We do have to give some purpose to what we do, I always said. Even writing comments and bitter remarks should aim at something else than just impressing ourselves by seeing on a screen what just fell into our minds. Logically we had to concentrate ourselves in order to find a convinient goal that would possibly cover all the possible subjects and inspirations, even eventual fun and other ways of distractin

g yourself on weekends.

Leonard Cohen

Myself immediately said, that the only reliable goal could be to find Sask. (Myself has always been stupidly in love with my imaginary construction, who was supposed to be the main character of a novel, but it is an evidence that schizoid do often confuse imagination with reality, and thus, Myself used to spend his time expecting Sask to arrive every day through a somewhat divine intervention, which is to say, a miracle.) The problem is that Sask actually arrived. This very peculiar fact, may convince me of the fact that it would be of some kind of interest to agree with Myself on the general purpose of the page. The fact of imagining 342 people trying to localize Sask somewhere, giving place to an infinite amount of quid pro quos and confusions, seems amusing enough so as to try it. Of course I don’t think we will ever get in touch with her again. The first meeting was astonishing enough and left the impression that there are events that are far too shocking so as to be easily absorbable for a normal human mind. (Yours is not very normal, Myself says. But this is his very personal opinion.)

If it happens though, and miracles become as common as rain in April, we will have to have prepared some kind of introduction, so as not to shock this poor person as we were shocked ourselves at that time. Thus, I’m going to describe my world in likings and dislikings, starting with music, trying to clearly separate Myself for myself, in order for Sask to know who we are, in case we should ever meet her. On the other hand, I will have to try to make the most precise description of Sask ever possible, in order to allow eventually someone to locate her. If anyone does have the suspicion that it could be this or that one, please notify. (Through the comments downstairs …)

 Of course you will ask yourself who Sask is, but we will come back to this very soon. In the meantime, just amuse yourself with ‘Manual of a soldier’, in order to get in touch with the novel’s character, who should hardly have something to do with the real Sask, though who knows.

Thus, we start the attempt of comprehending ourselves with our somewhat bizarre relationship to music. Myself does mostly agree with me on this subject, although he tends to prefer classic music, while I like folk popular music a little better.

Our hits are quite international: America offered Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe (although ‘My name is Lolita’ gave birth to a great lot of psychological analysis, we prefered ‘There is a river called the river of no return’), something of Baez, like ‘Let it be’ or ‘El preso número 9′, quite a bit of Tina Turner, two songs of Michael Jackson, the ‘play it again, Sam’ in Casablanca and other related songs like ‘Put the blame on Mane, boy’, the song ‘you’ve got a friend’, whose author we do always forget, but mainly and fundamentally

 Edith Piaf

Leonard Cohen, whose Cd’s we kept even while walking through the desert. And one or two other, like the early Grace Jones and such.

This was enrichened by almost no British song. Boney M were American, too, and ‘A time to be reaping, etc.’ was lost in time. It’s nothing personal, it didn’t seem to fit our particular psychology. On top of this, the German only contributed with a few songs of Zarah Leander and little less. Lately we used to listen to an interesting Bavarian anthem, but mostly by accident. The French, we used to ironically remind of the fact that their only contribution to universal culture was Edith Piaf and the theft of Jacques Brel (because he was Belgian), did not make any fundamental enrichment either. Essentially, we disliked Italian music.

The Greek contributed with an enormous treasure starting with byzantine music and all kinds of popular and folk music, as Gianis Kotsiras, Alkistis Protopsaltis, a little of Dalaras, and many many others whose names are difficult to remember, prefering over all Ionatous and Venetsanou interpretation of some recently translated (into modern Greek) poems of Sappho of Mytilini. We adored Turk music, but it was difficult to get, and thus we were obliged to hear two songs over and over again ‘Her yerde kar var’ and ‘Sensiz yillarda’ of Nülifer. We had equally the impression that we would like Russian music very much, but the only thing we could get was the ‘Kalinka’ sung by the Red Army Choir, and though we adored, we esteemed it not enough to get a general picture. Finally someone brought a cd with some Hebrew Ashkenaze music, whose arrival could also be considered almost miraculous,  and who opened new perspectives for our repertoire.

Christmas songs were always welcome, as well as national anthems, we learned five of.

Spaniards did give little, too. Although we knew that there had to be something interesting somewhere, some reminders of youth, it was almost impossible to get any songs of Concha Piquer, for example. Instead, South America did heavily populate our musical consciousness: los Panchos, different boleros, tangos of Rinaldi, old salsa and other rarities did fill up imagination with poetry: “Wait, the boat of the forlorn has not yet left …” and other most romantic stuff.

Classic was mostly piano, or violin and orchestra, or Bach’s Concerts of Brandenburg. Chopin was perhaps the favorite (another French theft), a little Mozart, pieces of Beethoven, Liszt, Paganini, sometimes, very melancholically, Strauss. Certainly no opera, we didn’t like at all, although we felt an extreme sympathy for Montserrat Caballé (even if she is a Catalan and people of Madrid do principally not like Catalans: there are always exceptions).

Of course I will have to remember more and why I did like all those strange people. Short, what may all this have in common, and how is it linked to my obtuse conception of reality?

More, shortly under … music.