"At the present, our whole thought process is telling us that we have to keep our attention here. You can't cross the street, for example, if you don't. But consciousness is always in the unlimited depth which is beyond space and time, in the subtler levels of the implicate order. Therefore, if you went deeply enough into the actual present, then maybe there's no difference between this moment and the next. The idea would be that in the death experience you would get into that. Contact with eternity is in the present moment, but it is mediated by thought. It is a matter of attention."
- Bohm
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Monday, November 05, 2007
Language, the Word Virus
Q: Do you think there is a word for everything? Do you think there is stuff which doesnt have a name yet, or there isn't a word for?
A: I think you have to change the question: words are a replacement for, rather than a reflection of what they attempt to describe. Language is the greatest barrier between us and what we experience: as soon as we put a name to something we change it, and as soon as you start thinking about life in terms of language you negate its objective qualities: its everythingness. Words take on their own identity, ultimately usurping the very thing they were intended to represent. Burroughs called it the 'Word Virus'.
"My general theory......has been that the Word is literally a virus, and that it has not been recognized as such because it has achieved a state of relatively stable symbiosis with it's human host....The Word clearly bears the single identifying feature of a virus: it's an organism with no internal function other than to replicate itself."
Think about why writing is so effective: is it because the words literally contain meaning, or because of what they stimulate in you? Everyone interprets everything differently, and all language is ultimately inadequate.
So, in a word.
A: I think you have to change the question: words are a replacement for, rather than a reflection of what they attempt to describe. Language is the greatest barrier between us and what we experience: as soon as we put a name to something we change it, and as soon as you start thinking about life in terms of language you negate its objective qualities: its everythingness. Words take on their own identity, ultimately usurping the very thing they were intended to represent. Burroughs called it the 'Word Virus'.
"My general theory......has been that the Word is literally a virus, and that it has not been recognized as such because it has achieved a state of relatively stable symbiosis with it's human host....The Word clearly bears the single identifying feature of a virus: it's an organism with no internal function other than to replicate itself."
Think about why writing is so effective: is it because the words literally contain meaning, or because of what they stimulate in you? Everyone interprets everything differently, and all language is ultimately inadequate.
So, in a word.
Friday, May 25, 2007
San Agustin and the Mayan Calendar
Short story submission for the Bradt Travel Guides Travel Writing competition 2007
The fire crackled and licked, conversing wordlessly with the crystal messengers in the night sky above. I had gathered the wood myself, erecting a teepee of twigs over a humble candle flame until a ravenous fire took shape. We sat around it under the stars, my teacher Ernesto beating a drum softly, chanting the words of the shamans. His strangely distorted voice echoed out into the darkness as a huge fireball burst across the sky, startling me with its brilliance. It looked like a spaceship crashing to earth; the most unearthly Christmas of my life.
A week earlier I was wandering down a muddy, sun-scorched path to the Pelota archaeological site, blissfully unaware of the surreal turn my journey was about to take. The warm-hearted people and simmering political undercurrent of Colombia had given me a wonderful taste of South America, but it wasn´t until I reached the south that I discovered the place that was to have the biggest impact on me: San Agustin.
An oasis of tranquility, the cosy town´s environs were all dirt tracks, low-lying mountains and elusive, unique archaeological sites: one-of-a-kind in a country with very little indigenous presence. After six days of relaxation I set out on a long walk to the Pelota - a set of standing stones excavated from the neighbouring hillside, daydreaming of Mayan and Inca temples. Arriving lethargic and craving good coffee, I entered the cafe next door and sat beneath the shade of a deck umbrella.
A long-haired guru sat in the shade of the veranda, surrounded by colourful, arcane charts. He glanced in my direction, stood up and lurched towards me with a huge grin on his face holding a chart. "Would you like to know your Mayan sign?" he said, his accented voice musical. "How much does it cost?" I asked cautiously. "Nothing," he said, still grinning from ear to ear. Taking my birthdate, he sat behind his desk intent on some kind of formula, his long hair framing his Hispanic features. I soon discovered that I was Yellow Rhythmic Seed, or ´Uac Kan´ in Mayan.
Introducing himself as Ernesto, the maestro produced various scraps of paper bearing Spanish explanations of my sign´s characteristics. It seemed that this was no mere tourist attraction: this was a place of Mayan study. “You know what the Mayans called themselves?" he asked rhetorically as we sat shaded from the hot morning sun. "Earth wizards. They believe they came to this planet to improve it. In 2012 much change will occur, the Earth is getting ready to do some exercise.”
For the next three hours Ernesto and his companions taught me the workings of the Mayan calendar: the 13 months of 28-day cycles perfectly synchronised with the lunar and solar orbits, the Tzolkin key, the spellwaves of the body and the order of the 20 elemental seals of creation. We invite people to stay with us and learn," he told me at the end of our chat. "Some people stay for seven days, others stay for 28 days. It is up to you." He showed me around the guest cabin: beautiful, secluded and rustic. Unable to resist, I decided to stay a week.
We spent much of the following seven days slumped in hammocks, discussing the Mayan schools´ beliefs; their goal was to reharmonise with the planet by synchronising with the natural cycles of the Mayan Calendar. We collected water, we gathered wood; on Christmas Eve we conducted the fire ceremony, a test of my hunter-gatherer mettle, scattering ashes soaked in sacred oil.
On my last day, Ernesto took me across town to another ranch. He had something important to show me. Making our way up a dirt path we emerged into a small field with rough, ploughed furrows. Ernesto excitedly explained that this was their main project, their path toward self sufficiency. I made approving noises but sensed his disappointment that I didn´t share his enthusiasm; I had been expecting something more than a small patch of farmland – perhaps a crashed UFO.
Later that night, Ernesto announced that we would be watching a documentary about the Mayan prophecies. As we sat waiting for the show to begin, Ernesto appeared behind me. "Would you like to see something interesting?" he said. I walked out onto the balcony and followed his gaze toward a mesmerising light, flashing red, green and blue in the night sky over nearby Pitalito. I couldn´t believe my eyes. "I asked a question at the fire ceremony,” Ernesto said gravely, “that is their response."
I´ll never forget the feeling of that moment, nor the day that I left the ranch, Ernesto´s words echoing in my ears as I walked up the path: "Remember, you are welcome to stay with us. When you decide to return, the doors of the time ship will be open."
A week earlier I was wandering down a muddy, sun-scorched path to the Pelota archaeological site, blissfully unaware of the surreal turn my journey was about to take. The warm-hearted people and simmering political undercurrent of Colombia had given me a wonderful taste of South America, but it wasn´t until I reached the south that I discovered the place that was to have the biggest impact on me: San Agustin.
An oasis of tranquility, the cosy town´s environs were all dirt tracks, low-lying mountains and elusive, unique archaeological sites: one-of-a-kind in a country with very little indigenous presence. After six days of relaxation I set out on a long walk to the Pelota - a set of standing stones excavated from the neighbouring hillside, daydreaming of Mayan and Inca temples. Arriving lethargic and craving good coffee, I entered the cafe next door and sat beneath the shade of a deck umbrella.
A long-haired guru sat in the shade of the veranda, surrounded by colourful, arcane charts. He glanced in my direction, stood up and lurched towards me with a huge grin on his face holding a chart. "Would you like to know your Mayan sign?" he said, his accented voice musical. "How much does it cost?" I asked cautiously. "Nothing," he said, still grinning from ear to ear. Taking my birthdate, he sat behind his desk intent on some kind of formula, his long hair framing his Hispanic features. I soon discovered that I was Yellow Rhythmic Seed, or ´Uac Kan´ in Mayan.
Introducing himself as Ernesto, the maestro produced various scraps of paper bearing Spanish explanations of my sign´s characteristics. It seemed that this was no mere tourist attraction: this was a place of Mayan study. “You know what the Mayans called themselves?" he asked rhetorically as we sat shaded from the hot morning sun. "Earth wizards. They believe they came to this planet to improve it. In 2012 much change will occur, the Earth is getting ready to do some exercise.”
For the next three hours Ernesto and his companions taught me the workings of the Mayan calendar: the 13 months of 28-day cycles perfectly synchronised with the lunar and solar orbits, the Tzolkin key, the spellwaves of the body and the order of the 20 elemental seals of creation. We invite people to stay with us and learn," he told me at the end of our chat. "Some people stay for seven days, others stay for 28 days. It is up to you." He showed me around the guest cabin: beautiful, secluded and rustic. Unable to resist, I decided to stay a week.
We spent much of the following seven days slumped in hammocks, discussing the Mayan schools´ beliefs; their goal was to reharmonise with the planet by synchronising with the natural cycles of the Mayan Calendar. We collected water, we gathered wood; on Christmas Eve we conducted the fire ceremony, a test of my hunter-gatherer mettle, scattering ashes soaked in sacred oil.
On my last day, Ernesto took me across town to another ranch. He had something important to show me. Making our way up a dirt path we emerged into a small field with rough, ploughed furrows. Ernesto excitedly explained that this was their main project, their path toward self sufficiency. I made approving noises but sensed his disappointment that I didn´t share his enthusiasm; I had been expecting something more than a small patch of farmland – perhaps a crashed UFO.
Later that night, Ernesto announced that we would be watching a documentary about the Mayan prophecies. As we sat waiting for the show to begin, Ernesto appeared behind me. "Would you like to see something interesting?" he said. I walked out onto the balcony and followed his gaze toward a mesmerising light, flashing red, green and blue in the night sky over nearby Pitalito. I couldn´t believe my eyes. "I asked a question at the fire ceremony,” Ernesto said gravely, “that is their response."
I´ll never forget the feeling of that moment, nor the day that I left the ranch, Ernesto´s words echoing in my ears as I walked up the path: "Remember, you are welcome to stay with us. When you decide to return, the doors of the time ship will be open."
Friday, May 11, 2007
Metro Blog Awards
Well, well! Since returning from South America I have been randomly informed by a friend that this site made it to the Brit Blog Awards 07 shortlist for best travel blog! Madness! Especially as no one from the Metro newspaper found the time to inform me; if it weren't for the tip-off I would never have known...
http://www.metro.co.uk/yourmetro/article.html?in_article_id=44586&in_page_id=54
Anyway, watch this space for more on Colombia - you can take the boy out of South America but you can't take South America out of the blog...
http://www.metro.co.uk/yourmetro/article.html?in_article_id=44586&in_page_id=54
Anyway, watch this space for more on Colombia - you can take the boy out of South America but you can't take South America out of the blog...
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Befuddlement on the Caribbean Coast
Please indulge my lengthy words once again and spare me no ire. I write this latest instalment from Puerto Varas, Chile where I´m staying with an old companion from the Camino de Santiago (a pilgrimage I walked back in 2002). Soon I´ll return to Argentina for the last leg of my trip and spend a good few weeks in Buenos Aires; much Spanish to be learnt, much steak to be eaten, much wine to be drunk...
Before making the trip here I travelled south from Bolivia into Argentina via Salta (beautiful colonial city), Cordoba (cosmopolitan and largely dull), Mendoza (heart of Argentina's wine country, and hearty the wine certainly is), and finally Bariloche - faded lakeside holiday town for Argentina´s elite, full of logs and chocolate. Very Swiss. And yet my journal is still stranded at the beginning of my trip, in the mythical lands of Colombia. Already my memories of that time are being obscured by clouds of nostalgia, and I'm starting to worry that I'll never catch up with myself - nay, I know I never will - but the thoughts and feelings are numerous and complex and the words never sufficient. But as ever, indulge me...
To Taganga
Leaving Shaun sniffing pale and squalid in the doorway of the Macondo hostel, I bid him and the Australians farewell, filled with a desire to learn jangly blues guitar after the nights spent listening to Ant`s affected Southern drawl and expert fingerwork. Earlier that day I´d visited the beautiful Parque Naturale, a small eco-park with paths linking incredible prehistoric trees and babbling streams that ran directly into a river that somewhat resembled the Mekong Delta. I sat for a while in an atrium and thought about teradactyls, a pleasant last few moments before going back on the road.
Jumping onto the first night bus at hand with minutes to spare, Debbie and I started our 12-hour journey up north to Santa Marta. This was to be my first experience with the face-numbing 'aire condicionado' prevalent on all long-distance Colombian buses. Like many aspects of Colombian society, the enthusiasm of the populace seems to exceed the logical benefits of modern technology - hence, any new innovation is milked beyond reasonable measure. If there`s even a slight trace of warmth or humidity in the air, you can guarantee the bus will be overwhelming, unstoppably, inhumanly cold. Why do they do this? Why are they incapable of moderating the temperature to a pleasant, balanced state? Do they do it out of spite? These questions, and many others, will forever be at the back of my mind.
So, my coach to Santa Marta started out mildly frigid and rapidly became a travelling freezer. Even after swaddling myself with the extra layers stored in my day bag and wrapping my head in a scarf, my nose was numb and my extremities incapable of circulating blood. Plus, the porter on that particular coach was an angry little tick who regarded everyone with a look of long-suffering hatred, stalking resentfully up and down the bus without doing anything productive, perspiring with the sweat of those doomed to a life of subservience.
To make matters worse, after finally managing to drift into a super-cooled state of hibernation we were rudely awakened by the porter who demanded our tickets and babbled something about Santa Marta. Debbie immediately assumed that our bags had been stolen. We left the bus and, dazed and confused, looked about us at our surroundings. The bus had stopped at a petrol station on a dusty main road in the middle of nowhere. The dense humidity hit us like a wet blanket as we stepped out of the bus, and we were immediately surrounded by predatory, feral taxi drivers who almost started a fight with the porter over our fare (his angry facade finally cracked and he started to look genuinely fearful). It seemed that they´d forgotten to wake us at Santa Marta, continuing for 26 kilometres beyond the town and had only just realised their mistake.
The angry shouting became a cacophony; Debbie began to quake silently beside me in fear of imminent death and destruction. Too spaced out to care about the violent atmosphere, I asked the porter what the hell we were supposed to do. He jabbed at the closest taxi driver and told him to take our bags, which he did - grabbing them roughly and tying them with string to the rack on top of his rusting, decrepit, almost totally defunct car. The other drivers, mostly dressed in shabby trousers and vests took umbridge at this and started shouting at each other, at us, at the porter and finally at Dios himself, but before an orgy of violence could ensue we were shoved into the taxi and swept away in the early morning heat, back towards Santa Marta.
The environment had transformed completely. Apart from the Caribbean climate, the landscape was tropical; palm trees dotted the fields and riversides as low-lying mountains grew larger on the horizon through a haze of moisture. I saw it all through red-rimmed eyes and painful fatigue. Another couple got into our taxi: a spiv sporting a striped shirt and a freakish-looking women with terrible skin and eyes spread far apart like a snail`s, obviously a match made in heaven.
