What I’m about to tell you is the most dreadful injustice I have ever witnessed, the end of my life, as I knew it, and the beginning of a travelling runaway currently ongoing. Overall, it is my desperate effort to build a painless bridge connecting void and gravity zero, a retaliatory sort of limbo where memories won’t weight and flashbacks shall become eviscerated, while I slowly travel-blog the ashes of a neglected, stolen world… and get ready to slice your throat —you know who you are, so take the hint and pray. I must honour the words of the Aikido ancestors, the daring and ruthless Samurai swordsmen who used the weapons that I train with NOT to blend seamlessly into nature (as O’Sensei, the founder, would advise years after), but to inflict deadly blows to any human or animal hazard. The old masters also believed that the Samurai sword is a holy blade only to be drawn as a last resort. They even estimated its average use: once every 500 years, even though most of those swashbucklers would unsheathe their weapons daily —and deadly. I’m just trying to honour the saying: «THIS IS THE MAGAZINE». I must use a nickname for prosecution purposes: there is an arrest warrant pending over my bony head. You can call me Wilson. If this opening paragraph were to be a song, it could be Jurgen’s Paape «In Time». Unfortunately, it sounds more like Aphex Twin drilling Mahler with a jackhammer. Music, literature and Aikido were once the answer. Then Nora stopped breathing and all the answers became obliterated. I had no alternative: I had to die by the sword. 024 I was young once. It was confusing and visceral. I thought I could write. Then I realised I could barely do it without embarrassing some of my heroes; hence I got a Degree in Journalism and shamed them all. My pal Manu got me my first gig as a movie critic for a trendy magazine printed in the Little Barcelona Hell during the late 1990s. Manu and I met inside a toilet. He managed to escape it. He set me up with an interview with the director of the toilet —aka the magazine. She had an impossible name, looked like an alligator dressed in Prada, had a fluffy, flaming-red hairdo, and a seemingly stillborn kangaroo stuck to her side. I was too spellbound to be horrified. Inevitably, I asked about the dead mammal. She said it was not a kangaroo but a Louis Vuitton handbag —almost the same thing. Then she said: It was a disposable affair: 72 trendy pages issued monthly that you could get for free in clubs, bars, record stores… It included fashion editorials featuring underage, intoxicated and very thin Catalans wearing Mickey Mouse jumpers and sucking lollipops; plus stories about music, arts, cinema and a cultural agenda mapping all the coolest spots in town where fashion and music victims would hang out with their Mickey Mouse’s jumpers and Adidas Gazelle on, while dipping their lollipops in their personal stacks. The headquarters where the alligator smoked and plotted her magazine revolution were in El Born, a former working class settlement properly dismantled and reassessed before the Olympics, that became the most hip, gentrified part of town. The HQ was some stunning 400 square metres apartment with a huge waiting room broadcasting fashion and music channels I had never heard of. It felt like strolling through a Scandinavian museum of modern art. I remember the sleek, dark glass tables in every meeting room, the abundance of gigantic interior plants, the mindblowing vintage lamps, and the pornographic Gaudi-meets- Da-Vinci-tiled floors. «All the furniture is by my favourite Norwegian interior designer», the director said. I was still in college embarrassing my heroes, and, all of a sudden, I walked into the backdoor of journalism… THROUGH LOUIS VUITTON BACKSTAGE IN BCN! I was lucky, wasn’t I? I would be travelling in private jets in no time. The director’s office was massive, filled with thousands of records, CDs, books and artworks. It felt like the Nazi’s bunker for artistic confiscations. She asked me to watch a movie called Will Hunting or something, and to write the review. It was the story of two young idiots who could play chess and scrub toilets, and who shared the most annoying therapist in the history of cinema. Nowhere, Now Here. Barcelona, 1990’s. Nowher, NOW HERE, March 2024. “He who lives by the sword dies by the sword.” HÉCTOR CASTELLS
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