This imaginary labyrinth –or labyrinths- of one’s intellect would grow in all directions: innumerable steps in innumerable stairs leading to the higher and lower levels of the mind’s heights and depths; its confines extending north, south, east and west in a vast and innermost imaginary landscape. The labyrinth would grow increasingly larger in all directions fuelled by desire, the unassailability of the loved other and by such other factors.

All this paints a suitably Romantic picture of the tortured state of mind of that who loves a distant love –quite suitable for our Italian nobleman living in 1826-, it sketches a portrait of the growing desire for this encounter with the other to take place as it depicts rather flamboyantly all those escalating emotions and parallels them to the growing size and complexities of the proposed mental maze.

But for it to be complete, for it to encompass all variables of human experience, one such labyrinth should also incorporate time. Thus, as all the other aspects and variables extend, the labyrinth would also grow to perpetuate itself in time, rewriting past memories, creating others, projecting itself into a not yet existing future, shaping it. This would give us the also suitable proposition that completely unassailable love would engender the complete labyrinth: universal, eternal in time and space.

Nevertheless, this ultimate labyrinth of our present disquisition could not possibly exist precisely in such a form as stated above. Any love needs a beloved, and the measure of the beloved’s labyrinth must per force also be taken into account.

These two labyrinths -in their growing and extending- could possibly touch in the infinity of space, like the intertwining fingers of two young lovers; in fact, the more unassailable the love, the bigger the labyrinths and their ramifications, and so the possibilities for that intersection to become real.

A completely unassailable love, as proposed before, would not engender one ultimate labyrinth extending endlessly in time and space, but it would engender two symmetrical labyrinths inhabited respectively by the two  equally enamoured lovers. Discussion might occur as to whether the two labyrinths could be different, or maybe exact mirrors of each other; some might even propose that this confluence of the two would then create one, single and total labyrinth.

And therein lays the great paradox of this whole argument, should we take the reasoning encapsulated by such metaphor as ‘your absence is a labyrinth growing into my soul’ to this farfetched length. A completely absent and utterly unassailable love, if shared by two lovers, will eventually unite their two growing labyrinths in one where they will search each other forever through endless time and space.

This should give us hope: if absence can build such labyrinths, the folly of love can make them so infinite that one and his beloved might, one day, cross paths.

Seven short texts I wrote in 2005, which I had completely forgotten about and just found by chance. Fascinating to find that the idea of using the same syntagms in various orders to generate a narrative and different meanings had started already then (nº1, 4).

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1. Lemon

White             fallen            bleeding

Concrete         grey              water

Licking           newspaper

Wind

Grey                bleeding

Newspaper      licking           concrete

White

fallen

water

2. Door

In the wasteland left alone

half standing in defiance

to those that had disposed of it.

It was not any more a passage,

a landmark between two worlds.

It had ceased to be.

Slowly devoured by oxide, that

invisible army of worms,

eating it up.

Like the slow fire of the stake

burned the flesh of the impious,

slowly,

eating it up.

3. Why you walk away

Words,

useless myriad of stars

in the constellation of language.

Desperate reaching gestures

trying to bridge anywhere,

out.

How could one reach

the unreachable,

the other,

you…

with

those desperate,

dignified reaching gestures,

that myriad of useless human cries?

How to say

how I long for my soul

to bathe in the dark, secret lake of your eyes?

4. Street Seller

Hours              lost

newspapers                        beer

old glasses                          worn out

Life                 lost

Crumbling                 look

confused                            walk

Lost                papers

hours                                 beer

worn out                            life

Lost                glasses

Confused                  hours

Crumbling                 life

5. Because I doubt

It is because I doubt,

that everything is unclear.

Paralysed, I doubt

suspicious of my right to doubt, even;

sweating, consumed in uncertainty.

Do you doubt, too?

Do you see my doubts?

Do you…?

It is because I doubt, I know

that everything seems to take so long:

Do you…?

Did you…

doubt…

…from the very beginning?

6. Milk

In one corner

at the side of the station

an old milk pack.

Torn,

eroded by rain and rats,

kicked by a mumbling commuter.

The remains of its content still around it,

Like the urine of a dead man…

…or an exploded lung.

7. The Old Man

The old man sits quietly on the carriage.

The early light of the sun is falling down from a confused sky, breaking up into a constellation of little golden reflexes in the windows of the buildings as the train goes by.