Eventually we arrived in Santa Marta and dropped the odd couple at their hotel, continuing directly to Taganga, the neighbouring seaside village recommended as a traveller`s alternative to the more 'upmarket' Santa Marta - ironic, considering that Santa Marta resembled a French seaside town after a cluster bomb attack. Tacky hotels everywhere, streets badly maintained and architecture lacklustre. I was surprised, especially after the many glowing recommendations I`d received from Colombians (including a girl I`d met in Bristol), describing Santa Marta as a `beautiful`, premium holiday spot. As far as I could tell, there was nothing picturesque about the place whatsoever - except perhaps for the garish posters advertising travelling circuses, shows and suchlike, and the ever-present political graffiti. There was a sea front but its glory was faded and forlorn, the streets shabby and strewn with dirt. It was early though, and I wasn´t feeling overly receptive.
Our driver wasted no time after the spiv had finally found his change, and we began wending our way to the outskirts of town, crossing a railway track that sat incongruously on an elevated surface that ran down the middle of what was now a dirt road. Our taxi bumped and rocked as it crossed the tracks and we were suddenly driving down the narrow streets of a slum; bare-chested latinos strolled about aimlessly, children played in the dirt, and in a moment of unspoken synergy myself and Debbie both had the morbid impression that we were being driven somewhere very scary and undesirable. But our fears were, as on many occasions in Colombia, unjustified. Soon were on a sealed coastal road and the sudden view of an unspoilt, fantastically tranquil little village nestling in a small bay raised our spirits. Taganga.
Pulling into the town, the taxi driver asked some locals for directions to our hostel, La Casa de Filipe, and we were soon pulling up to the main gate. Taganga is a small, rustic town with rough dirt roads and a beach front crowded with cafes, restaurants and dive schools; it felt relaxed and sleepy, a place where the pace never rises above a stoned amble. Located at the far end of the village close to dense, sloping foliage, the hostel had a natural view of the sea. The air felt even heavier with lethargy inspiring humidity, and after paying off the taxi driver (Debbie objected to the cost, claiming we were being ripped off despite the pitifully low fee), we lugged our bags inside. I was very tired.
My Spanish failed me as I tried to talk to the receptionist, but she made it clear that there were no beds available at present and we´d have to wait. Outside, the patio was patterned with wooden tables and hammocks. There was hardly any breeze. It felt eerily reminiscent of Koh Phangan, Thailand and my subconscious started to throw up odd flashbacks to my arrival at Thong Nai Pan Oi beach three years previously.
Debbie bought breakfast for herself while I was enquiring about the Ciudad Perdida trek inside, and when I came out they´d stopped serving. This annoyed me somewhat. I did, however, get a free passion fruit juice that came vaguely close to almost bringing me out of my walking coma. The women working at the cabana bar were one-country removed from the people of Bogota and San Gil - obvious Caribbean influence resonated in both their faces, physiques and dark skin. Another backpacker sat at a table nearby attempting to eat a breakfast, looking hungeover and haggard.
I sat and looked in my bag for the copy of ´Breakfast at Tiffany´s´ I was halfway through reading, but realised with a burst of frustration that I`d left it tucked into the back of a chair when we´d been rushed off the coach (I was roughly 50 pages in and still haven´t been able to find another copy). I took out my copy of ´The Yage Letters´ as Debbie quietly ate her breakfast but couldn´t focus on the words. My mind started to drift back to Bogota, analysing the changing landscape of this journey - I felt like it was taking me a bit longer than usual to get into the swing of things.
On my last day at the Platypus hostel I´d fought a battle of wills with Rocio about meeting up in Taganga within a certain time scale, coming out of the heated discussion with the feeling that I´d compromised my freedom within just five days of starting the trip. Already I was lumbered with this odd, unreadable Israeli girl who claimed she wanted to be a career actress after playing a hooker in an amateur stage production. Her knowledge of cinema was pitiful. It would be fair to say that she was getting on my nerves. I felt dirty and abused by the necessities of long-distance travel; the only saving grace was that I´d remembered to take my toothbrush on the coach with me and didn´t have a mouth like an armpit.
Other people began to appear on the patio and I recognised Christine from the Platypus hostel, a German who, as it turned out, had spent six months working in Romford. Poor girl. We sat and chatted and soon Nezke appeared, looking tall and typically flambuoyant even at this early hour in a dress and thick eyeliner. It seemed that the Bogota massive had already converged on La Casa de Filipe via Cartagena and the western coastal route - I thought about the bar we´d visited on the 40th floor of a high-rise building in the dank Colombian capital city and looked around me bleerily: where was I? How had I come to this crazy Caribbean beach?!
(Incidentally, these kind of meetings are typical of travel throughout South America. Due to the nature of the cross-continental circuit (what the Israelis call waves), people can meet, travel together and encounter one another again in random locations months later. The feeling is that you´re part of a mass exodus, and for my particular wave Jerusalem is Buenos Aires.)
It was 10am and everyone looked wasted, tired, hungover and stoned. I tried to convince Nezke to come on the Ciudad Perdida trek with me thinking that her sizeable personality would guarantee an entertaining trip; we talked for half an hour, me enthusing over the wonders of jungle trekking, and came pretty close to winning her over before discovering that she had absolutely none of the required equipment - not even a pair of shoes. She was a sandal-wearing, louche purveyor of music and whimsy through and through, a child of the moment addicted to her violin and all-night binges. Possibly it was the fact that we´d have to leave early the next morning that put her off.
Soon a room became availabe and we secured our bags. The bathroom smelled like the toilet had been backing up, sickening in the fetid air. Later that afternoon I had a brief meeting with an all-too-smooth and slightly patronising man from the local ´Magic Tours´ office, who spoke to me with a sympathetic, knowing smile and explained what the trek would entail with a map and itinerary list. Knowing the Ciudad Perdida´s reputation I was reluctant to trust anyone involved, suspicious that they were all somehow in cahoots with the Paramilitaries, but I took his word for it. The seven-day looked marginally more challenging so I opted for that option - oh, if only I´d known better...
Rocio soon put in an appearance with Pablo in tow and started to lavish attention on me (much to Pablo´s obvious disdain and my amusement), calling me "the most handsome Englishman I never saw". I´m not sure that Pablo appreciated this - were they really getting on? I sat at a table and talked to some other travellers for a while, lay in a hammock and went for a baguette at a local cafe, Cafe de Maria, which someone had recommended. The night brought on festivities of all kinds, with the inhabitants of the hostel sprawled all over the patio batting away mosquitoes, drinking and smoking dubious substances. Unfortunately, I had to leave the fiesta early wishing that I´d had another day to settle in a bit, and ended up sharing a double bed in a room with three girls - Nezke sprawled on the top bunk opposite and Christine on the bottom. We were all intixocated, but even the three huge fans in the room did very little to dispel the close humidity and my sleep was sweaty and restless.
The next morning I woke up at 9am on the dot and had my bags packed, waiting for the minibus to pick us up at 9:30. Paul and Jess, an English couple that I´d met the previous day were also waiting, and we started to worry that there was something wrong. The bus was taking ages: had we somehow missed it or slept solidly through an entire day? Still heavily sleep deprived, I started to feel quite disorientated, but this being Colombia the bus was simply 45 minutes late. Apologising, they shuttled us to Santa Marta and dropped us off at a hostel where we sat in grand dark wood chairs at an antique coffee table and waited for an hour and a half, initial English awkwardness soon fading into relaxed conversation.
We bought a sickly sweet coffee from a random hobo, thinking that breakfast was included. It wasn´t. My eyelids felt like they were being pulled closed by tiny clockwork elephants, and I felt a sudden urge to lie across the coffee table and drape my limbs wherever they fell, kicking the furniture and abandoning any pretension of sociability. One day I shall live the dream, mark my words...
Before making the trip here I travelled south from Bolivia into Argentina via Salta (beautiful colonial city), Cordoba (cosmopolitan and largely dull), Mendoza (heart of Argentina's wine country, and hearty the wine certainly is), and finally Bariloche - faded lakeside holiday town for Argentina´s elite, full of logs and chocolate. Very Swiss. And yet my journal is still stranded at the beginning of my trip, in the mythical lands of Colombia. Already my memories of that time are being obscured by clouds of nostalgia, and I'm starting to worry that I'll never catch up with myself - nay, I know I never will - but the thoughts and feelings are numerous and complex and the words never sufficient. But as ever, indulge me...
To Taganga
Leaving Shaun sniffing pale and squalid in the doorway of the Macondo hostel, I bid him and the Australians farewell, filled with a desire to learn jangly blues guitar after the nights spent listening to Ant`s affected Southern drawl and expert fingerwork. Earlier that day I´d visited the beautiful Parque Naturale, a small eco-park with paths linking incredible prehistoric trees and babbling streams that ran directly into a river that somewhat resembled the Mekong Delta. I sat for a while in an atrium and thought about teradactyls, a pleasant last few moments before going back on the road.
Jumping onto the first night bus at hand with minutes to spare, Debbie and I started our 12-hour journey up north to Santa Marta. This was to be my first experience with the face-numbing 'aire condicionado' prevalent on all long-distance Colombian buses. Like many aspects of Colombian society, the enthusiasm of the populace seems to exceed the logical benefits of modern technology - hence, any new innovation is milked beyond reasonable measure. If there`s even a slight trace of warmth or humidity in the air, you can guarantee the bus will be overwhelming, unstoppably, inhumanly cold. Why do they do this? Why are they incapable of moderating the temperature to a pleasant, balanced state? Do they do it out of spite? These questions, and many others, will forever be at the back of my mind.
So, my coach to Santa Marta started out mildly frigid and rapidly became a travelling freezer. Even after swaddling myself with the extra layers stored in my day bag and wrapping my head in a scarf, my nose was numb and my extremities incapable of circulating blood. Plus, the porter on that particular coach was an angry little tick who regarded everyone with a look of long-suffering hatred, stalking resentfully up and down the bus without doing anything productive, perspiring with the sweat of those doomed to a life of subservience.
To make matters worse, after finally managing to drift into a super-cooled state of hibernation we were rudely awakened by the porter who demanded our tickets and babbled something about Santa Marta. Debbie immediately assumed that our bags had been stolen. We left the bus and, dazed and confused, looked about us at our surroundings. The bus had stopped at a petrol station on a dusty main road in the middle of nowhere. The dense humidity hit us like a wet blanket as we stepped out of the bus, and we were immediately surrounded by predatory, feral taxi drivers who almost started a fight with the porter over our fare (his angry facade finally cracked and he started to look genuinely fearful). It seemed that they´d forgotten to wake us at Santa Marta, continuing for 26 kilometres beyond the town and had only just realised their mistake.
The angry shouting became a cacophony; Debbie began to quake silently beside me in fear of imminent death and destruction. Too spaced out to care about the violent atmosphere, I asked the porter what the hell we were supposed to do. He jabbed at the closest taxi driver and told him to take our bags, which he did - grabbing them roughly and tying them with string to the rack on top of his rusting, decrepit, almost totally defunct car. The other drivers, mostly dressed in shabby trousers and vests took umbridge at this and started shouting at each other, at us, at the porter and finally at Dios himself, but before an orgy of violence could ensue we were shoved into the taxi and swept away in the early morning heat, back towards Santa Marta.
The environment had transformed completely. Apart from the Caribbean climate, the landscape was tropical; palm trees dotted the fields and riversides as low-lying mountains grew larger on the horizon through a haze of moisture. I saw it all through red-rimmed eyes and painful fatigue. Another couple got into our taxi: a spiv sporting a striped shirt and a freakish-looking women with terrible skin and eyes spread far apart like a snail`s, obviously a match made in heaven.
Eventually we arrived in Santa Marta and dropped the odd couple at their hotel, continuing directly to Taganga, the neighbouring seaside village recommended as a traveller`s alternative to the more 'upmarket' Santa Marta - ironic, considering that Santa Marta resembled a French seaside town after a cluster bomb attack. Tacky hotels everywhere, streets badly maintained and architecture lacklustre. I was surprised, especially after the many glowing recommendations I`d received from Colombians (including a girl I`d met in Bristol), describing Santa Marta as a `beautiful`, premium holiday spot. As far as I could tell, there was nothing picturesque about the place whatsoever - except perhaps for the garish posters advertising travelling circuses, shows and suchlike, and the ever-present political graffiti. There was a sea front but its glory was faded and forlorn, the streets shabby and strewn with dirt. It was early though, and I wasn´t feeling overly receptive.
Our driver wasted no time after the spiv had finally found his change, and we began wending our way to the outskirts of town, crossing a railway track that sat incongruously on an elevated surface that ran down the middle of what was now a dirt road. Our taxi bumped and rocked as it crossed the tracks and we were suddenly driving down the narrow streets of a slum; bare-chested latinos strolled about aimlessly, children played in the dirt, and in a moment of unspoken synergy myself and Debbie both had the morbid impression that we were being driven somewhere very scary and undesirable. But our fears were, as on many occasions in Colombia, unjustified. Soon were on a sealed coastal road and the sudden view of an unspoilt, fantastically tranquil little village nestling in a small bay raised our spirits. Taganga.
Pulling into the town, the taxi driver asked some locals for directions to our hostel, La Casa de Filipe, and we were soon pulling up to the main gate. Taganga is a small, rustic town with rough dirt roads and a beach front crowded with cafes, restaurants and dive schools; it felt relaxed and sleepy, a place where the pace never rises above a stoned amble. Located at the far end of the village close to dense, sloping foliage, the hostel had a natural view of the sea. The air felt even heavier with lethargy inspiring humidity, and after paying off the taxi driver (Debbie objected to the cost, claiming we were being ripped off despite the pitifully low fee), we lugged our bags inside. I was very tired.
My Spanish failed me as I tried to talk to the receptionist, but she made it clear that there were no beds available at present and we´d have to wait. Outside, the patio was patterned with wooden tables and hammocks. There was hardly any breeze. It felt eerily reminiscent of Koh Phangan, Thailand and my subconscious started to throw up odd flashbacks to my arrival at Thong Nai Pan Oi beach three years previously.
Debbie bought breakfast for herself while I was enquiring about the Ciudad Perdida trek inside, and when I came out they´d stopped serving. This annoyed me somewhat. I did, however, get a free passion fruit juice that came vaguely close to almost bringing me out of my walking coma. The women working at the cabana bar were one-country removed from the people of Bogota and San Gil - obvious Caribbean influence resonated in both their faces, physiques and dark skin. Another backpacker sat at a table nearby attempting to eat a breakfast, looking hungeover and haggard.
