This year, as a birthday present, my parents are covering the expenses of a trip to Spain for a few days in mid-May. Although this is prompted by my friend Flo being out in Salamanca for a year - and it will be fantastic to spend a few days at hers after not having seen her in ages - I've long had a slight interest in the place. Yet, whenever I've mentioned this to people - many of whom being regular travellers - I've often been met with a sense of bewilderment as to why.
For me, the annoying thing about Spain is that, in the UK, there's a certain association with it being the default place to go for 'some warm', thanks to it being the nearest & cheapest place to go where the temperature is that bit higher - and, of course, the inevitable associations with Channel 5-type shows following 'Club 18-30' goers who get to further their binge-drinking instincts whilst wearing shorts.
If that's your thing, well, fair enough - I've had my fair share of drunken nights out in clubs, and I can kind of get that people who lead busy lives may well want a week or two of doing nothing in unfamiliar climes for a bit, so I'm not going to start belittling - but it just seems a shame that these associations might be preventing people from going on any cultural exploration of the place. There are, of course, other issues - the cruelty of bullfighting, for one (which I've never understood as a thing) - but, clearly, there's more to the place than that.
I think my initial interest in Spain was from an amusingly innocuous place - Dogtanian & the Three Muskehounds; a cartoon series from the 1980s that I loved when I was little (and still do - I rarely go longer than a year or two without a watch through the series). The show was actually made by a Spanish animation studio, BRB Internacional - although that's more coincidence than anything else. Specifically, there is a story arc over a couple of episodes late in the run, which involves the protagonists taking a perilous journey into Spain. Spanish stereotypes are inevitably abundant - there's a bullfight, lots of wine - but regardless of all that, because the show was sent in France, it portrayed this trip to Spain with a sense of mysterious exoticism, which I think I've always associated with the place as a result. There's even a quote in the episode that goes, "But, for now, danger and intrigue are far from their thoughts, as they enjoy the exhilaration and adventure of a place they've never been before!"
Years later, when in my mid-teens and increasingly discovering music, I got into The Clash - in particular, their album London Calling - and immediately I was drawn to the song Spanish Bombs. I don't think I really knew enough - or much at all, even - about the Spanish Civil War at the time to fully recognise that that was what the song was about, but their evocative near-storytelling lyrics full of name-checked places and names I didn't know anything about - complete with a chorus sung in Spanish - compelled me to discover more.
Coincidentally, around the same time - although I don't think I was knowledgeable enough to make the link straight away - I had a huge book about Picasso borrowed from the library. It was because of a bit of English homework; for the presumed sake of prompting us to give presentations and improve our communicative abilities, we were asked to select from a list of paintings to research into and talk about to the class for a few minutes. The one that got my attention much more than the others was the Picasso one (annoyingly, I can't remember what it was called and seem to remember it was obscure enough that it was hard to find much out about it, so I can't find an image of it) - thus the book. Although I'd already had some exposure to various artists I think it was the first time I properly read up on a specific one - and I found myself compelled by this newfound canon of work. And, of course, Guernica was a prominently featured work.
Immediately, it hit me as a powerfully dark, angry and painful piece in a way that I don't think any other piece of art had done before. I just had to know more - what could prompt something like this? So, after some further research, I found out about the 1937 bombing of the town with that name and the context surrounding it - which, of course, linked back to that song by The Clash. This interest carried on and, by the time of university, I found myself buying and reading books about the subject - including one by Russell Martin called Picasso's War, which sought to document and discuss the entire story of Guernica the painting, from the context of the event and the story of the painting being created to its aftermath, continued controversy and museum-hosting debacles. It's been about ten years since I read it, but I remember it being a fascinating read (which I'd recommend to anyone who has any interest in the subject) and, throughout, I thought how great it would be to go to Spain and see the place and / or the painting itself. Regarding the painting, it's notorious for being huge (to heighten its impact) and, as good as it is to have immediate access to seeing an image of it online, I suspect it's of little comparison to seeing and being dwarfed by the physical painting itself.
These days, Guernica is housed in a museum in central Madrid. Conveniently, to make it out to Salamanca where Flo is staying, the cheapest way is via Madrid - which is the very place that houses Guernica. So, about sixteen years after being taken in, I actually get to see it!
Hopefully I've just about gotten across my general feeling towards Spain. Despite this interest I essentially know no Spanish, and there is a certain nervousness at traversing a country I've never been to before for the first time (and, short of Salamanca, on my own), but any anxiety is far outweighed by my sheer enthusiasm. For me the trip will provide that perfect combination of early-memory evocation and the much-anticipated realisation of a coming-of-age interest - and, of course, I get to spend a few days with Flo. Fantastic. Who needs Club 18-30? Fittingly, by the time I go, I'll be 31 anyway.
As an update to yesterday's post - I have amazed myself by somehow managing to cull, so far, a total of 42 'friends' on Facebook. I had another look at my friend list, remembered how I find posts by a couple in particular quite annoying, so just deleted them out of impulse; after that, the rest seemed surprisingly easy. Do I really speak to you? No? Unfriend...and repeat.
