To Walk Alone in the Crowd

by Antonio Munoz Molina

  FILL YOUR LIFE WITH FLAVOR. He is a restless archeologist of the present, of the moment when what is valuable or pristine turns into debris, when the words and pictures of an advertisement pass from ubiquity to nonexistence. He is a scrupulous collector, asking for and gratefully receiving leaflets that everyone else immediately discards, taking them from overflowing garbage cans or from unemployed middle-aged men handing them out by the entrance to a shopping mall. Big Sale, Customize Your Mattress, Final Days, Tourist Menu Spanish Paella. Samantha Reincarnated Priestess and Sorceress of Love. He is an archivist, trying to rescue just a few things from the ceaseless flood of all that comes into existence only to be stuffed into the trash, a supermarket flyer with special offers, still smelling of fresh ink but already lying on the sidewalk. Things that belong to the present but are also premature relics that future archeologists will barely manage to recover, since nearly everything will have decayed, or vanished, or will lie buried away. He picks up the empty packs of cigarettes that people crush and throw away, like an envoy from the future or a foreign power sent to gather indiscriminate materials for other experts to classify and study. He collects the gruesome pictures of cancerous lungs, ravaged mouths, and dead men just as he collects the pictures of Asian and Latin girls offering massages with a happy ending. He thinks with a touch of commiseration about the person at the ad agency responsible for setting up the photo shoots, the white hospital lighting, the pale children who grew up sick because their parents were addicted to smoking. He thinks even more about the anonymous writer in charge of drafting the health warnings, sitting at a table looking at photographs that, instead of young people leaping joyfully into the air, show the gangrened feet, mouths, and bodies of dead smokers. Maybe he will even light a cigarette before beginning to write. For inspiration, like writers do in the movies.

  * * *

  GET YOUR SMILE BACK WITH A 3D-PRINTED JAW. Smoking affects sperm health and can reduce fertility. Smoking causes fatal cancer of the lungs. Smoking causes heart attacks. Smoking during pregnancy stunts fetal growth. Tobacco is highly addictive. Tobacco smoke contains over seventy carcinogens. Smoking clogs your arteries. Smoking can cause erectile dysfunction. Your smoke is harmful to your family and friends. Smoking causes heart disease and stroke. Smoking ages your skin. Smoking reduces blood circulation and is a cause of impotence. Smoking takes away years of your life. Fumar mata. Smoking kills.

  AROUND THE CORNER, AROUND THE WORLD.

  “You want to live in a bubble? Is that what you want? And what should the rest of us do?”

  “I can’t go back there, I’d just be too afraid.”

  “I know I’m a bad influence on you.”

  “Everything was going so badly and suddenly my life is totally fine.”

  * * *

  WHERE HAVE I HEARD THAT VOICE BEFORE?

  “They’re putting her in the pain clinic because she’s a total wreck.”

  “Tell Cristina to get on the phone. Tell her. Tell her to get on the phone right now.”

  “They must be at the doctor’s already. They arrived early.”

  * * *

  SO THAT YOU AND YOURS CAN ALWAYS STAY CONNECTED.

  “You’ve got bags under your eyes.”

  “Of course I do, what do you expect?”

  “Nerea, what do you think?”

  “Fuck their dead, that’s what I think.”

  “They’re fake, girls, the flowers are fake.”

  “I consider myself a brave woman.”

  “You have to be brave to do what you’re doing.”

  “That’s how it goes, you tried your best but you couldn’t manage, now we have to leave it to the experts. I’m not just saying that because I’m your mother.”

  * * *

  THE MOMENT YOU FIND OUT WHAT YOU WERE MISSING.

  “Have you ever been to the Ice Palace?”

  “Spare change, spare change for something to eat?”

  “I have to come here every fucking day to see you?”

  “Like I always say, they’ve suffered a lot, but what are we supposed to do about it? They’re not like us.”

  “No, he’s not up yet. He just woke up. He’s opening his eyes.”

  “I’m willing to give him something, but not everything he wants, of course.”

  “When he was thirteen his father died of a heart attack, hunting pheasants in Cortina.”

  “It has to be by night.”

  “No, better by day.”

  “A little help, please. Please, a little help.”

  * * *

  I’VE GOT THE IPHONE I WANT.

  “Spare change, sir. Please, a little help.”

  “A lot of people say it’s all witchcraft.”

  ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS CALL US. Writing with a pencil is like speaking quietly to myself. If a word is wrong or if I want to take it back I can rub it away with the dark eraser on the other end. Adding an eraser to a pencil was a bit of poetic practical genius, like adding wheels to a suitcase or like the time Joan Brossa nailed a playing card to a skull. The whisper of the pencil is like the sound of words flowing in the mind, words that have a kind of sound even when they’re never spoken, only murmured through barely parted lips. With a pencil I am closer to the silence I seek. The words seem to emerge neither from my will nor from my mind but from the lead tip, the black lode of graphite where they lie like the mineral itself in galleries beneath the ground. I am not making a confession as I write, nor do I affirm any opinion, belief, or purpose whatsoever. I just disperse, letting myself go. I follow the rich subterranean vein, the flow of words. I write by ear. When I sharpen the pencil, the outline of the words becomes too clear. There is an excess of precision, a frail tautness that could very well snap the thread of my writing along with the tip of the pencil. But after a few lines it all softens. Without realizing it I come a little closer to one of the things I envy most, the craft of drawing.

  YOU MAY NOT SEE US, BUT WE’RE HERE. Wherever you go, wherever you are, the city speaks to you in a voice or in a series of changing voices directed precisely at you. Like this, in the second person, the second person singular, like a love song or a poem. Sometimes the voice will identify itself, sometimes not. It gives you directions or it offers or suggests things you may like. It states universal principles or laws. The voice assures you that nothing you could possibly desire or imagine is out of reach. You could win a VIP experience in Vegas. Night doesn’t have to mean the day is over. You don’t need much to have it all. Over three thousand experts to look after your dental health. Five thousand cars at your disposal. The voice communicates thoughts of great philosophical and poetic depth. To find new oceans you must go far from the shore. Often the voice is plural: a we, an us. A generous, festive, cheerful us that understands you, that offers everything you want, knowing how to hear your desires or guess what they are before you know it yourself, before you say it, or do not dare to say it. An us that speaks with the bland though somehow threatening affability of an evangelical preacher, pressing and ubiquitous, allowing no escape. We’re always near you, even if you don’t notice. Our greatest gift is knowing you. We make it easier for you to shop. We see incredible things in your future. Get our newsletter. We want to read your book. We deliver your groceries to your home. We make your dreams a reality. We stock your fridge. Do you miss your old car? We can lend you a new one. It is an invisible us, pervasive, caring, always near, benevolent without being condescending, protective without being oppressive, all-knowing, all-encompassing. We are working for your safety. We bring you food at any time of day. We want to improve your experience. Discover the world with us. Join our team. We’ll be back very soon to surprise you. We know just what you need, even before you do.

  BREAKING NEWS, ALL THE TIME. I like literature that has the disruptive and intoxicating effect of wine or music, making me forget myself, forcing me to read it aloud and to give in to its contagion, explaining the world to me while setting me at war with it, giving me shelter eve
n as it reveals the horror of everything around me as vividly as its beauty. I like literature that gives me a lucid high without derangement, a sense of calm in which there is no coldness or indifference, compelling me to be fully who I am yet someone else as well, or no one, a nonentity, Don Nadie, Monsieur Personne, Mr. Nobody, gazing at the radiance of things no longer as a witness but as if it could be seen when there is no one there to see it. Garry Winogrand said that when taking pictures he would go fully outside himself: as close as you can get to not existing. By poetry I understand a drunken rapture, a height of expressive intensity that can be found in any art form, any memorable image or object in the world around us. What it resembles most is the supreme transport of a love that keeps its eyes wide open. It leaps down into the unknown. It vanishes without a trace.

  * * *

  ENJOY THE SPELL OF EVERY DESTINATION. I have always tried to live in “the moment of true feeling” (Peter Handke), the utmost presence and power of what is magically concrete. Having a kind of gift for despair, I have it for joy as well, especially the kind of joy that lives within us even when it is experienced in the company of others: the demure joy of sharing a conversation with a friend, a pleasant meal, freed from all feelings of reserve or any sense of looking on from the outside. As a child, I often experienced secret moments of fulfillment. I spent much of my time alone but solitude was not a sadness or a burden. I lived in a time outside of time, beyond the hours and minutes on the face of the clock. Everything vanished in my complete devotion to whatever I was doing. Playing, reading, listening to the radio; looking at the fire in the kitchen; going from one relative’s house to another pretending I was on a galloping horse; going to the movies in the summertime. I liked the ones that were set in ancient Rome, with battles, chariot races, gladiator fights, women in low-cut dresses with a slit on the side that revealed a long leg and a foot in a braided sandal. Walking back from school in the afternoon I rejoiced at the thought of the newly purchased comic book I would read when I got home, a pristine treasure waiting for me. There were songs on the radio that made me shudder inwardly with something I was incapable of naming, something in the voice, the wavering melody, even if I hardly ever understood the meaning of the words, which always had to do with love and jealousy.

  A tu vera

  siempre a la verita tuya

  hasta el día en que me muera.

  By your side,

  always by your side,

  until the day I die.

  * * *

  EXCLUSIVE BENEFITS JUST FOR YOU. I used to wait from the start of the song for that exact moment, that effusion of feeling that never failed. I never mentioned it to anyone. Not from shyness or reserve, but because I didn’t think those feelings could be expressed in words or needed to be shared. I felt no need to do so. My father and mother were kind and comforting figures who lived for the most part in a separate world that was exclusively their own, just as I lived in mine, or a cat lives in its cat world. I collected color stickers from the movie of The Ten Commandments. They came in packs and they were bright and glossy and you had to carefully align each one in the right space in the album. The slick surface was as pleasant to a child’s fingers as the slightly narcotic scent of ink and glue was pleasant to his sense of smell. Since we had no nativity figures at home, I would draw them on thick paper and then cut them out and glue them to a cardboard base. At night, in the dark, before falling asleep, I would go over the plots of movies I had seen or make up elaborate stories that I never told anyone. I would bury myself under the covers as in the hollow of a cave in a fairy tale. I fantasized about an older brother who was studying abroad and one day would come back and look after me, teach me games, tell me all the things that he had seen, take me on a trip.