In the far distance, Canary Wharf and the other towers appear like a ghostly fleet of metallic ships coming out of the mist; almost out of one’s own future memories…

The carriage is full of people reading busily, full of a barely contained energy. The old man sits still, his grey eyes look still into the void. After some minutes the train stops: Liverpool St., final destination.

The mass of people moving out like an organic, chaotic tide cannot rock his stillness. The old man moves slowly, incredibly self-absorbed.

Lost in the strange bliss of someone irretrievably tired of oneself, he is waiting; waiting with the eternal smile of the stars… to stop being.

I received an e-mail from conductor Eduardo Portal at the beginning of last July outlining the possibility of a commission of a piece for the Burgos Summer Festival (Spain), which would eventually be premiered during the Festival by the Antares Ensemble under his baton. I found out in the course of the ensuing correspondence with the chap in question that the piece, if I was to write it, was going to receive its premiere on the 11^th of September, 2009, and not 2010. This, effectively, was going to leave me with four weeks to produce a finished score and parts, which by any standards is not very much at all.

Nevertheless, the brief was captivating: to write a ten minute string orchestra piece to be premiered alongside H. Purcell’s suite Abdelazar. Apart from the actual line-up (string orchestra is, possibly, my favourite medium), the whole idea of relating the piece somehow to the Purcell was extremely appealing to me, definitely falling into the area of my compositional research and interests and so, despite the shortness of time given to write it, I accepted.

My first compositional impulse was (and this links the birth of this piece with Birtwhistle’s premiere of Semper dolens, semper Dowland at the Southbank some weeks earlier) to try and write a whole piece that would ‘write in’ the Purcell suite. That is, to incorporate the whole of the Purcell into a larger work’s fabric, connecting all the dances with my own music and adding other layers while the original Purcell was being performed. In other words, my idea was to try and turn the whole listening to the Purcell into an act of musical memory, almost like a palimpsest: traces of the Purcell would be ‘allowed’ to come to the foreground at times, but would form together with my music a larger, and longer, narrative. In a way, and to be fair to my critic of the Birtwhistle which you can find in one of the prior posts, I was trying to undertake the whole venture in the spirit I boldly put forward in that text.

Unfortunately, I soon realised that this compositional approach would require a long and careful undertaking to really make all the choices regarding adding layers to the Purcell, writing the linking music, choosing the way of allowing it to come to the foreground etc, a long and careful compositional process for which I did not have the time in the four weeks I was being given. Much to my regret, I had to abandon this promising idea.

So I looked elsewhere. I was fascinated by the centenary tradition of writing incidental music for the scene (of which the Purcell is a wonderful example) but also by other musics that had been written for the scene with another purpose other than being sung. It was under this last category that the Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes by Britten and Berg’s instrumental suite from Lulu came to my mind. Then, Apollon musagète by Stravinsky (which was also written for yet another stage purpose –ballet- and also written for string orchestra) gave me the idea of the mythical subject for my piece.

In a strange combination of the two sources, I had the idea of writing the piece based on the mythical subject of Echo and Narcissus (a myth that in its Roman version seems to me frightfully contemporary and close to our times) and rather than writing incidental music, I chose to endeavour and write orchestral interludes for it, and so my instrumental suite would be like an incomplete torso of a non-existing operatic work: the interludes for a musical drama that does not exist yet, hoping that maybe one day these interludes will find their place within a larger work. Compositionally, I created different material for each character -and  related musical identities for the different characters- as if this had been a full opera undertaking. So the incomplete torso was written as the first sections of the full work, so to speak, but keeping the whole in sight.

Then, if a closer integration of Purcell’s material in my piece was not going to be feasible due to lack of time I decided to have the two pieces interspersed and allow them to be boldly contrasting with each other, and in true Post-Modern spirit, make them the living proof of the contemporaneity of traditions that Post-Modernity embodies.

In the end, and furthering those ideas even more, it was decided that the Purcell would be played by a quartet with a tiorba, and my Echo and Narcissus by the rest of the Antares Ensemble. I wrote Echo and Narcissus knowing this and therefore taking into account the tonal centres of the Purcell, and also the duration of its movements in order to create a juxtaposed ordering that would fit each piece like a glove. The stage disposition was orchestra on the left, quartet on the right, and all the movements were played as a continuum on the night. This really brought out the best out of the two narratives, as the different styles refreshed each other, and the different sizes, spatial relation and character of the ensembles really turned the whole experience into a sort of musical zapping of two pieces, of two narratives designed for similar purposes, but in totally different contexts.

