Diary of a Cycling Instructor 20th September to 1st October)

Cycling back to Edmonton and its incinerator

 

Phallic and menacing: the beast in the background (photo by the author)

Edmonton never stood a chance against Cambridge. Not as a vis-à-vis encounter. After all one is a ward and the other one a city. The imbalance was shown more in the way of how campaigns played out in each area and how effective they were.

It always feels strange going back to Edmonton. As soon as I cycle past White Hart Lane (or Tottenham Hotspur Stadium as it’s called now) and enter N18 territory a sense of nostalgia overcomes me.

I lived in this neighbourhood of Enfield for more than twenty years (my abode was in N9). Whilst some people have long had reservations about this part of north London (diverse, multicultural, working-class), I’ve got a soft spot for it. I was one of Edmonton’s residents, one of the many immigrants shopping in the Green, having my hair done (when I had long hair) at Victoria’s on Fore Street and buying jollof rice and chicken from Rebecca’s Kitchen.

But when I went back recently in order to deliver some cycling training at a primary school off Fore Street, there was another thought doing the rounds in my head. A Facebook friend of mine had just sent me a link a few days before to a BBC Sounds podcast. The programme – called “Power to Which People?” – focused on the planned expansion of the Edmonton incinerator, the largest of its type in Britain and a bone of contention for environmentalists and community groups for many years.

I had already moved to Edmonton and my son was still a small baby when I first spotted the monster in the distance. It stood erect, a carbon dioxide emission machine coughing up smoke continuously. I still remember that in those years we had someone from Greenpeace or similar outfit camp up in our fifteenth-floor flat for a whole day, monitoring the incinerator.

Since the news was announced, there has been a campaign to stop the extension of the incinerator. “Power to Which People?” touched on that. A village in Cambridge faced a similar issue. A developer wanted to build an incinerator in Waterbeach. Had they gone ahead with their plans, the new structure would have been taller than Ely Cathedral and visible for miles around.

The council stopped the project on its planning stages arguing that it would have a detrimental impact on the landscape and nearby historic buildings.

Sadly, Edmonton is not Cambridge. It is an urban, heavily populated and deprived part of the UK. There are historic buildings, however. Salisbury House, on the northern side of the A10, is a Grade II listed late 16^th century three-storey building. The poet John Keats lived on Church Street with his siblings and grandmother. A blue plaque links his presence to the area. But instead of cathedrals, there are chicken shops, kebab joints and Poundstretchers.

Edmonton is already at the receiving end of a pollution onslaught. It’s surrounded by the North Circular to the west, the aforementioned A10 to the north (officially called Cambridge Road. Oh, the irony!) and Southbury Road (already Ponders End territory) to the east. To the south, Mollison Avenue completes what I used to call when I lived there “the square of death”. Lung-wrecking fumes from cars, lorries, vans and buses engulf the local population.

As I cycled away from the school the first day, I turned around, looked up and locked my eyes on the beast. The incinerator still looked menacing. Phallic and imposing, it was the tallest structure dominating Edmonton’s urban landscape. I set my pedal and rode off. Power to which people? My answer to the question is: power to the people trying to stop the incinerator’s extension.

Every school has them: the eye-rubbing, guilty-looking, late-running children pushed gently (and occasionally not so gently) towards the school gates by angry-red parents.

The location of a headteacher’s office tells you a lot about the way a school is managed. There are pros and cons when it comes to the headmistress/master’s office location. Put it in close proximity to classes and I can smell micromanagement a mile off. Place it away from the madness and it’s a hands-off type of SLT (Senior Leadership Team), trusting teachers to do their job.

Or a headteacher who doesn’t give two monkeys how the school is run.

I love a staff room with a sense of humour: a hatted skeleton looking like a version of a mambo-dancing, “The Mask” era Jim Carrey is just the start we need every day.

It will probably have to wear a “mask”, being so close to the incinerator (photo by author)

...

“Cuban, Immigrant, and Londoner”, on sale now.

Chronicles of a Newly Published Author

Brixton: a cultural and intellectual powerhouse of London

 

Photo by Deborah Jaffe

One of the advantages we, immigrants, have when relocating to another country, at least at the start, is a lack of awareness of codes.  By this I mean that we are not conscious of local prejudices and hang-ups. The urban geography we slowly become acquainted with is just that: new territories to discover and new names to learn.