I sat and looked in my bag for the copy of ´Breakfast at Tiffany´s´ I was halfway through reading, but realised with a burst of frustration that I`d left it tucked into the back of a chair when we´d been rushed off the coach (I was roughly 50 pages in and still haven´t been able to find another copy). I took out my copy of ´The Yage Letters´ as Debbie quietly ate her breakfast but couldn´t focus on the words. My mind started to drift back to Bogota, analysing the changing landscape of this journey - I felt like it was taking me a bit longer than usual to get into the swing of things.
On my last day at the Platypus hostel I´d fought a battle of wills with Rocio about meeting up in Taganga within a certain time scale, coming out of the heated discussion with the feeling that I´d compromised my freedom within just five days of starting the trip. Already I was lumbered with this odd, unreadable Israeli girl who claimed she wanted to be a career actress after playing a hooker in an amateur stage production. Her knowledge of cinema was pitiful. It would be fair to say that she was getting on my nerves. I felt dirty and abused by the necessities of long-distance travel; the only saving grace was that I´d remembered to take my toothbrush on the coach with me and didn´t have a mouth like an armpit.
Other people began to appear on the patio and I recognised Christine from the Platypus hostel, a German who, as it turned out, had spent six months working in Romford. Poor girl. We sat and chatted and soon Nezke appeared, looking tall and typically flambuoyant even at this early hour in a dress and thick eyeliner. It seemed that the Bogota massive had already converged on La Casa de Filipe via Cartagena and the western coastal route - I thought about the bar we´d visited on the 40th floor of a high-rise building in the dank Colombian capital city and looked around me bleerily: where was I? How had I come to this crazy Caribbean beach?!
(Incidentally, these kind of meetings are typical of travel throughout South America. Due to the nature of the cross-continental circuit (what the Israelis call waves), people can meet, travel together and encounter one another again in random locations months later. The feeling is that you´re part of a mass exodus, and for my particular wave Jerusalem is Buenos Aires.)
It was 10am and everyone looked wasted, tired, hungover and stoned. I tried to convince Nezke to come on the Ciudad Perdida trek with me thinking that her sizeable personality would guarantee an entertaining trip; we talked for half an hour, me enthusing over the wonders of jungle trekking, and came pretty close to winning her over before discovering that she had absolutely none of the required equipment - not even a pair of shoes. She was a sandal-wearing, louche purveyor of music and whimsy through and through, a child of the moment addicted to her violin and all-night binges. Possibly it was the fact that we´d have to leave early the next morning that put her off.
Soon a room became availabe and we secured our bags. The bathroom smelled like the toilet had been backing up, sickening in the fetid air. Later that afternoon I had a brief meeting with an all-too-smooth and slightly patronising man from the local ´Magic Tours´ office, who spoke to me with a sympathetic, knowing smile and explained what the trek would entail with a map and itinerary list. Knowing the Ciudad Perdida´s reputation I was reluctant to trust anyone involved, suspicious that they were all somehow in cahoots with the Paramilitaries, but I took his word for it. The seven-day looked marginally more challenging so I opted for that option - oh, if only I´d known better...
Rocio soon put in an appearance with Pablo in tow and started to lavish attention on me (much to Pablo´s obvious disdain and my amusement), calling me "the most handsome Englishman I never saw". I´m not sure that Pablo appreciated this - were they really getting on? I sat at a table and talked to some other travellers for a while, lay in a hammock and went for a baguette at a local cafe, Cafe de Maria, which someone had recommended. The night brought on festivities of all kinds, with the inhabitants of the hostel sprawled all over the patio batting away mosquitoes, drinking and smoking dubious substances. Unfortunately, I had to leave the fiesta early wishing that I´d had another day to settle in a bit, and ended up sharing a double bed in a room with three girls - Nezke sprawled on the top bunk opposite and Christine on the bottom. We were all intixocated, but even the three huge fans in the room did very little to dispel the close humidity and my sleep was sweaty and restless.
The next morning I woke up at 9am on the dot and had my bags packed, waiting for the minibus to pick us up at 9:30. Paul and Jess, an English couple that I´d met the previous day were also waiting, and we started to worry that there was something wrong. The bus was taking ages: had we somehow missed it or slept solidly through an entire day? Still heavily sleep deprived, I started to feel quite disorientated, but this being Colombia the bus was simply 45 minutes late. Apologising, they shuttled us to Santa Marta and dropped us off at a hostel where we sat in grand dark wood chairs at an antique coffee table and waited for an hour and a half, initial English awkwardness soon fading into relaxed conversation.
We bought a sickly sweet coffee from a random hobo, thinking that breakfast was included. It wasn´t. My eyelids felt like they were being pulled closed by tiny clockwork elephants, and I felt a sudden urge to lie across the coffee table and drape my limbs wherever they fell, kicking the furniture and abandoning any pretension of sociability. One day I shall live the dream, mark my words...
Sunday, March 11, 2007
From the depths of the jungle it came (Colombia, Part Three)
Avenida Montes, La Paz
I´m peering out of my hostel window over a scene of barely controlled mayhem. A herd of indigenous Aymara city dwellers have ganged together, creating a human cordon across a three-way intersection. Occasionally police on motorbikes turn up, dismount, wander nonchalantly over to the protesters, kiss some of them hello, and then stand around aimlessly watching the screaming motorists. A taxi tries to sneak by the blockade by driving up on the pavement directly below my window, peeping out from behind a tree, and nearly makes a getaway before one of the ringleaders (a woman dressed in typical indigenous shawl and wonky hat) notices and leaps in front of it. Soon it´s surrounded by indignant protesters who all but shove the cab back where it came from.
This is but one of the many highlights of my first day in La Paz, Bolivia´s capital city. There´s a huge festival taking place, the biggest of the year, and the whole town has become a hotbed of Super Soaker-toting nutjobs and children specially trained to lob water bombs at anyone who looks remotely like a gringo. Everyone is a potential enemy - every window a possible snipe position, and I can only venture out into the streets with a raincoat and hope for the best. Fortunately, I look Argentinian/Colombian enough to avoid major-target status, while my two companions (an Irish woman called Kerry and an Australian fella by the name of Mike) take direct hits every 20 seconds. I walk ahead of them, wrapped in my raincoat, and watch as two girls ignore me and pelt them with party foam and water). I laugh a lot.
Later, I see a woman walking towards me through the market with a multi-colour shawl on her back. Indigenous women typically carry their babies this way throughout Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, the material securely knotted across their chests. I glance into the shawl as she passes and see, not a baby, but a monkey. Little, beady monkey eyes peering out at me. Furry face contorted in glee. I recoil in shock and awe.
Later, I see eight miners crucified across the windows and pillars of the San Francisco cathedral in the city centre, a huge poster plastered across the exterior proclaiming:
5 meses trabajar sin comida
(5 months´ work without food)
Jump forward a week. I´m not actually in La Paz, I´m in Potosi – the highest city in the world at 4,070m, and home to the once-greatest silver mine in South America´s history. There´s not enough air here and the hostels all smell suspiciously of insect repellent, but I think it really might be all downhill from now on. After this I´m heading onto the ´hallucinogenic´ (Lonely Planet´s wording) salt flats at Uyuni, then onto the wild-west environs of Tupiza and finally, the long-awaited mecca that is Argentina. And steak; monumental, voluminous, indescribable mountains of cheap, cheap steak …
So, having messed with your temporal sensibilities I´ll leap further back in time and regale you further with my travels in Colombia.
I woke up on my first day at the Macondo hostel in San Gil drousy and dirty. The air in the room was stuffy and humid and I´d been disturbed during the night by my traveling companion, Israeli Debbie´s weird, provocative sleep moaning. As I awoke I heard what sounded like blues, something like John Lee Hooker or Kenny Brown, emanating from my neighbours´ room on the second floor outside. Assuming it was a stereo, I wandered out and half-climbed the stairs, peeped over the lip of the floor and discovered that the sound was actually coming from Anthony, who was strumming away to himself as his girlfriend, Christine, sorted through her things. I climbed back down again and went back to my room, feeling like a voyeur.
They were the only guests staying at the Macondo, a cavernous ex-private school with an internal courtyard decorated with hammocks, wicker table and chairs to the right and a large wooden table next to the kitchen at the back. Arriving the night before, we´d gone straight for dinner at the local pizza restaurant – Debbie´s choice, and probably the worst meal I ate in Colombia. I ordered a Hawaiian and received a plate of grilled biscuit dough smeared in pineapple puree, topped with canned ham, mushrooms and bland cheese as white as a fat lady´s thighs. By the end of the meal my plate was a mess of mushy cake fragments and discarded scraps. I considered telling the waitress that I hated her, but decided not to.
Returning to the Macondo, I entered and went straight for the kitchen for water, offering a jovial "Hello" to the couple at the table. Ant watched me pass with an amused, goggle-eyed look - long hair, baseball cap and unkempt beard all present and correct. At first I mistook his unreadable attitude and unblinking, myopic stare for arrogance, but quickly realized that he seemed to find everyone he encountered an object of surrealistic mirth. We spent the night talking Colombian politics with the dreadlocked, oddball Australian owner, Shaun, and the resident language teacher, Flo. Debbie and Christine sat with us at the table and mostly listened.
Both from Perth, Christine and Ant had recently walked the Ciudad Perdida (Lost City) trek in northern Colombia, embarking from Santa Marta, which was where myself and Debbie were headed next. They heartily recommended that I do the seven rather than six-day trek, which I later realized, after naively taking their recommendation, was probably their idea of an amusing practical joke. It turned out to be one of the most physically exhausting experiences of my life (a t this point I was still feeling uncertain about the Ciudad Perdida trek and almost tempted to go directly to Cartagena, but their enthusiasm clinched the decision).
As we sat round the table that night, Ant told us how they´d been sat down by one of the guides on the fourth day of the trek and given what sounded like a politically biased, pro-Paramilitary talk about the events of the mass-kidnapping that occurred at the Ciudad Perdida in 2003. Colombia´s most socially acceptable mass-murderers, the Paramilitaries had supposedly put the boot into the ELN (a rival paramilitary group), and its attempts to extract money from the various Israeli, Spanish, German and British families involved in the kidnapping. You may remember seeing one of the two Englishmen appealing on behalf of the ELN in a pre-recorded video broadcast by the BBC news (upon release, the same bloke admitted that the worst thing about the three-month ordeal was that the kidnappers didn´t understand the offside rule). Incidentally, two Australians - also part of the tour group - were almost kidnapped, but left behind at the last second for being too fat.
Shaun was full of conflicting conspiracy theories about the incident, and indignantly concerned with the plight of Colombia´s inhabitants (as many ex-pats tend to be about matters that they don´t really, actually, quite understand). His overriding belief was that the Ciudad Perdida tour groups receive anti-guerilla protection from the Paramilitaries, and that the official cover story of the kidnapping is a construct of the Colombian media - and a pro-Paramilitary propaganda exercise. Apparently, the Israelis in the group received special attention because of the ELN´s misguided believed that, as military graduates, they would be experts in weapon manufacture. So basically, the kidnapping was about weapons, not money. Or vice-versa. Or neither…?
What this discussion ultimately boiled down to was Shaun´s overriding conviction that by paying for a trip to the Ciudad Perdida, you´re actually giving money directly to the Paramilitaries. Being largely ignorant of guerilla activity in Colombia I had no idea whether this is true, and was inclined to believe that Shaun´s talk was largely paranoid and gratuitously conspiratorial (although when Ant mentioned that the trek included a tour of a working cocaine factory I started to wonder if he didn´t have a point).
Later the conversation turned to the book I was reading: William Burroughs´s ´Yage Letters´ - a search for the healing shamanic drug Ayhuasca on a journey through Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Shaun then told us about his own Ayhuasca experience near Iquitos, Peru. Traveling with a friend to the isolated northern jungle city, they gained the confidence of a local shaman and were taken to a stationary floating raft somewhere off the Amazon, ingesting the vine with some other travelers. Without wanting to repulse you with excessive detail, Ayhuasca is famous for making you lose control of your bowels and stomach almost simultaneously – the result being a total cleansing of the body. After enjoying this initial process of total self-abasement, Shaun entered a waking dream populated with spiraling snakes and animal forms; later, he swore that he saw (among other things) the dark silhouette of a boy trying to climb onto the raft. The shaman also saw this thing but somehow managed to keep it at bay (Shaun told us that his younger brother had died when he was still a child, which would be consistent with the indigenous belief that Ayhuasca is a portal to the spirit world).
Later, Shaun returned to Bogota and came down with Lychmenosis - a rare flesh-eating virus that he contracted through sand fly bites during his time in the jungle (on our first night he proudly displayed the nasty scar on his leg where the parasite had eaten through to the bone). The Colombian authorities kept him for almost three months in the hospital, the condition being so rare that few other countries would have known how to treat it. After his release he spent another few months recuperating in an annex opposite the Platypus hospital (where I began my journey), looked after by travelling wunderkind and hostel-owner Germann. Then, with nothing better to do and considerably more time in Colombia under his belt than he`d intended, he opened the Macondo hostel in San Gil. And then came down with Dengi fever. The moral of this story? Answers on an e-card please!
So, after my early-morning musical awakening the next day, the four of us banded together and made our way to the local colonial town of Barichara, a place of undisturbed tranquility and hot, dry sun, where we sampled the local delicacy - grilled Cabra (goat). Afterwards we hiked for an hour and a half to Guane – a minature replica of Barichara that created the peculiar illusion of having walked an impossible circle. Of course we hadn´t - Spanish colonial towns all seem to be the product of one tried-and-tested mold.
The scenery on the way was fantastic; starting at the top of a valley, we descended with a breathtaking view of the mountains on the opposite side, vibrant green in the intense afternoon sun and hazy through the lingering humidity. We encountered a few locals coming the other way along the earthy path, and a tree festooned with old-man´s beard - an ethereal, ghostly white parasite that sprouted from the branches like seasonal decoration.
Returning to San Gil in a local taxi, we ordered what was to be the first of many grilled chicken dinners. Chicken in Colombia is excessively salty, grilled or fried, and always served with papas criolla (boiled potatoes with the skin), rice, a few slices of tomato and a few wedges of boiled yucca - a super-bland root vegetable - a bit like potato - and the staple diet of Colombia.
