They DO represent us

    And so I came to live in Barcelona. Unlike Germany, Spain didn't overcome the crisis from 2008. Things got worse and, similarly to plenty of places throughout the world, people is raising up against the government, FMI and such. One of the many slogans we cry in the streets is that politicians don't represent us. We argue that the electoral law is odd and that it favours a two-party system--which is partly right. We are convinced that the greedy hand of stock markets is behind our incipient poverty. And to them we say: they don't represent us.

    Many won't like my point, but they should've thought about that earlier. We've grown cozy and warm watching TV while credit flooded our houses. We didn't want to hear the warnings. Do we remember Green Day's American Idiot? Have we ever listened to the lyrics? Can anyone believe the message became so mainstream and we wouldn't care anyway? Get your 20 bucks subversion fix sitting on your fucking crucifix. Now we're eager for rebellion and punk. Lucky we, there are politicians to blame. Once again: they don't represent us!!

    Well, they DO represent us. They're just a sample of the mess we were, the mess we are. They got there in front of our eyes with our apathetic votes. They aren't more or less evil than we are. Now we want to make up a new philosophy in which politicians are unfit. We ask them to turn around. But politics is a heavy stone with its inertia. It's hard to change with a sudden strike the momentum that it gained with brief, coordinated pushes over the years. I'm not even sure we deserve this change anyway.

    They do represent us. Or at least they represent us as much as they did when we were happy and deliberately ignorant. Aren't we just astonished of discovering what we've become?

Joy and Change

    These are days of joy and change :D

    Change (and also joy) because I'm moving form Berlin to Barcelona to begin working at the complex systems laboratory, at the Pompeu Fabra University. It's a great challenge what I'm facing here: deep scientific questions, enriching people and amazing projects alongside!!

   Joy (but also change just to make everything symmetrical) because a previous work of mine (The importance of interlinguistic similarity and stable bilingualism when two languages compete, authored by Jorge Mira Pérez --site in Spanish only--, by me, and by Juan José Nieto Roig --can't find a fine web profile...--; here for a popular account of the work) has been awarded the Galician critics prize in the category of Investigation.

()

Each night I try to rip it off, to rip off my mind. To find the exact one or two fibers which will give me the novacaine I need, the stuff i've been looking for. And it's always kind of a neuron which lies exactly outside my brain, exactly at my ears; and which sings something which has already been sung before, which was already to say and for ever: 

And try to sing this without crying!! The world has just been told for ever!! 

(Traditional) Homosexuality as a cathartic ritual for artistic creation

    """
        -- Qué te metes? Y no me digas que pollas.
        --Pollas. *
    """

    You stare at something close to your face, and then your sight diverges and the world becomes twice itself. And you wish you could have a camera and capture the moment "this must be art". The same, it is, but being born this way, never can get rid of the multiple vision of the deep penetration. You ride the night with a dick up your hole, down your throat and then you have it: the phallic smash on your brain scatters your infinite eyes down each corner, a superposition of scenes all held together by a huge, hard, long which unifies the world in a symphonic moan.

---

    Dizzy and exhausted, I walked down to the level of the Spree. I wasn't high anymore and now everything seemed wrong. I could see the corpses left by the war so long ago; I could see those killed on the river when trying to scape from the soviet sector, their souls floating forever at the exact spot on the water. I could see the streets stuffed with their inert spirits and I tried to walk aside, not to step on them, but there's so much death in this city, everywhere... I tried not to profane anything, but then I retched and then I had to throw up all the cocks I'd blown that night, many of them falling onto the floor, the most of them flowed down the river, string of though.

---

*This must be translated as: "What drugs do you take? And don't tell me it's cocks. " "Cocks. "

Three nazi tales: II, The Facebook

As recently as two weeks ago I came across an article at a Spanish newspaper (in Spanish) written by a well known spanish polemist (this site is unluckily also in Spanish, though there is a non-working British flag in the upper left which should allow one to change the language); a regular one of the neoconservative, pan-nationalcatholic TV-channel intereconomía. The author was disappointed that no official tribute is payed to the blue division anymore.