That’s how I found out about Brixton and its (unjustly deserved, in my opinion) bad reputation. In my early days at the travel agency where I worked for more than half a decade, I once mentioned to a colleague where I was planning to go later on that evening. He looked at me as if I’d just sworn at a client on the phone. Brixton? Are you mad? Do you want to get knifed?

Irony of ironies. My colleague (London-born and nearby Kilburn-dwelling) came from Irish stock and in years to come he’d relate to me tales of his parents (both from Northern Ireland) and the animosity and discrimination they faced when they arrived in the British capital. Yet, here he was, repeating the cycle. A cycle whose meaning I couldn’t grasp at the time but which was already making me curious.

Of course, I went to Brixton that night. As days turned into years and years turned into a couple of decades, I came to fall in love with SW9. I may live north of the river and hang out mainly in east London, but there’s something about Brixton that lures me back. It’s the crazy, organic and hard-to-define cultural and intellectual mix the place has to offer.

I saw a post-Baduizm but pre-New Amerykah Part One Erykah Badu at Brixton Academy (before it became O2 Brixton Academy) in the early noughties. I’ve raved to anyone who will listen about Fish, Wings and Tings, one of the top street food joints, not just in London, but probably in the country (pre-pandemic I’d already been to the place about half a dozen times. I can’t wait to go back). I danced my head off to the beat of master percussionist Kevin Haynes’ batá drums outside Habesha, an Ethiopian restaurant in Brixton Village on a sultry summer evening a few years ago.

At Pop Brixton I enjoyed an excellent dance-heavy set by the bandleader, pianist and producer Eliane Correa’s band, Wara, in the summer of 2018. And at the Electric in 2017, I was reunited with the music of one of my salsa heroes: Isaac Delgado. Along the way from that evening in the late 90s up to now, I’ve caught up with the history of the place. From the controversial sus laws to the Brixton riots, I’ve been filling up the gaps my university degree never addressed.

In the summer of 2015 when I embarked on a three-market bicycle tour (Borough, Brixton and Portobello), it was in the second one where I stopped and spent more time. Whether speaking in Spanish to the many Latin Americans who have stalls or work in the area, or waxing lyrical with the elders on Brixton Station Road, this was me taking full advantage of the culture London had to offer. The difference was that this time around I was aware of the code system. And I didn’t give two monkeys.

So, piece of advice for any fellow immigrant newly arrived in London. Go wherever the hell you want to go. Codes are meant to be broken and postcodes to be travelled through. You could even start in SW9. I know it will welcome you with open arms.

...

“Cuban, Immigrant, and Londoner”, on sale now.

Ariwo: where Afro-Cuba meets electronica

No wonder April was the cruellest month for T. S. Eliot. Just the temperature see-saw is enough to drive one bonkers. Perhaps the great poet, had he been alive, would have had a different view on the fourth month of the year, if only he had popped down to the Village Underground in Shoreditch to watch Ariwo on Monday 23^rd April as part of the La Línea Festival. The quartet-turned-quintet on the night (saxophonist Binker Golding was a special guest) produced one of the most exhilarating and rousing sets I have seen for a long time.

More than mere fusion, Ariwo specialises in a hitherto little-explored musical phenomenon: that of the crossover of electronica and Afro-Cuban beats. Except for the Cuban maverick Edesio Alejandro in mid-to-late 80s Havana, this territory still remains semi-virgin. The band’s emphasis on sound (hence the name Ariwo, which translates as “noise” from Yoruba) is evident all the way throughout their set, rendering the concert a deep sonic experience.

With personal biographies boasting both musical virtuosity and critical acclaim, Monday night was always going to feel special. What nobody could foresee was how special it became with each song being lapped up by an ever-hungry and knowledgeable audience. Gahambar’s trumpet-driven, looped groove transported me back to Havana’s carnival, floats parading up and down the Malecón, feet and hips moving endlessly and beer flowing freely. Caldera presented us with the sight of Yelfris, stalking the stage like a panther, trumpet in hand and ready to launch into a mano a mano with Hammadi Valdes on drums. To Earth showcased Binker Golding’s mastery on saxophone; his drifting riffs a cross between Ornette Coleman and Steve Coleman and yet distinctive in their own complexity. The track Alafin brought a rousing solo on congas by Orestes Noda, not just one of the finest Cuban musicians in his own right, but also an outstanding promoter of Cuban culture in the UK and Europe. And holding it all together, whilst at the same time providing some of the more spiritually enriching melodies on the decks I’ve heard for some time, was Iranian-born Pouya Ehsaei. No mean feat when you have some of the better jazz cats in the UK today challenging each other and upping the ante to the nth degree. Not all tracks were dance-friendly, though. There were a few eyes-shut, fists-clenched, much-welcome meditative moments, too.

