As sub culture/high culture hops go this is as deep as it gets. Thank God Federico Garcia Lorca is still revered by some. A cool bookstore near Plaza Santa Ana called Sin Tarima Libros (with a choice selection of vinyl record reissues including Bill Evans “Waltz for Debby”) that we had stopped into twice already was having a performance of Lorca poetry accompanied by a flamenco guitarist.
We reserved a spot and showed up as prompted fifteen minutes before 20:00. We were the only Americanos in the crowd of eighteen or so and were introduced as such at the conclusion of the performance. I didn’t understand a word of it but it was unbelievable.
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Encore! I love hearing your adventure stories. It takes me away from these wintertime blues. I tell my coworkers about these friends wandering around the south of Spain looking for adventure. They ask me “is it warm there? What a trip!
Gil Evans “Waltz with Debby” ? Not likely. Bill Evans “Waltz for Debby”. I know most of the formers recorded work and have never heard of that record. The latter is the famous one by Bill Evans. More likely that was what you saw.
Thanks. I tidied up the recklessness.
Michael G. Actually. That’s what I get for typing too fast.
Paul,
I think you were channelling the essence of Lorca. Lorca had a deep ‘affinity’ for listening to words and music.
In 1957 Jack Spicer wrote a series of poems, “After Lorca.” He considered them translations of Federico Garcia Lorca’s poems, for which he took liberties in composing. As part of the series, in addition to the translations, he composed five letters addressed to Lorca.
One of the letters, written 21 years after Lorca’s death, reads..
Dear Lorca,
When I translate one of your poems and I come across words I do not understand, I always guess at their meanings. I am inevitably right. A really perfect poem (no one yet has written one) could be perfectly translated by a person who did know one word of the language it was written in. A really perfect poem has an infinitely small vocabulary. . . I repeat – the perfect poem has an infinitely small vocabulary.
Greg