The guys at Sueno Lucido don’t take as much interest in the anarchist newspapers and distributions of posters and timetables. They are more into street performing, skating, poetry, MCing.
“Would you like a knife with some butter on it?”
Anna is the girlfriend of the welsh man. She’s a beautiful friendly blonde full of kindness. My daily pleasure is buying bread and fresh croissants from a bakery. I like to try as many as I can in the network of little shops and half cafes that pump out delicious smells from early morning.
“How do you like your eggs?”
“Fertilized”
“Would you like cake, and banana? Do you want a plate for your cake or just crumble it down your shirt? Have you seen the cat? She’s grown up with so many dogs she thinks she’s a dog.”
She is delighted by the portrait of her.
“I’ll treasure it forever. You should go and do portraits on the ramblas.”
“No thank you”
“You’d make a fortune”
“No thank you, I couldn’t think of anything worse. Maybe, I don’t know.”
“You should come down and see us at MACBA”
“Where is that?”
“It’s just near the ramblas”
“Ok, I’m actually going to the museum.”
“MACBA?”
“No, the Natural history museum”
“They won’t let you take the dog in the museum,”
“Shit.”
“Why do you want to go there?”
“You know Gaudi?”
“Of course we know Gaudi, have you seen that house on the corner?”
“Yes, he’s great isn’t he? He based all the shapes in the buildings, all the curves and structures on natural forms, he used different coloured tiles to control the amount of light that passes into courtyards. All the details and shapes are plants or animals and things. Great big stalacmites.”
“Do you want this book? It’s mostly blank”
“Thank you. Do you think the dog will be OK if I leave him here for the morning?”
“I’m sure it will be OK”
Don had told me that an empty marrowbone stuffed with dog food is a good way to keep a dog occupied if you’re out for a while, but Meady isn’t ready for that just yet.
I hate to leave him.
I especially hate to leave him in a room stinking of piss, but he’s not alone.
I scribble as many illustrations of insects and preserved creatures into the diary as I can and get back to Sueno Lucido. It’s a grey day and the ashy brown gravel soaks up shallow puddles more like patches.
“He’s been crying since you left man, why did you do that?”
“I’m sorry I had some things to do.” I’m thinking about the next mural.
After the Escher patterns in the wall, I was inspired by the concept of having to get a dog microchipped, so the next mural I did was butterflies with little microchips for bodies. I’m planning involving more natural forms, but abstracted, not styalised, taking the piece of real natural world, looking at its component parts, what is most basic about it and then putting it back together.
There are plenty of natural forms out in the city where it is a little more dog friendly.
It’s a terrible song but feels so appropriate to sing.
“if only I could have a puppy, I call myself so very lucky, just to have some company and share a bit of moon with me, I’d take my puppy everywhere, oh oh I wouldn’t care, we could stay away from crowds and signs that say no dogs allowed.”
Sitting around in parks, drawing olive trees. The spring dusting of greens, the blossom. The dog scaring small children in the care of fat old ladies in head scarves who frown and shoo.
“Ay que mono. Que tipo? Que raza?” How cute, what breed?
“Mestizo” Heinz 57.
Vale and I watch a film at her flat.
“It has a very famous porn star”
The film is a story about a woman’s sexual journey through different partners and experiences.
“This is him”
One scene has a man putting on a condom. Her successive experience lead her into sado masochism where she finds her fulfilment.
We talk about sex as a form of communication. I have feelings for this girl in Leeds, I don’t want to betray her, but I feel that possibillity I have a much happier relationship here, however I’m also afraid to get invovled with any woman and usually end up getting filled with self doubt and questioning. I like having sex though. I had some savings last year. I decided to spend it all on a present for that girl in Leeds: a hot air balloon ride.
“She sounds like a cow”
“She’s a fundamentalist”
“A fundamentalist?”
“She screams if you put too much water in the kettle or travel by plane.”
“Ay, I live my life in the most reponsible way I can, I don’t hurt anybody, nobody hurts me. I have been very very poor and I’ve had some really hard times, but I appreciate every day I’m alive. I saw you with that blond girl, I don’t care. I thought, oh that little bastardo, but I knew you were a little bastardo when you pushed in front of me at that office.”
“I didn’t push in front of you, I didn’t mean to, you arrived after I’d popped out”
“oh yeah, whatever.”
She pushes me to the bed with one hand while sucking on a hashish filled cigarette.
“You have to come to this party with the students”
“What students?”
“The Erasmus students. They’re nice”
“Some of them are nice”
“We’re going to go camping at Easter, are you coming?”
“Yes I’ll come.”
There’s a cabaret queer disco night downstairs at L’Eterno Memoria in the okupa next door.
There’s live music from all kind of dreadlocked and non dreadlocked Catalan singing/wailing and flickering fingers running complex rythmical patterns across guitar strings. There’s a performance that is astonishing in its eloquence and simplicity. A man has a special Tshirt, he meets another man and they get to friendly. The T shirt is actually two, the new friend slips inside the other part of the Tshirt facing the other way. The two are joined at the hip and do everything together. they are intimately stitched together and enjoy their relationship, but it turns sour and they have a fight. One leaves the Tshirt in anger. The original dancer is left alone with a man shaped vacuum in the other part of his garment.
At the disco everyone takes off their tops and dances. I meet an older gentleman originally from Northern Ireland but well travelled and speaks with an educated London sounding English. He’s charming and tells me about his favourite gay bar, La Bata Mirinaque, the crinolene dressing gown.
We dance all night and I end up walking around the city at dawn with the dog not knowing where I’m going, but certain I’ll find my way back home somehow. I don’t understand how a night out in the ground floor of the building I live in has ended me up with such a long walk back.
I go to visit Marquise at Makabra.
The place is full of signposts, drum circles, yoga classes, self righteous german lesbians, hilarious inteligent lesbians, emaciated Czech men, loose trousered clowns and lots of punks.
Marquise has a little hut with a room and a bed. His eyes are glazed and he stands swaying a little.
“I love ketamine” he says.
“I’ll come back another time”
I hang out at the beach with Meta.
“Hey you have a money belt too. Yours is much nicer than mine.”
“Yeah I made it, best to be safe you know. Never know when you might need some cash”
The brown leather tobacco pouch was made for me by a French artist. I loved how she said leather: “Ze lazer”
“Have you got any rizlas?”
“I have papers, they aint’ rizlas”
“papers then”
“Hey you know even heroine is a brand name.”
The sea flops to the shore in brief intervals.
“Shall we see how he likes water?”
Meady is a natural swimmer, at first wary of the moving wet surface taunting his feet, but once he’s wet he knows what to do: get back to dry land and shake off in the most strategic place.
After Meta leaves I go further along the sand to the all male part of the nudist beach. Of course there is someone doing a handstand.
Studio Diary 