Moving Pictures - The Falling Soldier

Since reading Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others, which is all about visual representations of pain and suffering and the way we experience the suffering of others via the medium of photography, I've wanted to do a series on some of the career-making photographs mentioned. 

Robert Capa's "The Falling Soldier"  believed to be taken in Cerro Muriano, Spain on September 5, 1936 was first on my list, as I find it absolutely gut wrenching. A soldier, in the exact moment of death from multiple gun shot wounds during the Spanish Civil War. I've massively interested in that period in history and locale (even writing a musical about it) and this really just captures so much emotion to me. 

Not only did this photo make Capa's career (he went on to become one of the most celebrated war photographers of all time) but it has since become one of the most controversial photos in history. In 1975, accusations came that photo was in fact staged. These accusations were often politically charged and leveled by Franco supporting Falangists. Critics pointed to landscape points far in the distance and matched them up with other places, proving it couldn't be what Capa claimed. It went back and forth. The man photographed was finally identified. His brother confirmed his death at Cerro Muriano, but in 2009 further evidence in a journal refuted that testimony. People still don't agree. 

Fake or not, you can't say the photo isn't striking and moving. The way certain dance can move or haunt because you didn't expect the body to move that way. In its own way, it's utterly authentic. What do you think? You can check out the negatives at the International Center of Photography here in NYC. 

Last Corrida in Catalonia

These are some pretty revealing photos of the last bullfight held in Plaza Monumental de Barcelona on September 25. Oddly enough, this collection by several photographers came to me via my google alert on David Mora and is actually posted in the Denver Post. 

I was saddened to learn when I started to look at the photos that it was Juan Mora and not David Mora in this corrida, but the pictures were moving nonetheless. I have kind of a deal with "the last ever" of anything. That mash-up of emotions that makes the corrida fascinating to me in the first place. Is there a name for that? Something about that last roll of Kodachrome film broke my heart and I think the Indigo Girls song Winthrop is probably the saddest song I've ever heard. "And for someone, there is something, never coming back."

More Mora

Remember when I said that this guy was something special? To mark my words, he was going to blow up? Well, it turns out that the day after I said that, he did. (Seriously watch that.) It was the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona. The whole day was hailed as a disappointment except for David Mora. 


He was gored twice. Once in the thigh and once in the armpit.  And it made me genuinely frightened. I actually thought, "What if I lose him!?"-- as though I actually knew him. But that's just the thing: I feel like I do. 


Despite my many conflicting emotions about the corrida, ('fight'-- bullfight, bullfighter-- 'fight' has never been the right word and never the word they themselves use) David Mora makes you reconsider the whole thing. Much like Enrique Ponce was for AL Kennedy while she was writing On Bullfighting, watching David Mora is the closest the corrida gets to a religious experience. (Enrique Ponce, as it turns out, was David Mora's sponsor in his alternativa.) And I think religion is an appropriate way to discuss it. Because I was raised Buddhist, so I don't have an attachment to the deeply ceremonial aspects of, say, Catholicism. But there are some churches, some cathedrals, and some sermons that I have heard by some priests and some reverends that make believe and understand. 


David Mora is someone who makes you love something that repelled you, and see something by seeing it the way he sees it. 


Without needing to know anything about cape work or rules, you can see-- even I could see!-- from the very first, that he was just plain better than everyone else. Listen to the audiences. Even in the last year or two, he's banished from himself those last flourishes of ego, of strutting. He's all business, and all love. Even with his ass hanging out, even when he went up against the Miura bull, his grace makes everyone else around him look like a hack, like a strutting peacock. Anytime I see a clumsy step or pass, a scurry, I know it's not my David.


Odd, I know. To say "mine." But as soon as I made him Aries Brio, he became mine. 


I can't tell you how many videos I've watched, how many websites I've translated. I feel like I could spot his work anywhere. Turns out, matadors are sort of difficult to get in touch with. But I really want to interview him. Like really. I found out his agent is Antonio Tejero, but haven't figured out a way to contact that guy. Anyone know? Can anyone help? (Bernardo Cubria, I mean you!) 


Watch for yourselves and see. 

