Casa De Salvador Dali

Port  Lligatt, Spain

A Stuffed, snarling polar bear covered in jewellery, giant plaster eggs and a swimming pool shaped like a penis: It must have been interesting for guests who visited Salvador Dali’s house during the decades he lived there. The renowned surrealist artist bought a collection of small fisherman’s houses in Cadaques during the 1930’s and gradually combined and enlarged them into a structure  resembling Wonderland, with warrens of small rooms filled with unlikely objects and winding terraced gardens.

Nothing at Dali’s is to be taken at first glance. Everything has a story. The three stuffed swans leering down on the library from a shelf, those belonged to Dali as pets and would swim around in the bay in front of Port Lligat. Upset that he could not see them at night, Dali fitted candles mounted on small helmets to their heads and would sit with his wife, Gala and watch the small yellow lights float past his house.  

Likewise, his narrow swimming pool turns out to be crafted in the form of a giant misshaped phallus, surely a thoroughly unsettling addition to any garden though at Dali’s it does not seem out of context among the giant, misty-eyed snakes and empty thrones that adorn the giant veranda, and where the king and queen of this surrealist kingdom used to sit before their court. Though both Dali and Gala have been dead for many years, this place lingers on, full of their eccentricities and a strange and unsettling energy that is hard to explain. Over the years I have visited Dali’s house many times, taking groups of friends and relatives and acting as a de-facto tour guide through the cool streets and dusty roads that lead up through the town and into the countryside to Port Lligat, and yet never am I completely comfortable there.

I could put the above feelings of unease down to the obvious bizarreness and insanity that is basically daubed upon the walls down to those staring black-and-white eyes of his that look out from dozens of photographs around the house. Certainly, it is hard not to feel shivers down ones spine when walking past a giant plastic couch shaped like a pair of luscious lips, or that silent stuffed polar-bear standing guard by the door.

Maybe though, it is that I find Dali not an amusing and eccentric buffoon with a talent for painting as I feel he tries to portray himself but rather a sinister creature who’s perversities were window-dressed enough that he has gained a cult status around the world. His sexual deviancies (which were many) led him to lust over very young men and women and photograph them naked in his garden. Watching a documentary about this recently, I found myself hearing Dali’s drawn-out, deep voice for the first time and seeing his strange face with its blank-eyed leer in a series of short videos. For me, seeing his lurching mannerisms as he droned huskily on about strange, senseless subjects I formed a deep dislike for the man.

That I think Dali was by all accounts a twisted pervert does not mean that I don’t harbour a certain cautious admiration for his work and indeed his house. The tacky shock value in everything he creates, from the décor of the rooms he lived in to his most famous works in all their strange glory, it is hard to explain but the effects work and do not look half as bizarre as one would expect. One can look at said art work and is confronted by a painting of Christ that when you stand back turns into the face of Abe Lincoln, or strange drawings of melting clocks and elephants with stick legs and recoils instinctively but at the same time something draws you in, compulsively. At his house, the same effect is created in each bizarre room, and always, as I walk home in the evening it leaves me slightly confused.

The Famed Penis Shaped Swimming Pool

The area Dali used to shoot many of his pictures involving young men

A member of the very relaxed Catalan security

Hay Tools and Dovecot combined

A sculpture above the entrance to a folly, Dali's garden

Dali and Gala's beds (a series of mirrors reflected the sunlight towards them in the mornings) where they slept separately 

Statue, Dali's Studio

One of the windows in Dali's studio, looking out to the bay

A half finished Dali, sitting in his studio

The Chair Dali painted from when he became too elderly to stand and work

A Window to the Beach

Bridge to America from Spain, a symbol Dali saw himself as

Two of the pet swans Dali had stuffed

Charlotte and the stuffed bear in the coatroom

Owl in the coatroom

The guardian bear in the coatroom that Dali took from France on a train, paying a ticket for his furry accomplice 

The outside of the Dali House at midday

Two Lovers? Statues on Dali's wall that can be seen from the road, or possibly sea

The Moustache

who is he that he can see what I cannot

that staring out to sea he comprehends

not stars but burning golden dragons

the sea a blanket of razor blades,

fishing boats wounded bloody geese wearing torches

for helmets while smooth white heads look on unflinching

from a churning shore of black ants

his very face a canvas to his history

 

Black moustache hanging, defying gravity

Twisted wooden cane connected to white knuckles

Staring, staring eyes seeking out sanity to destroy it

With a paint brush as King Phillip’s sword

 

I have no sword, but like everyone else

I know his secret

Pick an axe up from the ground

Weigh the thing upon your palm

Balance wooden handle on callused hand

Breathe deep a moment, pull air to lungs

Eyes shut firmly, then open

 

Strike a mirror; bring point of axe to silent glass

watch the furnace collapse

as simply as

a rock

in dark sea

 

His brain is that glass, jagged edges and warped shapes

twisted yellow vines climbing a crumbling mansion

ants around a rotting carcass, searching for some way in

I have been that ant, stood with both feet upon his tomb

melting eyes and noses watching me from white walls

wondering how to think like this.

 

 

The Euphoric Nature of Fresh Produce

Food has the peculiar quality of being influential in almost any aspect of human development. Aside from the obvious biological aspect, what we eat can play a huge roll in who we become mentally, influencing us for good and bad. Today, a disturbing lack of regard has surfaced towards what we in the first world will consume and, though definitely not the only culprit, America seems to lead the way. Fast food outlets have pervaded almost every large town and in the home-prepackaged goods are consumed with abandon.