I seem to remember the rest of our time in San Gil spent mostly eating fruit cocktails in the bustling local produce market, shopping for hats, and trying to work up the motivation to go paragliding. I didn´t of course. I did, however, bask in the natural rock pools, learn Spanish with Flo and the Ozzies, and spend a night at a club with our new friends and patron Shaun (who, after returning to the hostel very drunk later that night, bemoaned his horrible lack of money, success and prospects. He was hugely in debt by Colombian standards and no one, not even his brother, wanted to bail him out). The next day he had the most revolting hangover I`ve ever seen; it hurt to look at him. Even his dreadlocks looked nauseas.
Despite the general oddness of our host`s demeanour, I remember San Gil as beautiful and secluded, with a pristine town square and bemusing excess of trendy shops. From there we took a long night bus to Santa Marta and the neighbouring seaside town Taganga: jumping-off point for the Ciudad Perdida jungle trek...
I´m peering out of my hostel window over a scene of barely controlled mayhem. A herd of indigenous Aymara city dwellers have ganged together, creating a human cordon across a three-way intersection. Occasionally police on motorbikes turn up, dismount, wander nonchalantly over to the protesters, kiss some of them hello, and then stand around aimlessly watching the screaming motorists. A taxi tries to sneak by the blockade by driving up on the pavement directly below my window, peeping out from behind a tree, and nearly makes a getaway before one of the ringleaders (a woman dressed in typical indigenous shawl and wonky hat) notices and leaps in front of it. Soon it´s surrounded by indignant protesters who all but shove the cab back where it came from.
This is but one of the many highlights of my first day in La Paz, Bolivia´s capital city. There´s a huge festival taking place, the biggest of the year, and the whole town has become a hotbed of Super Soaker-toting nutjobs and children specially trained to lob water bombs at anyone who looks remotely like a gringo. Everyone is a potential enemy - every window a possible snipe position, and I can only venture out into the streets with a raincoat and hope for the best. Fortunately, I look Argentinian/Colombian enough to avoid major-target status, while my two companions (an Irish woman called Kerry and an Australian fella by the name of Mike) take direct hits every 20 seconds. I walk ahead of them, wrapped in my raincoat, and watch as two girls ignore me and pelt them with party foam and water). I laugh a lot.
Later, I see a woman walking towards me through the market with a multi-colour shawl on her back. Indigenous women typically carry their babies this way throughout Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, the material securely knotted across their chests. I glance into the shawl as she passes and see, not a baby, but a monkey. Little, beady monkey eyes peering out at me. Furry face contorted in glee. I recoil in shock and awe.
Later, I see eight miners crucified across the windows and pillars of the San Francisco cathedral in the city centre, a huge poster plastered across the exterior proclaiming:
5 meses trabajar sin comida
(5 months´ work without food)
Jump forward a week. I´m not actually in La Paz, I´m in Potosi – the highest city in the world at 4,070m, and home to the once-greatest silver mine in South America´s history. There´s not enough air here and the hostels all smell suspiciously of insect repellent, but I think it really might be all downhill from now on. After this I´m heading onto the ´hallucinogenic´ (Lonely Planet´s wording) salt flats at Uyuni, then onto the wild-west environs of Tupiza and finally, the long-awaited mecca that is Argentina. And steak; monumental, voluminous, indescribable mountains of cheap, cheap steak …
So, having messed with your temporal sensibilities I´ll leap further back in time and regale you further with my travels in Colombia.
I woke up on my first day at the Macondo hostel in San Gil drousy and dirty. The air in the room was stuffy and humid and I´d been disturbed during the night by my traveling companion, Israeli Debbie´s weird, provocative sleep moaning. As I awoke I heard what sounded like blues, something like John Lee Hooker or Kenny Brown, emanating from my neighbours´ room on the second floor outside. Assuming it was a stereo, I wandered out and half-climbed the stairs, peeped over the lip of the floor and discovered that the sound was actually coming from Anthony, who was strumming away to himself as his girlfriend, Christine, sorted through her things. I climbed back down again and went back to my room, feeling like a voyeur.
They were the only guests staying at the Macondo, a cavernous ex-private school with an internal courtyard decorated with hammocks, wicker table and chairs to the right and a large wooden table next to the kitchen at the back. Arriving the night before, we´d gone straight for dinner at the local pizza restaurant – Debbie´s choice, and probably the worst meal I ate in Colombia. I ordered a Hawaiian and received a plate of grilled biscuit dough smeared in pineapple puree, topped with canned ham, mushrooms and bland cheese as white as a fat lady´s thighs. By the end of the meal my plate was a mess of mushy cake fragments and discarded scraps. I considered telling the waitress that I hated her, but decided not to.
Returning to the Macondo, I entered and went straight for the kitchen for water, offering a jovial "Hello" to the couple at the table. Ant watched me pass with an amused, goggle-eyed look - long hair, baseball cap and unkempt beard all present and correct. At first I mistook his unreadable attitude and unblinking, myopic stare for arrogance, but quickly realized that he seemed to find everyone he encountered an object of surrealistic mirth. We spent the night talking Colombian politics with the dreadlocked, oddball Australian owner, Shaun, and the resident language teacher, Flo. Debbie and Christine sat with us at the table and mostly listened.
Both from Perth, Christine and Ant had recently walked the Ciudad Perdida (Lost City) trek in northern Colombia, embarking from Santa Marta, which was where myself and Debbie were headed next. They heartily recommended that I do the seven rather than six-day trek, which I later realized, after naively taking their recommendation, was probably their idea of an amusing practical joke. It turned out to be one of the most physically exhausting experiences of my life (a t this point I was still feeling uncertain about the Ciudad Perdida trek and almost tempted to go directly to Cartagena, but their enthusiasm clinched the decision).
As we sat round the table that night, Ant told us how they´d been sat down by one of the guides on the fourth day of the trek and given what sounded like a politically biased, pro-Paramilitary talk about the events of the mass-kidnapping that occurred at the Ciudad Perdida in 2003. Colombia´s most socially acceptable mass-murderers, the Paramilitaries had supposedly put the boot into the ELN (a rival paramilitary group), and its attempts to extract money from the various Israeli, Spanish, German and British families involved in the kidnapping. You may remember seeing one of the two Englishmen appealing on behalf of the ELN in a pre-recorded video broadcast by the BBC news (upon release, the same bloke admitted that the worst thing about the three-month ordeal was that the kidnappers didn´t understand the offside rule). Incidentally, two Australians - also part of the tour group - were almost kidnapped, but left behind at the last second for being too fat.
Shaun was full of conflicting conspiracy theories about the incident, and indignantly concerned with the plight of Colombia´s inhabitants (as many ex-pats tend to be about matters that they don´t really, actually, quite understand). His overriding belief was that the Ciudad Perdida tour groups receive anti-guerilla protection from the Paramilitaries, and that the official cover story of the kidnapping is a construct of the Colombian media - and a pro-Paramilitary propaganda exercise. Apparently, the Israelis in the group received special attention because of the ELN´s misguided believed that, as military graduates, they would be experts in weapon manufacture. So basically, the kidnapping was about weapons, not money. Or vice-versa. Or neither…?
What this discussion ultimately boiled down to was Shaun´s overriding conviction that by paying for a trip to the Ciudad Perdida, you´re actually giving money directly to the Paramilitaries. Being largely ignorant of guerilla activity in Colombia I had no idea whether this is true, and was inclined to believe that Shaun´s talk was largely paranoid and gratuitously conspiratorial (although when Ant mentioned that the trek included a tour of a working cocaine factory I started to wonder if he didn´t have a point).
Later the conversation turned to the book I was reading: William Burroughs´s ´Yage Letters´ - a search for the healing shamanic drug Ayhuasca on a journey through Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Shaun then told us about his own Ayhuasca experience near Iquitos, Peru. Traveling with a friend to the isolated northern jungle city, they gained the confidence of a local shaman and were taken to a stationary floating raft somewhere off the Amazon, ingesting the vine with some other travelers. Without wanting to repulse you with excessive detail, Ayhuasca is famous for making you lose control of your bowels and stomach almost simultaneously – the result being a total cleansing of the body. After enjoying this initial process of total self-abasement, Shaun entered a waking dream populated with spiraling snakes and animal forms; later, he swore that he saw (among other things) the dark silhouette of a boy trying to climb onto the raft. The shaman also saw this thing but somehow managed to keep it at bay (Shaun told us that his younger brother had died when he was still a child, which would be consistent with the indigenous belief that Ayhuasca is a portal to the spirit world).
Later, Shaun returned to Bogota and came down with Lychmenosis - a rare flesh-eating virus that he contracted through sand fly bites during his time in the jungle (on our first night he proudly displayed the nasty scar on his leg where the parasite had eaten through to the bone). The Colombian authorities kept him for almost three months in the hospital, the condition being so rare that few other countries would have known how to treat it. After his release he spent another few months recuperating in an annex opposite the Platypus hospital (where I began my journey), looked after by travelling wunderkind and hostel-owner Germann. Then, with nothing better to do and considerably more time in Colombia under his belt than he`d intended, he opened the Macondo hostel in San Gil. And then came down with Dengi fever. The moral of this story? Answers on an e-card please!
So, after my early-morning musical awakening the next day, the four of us banded together and made our way to the local colonial town of Barichara, a place of undisturbed tranquility and hot, dry sun, where we sampled the local delicacy - grilled Cabra (goat). Afterwards we hiked for an hour and a half to Guane – a minature replica of Barichara that created the peculiar illusion of having walked an impossible circle. Of course we hadn´t - Spanish colonial towns all seem to be the product of one tried-and-tested mold.
The scenery on the way was fantastic; starting at the top of a valley, we descended with a breathtaking view of the mountains on the opposite side, vibrant green in the intense afternoon sun and hazy through the lingering humidity. We encountered a few locals coming the other way along the earthy path, and a tree festooned with old-man´s beard - an ethereal, ghostly white parasite that sprouted from the branches like seasonal decoration.
Returning to San Gil in a local taxi, we ordered what was to be the first of many grilled chicken dinners. Chicken in Colombia is excessively salty, grilled or fried, and always served with papas criolla (boiled potatoes with the skin), rice, a few slices of tomato and a few wedges of boiled yucca - a super-bland root vegetable - a bit like potato - and the staple diet of Colombia.
I seem to remember the rest of our time in San Gil spent mostly eating fruit cocktails in the bustling local produce market, shopping for hats, and trying to work up the motivation to go paragliding. I didn´t of course. I did, however, bask in the natural rock pools, learn Spanish with Flo and the Ozzies, and spend a night at a club with our new friends and patron Shaun (who, after returning to the hostel very drunk later that night, bemoaned his horrible lack of money, success and prospects. He was hugely in debt by Colombian standards and no one, not even his brother, wanted to bail him out). The next day he had the most revolting hangover I`ve ever seen; it hurt to look at him. Even his dreadlocks looked nauseas.
Despite the general oddness of our host`s demeanour, I remember San Gil as beautiful and secluded, with a pristine town square and bemusing excess of trendy shops. From there we took a long night bus to Santa Marta and the neighbouring seaside town Taganga: jumping-off point for the Ciudad Perdida jungle trek...
Monday, January 15, 2007
Colombia - The Second Instalment
Since my last communiqué I´ve been gallavanting across South America like a bison with a rectum full of San Pedro, ducking, diving and avoiding customs officials like some kind of venomous plague. I´m now in Huaraz, Peru, preparing to embark on an epic, ten-day hike known as the Huayhuash trek. Scarily, I have also just discovered that this is the very place where John Simpson (made famous by the incredible docudrama ´Touching the Void´) almost met his maker.
Without wanting to put you off, I´m afraid that this entry may end up acquiring a dimension that may be described as ´large´. Others might call it ´gargantuan´, while still others might attempt a comparison with a long-extinct, elephantine beast (ahem, ´Mammoth´).
So, so, so. Yes. I should start. Where did I get up to? Answers on a postcard. No, no, no. This isn´t right, let´s try again.
Bogota: place of strange contradictions. One street can be lively, modern and vibrant, while the next is deserted, decrepit and devoid of any feeling of life. A grey nothingness. The weather is mostly cold and rainy, and it´s almost impossible to warm up. The air seems to chill to the bone without ever getting really cold. This doesn´t reflect the spirit of the people however; Colombians seem perpetually jolly and optimistic despite the still-precarious balance of their society after years of violenzia, and are incredibly friendly to travelers. In fact, Europeans seem to possess an almost-celebrity status among the youth of the country, who will readily accept you as their new best friend. They are openly reaching out to the world with open palms.
President Uribe seems to have done a good job of appeasing the various guerrilla groups (FARC, Paramilitaries and ELN), and the country appears to be entering a new era of prosperity. Colombians have embraced their newly emerging culture with an almost-alarming disregard for their violent past (and who can blame them?) – hence, Shakira is probably their greatest living national hero. The day before I arrived in Bogota, most of the Platypus crowd had been to see this bastion of Colombian culture shaking her booty at the local arena, and very few were displeased with what they saw.
Another sign of the country´s growing wealth is that many Colombians in their late 20s or 30s have dental braces - presumably because modern dental practice has only become affordable (or available) in the last few years. Men in suits and mature students proudly beam mouthfuls of steel as they pass in the streets and chat in cafes, bringing back contrasting memories of my own experiences at secondary school, suffering such enigmatic nicknames as "train tracks" and "metal mouth". Horses for courses…
Similarly, Bogota and Medellin are now global hotspots for laser eye surgery and cosmetic augmentation. One afternoon when I was relaxing at Hostel Sue with Neske and Jack, an Irish girl walked in looking like she´d just gone one-on-one with Prince Naseem, ran through the courtyard shouting, "Don´t look at me", and locked herself in the bathroom. After ten minutes dousing her eyes with various cleansing fluids and steroid drops, she emerged wearing huge, black sunglasses like a blind Jackie ONassis.
Come to Colombia ! The cheap and cheerful way to better vision…
Did I mention that I ate a lot of steak in Bogota? In retrospect, I´m rather glad that I indulged that particular vice, because the food in Colombia goes from bland and uncompromising to bland and deeply dull. Three food groups seem to exist in the hearts, minds and fields of Colombia: rice, plantains and chicken. Local people are happy to eat this heady combination day after day, with little sign or want of variety or seasoning. Fortunately, I love chicken. I can eat it for breakfast. And so I did, most days that I was in Colombia. Fortunately, their fruit is excellent and makes a laughing stock of anything you can buy in England – especially the mangos. My most enduring memory is of maracuya, a spherical fruit that you crack open to scoop out the insides, which resemble unhatched tadpoles. A very tasty and subtle flavour, somewhat similar to passion fruit, and supposedly very good for the digestion (since writing this entry, I have been helpfully informed that maracuya is in fact passion fruit).
There´s very little else to say about Colombian food, other than that it´s simple, unchallenging and easy on the eyes. The empanadas are great though – if you´ve never had one, think big, stodgy samosas filled with rice and/or potato, chicken and/or beef/dog.