David Mora by dtoros

Estrella in the Rain

If you have to walk around in the rain and cold, even though it's July, I recommend listening to Estrella Morente and pretending you're in Spain. I do this often, and I think it helps. Here's some Tangos de Pepico for your Monday. Estrella Morente is the daughter of another famous Flamenco singer, Enrique Morente, and as it happens has been married to a pretty famous bullfighter, Javier Conde, since she was 21. 


Javier Conde, as it happens, looks more like a movie star than your average bullfighter. In fact, was in Hable Con Ella, one of my faves. He also participates in the bloodless bullfighting they've been doing in Las Vegas, where the peones stick velcro spears to the back of the bull. That is some crazy dangerous stuff right there. 

Magical. Or Disgusting. Few things in the world spark such a difference of opinion. Maybe marriage.

 One of the many reasons it pays to make friends on the subway is that when your camera-- with all your photos from the bullfight you attended (alone!) for research on your amazing matador dance musical-- when that camera is stolen (along with your whole purse) from a Baixa coffee shop patio, these friends you made on the subway, who attended the very same corrida at Plaza de Toros Las Ventas Madrid on June 19, 2011 will graciously email you all of theirs.


And I needed them. Because what is available for seeing in all the glamourous photos on ESPN stories, and the youtube clips, are primarily concerned with images like the ones above. (Though, I'll get to him in a minute.) But when I walked into the plaza and to my front row Sol seat and my hot as hell rock slab to sit on (1. The cheap cheap seats were sold out 2. I live in Scotland-- I figured, bring it on, sun. Just bring it on.) I was thinking: who gives a shit about the matadors. I've watched them countless times on TV. I've read every book on corridas ever written. I know their deal. 


I want to know about the other guys. I wanted to look at their faces: the peones as they scurry behind burladeros to protect themselves, the guys with their trumpets up in the bandstand, the novilleros, the ticket takers...all those guys. What happens when they go home?I wanted to know who those little guys are. So I did a lot of watching them.


At least, in the beginning, that's what I did. I will tell you that the first 45 minutes in that plaza (I was early) were some of the most uncomfortable of my life. After the disapproval of nearly all my friends, I was: sitting on hot rock slab, my water bottle was already gone, (so... was my cerveza) I didn't know anyone, the people who were around me were super obnoxious bro-dog /embracing-their-machismo American men (barf), the sun was blazing in my eyes, and even before Paseillo, before anyone rode out on horses, and before the first very sad-eyed, very gentle bull came out, I was....depressed. 

I was depressed because on every level and from every angle, especially a modern corrida asks you to contemplate death. Of course. The bull's death, the matador's death (if not today, then sometime), your own death, and the death of the very thing you are watching. I looked around at a nearly empty stadium and felt a dull sadness that didn't seem to belong to me. 


So during the middle of the first bull, I felt sick. I wanted to leave. This was the height of male machismo folly! You think you're tough? Taking ten guys, swords and spears, to kill one bull? It seemed more pathetic than anything else. There was nothing technically wrong with the way the first guy was in the ring... except that killing a sweet looking bull seemed not only NOT beautiful, but that somehow he managed to make the thing boring. 


The only thing moving, the only thing beautiful was the bull. And as they hitched the dead toro to a cart and dragged him out of the stadium, I started to think about what that would mean for my show. My show, in which you never see a bull (because...just no). In which the bull is replaced by music and by the idea of these three women in his life, who turn the tables on my matador, Nico "Aries" Brio. I thought back to the quote that opens my show: 

“It may seem foolish to speak of almost killing an animal such as a fighting bull with a cape. Ofcourse you could not, but…you could lame the animal and, by abusing its bravery, force it to charge uselessly, again and again. It is the effort made [by the bull] that kills it.”
–Ernest Hemingway

David Mora

 And then, something magical happened. A truly cantankerous bull came barreling out of the Gate of Fear to meet David Mora (that guy above) and all of a sudden, there was a corrida. Not only that, there was my Aries Brio, and there was my show. Something about this David Mora... Just middle of the ticket, but serious, graceful, daring, an entertainer, dimples, ego you were happy to accept. All of it. He made that shit look good. And everyone bought it. Including me. 