Yes, Tom, maybe, April is the cruellest month. But it needn’t be. Especially when you have Ariwo to warm up the most inclement of spring nights.

© 2018

Pieces of Me, Pieces of Havana

Mid 90s, Havana. With a little help from Allen Ginsberg

Howl

(Cuban cover version of Allen Ginsberg’s original poem, with percussion, double bass, piano and horns)

That night I saw my generation reflected on the face of that 62-year-old German woman

dragging itself through the jineteros-filled streets at dawn, looking for an answer to the collapse of ideals

angel-looking girls looking for a heavenly connection to take them away in the machinery of night

who, poverty-affected and fidelismo-struck sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of the “wall”, minute dinghies across the water and the sound of timba in the background

who bared their – already semi-naked – bodies to José from Valencia, or François, from Quebec, staggering down poorly lit potholed roads.

who, having graduated from state-funded universities, hallucinated Paris, Madrid and Rome among wannabe western socialists scholars of marxism

who were expelled from these state-funded universities for crazy and obscene odes that turned the gun against its owner

who showed off their half-shaved thighs burning the eyes of salivating tourists fleeing from their so-called terror after the fall of the wall

who got busted by salivating coppers freshly arrived in Havana

who ate the fire offered in purgatoried hotels, expiating their sins before going to heaven, or room 1901

with broken condoms, limp cocks and hairy, shrunken balls

incomparable chevroned-lit neighbourhoods of shuddering, faltering lights, casting shadows on the sub-fauna between the 1830 restaurant and the La Punta fortress

who never knew kabbalah but sought visionary madrinas beaming in supernatural ecstasy on San Rafael, Colón and Águila

who jumped in tur cars on the impulse of a faux winter midnight-fuelled trip to Comodoro Hotel’s disco

who met a 62-year-old German woman vanishing into nowhere Zen, leaving a trail of unambiguous happiness behind, without noticing the happiness-smeared sword of Damocles following her across the ceiling

who had to pull out the sword of Damocles from the 62-year-old German woman’s body when she realised her paramour couldn’t tell the akkusativ from the dativ

II

What sea-facing statues bashed open the 62-year-old woman’s skull and ate up her brains and imagination?

Sat opposite me, facing me, laughing/crying/breaking/questioning/debating/pondering/challenging/demanding

Sag mir mal, warum?

And the weil hangs, hangs from the ceiling like the same sword of Damocles that has now been taken down and driven through her heart

There is no weil you say there cannot be as long as she doesn’t understand the pain stashed away under the stairways, out of the way of punters visiting the illegal paladar

There is no weil as long as she refuses to understand the incongruence of a twenty-two-year-old black male body and that of a Berlin Wall whose eyes are a thousandblind windows

Breakup on the roof, roof overlooking the city, city forced to sleep by scheduled powercuts but awakened by epiphanies and despairs

III

62-year-old German woman, I’m with you on San José Street where you’re madder than me

I’m with you in your incomprehension of my history which even I cannot understand either

I’m with you as the impromptu interpreter as warums and weils bounce from accuser to accused and back

I’m with you as you walk away, down the dark stairs, the sound of reggae music receding from your ears and increasing in mine

I’m with you as you reach your own casa particular and collapse in bed in the same way your “wall” collapsed seven years before

I’m with you as you wake up the next morning and look at yourself in the mirror, my generation reflected on your face

© 2018

Remembrance Day, Jazz and Sex

It was quite apposite, I thought as I walked away from the venue, that this concert was staged on Remembrance Day. Earlier on, just a stone’s throw from the theatre, I had watched the oldest procession in the country as part of the Annual Lord Mayor’s Parade.

If Remembrance Day is about acknowledging the sacrifices made by the fallen and injured to secure peace, what better way to honour them than through music? In my opinion, the most universal of all the art forms and the one that gives us the succour we need in our darkest hours.