I´m drawn to another memory of my friend Rocio´s Argentinian boyfriend, Pablo. That week at the Platypus was the first time they´d met in the flesh (having originally met on the internet). In keeping with Argentina´s reputation for inordinate cultural pride, Pablo had brought with him a receptacle that looked a little like a giant, stainless-steel eggcup, complete with shiny metal straw. With this marvelous frabtraption he concocted a mouth-numbingly bitter tea (known as maté), which he sat and sipped with superior satisfaction, gaining even greater joy from the looks of revulsion that greeted him every time he offered someone else a sip. "Everyone drinks this in Argentina", he would say, and go back to sipping his bilious slurry like a lord of leisure.
Also that week, my American friend Chris taught me a great song on the guitar, which I have as-yet failed to perfect. It´s called ´Sons de Carrilhões´, written by a fella named João Pernambuco. I´d highly recommend getting hold of a copy if you have a weakness for classical guitar.
But enough of Bogota . After finally agreeing to meet Rocio, Pablo and hopefully Nezke in Taganga on the Caribbean coast, I spent my last day impatiently waiting to leave. I´d decided to see as much of Colombia as possible via a counter-clockwise tour of the country, rather than simply shooting south through Ecuador. There was simply too much to see and do. I was set on trekking to the Ciudad Perdida (Lost City) near Parque Nacional Tayrona, lured by tantalizing reports of little-known ruins and notorious kidnappings, having seen enough museums and gold-clad churches to last well into the next life.
Incidentally, Bogota has a fantastic gold museum (mostly plundered from small, confused people), and a thriving cultural scene fuelled by the huge student presence. The Botero museum displays bizarre images by Colombia´s most celebrated artist – bloated, spherical people standing in mute poses – along with a surprisingly eclectic collection from artists such as Lucian Freud and Picasso. But I´d had enough of the bars, the MP4 music videos, the trendy bohemian culture, and the 40th-floor penthouse clubs of Bogota. It was time to hit campo.
On my way to San Gil with Israeli Debbie in tow, I was immediately struck by a feeling of liberation – adventure. It took us ages to escape the industrial, concrete grip of the city in our cheap, rickety school bus (Debbie had insisted on taking it because it was cheap), but things rapidly improved as the city fell away and the verdant, rolling countryside took hold. I spent six solid hours staring out of the window at the pastoral scenes rolling by, and never got bored.
Incongruous sites along the way included an estate of peculiar, multi-coloured castles resembling a miniature Camalot, set away from the road - the purpose of which shall forever remain a mediaeval-latino mystery. Later we drove past a peculiar circular diner that would have perhaps felt at home in the middle of a cheap British theme park, set on the lip of a beautiful valley, completely deserted and impotent. Here and there, I spotted a few indigenous-looking types, but these were to prove few and far between.
Colombians north of Bogota (and perhaps all over the country) seem to deeply enjoy wrestling with large animals. Two hours into the drive I spotted a woman dragging a belligerent, semi-enraged oxe along a roadside as her children skipped about, poking gleefully at the beast while she postured and screamed, cursing its impudence. The oxe was clearly unhappy with its lot in life, lolling its head violently against the bank and tramping its feet disgustedly amidst clouds of dust. Later, I saw an old man attempting to push a donkey clearly possessed of a similar spirit of disobedience, screeching to the point of collapse as its owner attempted to rant it up the hill.
Passing though narrow valleys, I was surprised to see cloud skirting the mountains around us, only 40 meters above our heads. We passed through various small towns and suddenly the air was warm and humid. I realized that I was breathing more easily, my mind clear. Debbie sat nervously in the back, eying everyone for signs of insurrection and betrayal. Eventually night fell, and lightning began to flash soundlessly outside as we moved at great speed through the darkness. At one point I hopped off the bus for air and had to hop back on almost immediately, running for the still-open door and diving back in at full pelt as the bus took off again without warning. I´ll never forget the look of frozen horror in Debbie´s eyes as she saw her chaperone almost disappearing into the night forever.
Arriving in San Gil around 7pm, we took a taxi directly to the Macondo hostel, me constantly assuaging Debbie´s fears that we were not being taken to a backpacker sausage factory and that our backpacks were not about to be stolen from the boot. Creeping around the corner of a narrow and incredibly steep cobbled street, the taxi finally let us out at an anonymous door with a piece of paper sellotaped to it, labeled ´Macondo´. As we shouldered our backpacks it opened to reveal a tired, scrawny apparition with blond dreadlocks and no shirt – the ozzie proprietor, Shaun. "You´re Mark, right?" he said. "Yes", I said, and in we went…
Phew, that went on a bit. Next up – San Gil, the Ciudad Perdida and various other pictoral depictions in word form.
Without wanting to put you off, I´m afraid that this entry may end up acquiring a dimension that may be described as ´large´. Others might call it ´gargantuan´, while still others might attempt a comparison with a long-extinct, elephantine beast (ahem, ´Mammoth´).
So, so, so. Yes. I should start. Where did I get up to? Answers on a postcard. No, no, no. This isn´t right, let´s try again.
Bogota: place of strange contradictions. One street can be lively, modern and vibrant, while the next is deserted, decrepit and devoid of any feeling of life. A grey nothingness. The weather is mostly cold and rainy, and it´s almost impossible to warm up. The air seems to chill to the bone without ever getting really cold. This doesn´t reflect the spirit of the people however; Colombians seem perpetually jolly and optimistic despite the still-precarious balance of their society after years of violenzia, and are incredibly friendly to travelers. In fact, Europeans seem to possess an almost-celebrity status among the youth of the country, who will readily accept you as their new best friend. They are openly reaching out to the world with open palms.
President Uribe seems to have done a good job of appeasing the various guerrilla groups (FARC, Paramilitaries and ELN), and the country appears to be entering a new era of prosperity. Colombians have embraced their newly emerging culture with an almost-alarming disregard for their violent past (and who can blame them?) – hence, Shakira is probably their greatest living national hero. The day before I arrived in Bogota, most of the Platypus crowd had been to see this bastion of Colombian culture shaking her booty at the local arena, and very few were displeased with what they saw.
Another sign of the country´s growing wealth is that many Colombians in their late 20s or 30s have dental braces - presumably because modern dental practice has only become affordable (or available) in the last few years. Men in suits and mature students proudly beam mouthfuls of steel as they pass in the streets and chat in cafes, bringing back contrasting memories of my own experiences at secondary school, suffering such enigmatic nicknames as "train tracks" and "metal mouth". Horses for courses…
Similarly, Bogota and Medellin are now global hotspots for laser eye surgery and cosmetic augmentation. One afternoon when I was relaxing at Hostel Sue with Neske and Jack, an Irish girl walked in looking like she´d just gone one-on-one with Prince Naseem, ran through the courtyard shouting, "Don´t look at me", and locked herself in the bathroom. After ten minutes dousing her eyes with various cleansing fluids and steroid drops, she emerged wearing huge, black sunglasses like a blind Jackie ONassis.
Come to Colombia ! The cheap and cheerful way to better vision…
Did I mention that I ate a lot of steak in Bogota? In retrospect, I´m rather glad that I indulged that particular vice, because the food in Colombia goes from bland and uncompromising to bland and deeply dull. Three food groups seem to exist in the hearts, minds and fields of Colombia: rice, plantains and chicken. Local people are happy to eat this heady combination day after day, with little sign or want of variety or seasoning. Fortunately, I love chicken. I can eat it for breakfast. And so I did, most days that I was in Colombia. Fortunately, their fruit is excellent and makes a laughing stock of anything you can buy in England – especially the mangos. My most enduring memory is of maracuya, a spherical fruit that you crack open to scoop out the insides, which resemble unhatched tadpoles. A very tasty and subtle flavour, somewhat similar to passion fruit, and supposedly very good for the digestion (since writing this entry, I have been helpfully informed that maracuya is in fact passion fruit).
There´s very little else to say about Colombian food, other than that it´s simple, unchallenging and easy on the eyes. The empanadas are great though – if you´ve never had one, think big, stodgy samosas filled with rice and/or potato, chicken and/or beef/dog.
I´m drawn to another memory of my friend Rocio´s Argentinian boyfriend, Pablo. That week at the Platypus was the first time they´d met in the flesh (having originally met on the internet). In keeping with Argentina´s reputation for inordinate cultural pride, Pablo had brought with him a receptacle that looked a little like a giant, stainless-steel eggcup, complete with shiny metal straw. With this marvelous frabtraption he concocted a mouth-numbingly bitter tea (known as maté), which he sat and sipped with superior satisfaction, gaining even greater joy from the looks of revulsion that greeted him every time he offered someone else a sip. "Everyone drinks this in Argentina", he would say, and go back to sipping his bilious slurry like a lord of leisure.
Also that week, my American friend Chris taught me a great song on the guitar, which I have as-yet failed to perfect. It´s called ´Sons de Carrilhões´, written by a fella named João Pernambuco. I´d highly recommend getting hold of a copy if you have a weakness for classical guitar.
But enough of Bogota . After finally agreeing to meet Rocio, Pablo and hopefully Nezke in Taganga on the Caribbean coast, I spent my last day impatiently waiting to leave. I´d decided to see as much of Colombia as possible via a counter-clockwise tour of the country, rather than simply shooting south through Ecuador. There was simply too much to see and do. I was set on trekking to the Ciudad Perdida (Lost City) near Parque Nacional Tayrona, lured by tantalizing reports of little-known ruins and notorious kidnappings, having seen enough museums and gold-clad churches to last well into the next life.
Incidentally, Bogota has a fantastic gold museum (mostly plundered from small, confused people), and a thriving cultural scene fuelled by the huge student presence. The Botero museum displays bizarre images by Colombia´s most celebrated artist – bloated, spherical people standing in mute poses – along with a surprisingly eclectic collection from artists such as Lucian Freud and Picasso. But I´d had enough of the bars, the MP4 music videos, the trendy bohemian culture, and the 40th-floor penthouse clubs of Bogota. It was time to hit campo.
On my way to San Gil with Israeli Debbie in tow, I was immediately struck by a feeling of liberation – adventure. It took us ages to escape the industrial, concrete grip of the city in our cheap, rickety school bus (Debbie had insisted on taking it because it was cheap), but things rapidly improved as the city fell away and the verdant, rolling countryside took hold. I spent six solid hours staring out of the window at the pastoral scenes rolling by, and never got bored.
Incongruous sites along the way included an estate of peculiar, multi-coloured castles resembling a miniature Camalot, set away from the road - the purpose of which shall forever remain a mediaeval-latino mystery. Later we drove past a peculiar circular diner that would have perhaps felt at home in the middle of a cheap British theme park, set on the lip of a beautiful valley, completely deserted and impotent. Here and there, I spotted a few indigenous-looking types, but these were to prove few and far between.
Colombians north of Bogota (and perhaps all over the country) seem to deeply enjoy wrestling with large animals. Two hours into the drive I spotted a woman dragging a belligerent, semi-enraged oxe along a roadside as her children skipped about, poking gleefully at the beast while she postured and screamed, cursing its impudence. The oxe was clearly unhappy with its lot in life, lolling its head violently against the bank and tramping its feet disgustedly amidst clouds of dust. Later, I saw an old man attempting to push a donkey clearly possessed of a similar spirit of disobedience, screeching to the point of collapse as its owner attempted to rant it up the hill.
Passing though narrow valleys, I was surprised to see cloud skirting the mountains around us, only 40 meters above our heads. We passed through various small towns and suddenly the air was warm and humid. I realized that I was breathing more easily, my mind clear. Debbie sat nervously in the back, eying everyone for signs of insurrection and betrayal. Eventually night fell, and lightning began to flash soundlessly outside as we moved at great speed through the darkness. At one point I hopped off the bus for air and had to hop back on almost immediately, running for the still-open door and diving back in at full pelt as the bus took off again without warning. I´ll never forget the look of frozen horror in Debbie´s eyes as she saw her chaperone almost disappearing into the night forever.
Arriving in San Gil around 7pm, we took a taxi directly to the Macondo hostel, me constantly assuaging Debbie´s fears that we were not being taken to a backpacker sausage factory and that our backpacks were not about to be stolen from the boot. Creeping around the corner of a narrow and incredibly steep cobbled street, the taxi finally let us out at an anonymous door with a piece of paper sellotaped to it, labeled ´Macondo´. As we shouldered our backpacks it opened to reveal a tired, scrawny apparition with blond dreadlocks and no shirt – the ozzie proprietor, Shaun. "You´re Mark, right?" he said. "Yes", I said, and in we went…
Phew, that went on a bit. Next up – San Gil, the Ciudad Perdida and various other pictoral depictions in word form.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Bogota - The Journey Begins...
I´m in South America. Colombia to be exact. I´ve been here for just over two weeks now, and as with all travelling experiences the way has been long, windy and unpredictable - full of colourful personalities, mosquitos and bad Spanish. I am now in Cartagena: infamous port town, historical site of gold exportation, pirates and dense, chewable humidity. I will do my best to bring the last few weeks to the electronic page with alacrity, picarseque prose and succinct description. Once again, if you find all this dull and tiresome, just tell me where to shove it.It all began in Bogota...
Boarding the Paris-Bogota flight, I experienced instant culture shock. Everyone on board was Colombian. Mustachioed, latino faces greeted me everywhere: bored, laconic and exotic. I spent my ten-hour flight engrossed in broken Spanish with the Colombian girls who irritably shifted over, having occupied my aisle seat. After discovering that I was English (and probably having never met an English person before), one of them insisted on helping me ´practice´ my Spanish for eight solid hours. The welcome byproduct of this intercourse was that the flight shot past like a dream; her name was Andrea, she was returning from a two-month cookery course in Paris and was into death metal (favourite band, Rotting Christ). She was single, and had a seven-year old daughter. In the end she invited me to stay with her if I ever made my way to Cali – a welcome, if slightly suspicious invitation, which I´m still not sure I´ll pursue...
Queuing up at passport control, I trod wearily, checking for any signs of altitude sickness – shortness of breath, light-headedness, uncontrollable hallucinations. Nope. The guy at the passport booth checked my passport without once looking at my face.
Leaving the airport I felt immediate jubilation; the air was clear and clean and the temperature mild, like a warm spring day. I grabbed a ticket from the taxi rank, jumped into a waiting cab and was immediately coasting my way through the city limits towards the Platypus hostel in La Candelaria, where I had a reservation. There were no seat belts in the back - typical latin America. With my head stuck out the open window I watched the approacing city; it reminded me of a strange cross between Navajoa (north-west Mexico) and the grimy-grey concrete nightmare that is Phnom Penh (Cambodia). Incredibly calm, empty streets and relaxed-looking citizens.
