Waves of Resistance

Magazine

I find that keeping a secret is difficult. Sometimes the intensity of my statements expand beyond my size, sixty-five centimeters of my body, and I am almost forced to open my mouth and let the secret words escape, as if releasing them into the air were an attempt to survive rather than a need for the secret’s harmonies to enter in another ear and unexpectedly activate a background message. Sometimes, if the secret moves me a lot, if it questions my existence or acts as a trigger for other types of situations, I decide to keep it, take care of it, protect it and make it just that, a secret. Sometimes I dance to it or recreate it in my head, but I always file it, I always collect it.

If I could dedicate my life to collecting something without any pressure or need to tell if it will be deducted from my account before or after the weekend, if I could hoard, accumulate or become obsessed with a specific, precise, unique obsession, if I could collect something, I would collect moments in which an error accidentally creeped into a studio recording, an unexpected one, like when in the middle of a domestic/dramatic moment of listening you realize that in the violins of a certain movement of an unknown composition, the sound of someone turning a page of the score reminds you that the sonic literature of that epic moment is personal and non-transferable.

It is within this plane of the personal and non-transferable in which waves of resistance arise, vibrations of a frequency below 10,000 Hz, those which are heard by the body. These are waves that refuse to spread through the air but are instead a latent explosion, a potential chaos or that simply are like those songs/secrets/treasures we avoid listening to or sharing with others for fear of them becoming diluted, disappearing, despite knowing that this will not happen. Experience and empirical/domestic experience have shown that no matter how much I say your name, no matter how much I call out to you, it will not fade away.

This text is a secret shared with the air but avoiding the consequences, words that when multiplied sketch a polymer that avoids Gaussian blur and appears before us. For some time now I have been thinking about the chords that set in motion the internal vibration of certain moments, that have become music or drama, or that have simply lain dormant waiting to explode. Sometimes I like to think that these vibrations emit colors, that they follow the rules of certain states of matter, that they are an object or something that can be handled, shared or exchanged, that they can be the amplifying element of empathy.

I imagine that when a friend comes to dissolve one of these resistant waves I need only say It’s Ok To Cry to avoid characters, commonplaces and even Marc Augé.

Sophie is always there (ALSO)

Let’s stop preaching to the birds and let them sing.

“Hello everyone. My name is Laia Estruch, and I would like to announce…”
That’s how it all started, at least for me. That statement, sung and converted into a jingle with multiple versions, touched me.

Laia Estruch

A few months ago, David Armengol and I recalled that moment. Laia was there but I didn’t dare tell her that listening to her sing, listening to her embody that jingle, was the greatest feeling of belonging to and the safest space in Barcelona, at least Barcelona on Thursdays at 7:00 p.m. in La Capella, or La Miró, or MACBA…

For me it was the introduction of days to come, the opening of a new path. It is a secret that from time to time I listen to, relive and that reminds me that sometimes generations matter, that although they label and oppresses there are things one chooses to adopt, to dramatize and to make one’s own in order to finish a phase before night falls.

***

Years ago (when I was probably 19 or 20), it was summer and I was in the town where I lived as a child, a town a couple of miles from the house where I spent my adolescence and all the operettas. I don’t drive, I have a license but I don’t drive and that surely occupied a third of the family conversations that summer. I remember repeatedly listening to Everything in its Right Place by Radiohead while hiding in my parents’ garage, and how the headphones protected me, how they created an ephemeral intimacy in a family home that has always been a communal space for the whole town.

I left the window open so the heat wouldn’t drive me any more crazy than Radiohead’s KID A was already doing. The summer was normal, heat, bike rides, obligatory naps and pipes at night, but one hot day my cousin Rosi (I’m related to most of the town) told me:

“I was looking for you in the garage but then I saw you dancing and moving with your headphones on.”

I pretended not to have heard her and continued my summer.

That day, I realized that any slight carelessness can cause The Other to be lost.

***

Below are some new KID A and secrets. You won’t catch me dancing to them with my headphones on, but please, if we see each other on the street, don’t talk to me, it would break the magic, it would dilute the secret.