Personally, I consider myself to be a “foodie” and at university often times I find myself appalled by the quality of our meals. Though one could counter my distaste by reminding me how fortunate I am compared with the majority of the world’s population, I don’t believe that would constitute a relevant argument. I have spent my fair share of time in the developing world and seen much worse BUT at the same time I have seen much better and know that it would not be too hard to prepare something palatable for us, especially when taking into account the amount we pay for the privilege of eating lines of cooked-to-death hamburgers, piles of greasy pizza and hunks of unidentifiable meat. We are students in AMERICA, historically a land of opportunity and drive yet the watery cabbage and bean soup we eat suggest more Slovakian prison than New Hampshire College. At the end of the day, food is obviously not a huge priority for those in charge and yet we are expected to perform well in class and have enough energy left over to play sports or take part in extracurricular activities.

Ok, I’ll agree that maybe I’m idealistic in the extreme and have no comprehension of running of viable university cafeteria. If I was to relinquish my claim that our food is needlessly crap, I would hang onto but one small annoyance. Standing in line for the school salad bar, or rummaging through the piles of apples and oranges I am foiled in finding good food even there. The lettuce is either soggy or crunchy with ice, the carrots are the tiny type sprayed to death with chemicals and the one time I saw a peach it was like steel grapeshot.

Now, compare that with the produce found at a Spanish market like the one in my adopted hometown of Cadaques. Before I continue though, I must quickly say that although bias towards Europe and most things European or foreign I am not oblivious to my home continents failings. I see our rising debts, our immigration problems, our huge desire to be American and the other shortcomings that we share with almost everywhere else today. I know we are definitely not perfect but mainland Europeans undoubtedly know about food, having improved and tweaked their knowledge for thousands of years. Though Starbucks, KFC, McDonalds and dozens of other chains have crossed the Atlantic and now lie in almost as many European streets as American, food is still relished in many places here.

Anyways, walk up the concrete drainage tunnel that serves to hold the local Cadaques market every Monday and the food stalls come into view behind the pirate C.D shops. Piles of fresh apples, peaches, grapes, mushrooms, tomatoes and garlic sit beside plastic vats of olives and legs of cured ham. The fruit is picked nearby and very ripe, so that eating a peach you get the sticky juice and pulp over your fingers. True, most is not organic but still, it has to be said that even sprayed with chemicals it is a world away from iced lettuce and soggy tomatoes. If the school could at least find me some fresh fruit and veg. I would shut up instantly and never complain again. Even just give me permission to go out into the fallow land by the schools water tower with a spade, some seeds and enough fencing to keep the deer away and I would try to at least plant and grow some addition sustenance. The food mentioned above and photographed below is enough to make me happy for a long time.

Now, I am on occasion a realist and I understand that there is little chance of my dreams turning into reality. Either the administration would be too stingy or even more worrying, perhaps most students would actually prefer the current university cuisine to anything I would consider remotely edifying. What I would say though, is that they should take a look at the photos I've posted below, imagine the real thing then tell me that we shouldn’t at least ask for something remotely resembling this. Just because we are students DOES not mean a healthy and yet amazingly good option should be denied us. 

Forbearers

 

With hand and foot they built this land

Bleeding palm on chipped rock, they carved these steppes

Dusty sole treading silently up narrow paths

The sea behind, and only dust rock sky ahead

 

Some heaved and groaned and pulled

Fish from blue waters

Fingers chafing on worn lines and canvas sails

Watching their flopping pray die upon the wooden deck

 

There were constants with all, holding them tight

In their gods’ hands

Backbreaking work that dulled the soul like a knife

Upon the rock of mountains

 

Salt lay heavy in their hair and in scales upon their backs

Eyes grew blotchy from uncaring sun, lips red from cheap wine

Pipe smoke and anchovies in small houses

Blackened from sun like those who lived there

 

Women, waiting in mock silence, necks like trucks of olive trees

Brown and twisted from carrying pots

Of oil along the polished stones of the shore

While seagulls cried and children wept at being left alone

 

They would sit in black on bleached slate

Palms of hands there to speak

Days of labour on the nets, the scars still present

The same palms to bury a husband, rear a child

End a life or bring one screaming, into the world

 

Now where are they? These men with bent backs

And women with hard faces

Buried in unforgiving rock or lost,

in unforgiving sea

 

 

We sit now in that square, drink coffee by well-fed dogs

And Germans clutching tourist maps, children throwing sand

Locals selling trinkets in whitewashed shops with bright awnings

These, decedents of the  men with bent backs and women with hard faces

 

Faded photographs of their fathers long past, stacked quietly in a drawer

Do the children of these faded photographic figures

Sit on sofas with dogs and T.V, wondering quietly

who built these hills and planted trees?

 

 

 

 

 

Endings,

Tartan Heart, 2009 

 

Tartan Heart ended in a sudden change of pace, if not a pause of action. Saturday night had seen minor classes of violence, drug overdoses, wild parties, and all that stereotypes the dark side of music festivals until suddenly the sun came up and exposed a barren landscape of collapsed tents and rubbish-strewn fields. The policemen massed in numbers and grew more forceful, and those festival-goers whose mobile phones had run out scowled and searched in vain for a charging socket.  Lines of hung-over lads waited for bacon sarnies, shivering from early morning cold weather and the alcohol that was slowly leaving their systems. Emerging from destroyed tents, a few unlucky campers blinked in the sunlight and wondered glumly how it was that someone managed to break their tent poles during the night.

During that night of drunken chaos and into the next day as bags were packed and hoisted into the back of cars and the festival ground slowly to a halt I wandered the campsite alone, my camera in hand. The following are a few shots of frenzied bedlam, drunken revelry, relieved celebration and exhausted acceptance: