Don't You Dare To Think Out Loud!

The arc of a bow and its arrow are our primitive reference for fully understanding the entropy that life entails. An entropy that overwhelms—or bores, depending on so many things—even the brightest minds. I imagine this is the origin of the narrative arc of a story: cutting through space like an arrow of time. Zeno of Elea believed that time was merely a sum of static, frozen moments, failing to r...

Sometimes, I wonder why the mere reading of some books stirs in me the irrepressible appetite for writing. Like just yesterday with Erasure by Percival Everett–the experimental novel that the latest film American Fiction is loosely based on. At the crack of dawn, while the first drops of spring rain were cleaning my dusty window, I was pounding away at my keyboard, keeping in mind the challenging...

I was a boy wonder, and I loved to hate the guts of whoever was a killjoy. And mostly, any authority figures who were poorly paid teachers, so I was bound to be self-taught. However, I had a professor who taught me to channel all that hate by reading aloud about any historical character of my choosing. Soon, I also became a performer aboard the school bus, which had loudspeakers and a microphone;...

I suppose it’s because I had a good night’s sleep that I feel better than yesterday. I thought I couldn’t write a single word because of the alarming lack of relevance. Writing fiction requires a massive focus on a story that sometimes makes no sense, and sometimes it truly does. Navigating between these two extremes is quite intense and certainly not for the faint of heart. I had the bad luck of...

What can I write about Lorca? He was not just a poet; he was also a dedicated pianist. Manuel de Falla was his mentor, and he learned from him about the profound songs known as Cante Jondo. Therefore, reading Lorca is an experience that evokes a deep sense of Duende, an ethereal quality that transcends mere poetry. Many scholars believe that translating Lorca into American English is an impossible...

Physical beauty must be the most bitter of gifts because it carries the seed of its own destruction, and its absence mortifies more than any. We all more or less know how the young and handsome Dorian Gray had problems to deal with this, and whoever does not should stop listening this literary podcast right now, shake off the mental sloth, and dust off the master of paradoxes, the great Oscar Wild...

As the dog days struck in August, I declined a gig to record audiobooks. And I was so low that I didn’t stop thinking, not even when I did laps in the Olympic pool. Climate change, many hellish summers this century, seas infested with microplastics and jellyfish and anisakis. And prawns expensive as f**k. I have no choice but to buy an AC if I want to work during the next summer. What world is thi...

It’s been a while since I have sailed to Palamós, still a small fishing town in 1962, where Truman Capote sought refuge for three semesters—always escorted by his obliging life partner Jack Dunphy and various pets—alternated with his cottage in Verbier, at the top of the Swiss Alps. In Cala Sènia, a secluded Mediterranean cove, the American author found the necessary peace, far away from New York’...

The German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt told a friend, a Parisian doctor, that he wanted to meet a certifiable lunatic. He was invited to the doctor’s home for supper. A few days later, Humboldt found himself placed at the dinner table between two men. One was polite, somewhat reserved, and didn’t go in for small talk. The other, dressed in ill-matched clothes, chattered away on every subject...

Last Monday, while monitoring and mixing this podcast at midday, a massive blackout plunged this beach town and the entire peninsula into a real-life episode of an apocalyptic future. I was fortunate to be seated at my desk, unlike the poor b******s trapped inside lifters or commuting on trains and subways, standing and packed one against the other like a can of sardines. The only lifeline was the...

I have news for you, my silent friend of many distances. Since I published last February a podcast about Bob Dylan, dealing with his recent biopic A Complete Unknown , where I argued the many reasons why he deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature, it turns out that I have found an audience in Apple Podcast. All because of a Dylan's fan site called Expecting Rain , which linked my podcast, and sudd...

The plays of William Shakespeare serve as an encyclopedia of human nature, and their characters are complex and rich, portrayed always with contradictions and nuances like real people. Some of these portraits are delightful and full of life, such as the character Puck, who appears in the comedy of Athenian wild fantasy called A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I believe the first tragedy I read was Antony...

