En cuanto al integrismo religioso judío, el problema es que el fundamentalismo está creciendo en todas partes. Entre los árabes, entre los judíos, entre los cristianos.

Incluso entre los ateos, porque hay manifestaciones fanáticas en la izquierda radical. Es un peligro creciente en todas partes porque la gente está ansiosa de respuestas simples. Cuanto más complicadas son las cosas, más necesidad tiene la gente de recibir respuestas simples y consoladoras.

-Amos Oz, premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras, 2007.

Were Niagara but a cataract of sand,
would you travel your thousand miles
to see it?

-Moby Dick, “Loomings”, Chapter I. Herman Melville.

Scrbe: MCC

No he podido pronunciarme. Trato de concentrarme en el silencio para pensar.

es inútil. Todo es ruido.
Cuento números hasta que me canso.
Defino.
Busco maravillas debajo de un pote.
Niego lo anterior.
Recaigo, besándote en la boca y aligerando un fin erótico. Una falta de respeto antipolite.
Creo que me cambian de sito los objetos que me los hago cambiar y me los saco en sistema; a ver.
Ese ataque de marx a todos los apriori (lea suave), ese apego al pensamiento crítico de marx, esa guerra sin fin contra la ideología alemana que luego se transformó en materialismo dialéctico.
La oración precedente está sin terminar.

By Greg Tate

James Baldwin liked to say “Artists are here to disturb the peace.” True that, Jimmy, true that. But when those rowdies are really on their game, they also rip folks out of mortal time and the fear of extinction. Lunge them away from their circadian lockstep and into the white-water roller-coaster rush of mythicized ritual frenzy, becoming mad, redemptive angel-banshees on the loose, casting wide nets, screaming love on that ass.

Escribe Guillermo Gómez-Peña

ESTIMADO lector/radioescucha/miembro del público presente, repita conmigo en voz alta:

MEXICO es California
Marruecos es Madrid
Pakistán es Londres
Argelia es París
Camboya es San Francisco
Turquía es Frankfurt
Puerto Rico es Nueva York
Centroamérica es Los Angeles
Honduras es New Orleans
Argentina es París
Beijing es San Francisco
Haití es Nueva York
Nicaragua es Miami
Quebec es Euskadi
Chiapas es Irlanda
your house is also mine
your language mine as well
and your heart will be ours
one of this nights

es la fuerza del sur…
el sur en el norte
el norte se desangra, se evapora
por los siglos de los siglos
and suddenly you’re homeless
you’ve lost your land again
estimado anti-paisano
your present dilemma is to wander
in a transient geography de locos
without a flashlight, without a clue
sin visa, ni flota, joder

Tomado de Bitácora del cruce, Fondo de Cultura Económica, DF, 2006. En la foto, GGP.

…pues no sé por qué, pasé muchos días convencido de que para ser un buen escritor había que estar completamente desesperado.

Enrique Vila-Matas

En París no se acaba nunca, Anagrama, p. 31

I’m young

and I’m underpaid.

Escribe Susan Sontag

46. The Dandy was overbred. His posture was disdain, or else ennui. He sought rare sensations, undefilded by mass appreciation. […] He was dedicated to “good taste.”

The connoisseour of Camp has found more ingenious pleasures. Not in Latin poetry and rare wines and velvet jackets, but in the coarsest, commonest pleasures, in the arts of the masses. […] Camp transcends the nausea of the replica…

48. The old-style dandy hated vulgarity. Ne new-style dandy, the lover of Camp, appreciates vulgarity. Where the dandy would be continually offended or bored, the connoisseur of Camp is continually amused, delighted. The dandy held a perfumed handkerchief to his nostrils and was liable to swoon; the connoisseur of Camp sniffs the the stink and prides himself on his strong nerves.

The Artists. They abandon the world on your doorstep. They show you the things you live among so you may know yourself. They cough in your face. They spit by your elbow. The artists. They leave their garbage in your hallway. They throw their hearts in front of the train. Disease is love transformed. They are high. They spit in your silent museums. They hurl their souls in your direction like a stone through polished glass. They die in your landscape. They mess up your banquets. You can’t turn away. The artists.

The urban artist’s “sense of place” is not rooted in rolling hills and nostalgia. It’s already once removed. It skins its knees on the pavement, steps in dog shit, and stumbles in the gutters as it is chased from one place to another by debts and developers.

-Lucy R. Lippard en “Homeless at Home”, 1986.

(Primera de la nueva serie Azotes: 2007, producida por Estruendomudo).