That was exactly what Chucho Valdés and Gonzalo Rubalcaba served to a musically-hungry audience at the Barbican as part of the London Jazz Festival. Two world-strutting behemoths with a Grammy collection that would be the envy of any well-established pianist, this was probably one of the must-see shows of the ten-day event. On the one hand, seventy-six-year-old Chucho, a pioneer and trailblazer of modern Cuban jazz, who with his band Irakere not only broke the mould of what Latin jazz was supposed to sound like, but also created new rules along the way. On the other hand, smaller in stature, but definitely not in craft, virtuoso Rubalcaba, who redefined jazz for a late 80s, 90s both Cuban and international audience.

The two masters together

In addition to all this, the experience, at least to me, of watching these two colossi was akin to what I could only describe as an aural orgasm. Yes, this post is certainly X-rated, my dears, so do not let your little ones read it (smiley, with a wink). By the way, all puns are intended. Yep, it is that kind of post.

Where to start? Maybe with the teasing, long, foreplay-like meditation at the beginning. It was as sensuous as it was deft. Delicate notes, exploring, probing, feeling. It was Rubalcaba who broke away first, his Steinway gathering pace as a patient and calm Valdés kept back and watched.

What followed thereafter can only be described with the language of love, or sex, if you prefer. There were sprints and sudden stops, polyphonic dialogues the two masters lunged at and percussive, quick-fire, repetitive tapping. A Cuban montuno became a climax-inducing piece. A “zapateo” was given a full big band revamp… minus the big band. The sound was big, all-encompassing. I looked both to my left and to my right. I saw plenty of open mouths and eyes, bobbing heads and shaking shoulders. Those twenty fingers on stage, eliciting occasional gasps and sighs in the audience, every time they travelled up and down the ivories and hit the desired spot. Would we have been down on the aisles grooving it had the concert not been at 2:30pm? You bet.

And just when you thought the concert was over, the encore came. Even the ”Duke” would have approved of Chucho and Gonzalo’s take on Caravan. It was full of razzmatazz and panache. The final stage of copulation and the post-coital ciggie all at once (I threw the latter in for good measure, I don’t smoke. But I’m feeling generous.). A tumbao-heavy version with a thirty- or forty-second Manteca riff halfway through. This was not a battle, in the same way sex should never be one. This was collaboration, banter, care, tenderness, playfulness, a bit of rough and calmness (at the end). My only gripe? Where was my second part? Where was the interval and follow-up? Because as many of us know, when it comes to sex, sorry, music, second parts tend to be as good as, if not better than the first ones.

© 2017

Cubafonía by Daymé Arocena

Daymé Arocena’s outstanding second album, Cubafonía, can be summed up in two words: maturity and intensity. The former can be evidenced in her approach to song-writing and arranging. It is bold and with a take-no-prisoners attitude. Opener Eleggua combines multi-layered vocals with looped bass and horns. This is followed by a lively party number, La Rumba Soy Yo. Scatting her way through parts of the song, Daymé reminds the listener that she is a pretty good jazz singer in her own right.

The intensity is found throughout the record, mainly in the first six tracks.  Lo Que Fue builds up slowly, starting with Daymé’s signature low rasp and ending with a Cuban descarga. Maybe Tomorrow (sung in English) deals with hope. Infectious Negra Caridad is a throwback to Cuba’s 1940s and 50s big band golden era. That a 24-year-old can hold her own belting tunes that the great late Celia Cruz took years to master, speaks volumes about Arocena’s standing in the Cuban musical scene at the moment.

The largest island of the Caribbean has always been a hotbed of creativity. However, for the last twenty-odd years the sounds coming out of my country of birth are more boundary-breaking and genre-defying than ever. Daymé joins Roberto Fonseca, Yusa, Danay Suárez and Telmary in the search for an identity which, although still recognisably Cuban, is not afraid to draw from other influences. A good example of this is Cómo, a ballad that would not be out of place in a record by Jill Scott. Performed confidently in both English and Spanish, the track shows off Arocena’s softer and more reflective side.

Special mention to Ángel, a minimalist composition (pared back percussion and piano) in which Daymé demonstrates a total vocal control. And also to the closer, Valentine (in which the chanteuse goes from English to French, to Spanish), a cute changüi number.

Cubafonía is a must-have for any jazz/Latin music aficionado. On the strength of this outing, I can only see a brighter future for Daymé Arocena.



© 2017

Next Post: “One-Minute Cycle Diaries”, to be published on Saturday 29^th April at 6pm (GMT)

Pieces of Me, Pieces of Havana

How infallible is memory? How fallible is it? How adept are we at retaining and reviving certain moments which, due to their mere ephemeral nature, should have been long forgotten?