  * * *

  NOTHING IS AS BEAUTIFUL TO US AS A CHILD’S SMILE. I was happy just to look at certain toys. It didn’t make me sad that I couldn’t have them. The possibility never occurred to me. Now I realize that I enjoyed looking at them on a shelf the same way I have admired, many years later, an ancient Greek vase, a painting in a museum, a valuable primitive mask kept behind glass at an antiquities dealer. Who needs to own what can be gazed upon at leisure? I remember a boat with a blue-and-white hull and a lateen sail. I remember an electric train moving through a model landscape, vanishing into the mouth of a tunnel and reappearing on a metal bridge beneath a cardboard sky. I was almost never unhappy during the first eleven years of my life. I would walk down the street or down a path in the countryside and always keep my eyes on the ground to see if I happened to find something interesting: a marble, a coin, a toy cowboy or Indian.

  THIS AMAZING GIFT COULD BE YOURS RIGHT NOW. Walter Benjamin collected toys and children’s books. He bought them for his son, Stefan, but he enjoyed them as much as the boy and he continued to purchase them when Stefan was grown and they no longer lived together. As an adult, years after his father died, Stefan Benjamin became an antiquarian book dealer in England. In his Moscow diary Benjamin recounts long and difficult journeys through the snowbound city to visit the Toy Museum or the street markets on the outskirts of town that sold used toys and children’s books. It’s the winter of 1926 and Benjamin seems caught in a dark fog of misfortune. He is destitute, life in Moscow is full of hardship, his love for Asja Lācis has ended in disappointment. The crude colors of those wooden blocks and of the pictures in the children’s books must have seemed brighter still during those gray days without sunlight or hope.

  * * *

  IF YOUR DREAMS HAVE NO LIMITS. Joaquín Torres-García made use of old wooden blocks in the toys he made for his children. Unlike most avant-garde artists and writers of his time, Torres-García was a faithful and devoted family man. His wife and children were always with him as he traveled to yet another city, as he searched for a house or an apartment thinking that he’d finally found his place in the world when in fact it would not be long before their poverty forced them to move again: Barcelona, New York, Paris, Rome. In New York he partnered with a businessman to start a factory that would manufacture his toys. All the materials were lost in a warehouse fire before production started. Men who lead destitute, wandering lives without any practical sense will suddenly dream up projects to try to earn the money they are unable to make through their art. James Joyce traveled back to Dublin in 1917 determined to launch the first chain of movie theaters in Ireland with the support of a few senseless investors in Trieste. Torres-García’s toys have all the heft of a piece of wood and all the whimsical beauty of a picture in a tale or a fable. He would pick up bits of wood on the street, scraps from a woodshop. Each of his toys contains the spark of his imagination and the skilled work of his hands. So, too, do the books he wrote and illustrated entirely by hand, from the title page and the picture on the cover to the drawings inside, whole pages covered in tidy hieroglyphs and words traced in a neatly uniform script. Each book is entirely unique, each page bears witness to the immense labor that went into it, a silent devotion like that of a medieval copyist or an Egyptian scribe, hours, days, weeks bent over a task that was essential to him yet entirely superfluous, even ruinous, since he could have spent that time doing something that produced some kind of income; since no one ever bought those books, and if he did manage to sell one, whatever amount he was paid could not have compensated him for an iota of all the talent and work that had gone into them.

  * * *

  FEEL LIKE A CHILD AGAIN. When he was teaching at the Bauhaus, Paul Klee made hand puppets and wooden figures for his son to play with. A sophisticated yet childish or primitive aesthetic unifies the great non-egomaniacal artists of the twentieth century: Klee, Torres-García, Alexander Calder with his miniature circus; Ravel with his scores for music boxes and windup toys; Béla Bartók’s piano pieces for children; Federico García Lorca and Manuel de Falla bringing together all that was best in their individual talents to stage puppet shows at a friend’s house. Helen Levitt took photographs of children at play in Spanish Harlem and of the chalk
drawings they made on sidewalks and buildings. Lorca’s ballads sway with the simple and mysterious cadence of the songs that young girls sang on the playground or while skipping rope.

  El lagarto está llorando.

  El lagarto está llorando.

  El lagarto y la lagarta

  con delantalitos blancos.

  The lizard is crying.

  The lizard is crying.

  The Mr. and the Mrs.,

  all dressed up in white.

  Of all the things that Walter Benjamin collected so avidly only to lose them just as quickly not long after acquiring them, just one survives: a Paul Klee drawing that looks like a picture for a tale, Angelus Novus. The things that artists made with their hands from cheap materials and bits of junk, the things they cared for and preserved through lives of poverty and grief are now trophies for billionaire investors, gleaming like gold ingots in crypts of bulletproof glass.