rv hosteller 11-Spain

      4. hosteller

In our life there may occur an encounter, no one can foresee, 

to turn the course of life regardless of our will. Probably Such

a case could be applied to this hosteller,Moon who happened

to be present at the flamenco performance in Portland,

as described before, 

Strangely enough he flied alone to the city again the next year,

this time with nothing but a purpose: to see flamenco.

At that time he was scheduled to get on board the airplane bound

for LA with his wife to visit her family there,That is to say,

he was driven to change his flying schedule by an irresistible urge

in his mind. As a result, in his second visit to Portland, he met

a bailaora ( a woman flamenco dancer) there named Lau,

whom he invited to his hometown, Masan, South Korea, 

for a performance he held there several years after that.

Furthermore he alone made a journey to Andalusia, Spain,

the place of its origin. In short, with his first encounter with flamenco

as a momentum, he has become flamenco-intoxicated

in spite of himself! 

He has said before in relation with flamenco,

" If I had had a chance to hear and see it much earlier,

I would be now a tocaor (a flamenco guitarist) or a bailaor

( a man dancer). It may be no exaggeration that not a day

has passed without my thinking of flamenco."

At first he was captured by Baile among the three basic components-

Cante (song), Baile (dance),Toque (guitar). Until he never forgets

the night of flamenco performance in Portland when the dancer Lau dancing

with her arms held in a smooth carve, unbroken by the bend of the elbows.

He like to recollect the night's stage,on which her splayed fingers

traced curling arabesques while she was dancing.

but Cante has been his most favorite. Anyway,he really loved to hear

Cante sung. In this relation he himself has enjoyed to recite a line, below, 

of verse for Cante:

Even my soul feels the pain

of so many tears

because these griefs will never get smaller,

will grow with the years. 

Probably most flamenco lovers will sympathize with Luis Rosales

who described Cante sung as follows:

At the opening of the cante, in the ayeo, the voice is pure ｅxpression.

Its sound is like the wind through the trees. The copla has not yet begun;

the opening of the cante is not made of words, it is made of sounds

and these sounds tell us nothing: they tremble; they say nothing:

they sing...... In the ayeo the voice is heard in a distinctive and

fundamental way..... It is found as if in the portal to the day of creation,

as if language did not yet exist

                  

Flying to Madrid

March, 12nd, 2005

In a sense, to make a journey may mean a kind of drifting of,

not the body, but the mind. It could be a freedom, in time and space,  

that the mind enjoys. It is not body, but mind that meets and spends 

days and nights of an unfamiliar place, somewhat in fear, somewhat

in sweet curiosity. In most cases, in a long move our body gets 

powerless, with its eyes and ears naturally duller, but In contrast,

our mind grows brighter, with its eyes twinkling with curiosity.

Particularly so it does in a long flight.  It is impossible for the body 

flying over the cloud,as matter of fact confined to a narrow seat,

to taste a breeze of freedom. In a sense, the body in a flying airplane

will be no more than a mild animal locked in the fold. At that moment,

,in his thinking, his body above the cloud can be compared to a fish 

in the running fish preserve ( a corf ). And not a passenger in flight

can expect the rhythmic movement or the soft engine sound of Greyhound 

running at dawn on the wide plain accompanied by twinkling stars above.

However,the mind feels refreshed with a foreseen gift given by the flight:

a freedom to imagine that it sees in advance the Mediterranean sea,

which it wished to go to, and perceive the sea breeze full of the light

to shake softly the ends of Olive trees by the seashore. In short,

Flight confining the body in a fold gives to the mind a rare gift of

sweet imaginations.

To make a long flight mean, to me, that  prior to the body,

the mind reaches in advance,through free imaginations,

the cities we are flying bound for. At this moment the mind has

an unusual experience: by a kind of fluid movements the mind can

reach any place, as it wishes to. It freely fly back to a place the past, or

meet the cities in the future prior to the body. In other words,

In the remote past my mind enjoys hearing,seeing and even can feel the sea

I used to live by in my boyhood. And in the near future it meets the cities 

whose hostels will wait for strangers with aroma of coffee and the legend of

Alambra in Granada which Washington Irving told us.

As for me, such is a journey by air. Anyway, in this case of my flying

to Madrid, Flamenco is everything to me. I got aboard this airplane

bound for Spain with a purpose only: to come close to flamenco.

Moon keeps on muttering to himself confined in the aisle seat

with his eyes closed:  

In Granada

at night with full moon rising

will climb Albaicin village and

there look down to the Alhambra,

treasuring its bloody legend,

with the intoxicated eyes by 

Arabian herb perfume,

flamenco guitar rhythm and Garcia Lorca's poem.

In Jerez

will wind into the narrow lane to gypsy dwellings, 

it is said,luring strangers with sweet sherry of Jerez,

the way of which in the beginning, it is said, 

gypsies and donkeys began to open,

and fill the grass with the sherry

made of grapes and the deep song of flamenco.

And  reaching Cadiz,

the city of light,

will let the pure sea light wash my dim eyes.

In Madrid

you should remember a hint that a guide book gave you:

What seizes your mind is 

rather than Palado museum,

rather than Baleskes stature,

a street guitarist, at the foot of it, playing Bach

 

When to Barcelona to see Gaudi Cathedral ?

Oh, forget it, this time. Concentrate on flamenco only.

You know, in his journey to the Mediterranean sea,

 the meaning of his Mediterranean had less to do with geography

than with anticipation , emotions and visual imagination.

At that moment He never visited  Florence or Bay of Naples.

His drive to discover new and diverse sources of motifs

was for one purpose only: to paint.