A true exercise in the actualisation of Archetypes.

Play Echo and Narcissus (2009)

(rehearsal recording, unfortunately without the Purcell movements!)

I. Liriope and Cephissus

II. Tiresias

III. Echo and Narcissus

IV. Death of Echo

V. Death of Narcissus

I went into the English National Opera without knowing what to expect of L’Amour de Loin. I didn’t know that much of Saariaho’s music, but had heard some positive comments on the lead-up to the performance. The subject, that of impossible love and based on Occitan courtesan love poetry of the Middle Ages –a literary tradition entwined so strongly with my Catalan forefathers-, was pregnant with interesting possibilities of re-interpretation, of translation of its symbolism, of actualisation of a subject –that of loving the impossible- which has been experienced by humans for thousands of years, indeed since humans became humans.

The libretto, written by Lebanese author Amin Maalouf didn’t want –nor even tried- any of that. In complete discordance with the praxis of other –more interesting- contemporary authors like Borges, Bioy Casares, etc, Maalouf seemed content with just re-issuing the Thousand-and-One-Nights bestseller yet again. His text and the way the action is set don’t help to de-contextualise those mediaeval verses on which the libretto is based at all –and which by the way, are very dear to me-; so we only got, to put it in modern parlour, yet another period drama.

In truth and to be fair, this is more than a criticism to Maalouf a statement of my own Aesthetic stand, and therefore shouldn’t be held against Maalouf, nor Saariaho. Nevertheless, if the intent was a recreation of that ideal setting for an idealistic plot of ideal love and the personal, intimate journey that such feelings might inspire, the endeavour failed dramatically. The direction of the drama was constantly stopped for no reason with one after another ‘reflective arias’ and the key moment of the whole work, the hiatus between the love from afar and the final meeting of the two lovers with the subsequent death of its protagonist, that crucial moment of transformation which sat in the middle of the dramatic timeline –the journey when the main male character falls ill while sailing to meet his loved one, only to die when meeting her- was completely brushed under the carpet, dispensed with without attention in a surprisingly short time and with, possibly, the least elaborated music of the night. Thus, the whole action was rendered stale, as the two halves of the drama –lovers in the distance and lovers united- were juxtaposed without a proper elaboration on the reasons for such a tragic ending, which the audience was presented with without further comment.

This said about the actual libretto, I have to admit that I am not entirely sure that the responsibility for the lack of direction, of transformation of the characters, that the stale nature of the boat/life journey can be thrown upon Maalouf’s shoulders alone. On the contrary, I believe that most of the lack of direction, contrast and transformation came from the terrible lack of all of those in the music.

Saariaho seemed to me the worst advocate for the story at hand, since she misunderstood the idealistic, idyllic setting for a dazzling fable with composing a musical backdrop so lush all along and so hypnotically regular in its continuous change, that after the first act ended one wondered if the barman had slipped some drugs into the wine one had before entering. Overall, the huge sense of disappointment and, literally, of feeling one had just been hit over the head with a brick, was only counteracted by the wonderful, creative display from director Danielle Finzi. Always colourful, always on the move, always imaginative and captivating, Finzi’s efforts and displays were almost the only thing worth following on stage.

Still, Saariaho’s music has a wonderful sparkling, glittering quality to it which could have made for a brilliant ten-minute orchestral piece, but turned into a self-induced torture when elongated to the two hours and a half that L’Amour de Loin lasted.

It is always very strange to write long time afterwards about performances one experienced, even more if one –that is, me- seemed to rather carelessly not take down notes about it. Nevertheless, I reckon the distance and the forgetting provide an extra filter for the judging of the pieces, as indeed one only carries within the more memorable instances, the more striking gestures and long lasting instants. It is under this distant and faint light that I approach the reviewing of these two performances: Birtwhistle’s double bill at the Queen Elizabeth Hall (Semper Dowland, Semper Dolens and The Corridor) and (in the following A Composer’s Notebook entry) the English National Opera rendition of Kaija Saariaho’s opera L’Amour de Loin.

Sir Harrison’s Fest opened with Semper Dowland, Semper Dolens -overall, a truly remarkable enterprise to undertake-. This adaptation/rewriting combined together two peaks of the lute’s master production: the Lachrimae and six beautiful songs. Although, as Sir Harrison writes in the notes that he thinks of arrangement as an act of love, I still thought there could (or even should!) have been some more love (as in arranging) going on in this work. In a way, I was expecting him to have found a wonderful way of writing in those original pieces by Dowland into something bigger, of the sort of creating a contemporary context for them: make them appear and disappear, skilfully, from within the textures and back again in a sort of exquisitely controlled palimpsestic discovery.