Memory is to me a series of framed tableaux vivants we make up and smash as we go through life. The smashing is unintentional and unconscious. The frames are not silent but do have distinctive voices, from tenor alto to inaudible whisper. They are not motionless, but their movements go from sudden spams to en pointe acrobatics. When we try to reconstruct these broken scenes the pieces do not always slot in the same places as before even if the representation at the centre of them is the same.

It follows that sometimes memory is a trickster. It sneaks up on you, unannounced and weaves a web of confusion and uncertainty around you. Was I at the stadium that night or did I watch the game on television? Was I part of the thousands of spectators willing our team to win the final game of the play-offs, or was I tucked in what had been until recently my parents’ bed and which now gave warmth and comfort to my mother and grandmother? I sometimes can remember clearly the roar of the Industriales supporters as if I had been there at the Latinoamericano stadium with them, screaming at the top of our lungs as our team came from behind to tie the game five runs apiece. And so we got to the bottom of the tenth inning...

Certainties abound in my recollections of that unforgettable balmy, Cuban-winter night of January 1986, too. Fact one: Industriales had not won the championship for sixteen years. The last time had been a year before I was born. Fact two: the right-handed pitcher on the mound for Vegueros, the visiting team, was the most lethal forkball pitcher we had ever had in Cuba, Rogelio García. Fact three: on first base, after having singled to right, was a very promising, young outfielder, Javier Méndez. Fact four: appearing in the final episode of this baseball drama was a veteran, left-handed, first baseman...

Memory is to me a series of framed tableaux vivants we make up and smash as we go through life. The shards of the broken scenes I have been able to put together throw back at me images I know to be truthful.

The left-handed, veteran first baseman's grip on the bat, about half an inch between both hands.

The number 40 on his back.

The blue shirt with white trousers, traditional colours of los azulejos.

The left shoulder raised higher than the right one, as he tenses up.

The first pitch.

A ball.

The traditional squat (the hitter).

The walk around the mound (the pitcher).

The pitcher's grip on the ball.

The first two fingers wrapping themselves around the seams.

The release.

The pitcher’s wrist snapping.

The ball’s slow journey towards the plate.

The batter’s right leg’s inward movement.

The swing.

In sport, there is always a silent moment before release. It lasts all of a nanosecond. In its infinitesimal nature are contained the pent-up emotions of a thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of spectators. It is the trajectory of the football as it heads towards goal after being struck by a forward who has just danced his way through the opponent’s defence. It is the killer knockout punch delivered by the boxer as the gloved hand moves quickly away. It is the last couple of inches before the diver’s perfectly straight body breaks into the placid water of the swimming pool.

That silent moment was present that January night, 1986. Was I at the stadium or at home? Memory has a habit of showing itself not in the way we remember it but in the way we sometimes want to remember it. Occasionally I have seen myself sitting on the stands watching many supporters in front of me balancing perilously on the fence, waiting. Waiting for the swing.

The swing. Was there ever a more majestic, more regal swing? Was there ever a swing that carried with it the hopes of thousands of spectators for whom the wait was finally over?

The swing. And then, the voice of one of the television commentators: “there goes the ball, it’s going, it’s going, it’s going, it’s GONE!!! Industriales campeón!

The silent moment as the ball flies higher and further. And then, pandemonium.

Memory is to me a series of framed tableaux vivants we make up and smash as we go through life. The smashing is unintentional and unconscious. The frames are not silent but do have distinctive voices, from tenor alto to inaudible whisper. They are not motionless, but their movements go from sudden spams to en pointe acrobatics. When we try to reconstruct these broken scenes the pieces do not always slot in the same places as before even if the representation at the centre of them is the same.

The events on that January night, 1986, however, were as truthful as I have told you tonight. To paraphrase Dylan Thomas: “The ball you hit out of the park, number 40, Agustín Marquetti, has not yet reached the ground”.