Arriving around 4:30pm, the sun was already beginning to sink, and the mountains skirting the city appeared as haunting silhouettes in the late afternoon light. My first impression was that a giant, mischievous child has picked up a fistful of concrete and thrown it haphazardly at this high-altitude plateau, causing the earth to ripple and rise up around it. As the taxi coasted through the centre of town I was surprised by how ugly and industrial it seemed; as we approached La Candelaria more young people appeared on the narrow streets, but the sparse, quiet atmosphere didn´t change.
Ugly, eastern-European buildings pollute the skyline with mono-syllabic rows of windows, set against the dramatic backdrop of Cerro de Monseratte. As I arrived, the low-lying clouds transformed the mountain into a squat, vaguely threatening goliath that presided over La Candelaria like a disapproving stepfather.
I got out of the cab a minute´s walk down the street from the Platypus and by the time I reached the door with backpack and bag I was out of breath – my first symptom of the 8,600ft altitude. Over the following days I became more familiar with these sly and subtle effects: walking up a gradual slope brings on mild dizziness and lack of breath, and colours seem more vibrant – though that may just be Colombia in general.
I was immediately impressed with the Platypus – free coffee, and friendly German owner Germann (pronounced Herman) who offered me a free beer before I´d had a chance to drop my backpack. The interior was cool and quiet, with an airlock-style porch arrangement to stop unwelcome intruders. Lovely little courtyard with fountain, backpacks lined up in the corner and a sitting room to the right with wooden tables, a high wood-beamed ceiling and wooden chairs.
My lasting impression of the Platypus is of a rickety firetrap where warmth is emanated only by the people, dedicated staff and free coffee. On my third morning I awoke at 5am from a dream that someone was leaning over me, whispering into my ear, "The air is getting thinner in here, wake up!" I jumped out of bed and vowed to stop drinking so much free coffee.
The only thing that broke the pristine, inner tranquility of my arrival was the sound of English-accented voices, and my first thought – "You go all the way to Bogota and can´t escape the bleeding limeys". Rather than staying in that night and adjusting to the time difference and altitude, I decided to go out with a bunch of mixed geezers from England, Australia, New Zealand and America. The American guy, Adam, had biked his way down from the States to Colombia, mostly overland, and was pushing his way further south. He was an old-skool Tool fan, and I enjoyed berating his lack of long-term dedication later that night while we played drinking games at The Pub in Zona Rose – yet another Irish pub in a totally incongruous setting on the other side of town. This is a totally upmarket zone, full of wealthy, comfortable Colombians who live in a bubble: detached from the rest of the city, and country, at large.
Bogota is a place of strange contradictions, where nouveau-riche brush shoulders with the revoltingly poor and tiny, crippled beggars shine the shoes of tall, well-dressed businessmen as they stare with remote indifference at their watches and well-manicured nails, waiting for their lunchbreaks to end.
La Candelaria, the until-recently poor and dangerous part of town is now and up and coming student zone. The area is mellow, decrepit and full of narrow alleys and old buildings that have become home to youth-friendly cafes, breakfast bars and watering holes (Mora: Mora sells smoothies and looks like an Ozzie joint, and Papyrus plays MPG4 music videos and sells great tequila. We spent a good few nights there whiling away the wee hours). As you traverse the cracked and sinking pavements you can´t miss the vibrant graffiti (none of which bristles with the clan-like anger of London´s tagging), which often references Uribe (the current President), contemporary bands or traditional Colombian people dressed in traditional garb. It is an area that traps travellers and invites poetry.
Damn, this email has become inordinately huge and I haven´t told you anything – about the friends I made (American Chris, Wolfgang the businessman, Emily the writer) or the experiences I had in Bogota. Climbing Cerro de Monseratte for a view that made the city look like an isometric computer game, seeing the clouds dip down and curl over a horizon that looked like the edge of the world and feeling another degree of altitude-induced effects; the Gold museum; the appreciation of new acoustic guitar music; dicussions of Earth Crust Displacement, geology and olde English literature with Chris and Ken; Roçio and Pablo; or the greatest coincidence of all: bumping into a Dutch girl I met fifteen months ago in Barcelona while travelling with my friend Ben.
Her name is Neske. We met in the supermarket after my second filet mignon lunch in two days, giving me the strangest feeling that two distinctly different temporal dimensions had rubbed together like a seismic shift. She´d been travelling constantly ever since we last met, while I´d been back in England, working and thinking about my wanderings in northern Spain. Neither of us could believe the unlikelihood of this coincidence (Bogota to Barcelona?) and I spent that evening at her hostel, watching her accompany English Jack on the violin as he played classic Eric Clapton tracks on a traveller´s guitar.
I could keep going and going and going... I left Bogota with a timid Israeli girl called Debbie and travelled north via beautiful San Gil to Taganga on the Caribbean coast, then walked through the jungle for six days to the lost city of the Tayunas – an ancient Indian culture. I talked to a man who´d spent six years in prison in Bogota for attempted drug trafficking, then opened a seaside Baguette shop with his estranged girlfriend. I read William Burroughs´ Yage Letters, and wondered about Shaun (hostel owner in San Gil) and his own Ayhuasca experiences. And I ate filet mignon for breakfast.
Monday, August 14, 2006
Pompeii, 1942
Pompeii, 1942. A geek-tourist scientist, intrepid explorer and faithful Indian sidekick make good their expedition to discover the lost phallus of Booozsh.
Friday, May 12, 2006
Albert Norman, '05
The rain cascaded down from a template-grey sky. In the distance lightning flashed, illuminating silhouetted buildings. The figure in the garden stood motionless, seemingly oblivious to the torrential rain, arms outstretched as if to embrace the falling sky. On closer inspection one could see that he was naked. Hair plastered over his face, he grinned with closed eyes as the droplets buffeted his face and drenched him from head to toe. Water rose and arched around him as the wind punctuated the rain with a steady rhythm. Lightning flashed again, and the figure turned his back on the city and walked back inside. Albert was his name, and he had tasted the naked world.
Albert sat at the table, elbows propped on the surface in front of him, hands together, fingertips touching. The steeple effect pleased him. He often sat in this position, spending up to an hour with eyes half closed, feeling the warmth of his fingers and the energy collecting between his cupped hands.
He felt hungry, so he stood and headed for the cupboard. The fridge was empty as usual, but this didn’t bother him - he was used to making do with the basics. Inside the cupboard was an assortment of tins and dried foodstuffs: desiccated banana chips that he’d made himself and chickpeas left in sealed containers full of water.
He wasn’t a vegetarian, he just couldn’t be bothered with the complexities of meat preparation. Vegetables and fruit always tasted right to him, no matter how they were prepared.
Albert took a tin of artichokes and opened it, then carefully pored the contents into a bowl, separating liquid from solid. He drank the liquid from the tin, then tossed it over his shoulder into the special bin he had constructed. It sank a metre into the floor, the boards pulled back to expose the vacant earth beneath. The area below was contained with plywood and lined with tarpaulin; a trapdoor has been constructed to close off the small pit when so desired.
Albert hated rubbish.
He looked at the bowl in front of him, then stabbed an artichoke and lifted it up to eye-level. He paused as he directed the fork toward his mouth, examining the vegetable mass with its flowery perfection and smooth root base.
As a physical entity born of the earth, Albert was compelled, daily, to take it into himself. This gravitational mass of quarks, atoms, molecules and countless other components had formed him from its own chimerical substance. Now, to support his continued existence it was necessary to replace his waning form with the appropriate materials gleaned from the surface of the planet.
He looked at the artificial, processed packaging that his food had come from and then looked at the object on his fork. It was severely lacking. He tossed it into the bin and stood up to leave.
Some time later, Albert was outside digging up potatoes with his bare hands and trying to eat them raw. That didn’t work.
Then he took a boot to the temple from the old boy whose allotment he’d broken into and was wantonly ravaging. The Doc Martin collided with his head, sending sparks and dizzy white flashes across his vision.
“What the fack d’ya thank you’re doing?! Get the hell out of my allotment you crazy jigger!!”
“I just wanted the spud mush! I just wanted a taste of real earthy fruit, baby…” He faded out dismally, lost and confused.
Albert sat at the table, elbows propped on the surface in front of him, hands together, fingertips touching. The steeple effect pleased him. He often sat in this position, spending up to an hour with eyes half closed, feeling the warmth of his fingers and the energy collecting between his cupped hands.
He felt hungry, so he stood and headed for the cupboard. The fridge was empty as usual, but this didn’t bother him - he was used to making do with the basics. Inside the cupboard was an assortment of tins and dried foodstuffs: desiccated banana chips that he’d made himself and chickpeas left in sealed containers full of water.
He wasn’t a vegetarian, he just couldn’t be bothered with the complexities of meat preparation. Vegetables and fruit always tasted right to him, no matter how they were prepared.
Albert took a tin of artichokes and opened it, then carefully pored the contents into a bowl, separating liquid from solid. He drank the liquid from the tin, then tossed it over his shoulder into the special bin he had constructed. It sank a metre into the floor, the boards pulled back to expose the vacant earth beneath. The area below was contained with plywood and lined with tarpaulin; a trapdoor has been constructed to close off the small pit when so desired.
Albert hated rubbish.
He looked at the bowl in front of him, then stabbed an artichoke and lifted it up to eye-level. He paused as he directed the fork toward his mouth, examining the vegetable mass with its flowery perfection and smooth root base.
As a physical entity born of the earth, Albert was compelled, daily, to take it into himself. This gravitational mass of quarks, atoms, molecules and countless other components had formed him from its own chimerical substance. Now, to support his continued existence it was necessary to replace his waning form with the appropriate materials gleaned from the surface of the planet.
He looked at the artificial, processed packaging that his food had come from and then looked at the object on his fork. It was severely lacking. He tossed it into the bin and stood up to leave.
Some time later, Albert was outside digging up potatoes with his bare hands and trying to eat them raw. That didn’t work.
Then he took a boot to the temple from the old boy whose allotment he’d broken into and was wantonly ravaging. The Doc Martin collided with his head, sending sparks and dizzy white flashes across his vision.
“What the fack d’ya thank you’re doing?! Get the hell out of my allotment you crazy jigger!!”
“I just wanted the spud mush! I just wanted a taste of real earthy fruit, baby…” He faded out dismally, lost and confused.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
The Hub
Around the central Hub the figures dance and toil,
like Puppets bound to an ever-rotating spindle
They do not understand the Hub,
only the strings that twitch their limbs
They are preoccupied with the dance,
and the bright colours that flow
Beneath their feet like ribbons
They mourn but briefly when the strings are cut
And continue their merry dance.
What other choice do they have?
The strings are all but invisible,
and the colours of the hub dazzle
and blind them with their beauty
The beauty distracts them from the twitching figures
whose grip on the hub has been lost
No longer connected to the motion of colours,
they labour perpetually in a half-state
They think they are happy,
but the strong healthy puppets can only pity them
Some are connected by only a few wires;
tangled survivors of the struggle to remain connected
They are worse than the twitching paralytics
Lurching around the hub, their eyes bulge at the scene
The others grow uncomfortable in their presence
Sometimes a lone dancer will take the initiative
and cut the remaining strings,
propelling the deviant into the rapidly expanding pile
Of paralysed, twitching dolls
Occasionally, one of these lone initiators will find their dance increasing in its intensity
Whether voluntary or at the will of the hub,
the dancer spirals through the kaleidoscope of colours
Into the hub itself
united with the source and the light and the dance
The others dance on; caught perpetually between the brilliant light
And twitching dark
like Puppets bound to an ever-rotating spindle
They do not understand the Hub,
only the strings that twitch their limbs
They are preoccupied with the dance,
and the bright colours that flow
Beneath their feet like ribbons
They mourn but briefly when the strings are cut
And continue their merry dance.
What other choice do they have?
The strings are all but invisible,
and the colours of the hub dazzle
and blind them with their beauty
The beauty distracts them from the twitching figures
whose grip on the hub has been lost
No longer connected to the motion of colours,
they labour perpetually in a half-state
They think they are happy,
but the strong healthy puppets can only pity them
Some are connected by only a few wires;
tangled survivors of the struggle to remain connected
They are worse than the twitching paralytics
Lurching around the hub, their eyes bulge at the scene
The others grow uncomfortable in their presence
Sometimes a lone dancer will take the initiative
and cut the remaining strings,
propelling the deviant into the rapidly expanding pile
Of paralysed, twitching dolls
Occasionally, one of these lone initiators will find their dance increasing in its intensity
Whether voluntary or at the will of the hub,
the dancer spirals through the kaleidoscope of colours
Into the hub itself
united with the source and the light and the dance
The others dance on; caught perpetually between the brilliant light
And twitching dark
Friday, April 28, 2006
Tel Aviv
A floating tree in a large seed, located in the old centre of Jaffa in Tel Aviv. Reminds me of a Dali painting. We encountered this on the tail end of a wedding party that beckoned us into their synagogue to join the celebrations, put kippot on our heads and played Klezmer with acoustic guitar that wafted through the air like an alluring scent. Slippery wet alleys and quiet squares in the dark...
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Los Arcos
Hot day in Los Arcos, great little town in the middle of Navarrah´s meseta. That´s desert to you and me.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Wine fountain
Yes, that's really what it looks like. A stainless-steel, all-you-can-guzzle red wine fountain. Arriving at 8am, I proceeded to swill as much of its frothy produce as my malnourished stomach could handle. Resting on little more than the previous evening's dinner and a few meagre morsels of biscuit, the wine soon worked its magic and I had to fight to stop myself from vomiting, launching into a fast-paced walk that took me quickly away from the brewery enclosure and into the morning glow of the Spanish countryside. By 11am I'd walked off most of the alcohol and still didn't feel hungry. Ah, the metabolic wonder of booze...
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Room to swing a car, Camino '05
Until you've slept in a half-derelict gym after trekking through 28kms of Spanish forest, you don't know the meaning of fun. Especially when you have a hirsute, didgeridoo-playing German, a cute Swedish teen and a wandering Jew for company.
