BooksBarbecue
Back Loop
Chapters (33)
  1. Loop
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. 7
  9. 8
  10. 9
  11. 10
  12. 11
  13. 12
  14. 13
  15. 14
  16. 15
  17. 16
  18. 17
  19. 18
  20. 19
  21. 20
  22. 21
  23. 22
  24. 23
  25. 24
  26. 25
  27. 26
  28. 27
  29. 28
  30. 29
  31. 30
  32. A note on the text
  33. Copyright
  1. Right leg or left leg?
  2. Company or solitude?
  3. How would you translate the word lessness into Spanish?
  4. How many times do you suck on a stone before putting it in your pocket?
  5. A dark room, a voice speaks to you. What does it say?
  6. Your loved ones live in dustbins and you have a single chocolate-chip cookie. How do you share it?
  7. A king with a supermarket trolley or a tramp with a cardboard Burger King crown?
  8. What do we talk about when we talk about Godot?

One way of turning into a swallow is by writing: I’m a swallow. But can the written word break the silence like a song?

Oh, music. I like music so much. But not the birds’ kind. I like music I can sing in the kitchen while I’m cooking, or in the street while I’m walking along. I know what song you have in your head, Jonás. Sing it to me. You’re a good singer, come on.

What genre, what kind of music do we like? It’s hard to say, if Ovid is the first punk and Ramones tracks are classics. And they are, aren’t they, now the internet is our Alexandria and we’re all Aristophanes of Byzantium?

Music. It’s so good. If I had to pick ten songs out of all the music I know, I’d pick one by Bob Marley and one by Bach. The two of them would sit together on the same list, with the same panache. The songs that are furthest apart would be like strangers who hit it off right away.

Jonás plays the piano really well. He has beautiful hands, long fingers. He’s no good at working music out by ear. Most of the time, he plays from memory, but when he forgets something he looks over the sheet music on the piano at his parents’ house. His repertoire is what’s contained in those seven or ten notebooks with missing pages: his father’s favourite pieces. Jonás plays Bach’s preludes and fugues wonderfully. If I tried to play Bach on the piano, the part I’d do best would be grunting like Glenn Gould.

The other night, while his sister and I were making quesadillas, Jonás tried to work out ‘Wild is the Wind’ on the piano. It was a disaster.

What do I do? What’s my job? Aside from working in an office, how do I spend my time? I spend my time drawing all sorts of lines. This Sunday I drew a lot of lines like this one:

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