© 2014

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 9^th November at 10am (GMT)

Pieces of Me, Pieces of Havana

“Bate la lluvia la vidriera

Y las rejas de los balcones
Donde tupida enredadera
Cuelga sus floridos festones”

The couple cross Reina Avenue in a rush. They are headed for the other side, where they find shelter from the inclement, cyclonic, autumnal rain. Above them in houses so dilapidated, that many of the tenants inside them go down on their knees to pray to La Caridad del Cobre to keep them safe every time the sky clouds over, clothes are hurriedly snatched away from lines. The couple stop to catch their breath. The woman looks at her belly and rubs it softly. Only two more months to go. The man looks at his girlfriend, soaked to the skin and struggling to find her balance. . Her flip-flops don’t help much, sadly. Silver raindrops shine like pearls in her Afro. She gets hold of his left arm and together they walk – shuffle - carefully. The floor is covered in puddles, cracks and dog excrement. He feels a slight chill brought about by this early morning rain and his wearing vest and shorts. To his right a row of street vendors begin to set up for the day ahead. They’ll probably do well today, he thinks, the rain forcing people to find temporary refuge anywhere, especially under the high ceilings and between the large pillars of Reina Avenue Add the smells emanating from the hot chocolates, coffees, pizzas, ham sandwiches and torticas/señoritas/marquesitas/piononos (the latter should normally be dessert but sometimes they are breakfast, lunch and dinner) and they’ll be quids in. The couple carry on walking down the long pavement, occasionally pushed by yet another invasion of people running for shelter from the rain which is coming down harder now. Not that it matters to the blond-haired tourists getting drenched out in the open on the corner of Industria and Parque de la Fraternidad, waiting for an old American car-cum-taxi that will take them somewhere exotic, in this exotic city, full of exotic natives. The man stops at one of the stalls and asks for two hot chocolates. The woman leans her head on his shoulder and rubs her belly softly.

“Al último fulgor del día
Que aun el espacio gris clarea,
Abre su botón la peonia
Cierra su cáliz la ninfea”

She has just come back from the doctor’s. To think that the appointment was at two in the afternoon and it’s only now as the grey day turns to dusk that she’s finally been able to get home. Well, she’s not home yet, she still has about a hundred yards to cover. It’s difficult to see with this rain, though. Luckily it’s not as hard as it was in the morning. The way it pelted down on her windowsill she thought it was the end of the world. She always thinks it’s the end of the world around this time every year. October is still hurricane season and although this tropical storm didn’t become one this time, it still left a lot of wet weather behind. Well, better not use “behind”, it’s not over yet, there’s still this annoying, persistent drizzle. She struggles with her umbrella. She doesn’t want her glasses to get wet. That’s the reason why she went to the doctor’s this afternoon. She needs a new pair of glasses and they told her that her replacement would be ready. But no, they weren’t. The doctor said something about tests, delay, and the embargo. He always blames the embargo. Everybody blames the embargo in this city. The honest truth is that she wasn’t really paying much attention to what the doctor was saying. She was thinking of her son. She hasn’t received any letters from him for a while. He’s told her to get an e-mail account but she hasn’t even got a computer. It’s her daughter who has one at work. She does have an e-mail account and that’s how they all communicate. But she still prefers to read his letters and he knows this. His hand-written letters. It’s the only time when her seventy-five year-old eyes don’t need glasses. She taught her son to read and write when he was little before he began school. His writing benefited from this early start. It’s always been neat and legible. Which is the reason she always looks forward to reading his letters. They are so articulate. She arrives at her house. Her front garden looks a bit rough. Some plants need trimming. She doesn’t want to ask her next-door neighbour, Alberto, again but she is going to have to. He doesn’t mind helping her with the gardening, she knows that. Plus, he always walks away with the same present: the bottle of rum she gets on her ration card. She doesn’t drink so it’s a win-win situation for both. But Alberto is also getting on a bit. How old is he now? Sixty? Sixty-one? She must ask him next time she sees him.  The quietness of her road in this area of Santos Suárez is a welcome contrast to the noise she’s just left behind at La Ceguera Hospital. She closes her umbrella and inserts her key in the door. These days she has to be very careful when opening her door. A couple of times she’s jammed the lock and locksmiths are quite expensive nowadays. She walks in and removes her cardigan. That’s when she notices the raindrop slowly sliding down her glasses.

“Todo parece que agoniza;
Y que se envuelve lo creado
En un sudario de ceniza
Por la llovizna adiamantado.”