The blue division consisted of spaniards which voluntarily enrolled to fight WW2 as part of the nazi army. This broadly makes them nazis from my point of view. Most of them came from franco's army, which broadly makes them fascists for me. I'd even say that there isn't any difference in here. More about the blue division can be found in the wikipedia, I was delaying the link on purpose to have you read my opinion first.

As members of the nazi army they fought the Russian campaign. Serving the nazi army. The polemist claims that they fought with real courage and honor, and that this makes a great score. He also remarks as merits of the blue division that they could once have raped a russian girl, but they didn't though they had a clear chance and big urge to do so.

franco's children. So far so good.

I read this article through one of my facebook contacts: a young boy once actively involved in the recent #spanishrevolution which demands more democracy among other stuff. He was in full agreement with the polemist. He argues that what really matters is that "they died for their ideals, whatever they were"; that they gave everything for nothing --quite a pity, I shall guess...--; and that all of this makes them "the last great heroes of this country" (this last in capitals, which I refuse to reproduce in here).

A cold opinion in the internet, sharp as the side view of the letters I write right now. Words of my generation. A reminder that time is cyclic, that we've already been in this planet for a while and history is exhausted, and that we have no other fate than playing it over and over again as the fractal piece of a rusty pianola.

Three nazi tales: I, Oranienburgerstraße.

At the corner Friedrichstraße with Oranienburgerstraße there was a pizza restaurant. I didn't use to go there: too expensive for me. But it was near the place I study and could see it everyday. Two weeks ago I walked by with two friends who were visiting me.

The place isn't a restaurant anymore. It was closed. The inside was dusty and the furniture removed out of its place, chopped into splinters. At each and every one of the wide windows someone had painted gross jewish crosses from the bottom to the top. I double checked the calendar: it was 2011. I double checked the place: it was Berlin-Mitte.

We left the place towards Brandenburger Tor. A shade of sadness. We slipped through a bunch of Syrian people demonstrating for the current president of their country who has been recently accused of crimes against the humanity by Amnesty International. "We'll blast you all", one could read on their shirts, or see the smiling face of president al-asad. "We'll blast you all", my sorrow sang.

Berlin, Warschauerstraße

The walk between Warschauerstraße and my room at a student's residence at Ostbahnhof was like playing a ramshackle piano on the dislocated tiled floor. That, whenever I walked the tiled floor. There was also this trip down the stairs from the high bridge at Warschauerstraße, where you could fuck around the dirt underneath, fuck up a lad or a chick who wouldn't complain about the sour smell; then walk the narrow vanishing path while any short of tick could get attached as it jumped out of the weeds which now and ever tried to erase the walkway; pass the tumbledown cottage, once --if ever-- a kind of train relay station; already near to the student's residence the huge Berghain disco stands, over and over again chosen the best one in the world, whoever decides it. The companion as good: any drunkard who got so far; a couple, an orgy shook the bushes, laughed the waxing waning moon which slipped roundly at either side; some children playing dirty vodka or rum sat on the curb of a road driving nowhere.

For a last time: back to the stairs descending from the high high bridge over the train rails, the bridge itself being Warschauerstraße. And the stairs hanging held by an armless night, with all the majesty of a suicide drop. And this was my preferred way back home.

For a last time, I say, cause they aren't there anymore. Now only a wailing of wind rocks the bridge, the soul. And my drunk steps, and this void. And I must walk back playing the quivering tiles, which soon won't quiver anymore. And as I pass by I see the old path changed into a neat BMX rink. The relay station is now being build into a railway museum or whatever. Yeah, the disco is still there. You can get ice cream inside. And whoever it chooses, s/he'll choose it again as the best one in the world. But people like me, the beaten downs, are not allowed in anymore. Instead, mama kids pretending to be whores but who wouldn't fuck --even suck a shit-- when sunk on the bitter night.

So this is what it means the fall of the Berlin wall. Capitalism as a busy beaver working back and fort, to and fro; fixing up whatever soviet disruption remains. Like a come of age of the whole city, mature enough that it doesn't need me anymore.

