Status Updates From The Pawn

‘—an old cliché: resistir es vencer—They stole a portrait of Franco. That’s how it started—in the—Barcelona School of Medicine—February 20, 1962, a poetry recital will be held in this—auditorium,—five poets: José Agustín Goytisolo—Jaime Gil de Biedma—Pere Quart—Gabriel Ferraté—& J.V. Foix—see you tomorrow, says the janitor—in place of the oil painting of Franco, a dummy now hangs with a noose around its neck. Check.’

‘—Madrid, 1962—We are particles—of those survivors—who looked under the rug to reveal—No one sees—Victims—poverty—Faceless, voiceless, atomised. Politically & socially invisible—Losing. It seems like—flipside of winning; one of the three possibilities that every life offers when the clock starts ticking & the game begins. Winning is the hoped-for, childishly idealised—theatre—confused with the true plot of the play—’

‘If I were born a thousand times again, I would be who I am—think as I think a thousand times over—a pawn’s sacrifice changed the course of the game—Hands—behind his back—Like a dog forced to go for—walks—The price of refusing to dance—to the beat of the drum—For 13 days, 1962, the world—on the brink of—destruction. It is on this board, riddled with—fallen pawns of previous games—You look at each other, but briefly—’

‘—a twisted paradox—Nevada, Alaska & New Mexico—to prepare for annihilating the enemy, or to prepare for your own annihilation—by launching an up-front act of self-sabotage, so you can personally feel the blow to your flesh, the depth of the wound, the shape of the scar—poetic horror—stretching relentlessly—terrified birds—camera always films from a distance, a cowardly voyeur—tempers reality—anaesthetises the gaze.’

‘King, queen, rook, knight—bishop. All capable of undoing—movement—correcting a mistake. Only the pawn’s advance is irreversible. Only—pawn is condemned to move ever forward—never looking back—the only pieces with a spirit of solidarity—weak &—often threatened, among themselves they form a colony—a siphonophore whose organs absorb the shocks of the game—All for one & one for all. El pueblo unido jamás será vencido—’

‘—photographs render their subjects mute—as if the moment the aperture clicks open it swallows not just—light, but every decibel in the vicinity. People & places—sentenced to eternity in a sonic vacuum—The silence is all-consuming, emphatic—the sort of ontological silence we associate with immortality—man was shot through the heart—Los Angeles, California—We don’t never forget—better known to the world as Malcolm X.’

‘Coincidence? The biographers ask. Coincidence, of course, they say in answer to their own question. Poverty has a smell—a viscous vapour that penetrates the amygdala through the olfactory bulb & never leaves the mind; a fragrant memory that serves as a deterrent against Alzheimer’s. The stench of squalor is inescapable in the Chicago shelter—winter of 1943—The radio won’t stop playing ‘I Had The Craziest Dream,’’

‘There has always been a principled vanguard minority ready to sacrifice—The—sacrifice is what propels history forward—The hero never gets to savour—The spoils go to the cold, calculating cowards, safe & warm in the rearguard. It’s drizzling as he stands for the tribunal—The hierarchy speaks of the common good, and to tell that tale, they need you—And the game, which you now see was never your game, will carry on.’