The weather forecast announces more rain for tomorrow. He gets ready to go out to work. He doesn’t like the night shift. Mornings are better. But the other security guard is ill and they asked him to cover. He knows he is not getting any overtime, just time off in lieu. In the old days, there was the extra money. That was under the previous management. But the company that runs the hotel now got rid of that. They also got rid of a lot of people. He tries to tuck his shirt inside his trousers but doesn’t succeed. The portly frame that looks back at him on the mirror reminds him that he must start to exercise soon. If only he had the time! He did have the time when he was a lecturer at the Faculty of Economics many years ago. The Abrahantes Stadium was just up the road. Walk all the way up L Street, follow the bend to the right, past the Napoleonic Museum and voilà! He used to run three or four laps round the weather-beaten track every week. Occasionally he ventured down to the gym but it was always crammed full. On top of that there were too many posers for his liking. He was fit in those years. He still is. But this job is killing him. It’s not so much the actual job, but the distance to the hotel and back and the lack of transport. He is not a spring chicken anymore, he thinks. True, at fifty-two, he is still in better shape than many of his contemporaries, especially fellow lecturers who struck lucky and found similar jobs to his, as porters and desk clerks in hotels around Havana. If only he could get rid of this massive belly! He looks at himself in profile. His wife doesn’t mind this unasked-for middle-age present. She has always been behind him, supported him through the ups and downs. That’s what drives him. That and their four children. He sees his family as a unit. A solid, hard-rock unit. Even after the farewells, of which there have been two. He manages to button up his shirt, zips up his trousers, fastens his belt, puts on his shoes and walks out of the house. The rain that fell earlier has freshened up the air. This is one of those occasions when he feels grateful for the long-sleeved shirt he has to wear as part of his uniform. The street is quiet. Nothing like heavy showers to silence the impromptu DJs who have turned reggaeaton and timba into their sole musical output. The puddles on the road reflect the light of the scattered lamps throwing up intermittent, ashen, mini full moons. Despite the many years living in the same barrio he stills feels uneasy about being out here at this time of night on his own. If he is lucky he will catch the coach that takes staff from the airport back to downtown Havana. It wasn’t long ago that his route to work took him in a different direction. He used to drive for a foreign family doing business in Havana and whose residence – mansion, really – was in the leafy suburbs of Miramar. That was the first job he got after leaving his post as lecturer at Havana University. He was one of the lucky ones. He could drive and had a valid license. He spent a couple of years with the family. Until one night when there was an adults-only party in the house. The children were dispatched to a friend’s. He knows because he drove them there. When he returned he thought he would be copping off earlier than usual only to be asked to come inside and... He left his job the next day. What embarrassed him most was telling his wife about “the thing”. She understood and stood by him completely. He still remembers her words: “The problem is that you still have morals, mi viejo”. Morals, yes, he still has them, he thinks now. That’s the reason why he doesn’t like doing the night shift. He doesn’t like coping with the drooling, pot-bellied, pink-cheeked male tourists trying to get a couple of under-age prostitutes into their rooms. It is hard for him to resist to their requests, not because he lacks the courage to say no, but because everyone else is in on the game. He doesn’t like coping with the drunken old women, saying in their mangled Spanish: “You look like a bull, be my bull tonight!”. He wipes his wide, black forehead and keeps walking to the bus stop. In the distance he can see the headlights of a coach or bus breaking through the semi-darkness. He comes close to the curb and sticks his arm out. His night shift is about to begin.

© 2013

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 3^rd November at 10am (GMT)

The three stanzas included in this post were taken from the poem “Tardes de Lluvia” by the Cuban poet Julián del Casal

Pieces of Me, Pieces of Havana

Most fairy tales have the same beginning: "Once upon a time...". But what if your story starts with "It makes perfect sense that years later I remembered this moment for what it was: a combination of sounds. The incidental prologue provided by windows opening and closing around me on the street, the loud clutter of seats, the shuffling of feet and, of course, the concert itself." What would you say to that?

It'd then make perfect sense to tell you that over the years I've reminisced more about the circumstances surrounding the event and not just about the event itself. Especially the windows. As I walked down 25th St., past the Faculty of Biology, the little stall with the funny, large, coloured umbrella selling hot chocolate and the old, crumbling building on the corner of 25th and G Avenue (official name, Presidents' Avenue, but nobody ever called it that), it was the windows that alerted me to the sound of the city slowly awakening from its sleep on this typically mild, though with a cool breeze, Havana Sunday winter morning in 199... On my way to the theatre, windows kept being snapped open or slammed shut, like a well-orchestrated, choreographic and yet, at the same time wild cacophony of urban sounds. Havana goes to bed late, so it takes its time to shake the bedcovers off.

