Musings in Granada and elsewhere

Typical American college student in Granada Spain. These are my adventures, thoughts and stories.

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Location: Cada Dia Mas Aqui que Alli, United States

I travel often.

Sunday, March 19, 2006

Dragon Festival

So this past week was an adventure. I tried to get a group of kids together to drive up to valencia to see las fallas (basically, there´s a whole bunch of really massive paper mache statues, like the size of entire buildings, and at midnight they stick firecrackers in the base of the statues and light them on fire. Appparently, it´s like they blow up the whole city) But people bailed on me last minute and so instead I went to the Alpujarras with laney to see the dragon festival. The dragon festival was kind of this weird mix between a punk festival, a rave and woodstock. No joke. There was a section called ¨The Red Dragon¨which is were all the punks and ravers and other scary people were (the ravers were scarier than the punks because they were on more drugs). Never in my life have I ever seen such blatant dealing before. I hope to never see anything like that again. Then a little farther into the valley was a section called ¨The Green dragon¨which was filled with some really dippy hippies. I mean, european hippies look a whole lot like american hippies, except they´re without a purpose. All they want to do is smoke pot and talk about how messed up the world is. I had a marvelous conversation with a man from the UK named Tree (yeah, I know, and he actually looked like a tree too!) about respecting women as people with immense power and how everyone is connected as brother and sister and so we should treat everyone as if we were related and that we should share our wealth with eachother. And so at the end he pulls out this ridiculously expensive Sony Digital videocamera (i know it was expensive because I had looked at the same model before I left for spain) and starts taking videoshots of me. and I didn´t say anything, just smiled but on the inside I was really angry. How can this man say one thing and do the exact opposite! It´s like some people just like to dress up and play hippie, but when it comes down to it, they´re just the same as everyone else.
I did have a decent time though. Last night laney and I walked around the Red dragon for a bit. We saw a celtic violinist just chilling out and playing some music so I got up and danced to that, which was a lot of fun. We also saw this incredible punk band. THe bassist looked exactly like david bowie! and the lead singer was this older woman, she could´ve been someone´s grandma, but the things she was singing about were absolutely contradictory (one of the songs was called ¨are you fucked up, jenny?¨) It was a riot, but also really cool at the same time. All in all I´m glad I went because it was an experience. and now I know that I don´t have to go back there if I don´t want to. Which at this point, I really don´t want to.

Monday, March 06, 2006

Youth

Today in my civilization and culture class we talked about the social realities of the youth of spain. It´s funny how everywhere I go, the older generations always say the same things about my generation; that we´ve got so much intellectual potential, and yet we just waste it all on drinking and drugs. But it´s kind of amusing how little they understand about us. They think that we are apathetic because we don´t care, because we are lazy and because it´sjust too much work to have an opinion about things. And for some people they are right. But honestly, I think those people are a minority. I really honestly believe that the real problem with my generation is that we have this ridiculous sense of depersonalization, and it gets fed by all the older generations telling us that we´re lazy and apathetic. What I mean is that on an individual level, we do care and we want to make a lasting impression on the world. Who doesn´t want to be remembered for something? But what is happening is that no one is showing us how to do it.We have no visionaries, no leaders, no musical or cultural icons to point us in the right direction, or in any direction. We have nothing to speak out against, no great war to unite us. The war on terror doesn´t unite because it is a war based on fear and immobility. Instead of speaking out, we hide because we don´t want to stand out from the crowd. We don´t want to be accused of being terrorists and we don´t want to be targets for terrorism. In a time of fear, immobility is the natural response. It takes guts to stand up and speak out, and no one is going to do that, especially if there is the high risk of them being the only one to stand up and speak out.

The professor talked about the ¨cultura contra¨. A culture based on being counter, not fighting against but just being the exact opposite for the sake of being the opposite. It made me think about radicalism, and how much easier it is to be radical or apathetic, rather than to be in the center of it all, getting your hands dirty and actually thinking things through. Like it´s much easier to say ¨I don´t care about politics¨ or ¨I´m an anarchist¨ than to actually sit down and figure things out. Because on either side of the coin, you´re taking an extreme point of view, already planned out for you. You don´t have to do any work for either side, and therefore they´re equally useless in real discourse.

