article by Jason Berry in the Hartford Courant, revealed that nine men, one a founder of the Legionaries, another still an active member, and the rest all former members of the order, had informed their superiors in Rome that Maciel had abused them sexually when they were pubescent seminarians under his care.

The accusations were not new, nor would they be the last. In 1938 Maciel was expelled from his uncle Guízar’s seminary, and shortly afterward from a seminary in the United States. According to witnesses, Maciel and his uncle had a gigantic row behind closed doors, and one witness, a Legionary who had known Maciel since childhood, told the psychoanalyst González that the bishop’s rage had to do with the fact that Maciel was locking himself up in the boarding house where he was staying with some of the younger boys at his uncle’s seminary. Bishop Guízar died of a massive heart attack the following day.

Later, it would become known that Maciel had his students and seminarians procure Dolantin (morphine) for him. This led to Maciel’s suspension as head of the order in 1956. Inexplicably, he was reinstated after two years. Much later still, someone realized that his book, The Psalter of My Days, which was more or less required reading in Legionary institutions, and was a sort of Book of Hours, or prayer guide, was lifted virtually in its entirety from The Psalter of My Hours, an account written by a Spaniard who was sentenced to life in prison after the Spanish Civil War.
...

As it turns out, Maciel’s common-law marriage to Blanca Estela Lara Gutiérrez was not exclusive. Some ten years after he met her, he began a long-lasting relationship with a 19-year old waitress from Acapulco, to whom he introduced himself as an “oil broker.” He had a daughter with her, and, according to a recent article in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, several more children with other partners.

After she found out that her husband was not a CIA agent but a child-molesting priest, Blanca Estela Lara did not come forth with the news that she was married to him. Perhaps she was terrified unawares of the man she believed “was her God,” as she would say a decade later. Perhaps she was simply ashamed. At any rate, she kept silent while some of Maciel’s victims and a few journalists—notably the late Gerald Renner and Jason Berry, now of the National Catholic Reporter—kept producing more evidence. And then, last March, two years after Maciel’s death, Lara appeared with her three sons on one of Mexico’s most well-regarded talk shows and listened quietly while her children testified that their biological father, Marcial Maciel, had made them masturbate him, and had first attempted to rape them, the older one said, when he was a boy seven years old. (This testimony has been tarnished somewhat by the revelation that the sons had earlier demanded millions of dollars from the Legionaries of Christ in exchange for their silence. The order has not attempted to deny the accusation, however.)

Quite apart from the damage to Maciel’s victims, there is the pressing question of why the Catholic Church, as an institution, did not condemn him ..."

Alma Guillermoprieto, The New York Review of Books. Father Maciel, John Paul II, and the Vatican sex crisis.

Unas bellísimas personas

"Stephen Hawking de agujeros negros y cosas de este tipo, pues sabe mucho, pero de aliens, no tiene ni puta idea. Porque si ves a un alien, un tipo de dos metros con forma de lagarto, amarillo y tal, acojona. Pero después son unas bellísimas personas. Las veces que me han tenido abducido, he tomado licor de hierbas con ellos, pero a saco.
...

¿Que pueden ser hostiles? Bueno, la sonda anal al principio duele, pero una vez lo repiten, no hay problema alguno.
...


Curiosamente mi primer contacto fue en el Xacobeo 93. Yo estaba en Portomarín, justo antes de cruzar a Pontes. Y de repente aparecí en la Ciudad de la Cultura [en construcción, distrito cultural y ocio de Santiago]. Todavía no estaba en construcción pero aparecí allí. Me encontraba en la biblioteca, en una mesa, jugando al dominó.
...


Quedamos en Bonaval todos los domingos con una bolsa grande de palomitas. Miramos al cielo y esperamos, esperamos. Porque también somos conscientes que el concepto espacio-temporal de ellos es distinto."

Correo TV.

Dark was the night, cold was the ground

"The first songs he recorded, on a single day in 1927, are more familiar. "Nobody's Fault But Mine" was covered by Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton did "Motherless Children," Bob Dylan turned Johnson's "Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed" into "In My Time of Dying" on his 1962 debut LP and "If I Had My Way I'd Tear the Building Down" has been appropriated by everyone from the Grateful Dead to the Staple Singers.
...

Johnson's haunting masterpiece "Dark Was the Night (Cold Was the Ground)" was chosen for an album placed aboard Voyager 1 in 1977 on its journey to the ends of the universe. Foreseeing an extraterrestrial intercept, astronomer Carl Sagan and his staff put together "Sounds of Earth" -- including ancient chants, the falling rain, a beating heart, Beethoven, Bach and Blind Willie.
...

Beyond five recording dates from 1927-1930 that yielded 30 tracks, the singer remains a biographical question mark. Only one picture of him, seated at a piano holding a guitar with a tin cup for tips on its neck, has ever been found.
...

Unquestioned is the opinion that Johnson is one of the most influential guitarists in music history. "Anybody who's ever played the bottleneck guitar with some degree of accomplishment is quoting Blind Willie to this day," said Austin slide guitarist Steve James. "He's the apogee." An instinctive virtuoso, Johnson made his guitar moan, slur and sing, often finishing lyrics for him, and throughout the years, Clapton, Jimmy Page, Ry Cooder, Duane Allman and many more have expressed a debt to the sightless visionary."


Michael Corcoran, Austin American-Statement. The soul of Willie Johnson.