We had a glimpse of an attempt to do precisely that in the first and last Lachrimae, but everything else in between just felt a little bit too much of a costumary –if superbly executed- transcription. Because there were no truly remarkable additions to the originals, I could never understand why there was a need not to have a consort of viols play the Lachrimae, as Birtwhistle’s different ensemble didn’t seem to add that much to it. Similarly, the songs (only accompanied by a modern harp) made me wonder why not use a theorbo, a lute, or whatever good old Dowland chose himself to accompany the singer, since nothing was done to alter the music, or add layers to it.

In an ironic way, for a man so bold in his statements, Semper Dowland, Semper Dolens felt like an awkward state of indecision: neither just presenting the original music and claiming authorship only of the actual idea of the juxtaposition/interspersing, neither a complete and bold reworking of the pieces so that they became part of a much larger –with much more Birtwhistle in it- work.

On the contrary, with The Corridor we found Sir Harrison much more at ease and, indeed, we did hear some true sparks of his bold dramatic talent. A piece of musical drama that wants to look at a very brief moment of time (that of Orpheus and Eurydice transiting from Hades and back to the world, and the former’s fatal turn to look back with the consequent loss of Eurydice), and so not unlike –at least in intent- to Arnold Schönberg’s Erwartung.

Here, with a hands-free set up, Birtwhistle manages to achieve again that well known skill of his which is dramatic pacing. I wouldn’t say completely flawless, as there was abundance of rhetorical moments which did weaken the direction of the piece, which was overall gripping and very effective indeed. The vocal lines were in places reminiscent of certain features of his opera The Minotaur, if –at least for myself- more expressive and successful than those sung by the half man, half beast and his Cretan colleagues.

Despite all of that, the sung passages lacked a certain variety and a stronger sense of direction. Not dramatic direction, but purely a sense of musical journey through different areas (either textural, tonal or rhythmical). The music felt disappointingly unchanged after all the emotional transformation the characters –and the audience- underwent.

But the greatest moments of the piece, and indeed the night, were the instrumental interludes for the main action, when the singer took over the stage acting as a sort of commentator/spectator of the unfolding drama reciting the text rather than singing it. Then the music was focused –with Birtwhistle’s little obsessive mobile motives that kept rotating in the ensemble- and the whole atmosphere just lifted up. The somehow rhetorical text could flow undisturbed, the ensemble could be what Birtwhistle is as a composer, and –sadly, but not that much- we could dispense with his vocal lines.

It is a bitter irony that the best parts of what pretends to be a musical drama are those spoken and not those sung. But we shouldn’t mind when those are totally gripping and extraordinarily expressive; and when the whole enterprise shows so much integrity and talent.

I come back to this blog after too long a break from it. The always manic end of the academic year was this time spiced up with the further addition of two commissions to be written over the summer, one with very short notice indeed. Hence, I was prevented from writing on these pages by the serious work I had to put in for those pieces and, on the other hand, also by the imperative need to get some proper rest during the summer.

Things had somewhat piled-up already before August: overdue reviews of Sir Harrison Birtwhistle’s double-bill at the Southbank and of Keija Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin at the ENO that were never published. Nevertheless, and given the choice, I confess I preferred a blog-free summer getting on with all the composing I had to do and combining it with some serious cycling in the little time that the writing of my new string orchestra suite, Echo and Narcissus, left me.

At the same time, I also want to comment on certain aspects of the process of composing both the suite for strings (written in four weeks!) and Five Words, Three Phrases written for the Schubert Ensemble, and also how the collaboration with artist Albert Corbí and the filming of my Litanies for solo guitar went in Bilbao. Of course also publish some latter, more recent reviews like Tristan und Isolde at the ROH and Le Grand Macabre at ENO.

The beginnings of the academic year are never straight forward, and certainly not without extra work to do until everything sinks into a manageable, straight forward, if slightly chaotic, routine. All the promised articles for other series like Cartas desde Londres, or the Quadern Mediterràni will eventually get written and published over the next weeks.

This is a serious back to work for me, then!