They gave him the ear of that first bull and he did a little lap around the plaza, tossing the ear, his hat, whatever he had at people in the audience and they'd toss it back to him. The dimples, the way he touched his hair, I swooned a little. I thought, "That is my guy."Sex.eeee.

You see, I'm a pretty feminine writer. I always know who the women in the story are, and often, I access the men by way of the women. So I've largely been writing around him and waiting for some tangible detail to lock him into focus. Thank you, David Mora, for making me get it. And for making me feel that amazing mix of conflicting emotions that are the exact elixir I want people to feel when they one day sit in a theatre and watch Tercio de Muerte. How the onstage seating will slowly trickle off stage. How when they come back from intermission, half as many people will still be there. I want them to feel depressed. And sick. And bored (just a little...or maybe frustrated) and elated, and hysterical and turned on, and ashamed that they're turned on, and superstitious and worried and connected to something primal, and confused about why they feel connected to it. 

I don't think there are any lit terms in English that are as good as the terms in other languages. Nothing as good as mono no aware. Definitely nothing as good as duende. But I felt all that. Which is to say, if you let it, the corrida is a dramatic universe so rich in texture, that it is capable of activating in you-- and causing you to questions the origins of-- almost every emotion you have. The collision that results is why you go. 

**Please, please read wonderful Scottish novelist A.L. Kennedy's book On Bullfighting. One of the most vulnerable, honest and compelling reads ever. Also, Death in the Afternoon remains, for all its Hemingway-ness marvelous. Read these. For video of what I saw, check out here. Google chrome will translate these pages for you.

Subway Friends, or Who AM I??

Hi. My name is Ryann. You might remember me from such notorious stranger friendings as the great piano on the subway/Pete & Sooz friending of '09 and the riding in the big red truck with a stranger from the Atlanta Airport to Alpharetta in the middle of the night caper of '00. Basically, if you know me, you know I have a strange knack for falling into groups of people and becoming friends with them. Especially on the subway. 


The girl who lives inside my head? I know her pretty well. But sometimes, another girl gets unleashed on the general public and I come back from a bullfight with three engineers masquerading as secret agents, Lorenzo, Rodrigo & Stefan, from Italy, Brazil & Austria (respectively) leading me to ask myself, "Who. Am. I?" 


Here's how it went down. I got onto the subway after the bullfight (I have a lot to say about the bullfight-- and all your commentary regarding my attendance, and I will do so once the tiny monsters stop eating my  brain) and ran to catch a train. As I ran, my sunglasses fell off my head and one of the matching hat guys I had noticed sitting near me in the plaza de toros (I noticed them due to their matching hats) kicked my shades onto the tracks as they also ran to catch the train. 


I could have let it go, but I could tell they all spoke English and all had different accents, so I decided to let Subway Friending Ryann out and gave him some shit about it. We chatted, figured out we were getting off at the same stop, they all live in the Netherlands, yada yada yada, and we decided they owed me a beer for losing my sunglasses. I buzzed my flat and told Aly and Erin that I was back from the bullfight and I had brought friends! 


Many cervezas and paellas and much terrace chatting later, we're all pals. Even on the facebook. So.... trip to the Netherlands, I suppose. 


Thanks for the fun times, newest pals. And muchas gracias to YOU, Espana. Check ya later, Madrid. It's been re-al. Next stop, Lisbon! 

Perfect Prado

So the Prado might be my favorite museum I've ever visited. Not just because my favorite painting is there. Everything about the Prado is perfect. 


On the way in, we sat and listened to some Spanish guitar and I was curious as to these prints an old man kept slaving away over. They were prints-- just of flamenco dancers and bullfighters-- so I wondered what he was doing to them, as he clearly had an art kit on his table. Then I realized he was stenciling in people's names to the posters. And it was settled: I needed one of those bullfighter ones. 