Yesterday, I had a lovely spring morning. I had to take care of some paperwork in Barcelona, which left me at the doorstep of my favorite bookstore, La Central del Raval. I hope it will remain open for many more years. I recommend its patio for quiet reading, although I don’t like the self-service and the long queue for those who are undecided about which cake to choose. When I returned to my stud...

I have mixed feelings after watching Chalamet’s Bob Dylan impersonation in the film A Complete Unknown . It is a superb acting performance. Still, there is an unsurmountable distance between an actor cast solely based on his looks and chameleonic aptitudes, and the real deal that shrines through, which is often disconcerting. The first impression of a successful folk star like Joan Baez was "I was...

Long before this era of senseless over-sharing, there was an intriguing piece of furniture called a rolltop desk, where our ancestors used to sit and write. It had secret drawers to keep handwritten letters and faded portraits of their loved ones. These secret drawers were kept locked, and the key to open them was hidden. Sometimes, the women wore the key sewn into their garments. I've just opened...

Keeping a newly completed manuscript in a drawer to rest for a while before editing it once you regain objectivity is not trivial advice. It’s true that after so much confinement and the solitude that writing entails, one wants to get up from the desk and celebrate the good news. However, with today’s immediacy, where one can send an original manuscript with a simple click, the rest in the drawer...

Farmers, ranchers, and fishermen, the pillars of the primary sector, have been frequently depicted in literature throughout history. Growing up in the shoreline, from the Caribbean to the Mediterranean Sea, and even the Atlantic Ocean for extended periods, I’ve developed a stronger connection with those who make their living as fishermen. Yesterday, I was stunned while reading an interview with Vi...

The novel Pedro Páramo by the Mexican writer Juan Rulfo is based on a popular trope: the son who returns to find his father. Juan Preciado’s story begins when, on her deathbed, his mother asks him to search for his father in Comala, a town she fondly remembers as a vibrant and bustling place. Upon his arrival in Comala, Juan Preciado encounters a desolate and decadent destiny. Along the way, his f...

In my very long mailing list—which this platform insists on distributing a newsletter instead of leaving the reader alone at his own free will—I also have writers whom I admire. One of them, Antonio Muñoz Molina, a well-known Spanish novelist and columnist, wrote last month in El País that he is fed up with unsolicited emails. Twenty years ago, in the early days of the blogosphere, there was no ne...

The rumbling swell woke me up in front of a breakwater wall that blocked my view of the sea, but the water sprays climbed above it, like a ranging whale expelling air from its blowholes, in each assault with the force of a geyser. Through the windshield of the car, I spotted Leire walking over the dike without caring about getting soaked from the volatilized foam in the air; she was barefoot to wa...

Since I quit drinking alcohol and smoking pot or tobacco to avoid running out of steam and finish sentences skidding at the top of the gravel voice, my journaling has regained the life it once had, which is a pleasant surprise and a valuable benefit. When I did thick spirals of smoke, my quiet thoughts were lost forever. Or worse, if possible, from the deep buzz only reached to the edge of awarene...

I don’t believe this record can be broken, but who knows? All it takes is a madman to allow American missiles to be launched at Russia from Ukraine, similar to the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Yet the final year of the last century still holds the record. Plus, in my lifetime, I won’t witness another turn of the millennium. But it turns out that yesterday, I received the news of the passi...

September is my favorite month for several reasons. Once the haze dissipates, the crowds that come with summer in a beach town also disappear, especially now that social networks have attracted swarms of people to remote places. It is also a time for farewells to summer romances, a theme often found in coming-of-age novels. The posh urban girl promises to keep in touch with the besotted villager b...

With indescribable relief, I note that the summer storms have finally arrived and two-thousand-year-old festival known as Ferragosto is behind us. The festival, originally a celebration of Roman Emperor Augustus, was once a time when beasts of burden were adorned with flowers after the rigors of harvesting and threshing wheat and workers bet their wages on horse races, a ritual which is in some pl...

Marcel Proust had an epic quarrel in 1895 France with the literary critic Charles Sainte-Beuve on what the reader should know about any author and also wrote that every detail of the author’s life had to be kept in mind because his characters were simply an elaborated extension of the self, not natural creations. The most celebrated French author of the past century strongly disagreed. Consequentl...