Alban Berg (1885-1935) was writing Lulu at the time of his death and left it unfinished. Nevertheless, the work was almost complete and Berg’s short score showed very clear instructions as to how to transfer into full score the short-hand draft. The orchestration of most of the third Act was completed years later by F. Cerha, following Berg’s written instructions. Based on two controversial stage works by multi-faceted Frank Wedekind (1864-1918), Erdgeist and Die Büsche der Pandora, Lulu explores the rise and fall of its central female character and all others surrounding her, in the most brutal and compelling way.

We are already warned at the beginning that ‘this is no middle class entertainment, but an exposé of the bestial nature of all human beings’. Indeed, the story of this strange woman that manages to exert such power of attraction over all men and women in the plot, and at the same time only manage to slowly destroy herself and everyone around her is but of a brutal nature.

The way the plot -almost a hundred years old now- and the wording of the lines in the libretto remain so incredibly contemporary is almost a miracle. I cannot think of any other opera of the time that remains so new at a surface level as much as at a deeper one. The way the crisis of a whole society is represented in the story is tremendous. Seeing and listening to the characters of the opera, their concerns, the degradation of the Weimar Republic, the opportunism of investors, the stock-exchange crack, the way the characters immerse in and pursue pleasure and excess as a way of anesthetising their perception of the reality around them I perceive as terribly contemporary to us. Not only in the same way than Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is contemporary, but in a much more direct and poignant way.

Today we can find the same characters in the streets of the City of London, and putting the same lines in their mouths as Wedekind wrote a hundred years ago would seem the most natural thing. In a way, Europe is reliving the 1929 crack, with its prior demises, excesses, corruptions; with its turning a blind eye to the rising of extremisms, with a fearful society that turns on its back and trusts their destiny to the conservatives not so much to go forward, but to ensure nothing changes, that certain privileges are not lost; and nevertheless waiving its rights without too much thought at the first order that ‘sacrifices have to be made’ to remain secure.

All of these considerations gave Berg’s score an added impact on the night which one could not miss. The Royal Opera House production had the most excellent, expressive and seductive cast:

Agneta Eichenholz was a superb and rather attractive Lulu, her singing having a rather cool, but cutting quality that added magnetism to the character.

Jennifer Larmore was a sensational Countess with the most beautiful, expressive and charged singing of the night. Michael Volle and Gwynne Howell were also very good indeed in their portrayals of Schön and Schigolch, with some terrific singing, while Philip Langridge showed once more his savoir fair.

The Orchestra’s performance was of the high standards that Pappano has got us used to. Nervertheless, it lacked a certain brilliance and punch which we only got at certains points of the drama.

The stage design, which had taken a rather minimalist and contemporary look (much to my enjoyment, as it highlighted the correspondences between the 1930s and today) was rather impressive in its simplicity and cold beauty. Nevertheless, the directing was indeed poor, turning most of the action into abstract patterns of walking and very detached motions from the characters that did not manage to take all the advantage of the great libretto and of the prodigious music. Only the great acting skills of some of the most experienced singers could add the necessary ‘stage presence’ for the intensity of the action. In this aspect, Gwynne Howell’s star shone far brighter than anyone else’s.

Despite of these shortcomings in the direction, there were some truly memorable moments during the night, which sprung of the magnificent music that Berg wrote for them. The murder or Schön, during Act II was one of them. A more liberated directing, together with an orchestra which Pappano awoke for the first time to team up with the potent singing that was taking place in the stage turned that scene ending –as it should be- into a true climax. A similar moment of exceptional, intense beauty was reached in the following scene when Alwa and Lulu embrace ‘on the couch on which your father bled to death’.

But for me the high point of all the opera -and the only moment where pure love is displayed in the whole drama- was at the very end, when the lesbian Countess sings her unconditional and eternal love for Lulu, after she has been murdered. Berg wrote for this the most glorious, lush music, with a vocal line so poignant and sensuous that when it is rendered as it was on the night by Jennifer Larmore, one seems to understand and believe again that pure, eternal love is possible even in our present world of misery and decadence.

Históricamente se ha asociado a las diferentes vertientes políticas de derecha e izquierda ciertas propensiones filosóficas y de pensamiento. Esto es, la sociedad Moderna articuló sus dos polos políticos de una forma Moderna: dos pensamientos coherentes, linajes de pensadores de uno u otro bando que habían generado un corpus teórico, unas políticas con unos objetivos claros y simples, preceptos que eran transmitidos de manera similarmente directa y clara a las bases sociales de esos grupos políticos.