Write and Link

Two advises that I myself don't take as serious as I should. This is definitely what we must do if we really want to taylor the new global consciousness we wish. If this new consciousness is really to be born it will be an emergent one, far from individualities and in fight, at least in its first terms, against most of the structures we know nowadays.

Therefore:

Write a lot!

'Good an evil', 'artistic value' or the ’importance’ of an idea are not objective; but they aren't subjective either, in the way 'subjectiveness' is known nowadays. Rather, not completely. Evaluation of these concepts lays on a emergent, social level; exactly where this new form of consciousness is to arise; and this and no any other means is to approve or deny these subjective values. One's intelligence could serve to be ready, to have a hint and play with some vantage; but it'll be the great emergent goddess which will speak the last words.

Therefore: write a lot! Expose yourself to a public avid of failure. The matter is not anymore if you find an idea great or not; but that the actual, uppermost value of a text will only materialize in the interactions it prompts. But also be aware that this is not only the value of your work which is being squeezed out of these interactions: also the value of the You which lies in the intersection of your being with the being of the social goddess will be.


Link a lot!

And this comes as a hint that the nature has laid down for us when the brain appeared. We aren't anymore condemned to the rigid margins of a book. Chapters and sections seem to fight their last battle in the author's mind, but readers come along and break them down as they jump from one hyperlink to the next one.

I shall even think that blogs are a last chance before we assume non-linearity of the written world to come. And so I tell myself: link a lot! Let's embrace the new tools we have, for the first one mastering them has already walked quite a stretch towards winning the ephemeral eternity that awaits us.

Democracy 2.0

There is a #SpanishRevolution going on!!! Of course, it is directly inspired in the icelandic movement, but I'd say that the closest inspiration are the arab ones. Key feature --which I didn't find so important in the icelandic case-- are web 2.0: facebook and twitter. They brought together a bunch of very different people just because they we are upset with our corrupted politicians and the system they support.

A main claim against this movement is that the politicians say we don't know what we want. We organized independently of any political party or syndicate. We discovered that we don't need any underlying structure to express our claims. The politician power fears this enlightenment. The easiest thing is to say we don't know what we want.

I do know exactly what I want: I want a public social network over which I can interact with another people discussing initiatives which will democratically rise or fall. A public social network over which I can configure my vote about the many different issues of importance to my country, in real time, without the corrupt sense of delegating my will each 4 years in a party working for international enterprises. A public social network which would allow me to link my vote to a determined party or think tank or person if I desired to do so because I consider that I am not an expert on a topic, or because I considered that the topic is not so important to me, or because I just don't want to review the color of my opinion each and every minute and I trust enough a certain party or think tank or person. But also, if the people on which I delegate plans some dirty move, I want a public social network to remove my endorsement at the moment I desired, on real time and not just each 4 years.

This I call it a real (or at least more real) democracy.

A foreseeable claim against this is that we are not prepared for such a thing, or that the thing couldn't be kept under control... Just wait until you hear that. Doesn't this remind you of a fellow Mubarak talking to the Egyptian folks? O a gay --yeah, this one is on purpose-- called Franco preparing Spain for over 40 years for the simulacrum of a democracy? Don't let them play any tricks on us when they are scared and try to spread their fear. We have the technology to implement it, now we only need the will.

So up to here my point. I do know exactly what I want: not only regarding the 'how', but also have some thoughs on the 'what later'. And better on: each girl and boy, and elder and middle aged and whoever you can find tonight camping on the Spanish's squares does know what they want. Maybe they don't want the same as me, but they do know what. And we shall speak out loud and frighten the night.

Meeting on Tuesday the 19, at 15:30 in front of the Spanish embassy. Further meetings for Friday and Saturday! Keep looking at the hashtags:

#SpanishRevolution
#acampadasol
#acampadaberlin
#nolesvotes
#notenemosmiedo
#yeswecamp

Leave us kids alone!!

I can see it coming!