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Cathars and Spirituality
On 'Good' and 'Evil'
Though the attempt to quantify what is 'good' and what is 'evil' may appear irrelevant in this age of scientific realism - the important and vital qualities of religion having been dumbed down or long forgotten - the issue still holds great importance in understanding the absurd society in which we live. The observant Christian will follow his or her religion beliefs, living by the tenants of a faith which dictates the importance of charity and abstinence, in order to avoid the devil and achieve salvation. Yet, the paradox is glaring - we live in a society based entirely in the certainty of scientific fact, most of which contradicts or ignores the foundations of spiritual faith. Many alternative philosophies, such as Existentialism or Satanism believe that the line between good and evil is non-existent - that the two are interchangeable and part of the same, closed system. The Humanist vision, to which both of the previous world-views can be attributed, is one of an unbiased existence in which man lives according to the whims of his nature, whether they be social/antisocial, destructive/constructive, or other.
Yet the truth, as ever, is in balance and equilibrium. The truth is that evil breeds evil; indulgence breeds ignorance, and success breeds jealousy. It is far harder to indulge in good, because someone will always mistake it for bad. And then the indulgent will grow fat on the work of good men.
The Christian ideal is perhaps the most fascinating remnant of an earlier, more enlightened age. As Roman Catholicism stole its imagery and substance from earlier religions (including Judaism and the many 'Pagan' faiths), it contains a great deal of corrupt truth. If we look at the source of these ideas and the eras from which they arose we can shed a great deal of light on the true meaning and application of these 'truths'. One of the most interesting elements within Catholicism is that of the conflict between 'good' and 'evil', or God and Satan. God is always portrayed as a being of light and 'good', whilst Satan is consistently depicted as a being of darkness and 'evil'. But, as many people are aware, Satan was in fact an angel of light who was cast out of heaven for challenging the word of God, just as Lucifer rebelled in giving fire to man. The two angels are in fact one and the same, representing independent action and freedom of thought, rather than blind deference and obedience - a principal upheld and enforced by the Catholic Church. And why? Because Catholicism is a system designed to safeguard money, power and influence; an institution installed to keep the people lowly and the indulgent in power. A far cry from the original intentions of the Christianity.
The concepts of 'Good' and 'Evil' have existed for thousands of years, it is only in the past two millenium that they have been given such distinct embodiments. Figures representing greed, lust and human desire have been present in countless religious systems including the Greek and Roman Gods, the Norse myths and many lesser-known Pagan entities. One of the most obscure and lesser-known belief systems to focus on the interactions of good and evil is the Christian-derived Cathar religion. Closely connected to the Knights Templar, the Cathars occupied a large area of Southern France known as the Langue d'Oc, living in rural simplicity and practicing a religion that appeared, on a first glance, to bear a strong resemblance to contemporary Christianity. A closer look however, revealed a glaring contradiction: the Cathars believed that Mary Magdalene had been the lover and wife of Christ, and that she had fathered his children. This meant that they viewed Christ as a mortal man. This meant that sex was not an unholy sin. This meant he was no more the 'Son of God' than any other deeply spiritual individual; indeed it suggests that for the Cathars, Christ was a true icon - an example of faith rather than an object of patriarchal salvation.
The Cathars also held a particularly esoteric belief, echoed in the practice of the mystery schools of ancient Egypt and the Middle-East, to which no parallel can be drawn in current monotheism. They believed that within our realm of experience are two distinct spirits: one of the Earth, or the lower plane, and one of the higher spiritual plane. These two spirits are not enemies, nor are they mutually exclusive, they are interdependent and part of a single hierarchical system. The earthbound spirit works in the field of life and serves the ego of need. In turn, this spirit is fuelled by the individuals that worship it. This spirit also represents indulgence and the self - if the individual consistently indulges in the fruits of the material world, operating from a selfish viewpoint alone, then they are indulging in the food of evil and will never move beyond the earthbound spirit into a higher realm. The other, more subtle spirit of the higher plane exists beyond the realm of material pleasure, and will never be reached by those who do not see beyond the material. To reach this spirit we must continue our evolution and move beyond our physical and spiritual preoccupations to reach a higher realm.
Unfortunately, the earthbound spirit represents a far greater attraction because it exists within our own world; in the physical realm that surrounds us, and in everything that we desire. The higher spirit is a far greater challenge; it exists in our dreams, in our love and in moments of ecstasy that cannot be easily repeated, unlike the pleasure of a good apple. This higher spirit exists in a vibration that we can only reach through intense focus, and then only momentarily. It takes great effort to maintain, in contrast to the lower spirit that vibrates within our own range. And so we have a choice: to serve the earthbound spirit or to seek the higher spirit and complete our evolution. However, these two spirits are not distinct, separate entities but part of a bandwidth that stretches way beyond our material consciousness. We are low-vibrating creatures, capable of distraction and preoccupation, and thus prone to enslavement by the enticing earthbound spirit. This is the truth of 'Good' and 'Evil': the more that we serve the spirit of material satisfaction, the greater the evil that we can wreak upon our fellow humans and the world around us. It is time to evolve.
Though the attempt to quantify what is 'good' and what is 'evil' may appear irrelevant in this age of scientific realism - the important and vital qualities of religion having been dumbed down or long forgotten - the issue still holds great importance in understanding the absurd society in which we live. The observant Christian will follow his or her religion beliefs, living by the tenants of a faith which dictates the importance of charity and abstinence, in order to avoid the devil and achieve salvation. Yet, the paradox is glaring - we live in a society based entirely in the certainty of scientific fact, most of which contradicts or ignores the foundations of spiritual faith. Many alternative philosophies, such as Existentialism or Satanism believe that the line between good and evil is non-existent - that the two are interchangeable and part of the same, closed system. The Humanist vision, to which both of the previous world-views can be attributed, is one of an unbiased existence in which man lives according to the whims of his nature, whether they be social/antisocial, destructive/constructive, or other.
Yet the truth, as ever, is in balance and equilibrium. The truth is that evil breeds evil; indulgence breeds ignorance, and success breeds jealousy. It is far harder to indulge in good, because someone will always mistake it for bad. And then the indulgent will grow fat on the work of good men.
The Christian ideal is perhaps the most fascinating remnant of an earlier, more enlightened age. As Roman Catholicism stole its imagery and substance from earlier religions (including Judaism and the many 'Pagan' faiths), it contains a great deal of corrupt truth. If we look at the source of these ideas and the eras from which they arose we can shed a great deal of light on the true meaning and application of these 'truths'. One of the most interesting elements within Catholicism is that of the conflict between 'good' and 'evil', or God and Satan. God is always portrayed as a being of light and 'good', whilst Satan is consistently depicted as a being of darkness and 'evil'. But, as many people are aware, Satan was in fact an angel of light who was cast out of heaven for challenging the word of God, just as Lucifer rebelled in giving fire to man. The two angels are in fact one and the same, representing independent action and freedom of thought, rather than blind deference and obedience - a principal upheld and enforced by the Catholic Church. And why? Because Catholicism is a system designed to safeguard money, power and influence; an institution installed to keep the people lowly and the indulgent in power. A far cry from the original intentions of the Christianity.
The concepts of 'Good' and 'Evil' have existed for thousands of years, it is only in the past two millenium that they have been given such distinct embodiments. Figures representing greed, lust and human desire have been present in countless religious systems including the Greek and Roman Gods, the Norse myths and many lesser-known Pagan entities. One of the most obscure and lesser-known belief systems to focus on the interactions of good and evil is the Christian-derived Cathar religion. Closely connected to the Knights Templar, the Cathars occupied a large area of Southern France known as the Langue d'Oc, living in rural simplicity and practicing a religion that appeared, on a first glance, to bear a strong resemblance to contemporary Christianity. A closer look however, revealed a glaring contradiction: the Cathars believed that Mary Magdalene had been the lover and wife of Christ, and that she had fathered his children. This meant that they viewed Christ as a mortal man. This meant that sex was not an unholy sin. This meant he was no more the 'Son of God' than any other deeply spiritual individual; indeed it suggests that for the Cathars, Christ was a true icon - an example of faith rather than an object of patriarchal salvation.
The Cathars also held a particularly esoteric belief, echoed in the practice of the mystery schools of ancient Egypt and the Middle-East, to which no parallel can be drawn in current monotheism. They believed that within our realm of experience are two distinct spirits: one of the Earth, or the lower plane, and one of the higher spiritual plane. These two spirits are not enemies, nor are they mutually exclusive, they are interdependent and part of a single hierarchical system. The earthbound spirit works in the field of life and serves the ego of need. In turn, this spirit is fuelled by the individuals that worship it. This spirit also represents indulgence and the self - if the individual consistently indulges in the fruits of the material world, operating from a selfish viewpoint alone, then they are indulging in the food of evil and will never move beyond the earthbound spirit into a higher realm. The other, more subtle spirit of the higher plane exists beyond the realm of material pleasure, and will never be reached by those who do not see beyond the material. To reach this spirit we must continue our evolution and move beyond our physical and spiritual preoccupations to reach a higher realm.
Unfortunately, the earthbound spirit represents a far greater attraction because it exists within our own world; in the physical realm that surrounds us, and in everything that we desire. The higher spirit is a far greater challenge; it exists in our dreams, in our love and in moments of ecstasy that cannot be easily repeated, unlike the pleasure of a good apple. This higher spirit exists in a vibration that we can only reach through intense focus, and then only momentarily. It takes great effort to maintain, in contrast to the lower spirit that vibrates within our own range. And so we have a choice: to serve the earthbound spirit or to seek the higher spirit and complete our evolution. However, these two spirits are not distinct, separate entities but part of a bandwidth that stretches way beyond our material consciousness. We are low-vibrating creatures, capable of distraction and preoccupation, and thus prone to enslavement by the enticing earthbound spirit. This is the truth of 'Good' and 'Evil': the more that we serve the spirit of material satisfaction, the greater the evil that we can wreak upon our fellow humans and the world around us. It is time to evolve.
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Steve Albini Interview
Emerging from the ashes of ‘80s hardcore, Big Black were a post-glacial reaction to corporate rock and an evolutionary step along the punk ladder. From these humble beginnings emerged Steve Albini, the snarling purist whose DIY ethos revolutionised the underground music scene. Outspoken and unapologetic, Albini soon gained notoriety for an unflinchingly hostile attitude towards the media, compounded by a defiant attitude in the face of criticism.
Never afraid to make enemies and always ready to speak his mind, Albini’s seismic blend of jackhammer drumming and buzz-saw guitars lay the groundwork for the ‘90s industrial scene. With over a thousand albums to his name from bands such as PJ Harvey, Bush and Nirvana, Albini stands as one of the most influential, yet anonymous producers in the history of rock. Following a brief sojourn with the controversially named Rapeman, Albini formed the indomitable Shellac: one of the co-curators of 2004's All Tomorrow’s Parties. RC decided to investigate the truth behind rock n’ roll’s maverick.
You studied journalism at college. What made you choose a career in music?
I couldn’t say I was pursuing a career in any sense. The whole time I was in school I was in bands, but to be honest it never really occurred to me that there was a job there. No one had any expectation that these bands would ever make their money, earn them a living; that they would ever be carried through life on punk-rock’s shoulders. However, that’s not the same as saying that it wasn’t important to everybody – it was deadly important.
So what inspired you to actually start making music? Was there any particular band that sparked you off?
The Ramones. I can say with quite a bit of confidence that if I’d never heard the Ramones I wouldn’t be involved in music at any level. I came to Chicago in 1980, and at that point the punk scene was kind of like a secret society. The bands that were around at the time were all perverse and amazing bands: the Effigies, Naked Raygun; really utterly unique bands, and I don’t just mean unique for the day, I mean unique. I can’t think of another band that behaved the way those bands behaved at the time, and in retrospect that’s what I liked about punk-rock, was that each and every band was a completely distinct package of behaviour.
How did Big Black start out?
During my spring break in ‘81 I recorded a couple of songs in my apartment. One of the people I distributed the cassette to was the manager for the band The Effigies. They were running a co-operative record label called Ruthless Records and offered to release the tape as the Lungs EP. The first rehearsals were done with Naked Raygun’s Geoff Pezzati on guitar and me playing bass, and we had a drum machine.
At the time it was kind of a novelty for any band to have a drum machine; they were either treated like very simplistic metronomes or they were used as a sort of imitation drummer, and all that just seemed totally retarded to me. The drum machine is an idiosyncratic instrument that’s got a lot of charisma and personality. Not taking it seriously as an instrument to me just seemed really… cheap.
The harsh guitars and relentless drum loops provided the backbone of Big Black’s sound. Was this a reaction to rock music in general?
Sort of. Everybody in the punk scene thought the mainstream audience were the stupidest people on earth, and we would have been saddened and offended if they had showed up to any of our gigs. Our fights were with the populist, ‘pop’ end of the new wave spectrum which I found really abhorrent. We didn’t really have any fights with Prince or Madonna. You end up getting in fights in your own neighbourhood, y’know? A 12 year-old kid doesn’t get on a bus and go try to assassinate the president, and the reason that he doesn’t is because that’s so far beyond his experience that he’s not even pissed off about it.
Big Black built up a huge cult following but split just before releasing what went on to become your most successful album: Songs about Fucking.
There was a practical reason for that. About a year prior to us breaking up, Santiago decided that he was going to go back to school. We scheduled everything so that it would finish by a certain date and the day after we got home from our final tour, Santiago showed up for his orientation for law school. I didn’t see any value in trying to replace him. Santiago was there from our first public performance, and I felt like he was really important for keeping my latent megalomania in check. We just figured well, that’s it, we did a good job. Big Black accomplished a lot and I was happy and proud of it.
‘Rapeman’ caused some controversy.
Ah screw that, who cares. Nobody cared about that. I mean sure, Rapeman is an ugly name; big deal, fucking get over it. And to my mom it’s no more offensive than ‘Sex Pistols’. The English music press made it seem like it was the most incredible thing in the world that somebody could name a band like that. They were drunk with power and they wanted to make a big deal out of it, whatever. It really broke my heart when we split up ‘cos I really loved playing that music, and I really loved playing with those guys.
You worked on the Pixies’ critically acclaimed debut album. How did that come about?
I was sent a demo that they had been selling around Boston which included their first EP Come on Pilgrim plus about a half dozen other songs, and I thought their music was fine. The number one goal was for them to get a record out of it that they liked, but the problem was that they didn’t express themselves very well in the studio. I enjoyed working on that record, but their music really didn’t make much of a dent on me. I’m not really that selective about who I work with and if it doesn’t seem like there’s a problem then I’m happy to do it.
How did you feel about the prospect of working with Nirvana after the success of Nevermind?
Well, I had been kind of insulated from the whole fracas about Nirvana becoming famous because I didn’t listen to the radio. So none of that stuff really percolated into my attention span, but I was aware of the fact that Nirvana had been part of the underground and then had sort of graduated into the big leagues. Then and now, I still think of bands that aspire to a mainstream level of success as being kind of vain and foolish. However, once I got to work with them I enjoyed their company, I respected them as a band and thought they made a great record.