Todo esto que podía ser cierto de la vida política de hace cien años ha pasado a la Historia en tanto en cuanto nuestra Contemporaneidad ha dejado de vivir en la Modernidad y la Post-Modernidad se ha abierto finalmente paso. En el mundo Post-Moderno, como ya estamos viendo en la geopolítica mundial actual, la tradicional bipolaridad está siendo sustituida por una multipolaridad global, la coherencia del pensamiento está convirtiéndose en una riqueza basada en la diversidad de los puntos de vista y la tradición teórica se personaliza a niveles inauditos al entrar en contacto con las bases políticas.

Esta reordenación total producida por la Post-Modernidad está también influyendo de una manera revolucionaria en la ordenación del campo político tradicional, favoreciendo en él transformaciones paralelas a las experimentadas por otros ámbitos de la sociedad Contemporánea, una vez engullidos por la Post-Modernidad. Sin embargo, no todas las sensibilidades políticas están respondiendo a los retos de la Post-Modernidad de la misma manera, lo que puede llevarnos a ciertos desequilibrios poco deseables en el juego político democrático, si no aprendemos a interpretar la realidad traída por el cambio de una manera lúcida y adecuada.

El motivo de este artículo es explorar un ejemplo de la transformación que la Post-Modernidad ha ejercido en la política, la nueva dicotomía a través de la cual las antiguas facciones políticas de derecha e izquierda tienden a expresarse hoy en día en la sociedad Contemporánea: la Política como Moda vs la Política como Religión.

•Política como Religión

El conservador siempre ha tendido a definirse en relación a la idea de permanencia, de conservar (conservadores), o de reacción frente al cambio (reaccionarios) o incluso de un sentimiento de nostalgia (los nostálgicos de éste u otro régimen: franquistas, carlistas, etc, incluso cierto tipo de republicanos). Los conservadores creen en el presente como una perpetuación directa de la Historia ya acontecida, y consiguientemente viven el paso del tiempo como una lucha empecinada para mantener ciertas estructuras tradicionales de poder, mantener viva la memoria de sus poderosos (sean Carlos V o Don Pelayo), y de sus mitos políticos (desde ‘no se ponía el sol’, hasta ‘con Franco se vivía plácidamente’).

Realmente el intento conservador es un intento de congelar el tiempo: para el conservador no hay futuro mejor que el pasado, como mucho el presente, y desde luego jamás un futuro abierto al cambio y por esto lleno de incertidumbres. Este pavor al cambio hace que el conservador trate de definir, de acotar el futuro en base al pasado que ya conoce antes de que se ese futuro se haga presente. Un pasado cuya interpretación el conservador considera completa, cerrada y no alterable mientras aspira igualmente a definir y a cerrar el futuro de la misma manera, a evitar a toda costa la alteración del porvenir.

Es por todo esto que la estructura profunda del votante conservador dentro de la Post-Modernidad se puede definir con una analogía hacia el modelo religioso: veneración del pasado y perpetuación de la memoria, veneración de sus poderosos, práctica de rituales, instrumentalización del martirio, e incluso en algunos casos la guerra al infiel. El creyente religioso, como el conservador, cree en un pasado cerrado a la interpretación y en un futuro que ya está escrito. La Historia, y con ella el presente no son sino el plan secreto de Dios, y los fieles luchan empecinadamente contra las fuerzas demoníacas para asegurar la permanecia y la durabilidad de ciertos principios, prácticas y rituales.

¿Quién no recuerda al Aznar de la última etapa llamando anticonstitucionales (una versión Post-Moderna de la herejía) a todo el que no seguía sus dogmas políticos? Lo que es más, Aznar invocaba a la Constitución no como un contrato social que puede ser modificado o abandonado por los que lo suscribieron sino cual libro sagrado inmutable, otorgándole a la carta magna un valor quasi Bíblico. En su caso, precisamente porque no puede tolerar ni un cambio de esa constitución, de ese pasado que él y otros como él definieron y cerraron durante la transición democrática. Para Aznar la constitución es un punto de llegada, no de partida. El texto en este caso, como en las religiones, no abre posibilidades, sino que marca el non plus ultra.

¿Quién no recuerda a Rajoy llamando Torquemadas del s.XXI a los jueces en la pasada campaña electoral? La comparación habla por si misma: dentro del imaginario conservador/religioso, se apela a la gloriosa condición de mártir, que en otras partes del planeta está tan bien considerada que hay quien se hace explotar en trenes y cafeterías para alcanzar esa forma de permanencia gloriosa en la memoria colectiva que asegura por vía rápida el martirio. Si esta condición de mártir se le otorga a un líder acosado por los infieles (el caso de Camps), ¿cómo evitar la adhesión incondicional de los fieles de la fe a tan supremo gesto de sacrificio?