I had a similar conversation with my host brother about this stuff. It´s all very depressing because it seems like no one has any hope for the future. It´s like, ¨this is the reality and it´s the way things are and your generation is apathetic and sucks and blah blah blah¨ And I´m thinking to my self, ok, if we are so apathetic, then what happened to me? Surely there has to be more people out there like me, who want to make a difference, but maybe they´re just scared? It´s too easy to write an entire generation off as being lazy or stupid. It´s tempting to do so, I know because I´ve done it often. But I really do believe that if people see how an individual act can influence our lives drastically and permanently, people will want to change. It´s like with the Vietnam war-- I don´t think the whole anti war movement started because that generation was particularly worldly or anti-american emperialism or anyting like that. I think it started because all the young men in the country were faced with the reality that they might be sent to fight a war that they know nothing about. And so when they did research, they realized that it wasn´t something that they personally were willing to give up their lives for. It was because they understood that the war affected them personally and that they either needed to stand up and speak out against it, or just go over there and kill people.
The professor for this class is kind of intimidating, and usually I just sit there and take notes, even if I disagree. But today I couldn´t really handle it, because what he was saying, while true, was not completely true. He thought we were apathetic to forget something, that we are weak and that we can´t handle the reality of the world. I told him that wasn´t it at all. Salimos para ser solo. We go to bars to get drunk, we go to clubs to dance, but we never have conversation amongst ourselves. It is not because we are afraid of anything, it is because we are lacking a sense of solidarity. And we fill the that emptiness inside of ourselves with things that don´t last. And this reality is sad, but there is always hope. Anyone, at any moment can just wake up from the daily humdrum life and realize their reality. And so there´s always hope of an awakening in our culture. It´s like all that commercialism and consumerism is just a blindfold. Underneath it all we´re still human and we´re still capable of intellectual thought. And I have seen trends form and develop and take over, and I know that it would be difficult to start a trend of awakening. But it´s possible to do. If a trash tv show like The OC can start a trend in music and cars and clothing, then it is possible to start a progressive trend in thought. It has to be possible. To think otherwise would be to sacrifice all intellectual thought and hope to the existential vacuum that we have created for ourselves.

I probably sound silly and idealistic. I know. But sometimes I think it´s neccessary to have hope for change. I think about all the things I have done at Hamilton, how many people I´ve helped register to vote, helped mobilize to marches in DC, people who I´ve gotten in contact with, who really want to change things, they just needed a way to do it. I think about how successful Drop Beats Not Bombs has been, and how I´m going to help out with The Human Initiative this summer (www.humanity.org)and to me, its sillier to give up because there´s so much potential already for change.

Sunday, March 05, 2006

San Nicolas

Today I walked around the Albayzin and got coffee with one of my friends. We caught the sunset at Plaza de San Nicolas. The mountains and the Alhambra turned orange, then red, then purple. I felt like I had jumped into a postcard. Seeing things like that makes you realize that your problems really are so trivial. The mountains have been sitting and changing colors every day for eternity. We´re just a blip on the radar.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Carnival!

Was everything I expected it to be. Except bigger, rainier and crazier. I´ve never been much for parties like that, and I was getting over a pretty awful cold, so to be honest, I wasn´t really digging it that much. I went with the API crowd on friday and then stayed with Amanda at her friend Miguel´s house till Monday. Miguel is a really cool guy, although we aren´t quite sure how old he is, he was very hospitable and let us stay in his apartment because its just impossible to get a hotel room in cadiz at a time like that. He is a music promoter, and has the biggest collection of alphebetized cds i´ve ever seen. Needless to say, I spent about 45 minutes just standing there and staring at all the music. Absolutely ridiculous.

We arrived in Puerto de Santa Maria on friday. It´s a cute little city, close to Cadiz (about 30 minutes away) and the food there is incredible. After walking around a bit one night, Julie, some of my other API friends and I wandered into a restaurant and I got some fried fish. Of course, it didn´t occur to me to ask what type of fish it was. As soon as I started eating it, Julie suggests that perhaps its jellyfish (keep in mind that Julie does not eat fish). After being freaked out for like a minute, I realize jellyfish would not look like the way my fish looked if it was fried. At that point i didn´t really care what it was because it was absolutely amazing. I found out later that it was just Hake. Sheesh.

Saturday night, we took the API bus into Cadiz. One of the boys on the bus thought it would be a good idea to get incredibly drunk before the ride there. He started to get really belligerent and actually threatened to sue one of the program directors for accusing him of being drunk (which he clearly was). Finally he was convinced to get off the bus. He actually fell off the bus. The next morning at breakfast, he still held his ground, contending that he was not drunk and that the API directors were at fault. People never cease to amaze me with their stupidity.

The actual party on Saturday was pretty intense. I cannot believe that people actually party for an extended period of time like that. As Juan said, (while dressed as a nun, putting on hot pink lipstick) ¨Carnival is like a marathon, not a sprint. If you sprint you will just die.¨ Incredible.

I have to say though, I´m glad I stayed and went out on sunday night as well. To make the comparison, Saturday was like a crazy drunken frat costume party except outside in the rain in the middle of a city. Sunday was like a normal party with music, political satire and more culture. Although it was still madness. Getting a cab back to Miguel´s was a nightmare, as you can probably imagine. No matter where you are, trying to hail a cab at 4am is never much fun. It´s even less fun when you´re cold and grumpy and there´s a three hour wait.

On Monday we walked around Cadiz, it was beautiful out, not quite as cold as it was during the weekend. We walked along the water, had some afternoon tapas and pizza and then took in some sun on the beach. Very nice. We took a late bus to Sevilla and then another from Sevilla to Granada. Got back to Granada at about 3am to find that the building had changed the locks on the front door. My cell phone was dead at that point and I didn´t know where to go. So I just wandered over to a friend´s house and spent the night there. What crappy luck!

I have some cute pictures and I will be uploading them as soon as I can fix my laptop.