Looked through the list several times, so was fairly thorough, but decided not to overdo it; there are still quite a few on there I don't speak to but ultimately they either a) don't clog up my news feed with stuff I just ignore or b) still seem like nice enough people who I might get on with. There was one I nearly deleted but looked at his photo and thought he has a nice face and couldn't...ha! But, he never seems to post things anyway.
A therapeutic Good Friday. 42 = life, the universe and everything; coincidence? (Yes.)
In other news, after only eleven months of having my laptop, I managed to change the default language from US English to UK English. There is nothing that I can't do right now.
Call it boredom or unemployment procrastination, but I’ve decided to get a blog going. Have contemplated it for a while without actually bothering to do it - so this is me going for a bother.
My first post is probably going to sound bitter in some aspects, but it isn’t intended that way; it’s more of a ponder about the nature of friends on social networks - or, more specifically, Facebook.
Last night, for no real reason other than a general ‘I can’t take much more of job websites’ listlessness, I was browsing on Facebook for a considerable length of time, as a kind of default place to browse. I’ve been using the website for over eight years now and I’ve never decided to perform a mass culling of friends; I’ve only ever deleted the occasional individual, usually being prompted to by someone posting something I find particularly horrible - racist or homophobic messages, for example. Thankfully, these have been few and far between. But, whilst reminding myself of the list of friends I have, it hit me how without having had such a cull the website serves as a constant reminder of how people fall out, or drift apart. After looking through my timeline from the first year or two of use, it surprised me how regularly certain people I no longer speak to - or am even friends with - would still post on my wall or comment on posts; people who the closest contact I have with these days is to ignore the annual notifications of their birthdays. In that sense, it hit me how my Facebook has become a bit of a social graveyard - ”Here lies your friendship with [x], 2007-2009” - and that is clearly why I find the website an increasingly depressing experience; I just keep seeing people I no longer speak to doing things with other people. Of course, it’s not like I didn’t drift apart from people pre-Facebook and this wouldn’t have happened before, but I didn’t have constant reminders of friendships that didn’t seem to quite work out. Essentially, it’s a friendship list that’s out of date; my news feed feels a bit like people I don’t hang out with anymore repeatedly walking up to me in the street, telling me how great a time they had last night doing things that don’t involve me anymore and running off again. Obviously it’s more passive than that - unintentional, even - but it doesn’t feel all that dissimilar when seeing it on a daily basis.
This morning - because I had made a point of looking at my list of friends last night - I immediately noticed that the friend count was down by one. Being in this unusual position where I would likely be able to tell who it was (typically I don’t tend to keep track of how many friends I have), I put my social network detective skills to use, looking at the friend lists of people whom I know I have lots of mutual friends with and so on, all the while just expecting it to be someone from school or a job from years ago who I never really spoke to anyway. However, when I found out who it was, I was slightly shocked, as it was a person I’ve always tended to get on with, sharing likes and mutually posting comments more recently than many. Upon looking at the mutual friends I have with this person, I noticed how a few others seem to have been deleted as well - all the signs point to a cull. Immediately, inevitably, I thought, “What did I do?”. But, then it hit me: following what our geographical disparity is likely hinting towards, this person has merely been proactive in preventing their Facebook become what mine has - and, after the initial feeling of being a bit hurt, I find it oddly admirable. It reminded me that, even in the context of social networking, sometimes the best thing is to just accept that not everything will work out in the long term and move on before you’re just scrolling though a status graveyard every day.
So, I opened up my list of friends again, thinking, yeah, let’s do this! Let’s cull some people! I don’t speak to loads of them anyway - nothing will change except I’ll have a less depressing news feed! But…I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Even as I looked at people who I know I won’t even send a happy birthday wish to, it just didn’t seem like anyone had done any specific thing to warrant it. Even with this reasoning it still felt unjustifiably harsh somehow; too hard to change my passive rejection to an active one. Why?
Having always been something of a hoarder, it was possibly inevitable that such a trait would be carried on to a social network capacity; it’s just that, instead of a “But I had so much fun playing with all that Meccano! I can’t get rid of that and throw away the possibility of doing so again!”, it’s now a “But I used to get on so well with that person! I can’t delete them and throw away the possibility of ever speaking again!”. It seems the underlying cause hasn’t really changed at all - it’s just that the involved is no longer an inanimate object. (Although, I did always have a bit of inanimate object empathy…which might explain some of the hoarding.)
So, a cull is yet to happen, and little has changed beyond being a friend less. Admittedly, I have always been a bit rubbish at initiating conversation with people on Facebook / keeping touch in general beyond the ease of a ‘like’ here and a comment there, and I could have done a better job to prevent this from happening. I could be looking too much into this, but because of this deletion I find myself suddenly feeling more positive and closer to change; I now feel much more admiration towards those that manage to pull these culls off, even if I happen to be a victim, and I think I’m a step closer to doing it myself. It may yet take a bit more time to prepare myself mentally, but I’m getting there. The plastic sheets in those Meccano sets are probably snapped in half anyway.