It's going to look really good in my room, but that's not even why I want it. As I walked up, the man pulled out the flamenco girl, and started talking to me about putting my name on it. I let him know I wanted the bullfighter. And I didn't want my name on it. Oh, no. I wanted my bullfighter from my musical, Aries Brio. So now, I have a poster advertising a bullfight with my fictional character. I probably just can't relay to you how cool that is to me, but I'm just a big old nerd and anything that allows my characters to take a step from my head into the real world is pure gold. 


Inside the museum, I loved the preparatory sketches Goya did for his huge royal portrait. The Riberas scared me. But the main event for me was the Velazquez rooms. Specifically, Las Meninas. I think I stood in front of Las Meninas for about 30 minutes. I just love the way he uses color. I just love. 


Slightly interesting-- The Prado has this tendency to really interpret the art in a way that I haven't seen museums do in a while. What are your thoughts on that? I always go back to Susan Sontag's Against Interpretation and can't help wonder if being told what to think about art or anything else is kind of a Spanish Fascist hangover.


Last thing. The Prado does something so cool I can't stand it. If I had any way of getting the stuff home, I would have done it. The have prints on demand. You scroll through the masterpieces and they print it in any size for you, on a variety of different materials. Matte Finish, Glossy Finish, CANVAS! Really reasonably priced too. I think all museums should be doing this if they're not. Amazing. 


I gots wayyyyy more stories from yesterday, but I'll leave you for now. I need to soak up some more sun and head out of town to check out El Escorial. 

Champion Sound & Spain

Courtesy of Taylor, here is some fun Spanish music for your Sunday, Crystal Fighters. I'm thinking a lot about Spain lately and not just because of Tercio de Muerte. 

Aly, Erin and I are going to stay here in Madrid this June! Yay! I can't wait to be lounging with my favorite girlies on this beautiful terrace, eating breakfast and soaking up sun. 

Hope you're having a great Sunday! 

Help Japan

My mind has been in Spain all weekend, working on Tercio de Muerte, but my heart has been with Japan. 

“Buddhism holds that everything is in constant flux. Thus the question is whether we are to accept change passively and be swept away by it or whether we are to take the lead and create positive changes on our own initiative. While conservatism and self-protection might be likened to winter, night, and death, the spirit of pioneering and attempting to realize ideals evokes images of spring, morning, and birth.” -- Daisaku Ikeda

Death in the Afternoon

The number of projects I have running simultaneously right now is sort of giving me vertigo. I keep ricocheting from Tzarist Russia to Cartoon high schools to writers on the Isle of Skye in the 20's to Jane Eyre-inspired short stories to bullfighting. Which is really what should be (but hasn't been) taking precedence this week, no thanks to the tech gods.  


But I have tried, working around my video editing nightmare, to steep myself again in my work for the various bullfighting/ Tercio de Muerte projects. I'm re-reading sections of Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon-- just the richest thing I've ever read. Every line. The book is one continuous underline. And so funny. Sometimes, you forget how funny Hemingway actually was. 


I have to say, I am just so endlessly fascinated by this project and the various media it has started to grow limbs in every possible direction. A radio drama, of course the musical, and who knows what else. But I dream of my invented Aries Brio and his sister Paloma, his lover Fernanda, and his wife Gemma, endlessly. With music and without, with visual, and then, in the heightened world of sound on the radio. 


One of my main goals-- aside from the fact that I think the subject is a relatively untapped gold mine, just begging for a sexy dance musical-- is to build up a more masculine voice in my writing. My stuff has always been decidedly feminine in tone and content, which by and large, I'm fine with. 


But as I move into my phd years and begin work on both the creative and research portions of my work, I'm going to be looking at literary boys' clubs. I'm going to have a lot more male characters on my roster and I need them to be amazing. So, Hemingway. Hook me up. Plug me in. Do it. 


Plus, I am just so intrigued. A great decline/decay of a tradition (as a descendent of Tennessee Williams and devoted lover of Faulkner, you know I'm into that!) cruelty mixed with a kind of majesty, the weird psychology and politics of it all... or to quote for you:


"Magical. Or disgusting. Few things in the world spark such a difference of opinion. Maybe marriage."





I confess, I'm more interested in bullfighting in the 1930's-1960's, but for further reading, this article about Alejandro Amaya is hot.