Flamenco in Emails 11

V. A poem can be pure dance

 

 

     1. A pure desire

 

  A mind becomes pure when it desires for a thing only.

 So your mind can be pure by getting indifferent

to other things. Multifarious desires make it impure.

 - kierkegaard -

 

 

                 

 

                                      

  Pure Desire and the Boundless Imagination! 

Last summer this line of the logo of 2007 Keochang

International Festival of Theatre happened to catch my eyes. 

In summer of the year,2007 I participated in the Festival 

in order to inform the Kift's staffs of flamenco unfamiliar

to them. The logo I first saw  was written on a placard

hanged on the edifice of a hotel I stayed in  at the entrance

of the Kift  located in the Susungdae area of Keochang County.

And again I saw the logo  again in the kift's periodicals 

at the restaurant there. At times from then I have been

captivated by the logo:

Pure Desire and the Boundless Imagination.

 

The logo of the Kift festival  suddenly inspired ino me

a thought to write about my experience of flamenco.

At the moment when I encountered with the Logo

I had in front of it a question in relation with it:

Desire is pure ? How?

By nature it is impure!

And for what?' A pure desire?

unstained or innocent ?

What does it  mean on earth?

How is 'pure' harmonized side by side with 'desire'?

 

 In our minds there are several forms and levels of desire.

Desire, in its lower form, is a subtle form of greed,

and constant worldly yearning. But desire itself is so subtle

that we may not even realize that we are habitually 

 under its control. It is said that lower desire, in any form,

is in relation with  degradation of higher aspiration,

like how lust is related with degradation of passion.

 

 

When it comes to desire,less is often more!

Unclutter your life of desires ,and you will be freer!

 

Question again, your desire is to write?

If so, the best way to be a writer is to get simple and

indifferent to any other thing.

One step further,

keep yourselves 'far from home and friends,

separated from your language,

snatched from your props and stays,

deprived of your masks...'

 

Another advise, below, Baudraire gave to

whoever desires to write:

focus close attention on one subject,

even in bathroom, or in a prostitute quarter,

with your mine concentrated on one subject.!

 

 

Then what in the world do they want to express

by 'pure desire' ? To me  the two words of  'pure desire' 

seems  contrdictory  to each other.

Probably does it means to me  an irresistible yearning

to fly beyond the sealine to an exotic land of imagination. 

 

Right! 'A pure desire' seems to mean an irresistible passion

 

to break from the yoke of the routine day life

in a imagination, exotic and poetic. Then it is unsuitable

to the life of sensation which requires more and more.

It can exists only in the life of spirits

which require less and less.

 

 

 

 

Monet was a very different traveler from Renoir.

He had remarkably little curiosity about new cities or cultures

for the sake of novelty and was no tourist at all.

His drive to discover new and diverse sources of motifs

was for one purpose only: to paint.

 

As for me, 

I traveled again to Portland with one purpose only:

 to see Laure dancing  Morning Dew .

I flied to Andalusia with one purpose only :

to see and hear flamenco

with a simple desire to write it,

 I had no desire to be a bailaor, a giuitarist or flamencologist.

 

 

 

 About 20 years on , I have written on my personal story,

with a desire to be a poetic essayist in mind.

As for  my writing style ,it  is quite different in form and

character from the formal essay, such as academic criticism

or an actor's professional essay. It ,as a personal poetic prose, 

depends less on airtight reasoning than on my personal style

or personality. Saying again, it is just a free, informal personal

story. So, it has an open form and a drive toward candor and

self-disclosure, full of  freedom from stiffness and affectation.

So, this book of 'flamenco in emails'  is something

like personal diaries or letters of a tramp on the road.

 

Glancing over sentences up and down you would figure out 

an image of a flamenco-holic tramp on the road . His image,

personal propensity etc. are hidden between lines of emails and

the coffee smell or vino aroma in certain phrases which depict

places he visited , for example, Pioneer Square cafe in  Portland 

or a flamenco cave tablao in Granada. And also you would

imagine the winding lanes on shrub-covered slopes of

Andalusian territory seen through windows of the running bus or

catch with curiosity the exotic flamenco cante rising up

from the foot of  Sacromonte hill.

 

As for me, through writing the past things that once caught me

on the road now comes in sight  in defiance of the physical order 

of passing time. It is said that the physical time runs just forward

into the future consisting of a system which never goes in reverse, 

However,you would see in this essay an unreal atmosphere 

where every experience of a traveller runs free of time order. 

as if they were on stage for dramas. In this regard,

if you paid attention, you would catch between the lines a hint

which Annie Dillard gives in her book of 'the writing Life':

 write summer story in winter

and winter story in summer.

 Describe Debulin , as James Joice did,

on the desk in Paris.

 

My hands and eyes were faithful to her advice from time

to time in relation with the construction of my writing.

For example, my first encounter with the Kift Festival of

Keochang county came to be written, not in the very spot

of the scene, but in the triste bed of hostels in Tokyo 

in deep Autumn . on the other hand, it is during my stay,

as a drama viewer, in Susungdae in summer that I was driven

to write the flamenco fever or the forests of the remote

Siberian frozen lands where I had roamed before. 

 And It is in late autumn, chill and wet, in a  hostel in Portland

that  the mages of the  kift festival floated before my mind's eye:

the summer landscape of Soosungdae valley,

scenes of dramas which I watched squeezed among spectators,

singing cicadas on the ceiling of Chungsongdang house ,etc.

The kift festival itself  on the spot was to me no more

than so-so. It is not in Kift festival while I was staying there

but in Portland several months after the festival 

that I came to catch the meaningfulness of Kift

and to love the Festival.

 

In retrospect, the finale party of the theare festival was great!

At that time I sat free alone on the floor of Chongsong Dang 

in the deep darkness, giving my ears to the rhythmic sounds

of drum and guitar outside. I know well the drummers .

Then who is the guitarist?

A new comer as a member of drams group from Qubeck ?

Of coures I could not but walk out, hooked by the rhythm,

toward the garden party.Below is the mummering to myself

at the moment: 

 

 The time is in repleteness,

 its stream sweet. 

 Sergio, a Spainish and David, a German, both of youths

 playing drums is stirring up  a night of their farewell  undulating.

 The fascinating guitar melody,

 brillant displays of fireworks in the sky,

 Every actor and actress share warm embraces 

pledging to meet again next year.

And stars above pouring down were decorating

the night landscape of the festival.

 

On the other hand, 

It was in the Chungsongdang house at the Kift fesival 

that I  visioned fascinating images,

of  Dani dancing flamenco in a studio in Portland ,

of Lau dancing Morning Dews in Masan, my hometown,

of Sacromonte hill in Granada of Spain

where the dark song of flamenco was heard,

and of the running train through the snow-covered Siberia,

with Samovar tea boiling on it, etc.