On the second day of the pre-school year he was confronted with the perplexity of his own bloodlessness and vulnerability. “Nobody is all-powerful, you better learn to fight your own battles” was the only comfort he received at home when arriving with a purple eye and a blood stained jumper.
Six months later, the muddle of all fears had evolved in an almost obsessive commitment to survival. And it was all about that: being the strongest in the playground and the one destroying rivals at any means.
At ten he attempted rape over an older girl and things have only degenerated since his first real sociopathic endeavor.
Now tell me about the making of Attila the Hun: was it lack of love or too much television?
Txema Rodríguez
photographer
Playground reality show
Let the night do the talking
Two girls shared an extended banal conversation at the end of a dusty wooden counter.
Three Victorian cracked mirrors reflected their faces and the busy street behind the window.
I spent a long time watching the scene, while waiting for her to come back from the ladies’ room.
The dust on the counter was part of the decoration, as well as the alabaster pendulums hanging from the ceiling, the paper glasses containing remains of tea and coffee. Everything seemed so artificially old and shabby, so London á la mode that I wondered why we hadn’t pick Prague as our destiny.
Later, we had dinner in a café where Formica-topped tables that hadn’t changed in fifty years. I looked at her pensively munching a serving of ham omelet and chips. My moodiness banished in less than a second. She touched the corner of her mouth as if I had seen a drop of mayo or whatever. She did it so graciously that Picadilly at dusk felt the perfect place at the perfect moment to me.
I suddenly remembered Clea’s Alexandria, the making of a world through love, the remembrance of things half forgotten and I noticed my new biography replacing the old one only for her.
Spook
This light shining through my flesh upon things on to the ground. This light that I can barely name. This life belt, this umbilical cord, this secular appearance of a revenant God, this momentary oblivion of me.
Catenary
To Delia
I arrived before dawn, dead-tired from the 260 mile train trip and there she was: stunning beauty wrapped in messy sheets, offering arms and begging for cuddle.
Imagine Leonard Cohen in the darkest angle of the room, singing Suzanne, imagine me fed with tea and oranges, imagine the girl that said “Come in, I’ll give you shelter from the storm” in Bob Dylan’s song. Imagine both girls and better them, make their skin whiter and softer and give them a miraculous talent for quietude and imagine me lost in her body, feeling the whole scene somewhat unreal.
Take two extremes of this love in solemn silence, supported at its ends and acted on only by its own weight. Take us to the deepest realms of your mind and give us the joys of Sunday morning, the hush of night, the auspicious ways of the shipwrecked, the statuelike disposition of eternity and forget everything else.
We both had to get up and commute to work.
Mondays shouldn’t exist.
Stripping naked at the gates of Assisi
Photography is my primary coping behavior.
I take photographs of what I’m scared to own, lose or let go of.
I take photographs of what I fear or secretly wish to become.
I take photographs of cyclical nightmares.
I wordlessly beg for a proof of my deserving.
I hide behind the focus like a shy actor on stage.
Photography has also become my universal prayer, the multiple portrait of my flaws, the endless list of my unmet needs.
Photography makes me invisible so I can finally become visible in a figurative sense.
I get a grip on light so I can explain shadows.
Photography is for me the weird experience of being born, falling in love, falling out of love and then dying in one hundredth of a second.
The I-Me-Mine of constant fluctuation
I bow to the humble heart that comes to nothing so I can feel the miracle of what you saw without trying to own it by definition.
Kinky comforts
It all started decades before failing in love with you. As a child, being true to my desire and asserting my will would lead to bitter harvests. It was my choice to be your servant so I could forget myself and rest from the burdens of responsibility.
I made you my only focus. You scheduled my breath. You payed the bills. You named my needs and picked up the suitable toys: the collar, the crop, the handcuffs.
I could secretly blame you for all mistakes while rejoicing in moral superiority.
You were the iron curtain before all things forbidden and disquieting. You set the rules to follow with subtle or blunt narcissistic chinoiserie, depending on the days, depending on your moods.
Safe, sane limits saved my craving for perfection from unexpected blunder.
But, was it really of mutual agreement? I was so eager to please, emotionally numb, voiceless and narcotized. I can barely remember what I really wanted, if I really wanted anything at all.
Maybe the problem is a virtual absence of desire. Maybe you were just a woeful detour in the search for God.
Some nights my mind feels like a a play of macabre and horrific nature. I won’t forget you hold hostages. From time to time I wonder about your new acolyte and imagine the terms of the actual bondage, praying for him.
Now, what? Now that I am truly loved, what?
Now that I’ve realized I had always been the master, what?
Sometimes I look at the mirror and I see a lottery winner with no aim, a door-to-door salesman faking the perfect smile. At last, I resolve to pay the ransom and talk to you respectfully.
It’s raining heavily in Las Vegas now. A young couple has just got married in a quirky chappel near the liquor store. Elvis lights a cigarette as they turn the corner and the small bouquet shrivels on top of a garbage dump.
Know where to stand
Ansel Adams made a photo of Mount Williamson (from Manzanar, California) liying on the top of his car, using a 19-inch lens on 8×10 film. The camera slightly pointed down. The position provided a wide overlook of the foreground. The light was literally washing over the whitened stones of the desert and the resulting shoot is a perfect portrait of inner silence.
No one can teach the eye to anticipate the emotion of the finished image. That’s what he called ‘departure of reality’.
Now we are the camera. We traded the sacred for the pixel. We trust the mesmerizing effect photographs have got over will and belief, we act as the numb members of a massive cult of disposable reality. We take instead of making. We gorge and feast, we binge, we hoard, we overexpose our reckless hunger of the visible and yet we remain consumed by the desire of what can’t be contained in words.