¿Quién no recuerda la famosa arenga lanzada por los populares en el mítin de Valencia –no recuerdo si fue Camps o Rajoy- ‘vamos a por ellos’? No creo que haga falta señalar que no parece la mejor consigna de un partido democrático, sino más bien el grito de guerra que llama a los adeptos a la guerra contra el infiel.

También, y esta es la más preocupante de las analogías, en momentos de crisis la estructura religiosa ofrece certezas y no necesita de argumentos racionales para sustentar sus creencias; es más, siempre existe la sutil invitación a suspender el ejercicio de la razón y únicamente ‘tener fe’ (’Camps es el más honrado de los españoles’, Mayor Oreja dixit). En una sociedad Post-Moderna en crisis y mayoritariamente agnóstica, la religión ha dado paso ya a la Política como Religión.

Solamente así se pueden entender los últimos resultados electorales en Madrid o Valencia (sociedades en las que la corrupción conservadora es más que pornográfica y donde, paradójicamente, la derecha ha mejorado resultados). Solamente podemos entender estas victorias conservadoras si entendemos esos votos como la expresión de un fervor político-religioso que no admite ninguna crítica interna, sino que se articula de manera similar a los fundamentalismos religiosos en tanto en cuanto sus votantes actúan políticamente por fe, independientemente de que ésta esté o no sustentada por raciocinio o por los hechos.

•Política como Moda

El progresista, por el contrario, se define por su voluntad de cambio, por creer en la idea Moderna de progreso (progresista), y sentir la Historia como un proyecto abierto al futuro, una conquista progresiva de derechos y libertades individuales. El progresista entiende el presente como hijo del pasado pero acepta que el presente tiene el deber de abrirse al futuro incluso si esto implica correr riesgos o aceptar incertidumbres. La izquierda entiende la Historia como la continuación de un gran proyecto de desregularización de las tradicionales imposiciones sociales y culturales; proyecto que se inició en la Modernidad y que ha culminado recientemente en la Post-Modernidad.

De la misma manera que la lucha política ha sido una herramienta fundamental en todos los cambios que se han producido desde la Ilustración hasta la Post-Modernidad, el pensador francés Gilles Lipovetsky (’Hypermodern Times’, 2004, ‘The Empire of Fashion’ 1987, ‘L’ere du Vide’, 1983) nos presenta a la Moda como otra de las herramientas cruciales en el desarrollo de esta desregularización de la sociedad, como un factor determinante en la conquista y definición de espacios personales, de creación de identidades personales y de la introducción de cambios profundos en el sistema. La Lógica de la Moda, como la llama Lipovetsky, ha permeado todos los aspectos de la Modernidad hasta que la transformó en Post-Modernidad. Hoy en día ¿qué no obedece a la lógica de la moda en mayor o menor medida?

Dado que los progresistas luchan todavía hoy por ganar espacios de expresión personal, y por abrir nuevos ámbitos de derechos y libertades individuales, junto a la moda la política contemporánea se ha convertido para muchos progresistas en un factor más de individualización, en una herramienta más al servicio de su definición identitaria personal.

Dado que la Post-Modernidad y la revolución tecnológica junto con el confort ofrecido por el estado de bienestar han dinamitado una conciencia social real y activa, muchos progresistas apoyan una opción política u otra dependiendo de lo cool, lo alternativa, lo grunge, lo extrema que pueda ser como quién se compra unas gafas de sol o lleva una determinada cazadora, cómo quien recicla o dona a una ONG; es decir entienden y se sirven de la política principalmente como herramienta al servicio de la definición de su identidad más que como opción de una acción política real.

Para un sector numeroso del progresismo, y aunque no se lo confiesen a sí mismos, la política ya está completamente disociada de la sociedad y ellos ya han renunciado a sentirse responsables de lo social; únicamente les preocupa su propio ámbito identitario y la estética de la opción política con la que se alinean. Se sirven ya de la Política como Moda.