My (grand)father used to say that we should let the youth take over the institutions; not only hear their (our, as I'm young myself) opinions, but also grant them attention and interest.

Of course no one would ever hear my grandfather in this point, as wise and old as he was. And so, politics and similar advance so slowly, sometimes backwards. And I can see nowadays how people older than me is completely wrong in their points --they usually even mistake the debate-- and how they prevent me and others like me from making the world one that fancies us. It makes me feel kind of angry and frustrated.

But years will pass by and the older will become elder and latter slain, so my generation will at some point gain control over the world. Great done! But we will also grow older, as any rolling stone; and our ideas wouldn't be anymore those shaking the scene, but the ones taking firm hold of it. At this point, we shall also have grown into mad and irritated fellows. We have our 15 minutes and won't waste them. We won't let any 15-, 25-, 35-years-old lad with funny technological gadgets and up-to-date-fashion dresses ruin our moment. We will fight with ourselves to implement our aged ideas into a world that is not the same anymore, and thus we will condemn the youth to a living hell of frustration and ever repeating history and we won't understand that they are our only chance to make our desired chimera real.

Just to put it easy: we are fighting a Darth Vader, and the fighting itself is the easiest way to becoming one ourselves.

The heat in Granada

I saw ourselves as from a camera zooming from deep beneath our feet; from down on the boulevard with boiling, living people; smoke from the bars; a gleaming haze of yellow light which rises just over the first and a half floor; and the camera zooms out so close to the edge of the building as a sudden vertigo, and a further twisted life can be intuited in the corner of the sight where an also-gleaming darkness trembles in the aMazed streets fueling up the night. And so the zoom buzzes as it passes by, a shiver of our ears and the sky stays still just above our heads and Granada, so warm, so almost summer. So with short pants and t-shits and our browny skins so willing to touch themselves. So your eyes so your nice the blue behind. Each one a can of beer, alone in the terrace where I'll always love you. The heat is to sway our heads pleased and forever; long enough for the camera to stop, hold and fall, and make us shake this time with the violence of the ephemeral. And a sudden burden on my heart pulls hard from me and drags me down the terrace into a nightmare of mere night, of concrete vertigo of building edge when zooming my head down into the drugged hardness of the city paving.

I'll miss you so much Granada, your very essence.

The right paradigm?

To create jobs is seen as a great thing. People cheer about the idea that more jobs available would help us out of the financial crisis we're in. We humans have worked since the beginning of the history, usually because we had to. If we look back, little changed about this point. We need to work to have a life according to our times. We voluntarily become slaves of a system which will provide us with a house; heath insurance; safety against anarchy, radical islamism and other similar threats; a good school for our children so they are competitive enough to cope with their own lives and become slaves themselves.

Each time I read in the newspapers that someone created that much of new jobs... I can't see this as good news anymore.

Why is life like that? If we had actually achieved some progress we shouldn't need to become slaves of a sick system involved in wars and other forms of killing. I'm sure there's money enough in the world, welfare and resources enough so as to live without working for a few generations. It is again the distribution of these resources which matters to create the enslaving structure we live in.

I seek an ideal state I call the 'idle humanity' in which machines have taken charge of our works, and welfare and resources reach everyone for free. I wouldn't be afraid of this 'idle humanity'. No one works... so what? There's no need to... Even more, I assume higher unknown structures of 'work' would arise, in which enthusiastic humans would get involved voluntarily. No need for every one to participate: others could decide to die on a LSD orgy lasting many decades.

If you like my idea of 'idle humanity', good news are awaiting you! There are many countries in the world which work for such a picture to become real! As an instance, the amazing socialist government of the spanish kingdom has already over 20% unemployment. What an achieve in equality!!! Complementary measures such as not supporting students who just graduated were also implemented. Of course the remaining 80% work without any kind of motivation, just as in the 'idle humanity' model. They accept low (or even no) salaries, because money is not what matters in a society-to-be were everything is for free. The inspiration for work arises in these people in the same way as secondarily needs arose when the primarily ones were satisfied.

And so on, and so forth. This is progress, evolution.