the conditions from which art blooms.

radical love letter #89 | on art & radical politics

an artist date, in Catalunya.

Dear ones, 

I had a plan to write you something Politically Important about tourism and its tensions, inspired by this trip I’m on, weaving in some of my favorite thinkers on the topic (like Jamaica Kincaid, M. Jaqui Alexander, Jasbir Puar, and most recently Alicia Kennedy) and highlighting various conversations with comrades I’ve met during attempts at anti-tourist travel. But instead, I am penning this at a trendy wine bar on el Passeig, apologizing every time I speak to the waiter in choppy Catalan, and thinking about a recent episode of Sex and the City. You cannot, as they say, win them all. 

I am here on an artist date, an activity articulated by Julia Cameron in her highly celebrated The Artist’s Way, in which she encourages weekly solo dates doing anything that sparks whimsy and creativity. I am in a class (facilitated beautifully by friend-of-the-newsletter, Binyamina) that involves working through Cameron’s book, and although one might think that traveling would be a constant spark of creativity, the truth is that the artist date requires a very specific kind of intentionality (and also aloneness, which I haven’t had much of). And so, on a day that Peter has to go into Barcelona for meetings, I take myself out. When I explain what I’ll be doing while he’s gone, he responds, “Like Carrie did! When she went to the museum.” He is referring to an episode of the aforementioned prestige program that I have cajoled nearly every partner I’ve had into watching. Though I never would’ve put money on this squatter anarchist to be among its fans, here he is making connections to our favorite New York sex columnist visiting the Guggenheim. 

I am alone in cafes often, but in English-speaking ones in the States, and almost always coffee shops with a laptop, not wine bars with a notebook, and especially not wine bars where I have to stumble through basic pleasantries with red-shy cheeks. Here at El Celler del Bages, I am forced into paying more attention, needing to get creative with communication for the simple fact that nothing is rote. Every time I am in proximity to another human, I feel my brain brace itself for new exercise, putting in more effort than usual to invent some way of making sense with a decidedly scant tool bag. 

I make it through the drink order (the wine is a common French name, and “aigua amb gas” is something I etched into my brain like a fossil the first time I was here), but am unable to ask clarifying questions about the wifi (it is pronounced “wee-fee” here, and I think that’s just neat) connection, which is not working. It is not a surprise to me that the universe has denied me internet while on my artist date, and so I rest easy into the awkwardness of being the only person on the whole patio who is at a table alone. In this space of having no one to talk to, and no device to scroll, I feel the shift I know Cameron is hoping we’ll all find. Spaciousness for the intersection of our bodymind and soul. Spaciousness that enables the conditions from which art blooms. 

***

At the table I observe and jot down, in a detail I absolutely would not have noticed otherwise, the following: “the pigeons here are bold + brave, so close to my feet at the table that I think some may snack on my toes”; “a woman in the street is angry + yelling, and I imagine it is about love. Or, more specifically, the desecration of it”; “a norm-core toddler is running delightedly down the street with shrieks. He nearly bumps face first into the shins of a person walking the other direction, the way I see toddlers do so often. This person looks straight out of an ACT UP documentary and I love his vibe – he is wearing a black leather jacket and black jeans, with the accent of a leopard fanny-pack. (I am also wearing a black (p)leather jacket and a leopard print skirt!) He has several silver hoop earrings. He beams at this little toddler whose normy parents are close behind with energy of apology and exhaustion. This ACT UP dreamboat smiles at the grownups, then a softer and brighter smile again at the toddler, before moving out the little one’s path, and going on his way”; “I am shaking talking to this patient waiter, wow I feel like a jackass!” 

I make a few more notes and it is just me and the notebook for about 45 minutes. I get the itch to try the internet again, which I rationalize by deciding I should look up some more Catalan phrases to help me be less dumb with this poor waiter. Still no internet, but there is the Substack app, which I realized in one of the many internet-less moments over here, is accessible without wifi. I congratulate myself for making it almost an hour, and promptly dive into the newsletters I love that feel especially cushiony, elegant, and indulgent. I read and read and think ‘fuck, do I love intimate writing.’ 

**

I’m back to thinking about Sex and the City, which we watched most recently on a laptop in the squat, in the same place that just a few days later would be host to Peter’s goodbye party and the impromptu evening of music in which it culminated. I am interested in conversations about art and politics and can hold my own in a discussion about Adorno or Benjamin, but I think the concrete particularity of how art has shown up while traveling these past few weeks is much more compelling:

When we spent five days with some of the most principled anarchists I’ve met, Politically Important conversations were offset by sharing favorite 2010-era Youtube videos, and, as I shared last week, in an hours long show-and-tell of our most beloved punk and hardcore bands. In Greece, I meet two anarchists I have known through stories as militant and sharp, analyzing and offering strategies for movement building and revolution-fueling at every step. It turns out, they also happen to both be poets, and one of them also an actress and short story writer. We go to the theater they help run, and when I am backstage, I am flooded with memories of my time acting in middle and high school, near giddy with the familiarity of it. I quit acting when I found punk and the anti-war movement, because it felt frivolous. I have known for some time that this is a shallow understanding of Politics, but it was meaningful to be reminded so viscerally that art is not a distraction from struggle — that actually art is what fuels it, or what gives us necessary breaks from it, or what we make our art about. Or, put another way, in the now oft-quoted wisdom from Toni Cade Bambara, the role of a movement artist is “to make revolution irresistible.” 

On our last leg of the trip, Peter introduces me to his dear friend and movement elder, Ricard, who grew up amidst daily working class resistance to the Franco regime in the 50s and 60s in Catalunya. By the late 60s, he threw himself into the internationalist struggle for workers' self-organization against the authoritarian Left and the armed struggle against the repressive regime. He lost friends to police batons, execution squads, and soldiers’ bullets, he was snatched off the street by secret police and sent to prison, he was part of a whole generation that gave so much. It's no surprise that he dedicates so much of his activity since prison to questions of "historical memory," since forgetting was a key part of the contract that kept capitalism thriving in the Transition from dictatorship to democracy. Through Peter’s translation, over a beautiful lunch, I hear stories about his revolutionary past. But perhaps I hear the most excitement in Ricard’s voice when he tells us about a creative project he’s working on — in his 70s, he’s hoping to publish his first novel.

The goodbye party at Peter’s squatted apartment was disproportionately full of musicians---partly chance, partly the reality that, I think, there are a lot of anarchist artists, especially in squat scenes, where they have traded working for a living for the spaciousness of living---and those of us who don’t identify as such were joyful to participate. An accordion, a banjo, and a violin accompanied voices belting out traditional songs from the radical Catalan (or adjacent) canon. I only knew the words to “Bella Ciao,” but I swayed and hummed along to all of them, basking in the magic of the moment. Thrilled for my sweet partner to get such a special sendoff, and also thrilled to be reminded, once again, of the power of the aesthetic. Delighted to witness the juxtaposition of high art and DIY electric wiring. We can have it all.

***

My artist date – the one P compares to an episode of Sex and the City – is not as impressive as some of the other things I did while traveling, and certainly it’s harder to suss out the stakes of it. But this is what I felt called to tell you about. How in between radical conversation with international anarchists, I took a break at a wine bar, paid attention, and felt so nourished. 

Another thing I scribble in the notepad at the wine bar is “Simone Weil quote,” to remind myself to look it up. No wonder I think of it here. “Workers need poetry more than bread,” she says boldly. “They need that their life should be a poem.”

love & solidarity, 

raechel