•Corolario: La Gran Crisis de la Izquierda Contemporánea

Es ésta la gran crisis de la izquierda contemporánea. La paradoja de la izquierda es la misma que la de la Modernidad: la esperada aplicación a todos los niveles de sus principios ha acabado aniquilándola. De la misma manera que los principios Modernos han acabado implantándose en la contemporaneidad desintegrando la Modernidad en Post-Modernidad, los principios de liberación y de derechos personales que la izquierda ha abanderado se han aplicado finalmente en el estado del bienestar, para misteriosamente anestesiar al progresismo frente a la realidad, convirtiéndolo en una constelación de pequeñas voluntades extremadamente celosas de su espacio personal, y a la vez completamente incapaces de hacer nada por salvarlo, atomizadas sus voluntades en dispersión Post-Moderna.

Hoy, la izquierda parece decidida a inmolarse voluntariamente ante la reacción. Incapaz de articularse frente a un fervor político-religioso análogo al integrismo fundamentalista, la izquierda parece resignada a ofrendarse en sacrificio a la reacción y renunciar progresivamente, casi por dejadez, a las conquistas que todos disfrutamos hoy gracias al gran esfuerzo de cambio y de progreso que se inició con la Ilustración hace un buen par de siglos y pico.

En un mundo en el que el estado del bienestar y la revolución tecnológica nos han dado cotas de libertad, autonomía y derechos nunca antes alcanzados (y que hoy nos parece que hayan estado siempre ahí) la política real ha sido desterrada casi únicamente al campo de lo virtual, y pocos parecen dispuestos a descender del ámbito de lo virtual/identitario/adolescente al de lo real/pragmático/adulto. Algunos aprecian con desdén que sus identidades políticas virtuales (y extraordinariamente personalizadas) nunca se verán fielmente representadas en el ámbito de lo real por nadie que no sea el propio sujeto, es decir ellos mismos. Esto ha resultado en la atomización del voto de izquierdas en numerosos partidos de carácter decorativo más que político (cuyo único valor real reside en la estética identitaria que ofrecen a sus votantes), y en la notoria y extrema negligencia del electorado de izquierdas a la hora de cumplir con su derecho (que es también un deber) de ejercer el voto: ¿Para qué esforzarse por votar, si nadie representará nunca de manera fiel y exacta mis ideales?

Por otro lado, la derecha, desacomplejada por primera vez desde la Segunda Guerra Mundial, está orgullosa de sí misma y enseña ya sin vergüenza sus miserias morales y su extremo cinismo a la vez que erosiona día a día, lentamente, la efectividad y las bases del sistema democrático. En una época de agnosticismo generalizado, con una crisis global del esquema de valores, del sistema capitalista, dentro de la gran incertidumbre que vivimos estos tiempos muchos parecen encontrar una bendición en las certidumbres y las garantías contra los cambios que la Política como Religión ofrece. Y no importa el coste en derechos y libertades, el coste en perversión del sistema democrático mientras haya un padrino que le garantice a uno seguridad y comodidad dentro de su pequeña parcela de yo. No hace falta recordar lo que el pueblo Americano aceptó en reducción de derechos y libertades después del ataque a las torres gemelas, en medio de incertidumbres y en favor de una cruzada (!) contra el terrorismo…

Curiosamente, muchos votantes progresistas actúan hoy de manera terriblemente snob y aristocrática: como un grupo de patricios que compiten por vestirse con las sedas (políticas) más exóticas y discuten por las esquinas la nueva ley de riego mientras los bárbaros ya saquean e incendian Roma. Parecen considerarse tan a salvo de la realidad y tan poco responsables de ella que ya, la mayor parte de las veces, ni votan.

Mientras, hay estructuras que medran peligrosamente en el suelo propicio de la atomización Post-Moderna, estructuras como el Fascismo de Baja Intensidad y la Política como Religión ganan adeptos día a día. Adeptos necesitados de alguien que les asegure pan, circo, y líderes fuertes en tiempos de crisis. Adeptos necesitados, sobre todo, de certezas en sus vidas en un tiempo de incertidumbre.

Unos están felizmente dispuestos a renunciar a sus privilegios sin importarles el coste; a rendir pleitesía a los poderosos a cambio de su protección por miedo o simplemente por puro cinismo. A los otros no parece importarles demasiado lo que pase en el espacio público mientras les quede la ilusión de su privacidad y se les permita expresarse en la periferia.

Y así, discreta y sibilinamente, el Fascismo de Baja Intensidad asciende imparable.

See whether tomorrow we get lucky.

I haven’t forgotten my agenda of articles, and I am just annoyed I cannot post them here yet!

So… I’ll be back soon-ish.