On the corner of 25th and G I turned left and walked on up the ample avenue with trees on my left side and the Infantil Hospital on my right. I crossed the road and carried on past the improvised graffiti park (my favourite one was "Floods don't occur because of excess of water, but because the country is sinking"). A bend announced that I was now in the vicinity of the Castillo del Príncipe, the fortress whose irregular shape was off-limits for tourists and which loomed large and powerful from the top of the hill where it was situated. In the distance the sound of an open window banging repeatedly against a wall travelled on the wings of this cool morning's breeze. Its loose hinges cried out for a dollop of oil.

I finally arrived at the venue. The Avellaneda Hall of the National Theatre teemed with early risers for this concert by Cuba's National Symphonic Orchestra. The crowd could easily be divided into three groups: the older generation dressed in their Sunday best, the young'uns in their scruffy clothes and both professional and amateur musicians in casual wear sporting their own instruments and surely on their way to a rehearsal or performance after the concert. I was still a young'un in those days. My jumper with the Japanese caption whose meaning I could never really decipher paired up with my bell-bottom black jeans and sandals to give me a somewhat hippyish look.

The auditorium filled up quickly. Those without a seat, like my friends and I, had to make do with the floor. Around us there was a loud clutter of seats snapping shut as a line of shuffling feet carried their owners to the few vacant spaces still remaining. Near me a television camera rendered the concert its formal and official nature; the first one in a series of events which, though short-lived, aimed at bringing the Symphonic closer to new audiences. After a few minutes the lights began to dim. The noise died down. Some throats cleared. A woman behind me whispered in my ear that if I wanted to lie my back against the front of her seat I was welcomed to. I thanked her and slid backwards on my bottom. The curtain rose. Although it was still dark it wasn't difficult to spot the silhouettes of some instruments leaning on the chairs. Suddenly a light came on, illuminating the stage. One by one the musicians made their entrance until, finally, it was the turn of the conductor. Loud applause welcomed him. With his back facing the audience he raised his hands. A thick veil of silence descended on the hall.

It made perfect sense that years later, when he was already settled in London and whilst looking out of the window of his flat on the fifteenth floor of a high rise, he pondered about the circumstances that had made that occasion so special. After all Beethoven's 5th symphony (the first piece on the programme) was a popular choice on CMBF, the radio station that broadcast mostly classical music in his hometown, Havana. So, there shouldn't have been anything extraordinary about this melody or the performance of it. And yet that Sunday carried with it such a sense of importance that he often wondered if there wasn't more to it than met the eye.

Nakedness. He said to himself, as his wife and son slept in the next room. At last he'd cracked it. In that hall that day what he saw was the conductor baring himself, and, in the process offering his vulnerability in exchange for the audience's. It was a scary thing to do, this vulnerability trade-off; he might not have been reciprocated. But from the first da da da daaaaa/da da da daaaaa, this man stripped himself of his armour. And so did the audience of theirs. As soon as the two fortissimo phrases kicked in, the public began shedding the layers of their hitherto black and white lives in order to let this warm, musical moment of colour in.

You can't rehearse magic, he said to himself in the dead silence of the London night. You can put in the long hours, practising technique, layout and lighting. But you can't magic magic magically out of thin air. In order for a concert to be memorable, you need honesty from each and every single musician in the orchestra. They have to be unafraid to call to a part of themselves that might expose them to a hungry and unknown audience. And this can only be achieved by invoking that which underlines our common humanity. Only then is the public also allowed to let go, too.

He came back every single Sunday thereafter to the same theatre, the same hall, to meet almost the same people. The concerts that followed were not the same, though. There were no more goosebumps. This didn't mean that the quality had declined, but rather, that the expectation had grown. Tenfold, maybe.

In that flat, up on the fifteenth floor of a high rise, and whilst looking over a part of London that wasn't dissimilar to the downtown part of Havana where he'd been raised, he thought of the beginning of fairy tales. He also thought of the conductor's symmetrical posture, legs open, his raised arms at equal angles and his baton pointing upwards. He thought of the short silence before the da da da daaaaa. And he thought of how, instead of "Once upon a time...", sometimes it's better to start a story with "It makes perfect sense that years later he remembered this moment for what it was: a combination of sounds. The incidental prologue provided by windows opening and closing around him on the street, the loud clutter of seats, the shuffling of feet and, of course, the concert itself."

© 2012

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 27th May at 10am (GMT)