Did you find yourself under any commercial pressure?
Oh I couldn’t give a shit about commercial pressure, none of that mattered to me. It mattered to all the flotsam and jetsam that were attracted to Nirvana, all the shit-box people that were there; their management people, their record label, their fucking hangers-on of all types. Now after the fact, Geffen’s Gary Gersh went out of his way to try to cause trouble. He was calling journalists and saying, “Yeah, this new Nirvana record is terrible and it’s all Steve Albini’s fault”. So I said, “Well Gary Gersh can go fuck himself.” And that started a big fracas with the record label.
Where any alterations made to the original recording?
Yeah, but I don’t think it had very much to do with that. After they finished the record the band were getting yammered at by everybody telling them how bad the record was and how they shouldn’t release it. It was a little bit uglier, a little bit darker. From the evidence, Kurt’s drug use had kicked back in and there was a lot of personal stuff tied up in the completion of that record.
It doesn’t surprise me that the record ended up changing a little bit, but to my ears it seemed unnecessary. It was like “Well, I’m afraid this won’t kick out of the radio hard enough, I’m afraid that it won’t sound enough like Boston,” or something. I don’t know what the fucking deal was.
What do you see as essential to a band?
I’m really only interested in music that surprises me. And what surprises me most is when I feel like I’m part of a genuine communicative or creative impulse from somebody else. What I like is to feel that the person making the music is being on the level with me; that they’re earnestly indulging a creative impulse, as opposed to just doing it for show.
I’m not really interested in the poetry of the expression. Music is way more than just the notes, y’know? It’s a conversation or it’s a gesture, and if you just repeat a gesture mechanically then it’s not an inspired gesture, it’s just a fucking pantomime. There are some movies that are better if they’re naturalistic, and there are some records that are better if they’re naturalistic.
What has been your most satisfying project to date?
Well, there are personal relationships that are formed from being involved in music that are immensely satisfying. For example there’s the band Silkworm who I’ve been making records with for a long time. We’re great friends, and our friendship wouldn’t have come about if I hadn’t been working on their records, and I think that’s what I take out of this job more than anything else.
In your essay The Problem with Music, (originally written for Chicago journal The Baffler) you detailed the duplicitous nature of the music industry. What advice would you offer to unsigned bands looking to make a career in music?
I wouldn’t presume to tell them what to do because everybody has to make their own mistakes, but they should be conscious of the way that the business operates. The people who’ve survived the longest and made the most durable and admirable careers have remained independent.
If you look at a woman like Annie DiFranco, okay, she’s not on the cover of Rolling Stone, but I guarantee you she makes more money off her records than Avril Lavigne makes off her 10 million. The same can be said of Fugazi and the Dischord record label. By keeping it close to your chest you can make sure nobody else fucks you, but more importantly you can make sure that nobody is fucked on your behalf.
Bands are encouraged to take this unrealistic view that they’re Robin Hood, taking money from this evil company. What the evil company is doing is placing a bet on them, and the bet is that they can make more money out of them, and if that doesn’t work they’ll make sure that the band is destroyed. So if your band means nothing to you, if you don’t care whether you’re paid fairly and you just wanna have this experience of being a rock star, then whatever. You pays your money, you takes your choice. So I don’t really have specific advice, but I have a perspective.
What is the future for Shellac? Are you working on any new material?
Shellac’s my band, and I’m happy to be in this band for the rest of my life. We’ve been recording over the course of the last year, but it takes us a long time to do anything. We spend a long time between sessions.
Watching you perform live, it seems like you guys are just having great fun. Would that apply to your attitude to music in general?
Yeah, I don’t do this for a living, I do it because it’s the most fun that I ever get to have. I can’t imagine why you’d do it otherwise. If you were just doing it to pay the rent, man there’s a lot of easier ways to make a living. And if you’re doing it because you want to be famous, go shoot somebody. You get famous right away that way.
If you would like to read an extended version of this interview, please email me at selbo66@hotmail.com
MS
Saturday, April 27, 2002
El Camino de Santiago, 2002
The Camino 2002 - A Retrospective Journal
I was on my way to Spain. After two and a half hours at Gatwick airport – just enough time to check-in, browse at WHSmith and enjoy a last KFC (damn my greasy addiction) – I was sitting in the window seat of the 12:20 Easyjet flight to Madrid feeling tired, dazed and apprehensive. I hadn’t had much sleep the previous night, and in all honesty I didn’t know what I was doing. At that precise moment, my plans were totally insubstantial; I knew only that I was flying to Madrid to begin a long, indeterminate journey across the North of Spain following an ancient pilgrimage route known as the ‘Camino de Santiago’.
Most people know of the Camino from Paulo Coelho’s The Pilgrimage: an account of his personal ‘experiences’ searching for a sword somewhere on the route to Santiago. My journey had no such aim. I knew only that now was the time for action - walking the Camino was a conscious attempt to abolish laziness and lethargy, and a continuation of my new-found faith in signs and the universal magnetic consciousness.
I stared at my brand-new copy of the Lonely Planet’s Walking in Spain, which contained a short section on the pilgrimage, outlining a 28-day route. It seemed like a remarkably short amount of time to cover 738 kilometres.
A girl with a pleasant and friendly exterior sat down next to me. She had shoulder-length brown hair and distinctive Spanish features - more European than Mediterranean. After we’d taken off and my usual plane-crash anxieties had been quelled, I stared out of the window wondering what the hell I was going to do when I arrived in Madrid. I didn’t know where I was going to start the walk, and my faith was waning slightly; without a scrap of tangible research, I'd brashly told friends and family that I was going to walk the whole route.
“From St. Jean Pied de Port to Santiago de Compostela. That’s 738 kilometres; all the way from the Pyrenees to Galicia on the West Coast of Spain.”
I had a nice colourful map on my wall depicting the route, printed from a website URL I couldn’t remember. But in my heart I had faith that events would ultimately direct themselves, and despite the usual paranoia and doubts that haunt an unplanned journey, I was right.
I smiled at the girl next to me and offered a weak greeting. She was friendly enough, and told me in accented English that she was returning to Madrid to catch the connecting train to her home in Asturias. She spoke fluently and told me that she had studied in London, remarking with curiosity when I told her that I was intending to walk the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage. She seemed surprised, and told me she thought it would be probably be quite rainy; not a particularly reassuring sentiment as I had no waterproof clothing.
I told her that I thought I would probably be starting in Burgos – a city a third of the way on the route from St. Jean to Santiago de Compostela. The pilgrimage is famous throughout Spain and much of Europe, and during recent years its cultural importance has continued to intensify as awareness of the walk has become more widespread. Most Spaniards (and Europeans for that matter) have heard of the pilgrimage, and as it turned out, so had the man sitting next to her.
He interjected in Spanish, and it soon became evident that he'd overheard our conversation. He looked to be in his early thirties, with short dark hair and a strong tan. The girl translated for me, saying that he claimed to have walked the Camino five times, and that next he planned to walk to Jerusalem. There was apparently no need to buy food on the Camino; the ‘refugios’ supplied nourishment for the poor pilgrims who passed along the trail. This was reassuring, though I was only to encounter this cosy reality twice in the five and a half weeks that I spent walking.
The man seemed warm and encouraging, though possessing of a slight arrogance, and told me – with the girl’s help – that I would need to get a pilgrim’s Credencial. I already knew this; it was described in Lonely Planet as a gatefold document, without which one would be denied shelter in the refugios. The man said it was possible to obtain one from the San Francisco el Grande; a large church in central Madrid. This was all good information. And so very convenient…
They began to converse in Spanish and I drifted off into a heavy, sleep-deprived slumber. The humming, filtered air of the plane did not sooth my anxieties as the scenery of Europe continued to shift far below. When I opened my eyes, the terrain had turned golden-brown and glowed with the heat of the Mediterranean sun. Here and there I spotted small settlements and streams. Though barren, it provoked in me a small flicker of excitement; the thrill of unfamiliar familiarity. Already, the journey was beginning to crack the shell that had inhibited my emotions for the previous six months; a shell which had been further intensified by exam stress and habitual pot-smoking. I was nervous but ready to face the challenge I’d set myself. I stepped off the plane, thanked the girl and the man, and headed for baggage-retrieval.
At baggage retrieval
“You from London, then?”
I asked the question partly through friendliness and partly through desperation. The guy was clearly English; he'd been speaking to a friend on his mobile phone whilst waiting for his bags. He wore combat trousers, had short spiky, waxed hair and an eyebrow piercing. I still had no idea what I was going to do when I left the airport.
“Yeah mate, just here to meet my girlfriend. And yourself?”
“Not quite sure yet.” I sighed. “I’m here to walk the Camino de Santiago. It’s a pilgrimage up north. Have you heard of it?”
He gave me a sideways glance.
“…No. A pilgrimage, is it?”
I decided to change the subject.
“You here for long?”
“Just a few days. Gonna be staying at a mate’s flat, he’s showing me around town.”
“Yeah, do you know any good places to stay? I have no idea where I’m going.”
“No, sorry. I’d say you could sleep at my place, but it’s not my flat, y’know?”
The conversation had run its course. We said our “goodbyes” and “good lucks” and went our separate ways. I wished I had a place to stay and someone to meet who could tell me what to do, where to go, how to live my life. I went to the information counter at baggage retrieval and asked the attendant to mark a place on the map where I could find a decent hostel. He indicated some streets around Sol station and I headed for the metro system; I was later to discover that ‘hostel’ actually means ‘hotel’ in Spanish. On the way out of the elaborate transit system, opposite a huge map of Europe crisscrossed with red flight paths, I found a 20 Euro note on the floor. I took this for a good omen.
Though I really had no plans for the next 24 hours, my adrenaline was keeping me positive and I felt ready to begin my journey. Escalators took me down to the subway. Madrid’s metro system is more eye-pleasing than many other European cities - and certainly much cleaner and more efficient than the London Underground. It reminded me of the platinum efficiency of the Metro system in Washington DC.
I was still feeling woozy from the flight as I stood on the platform, but immediately spotted the unmistakable form of an English traveller waiting for the inbound train. I wondered if he had come in on the same flight as me. While waiting for the check-in desk to open I’d noticed four girls also waiting – they’d been on the flight, but I hadn’t seen them since. I waited until we’d boarded the train, and then after thoroughly checking his attire for confirmation of his English status (his sneakers were a dead giveaway), I struck up a conversation.
"You're English, right?" This kick-started our relationship with a degree of formidable efficiency, and I soon discovered that he was Ian from Brighton. I showed him the spot that the clerk had circled on the map, and he Ian said he was heading that way anyway. I asked him whether he was on holiday, but he seemed unsure of how to explain his agenda; he said he wasn't technically on holiday, but that his situation was complicated. He'd been recommended the Hostel Pan American down the road from Sol station, so we navigated the Metro while exchanging pleasantries.
I already knew from his attitude that he would be easy company, and we quickly agreed to share a room to keep the costs as low as possible. Ian had been to Madrid before and knew the Metro well enough to get us to Sol without wasting much time; we emerged into a broad concourse intersected by a two-way road system, extraordinarily quiet for the time of morning and surrounded on all sides by gold merchants proclaiming good prices for Oro, internet cafes and a large statue monument. Sol is Madrid's primary starting point for a good night out; the area is in close proximity to most of the up-market shops and bars, and one side of the square is dominated by a large clock, under which most of the population of Madrid congregate for New Year's Eve.
I felt relieved that I’d so quickly found myself a companion with purpose, and felt myself sinking into a false sense of security. I was putting off the inevitable though; I still had no concrete plans, I was carrying a heavy backpack that was already weighing me down and I had only the vaguest sense of purpose.
On the train we had started discussing our reasons for being in Madrid; I’d immediately told him I was there to walk the Camino de Santiago, to which he remarked with surprise and said that a friend had told him about it.
As we walked up the street in the bright September sun, he continued to tell me his story. He’d recently left his job in dubious circumstances, decided he needed a holiday, but without the cash to fund his trip he’d taken out a new credit card and gone over limit to buy as many gold rings as he could from Argos. He’d heard that Madrid was a good place to sell gold, and his ingenious scheme was to sell the rings for profit, then head south for a month of surfing and sunbathing. I nodded attentively while he told me his plan, thinking all the time that this was probably the most ill-considered and fanciful scheme I’d ever heard.
But we were in new territory. I had so little idea about where I was headed that time almost seemed to be standing still, it had no meaning or context in this situation. Perhaps thats why I spent so much time trying to decide how to proceed - that, or a complete lack of confidence.
Leaving Madrid
A couple of days later, Ian still hadn't been able to sell his gold rings, despite the omnipresent 'Compro Oro' signs around Sol station and the surrounding back streets. Every day I spent in Madrid made me feel more nervous, more anxious to start my journey proper, but without direction or the wherewithal to make a decision. The centre of Madrid was vibrant but strangely austere, with tapas bars on every corner strung with disembodied pigs' legs and tourist shops selling overpriced paella. On our first day, we'd both bought chorizo bocadillos and I hadn't been impressed; dry flavourless bread with chewy, fatty weird slices of sausage.
We'd ended up moving our residence to a cheaper hostel somewhere on the outskirts of the town centre, and spent a couple of pleasant days chatting to fellow backpackers and searching for restaurants that served dinner earlier than 8pm (a rare commodity in Spain). A pleasant weekend, but I couldn't help feeling that it was little more than procrastination.
The morning I was due to leave we sat on a bench near the hostel, drinking coffee and trying to make a decision. Ian had been making phone calls and was considering accompanying me on the first leg of the Camino as a cheaper alternative to his surfing adventure. I was reassured by the idea of continued company, gripped by growing doubts about my ability to navigate my way to the relevant refugios with non-existent Spanish. I was possessed by terrible images of myself lost in darkening, unfamiliar towns, unable to communicate with anybody.
A girl with severe motor-neurone disease walked by, and my sense of anxiety began to increase. I needed to make a move, my gut was screaming at me to get going.
I was due to catch the train to Burgos, having decided that I would simply never make the distance all the way from southern France to Galicia in western Spain. It was a disappointing decision, but a decision nonetheless. And that's the only way to start a journey.
Walking the Line
The ground came up to meet my feet again, every step intensifying the dull, numbing ache that had set in half an hour after I'd left the refugio that morning. My shoulders screamed a similar protest; the socks I'd bound around the shoulder straps as makeshift padding did little to ease the pain.
I was three days into the Camino, having finally embarked from St. Jean Pied de Port in Southern France. Ian had finally decided not to come, and I'd left him at the hostel that morning, heading for the station sleep-deprived and confused.
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