I've listened to Devendra Banhart's Cripple Crow (XL Recordings) several times tonight, happy to hear him expand his range with a fuller band sound and more songs in Spanish, including a version of a Simón Díaz song, "Luna de Margarita."
He opens with sweet guitar chords alongside a cello and his still strange voice. At one point in the album he sings: "Yo no he tomao / Pero me voy a tomar un traguito ahora..."
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Another huge Banhart fan, Jacinta Escudos, recently posted her excellent essay "Reflexiones de una nómada" at her blog:
"Me ha tocado conocer estos tres tipos de viaje: el de turismo, el de exilio, el de migración. El movimiento es siempre el mismo, pero el ánimo cambia."
(The album will be in the mail today, Jacinta.)
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Reading to supplement what little I know about Schiller's theory of Aesthetic Education. I need to begin writing my essay on Roque Dalton and Roberto Bolaño, which is due by mid-December. The essay is built partly on the period (approx. 1973-1975) when both poets met in El Salvador. Bolaño befriended Dalton and his fellow guerrillas, some of whom would eventually murder him. It seems obvious to me that Dalton's murder would have been a lesson for Bolaño on the dangers of political extremism, in that instance by those on the left. The parallels between Dalton's Pobrecito poeta que era yo and Bolaño's 2666 are what I am trying to untangle. Each one a masterpiece of their respective eras. I have to devote my time to the essay and to poems I'll be presenting at a reading later this fall.
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Boston being the semi-provincial city that it can be, I haven't been able to see the new film by Venezuelan director Jonathan Jakubowicz "Secuestro Express," since it's not playing anywhere around here. The film has been selling out for weeks now in Venezuela thanks to the Venezuelan government's attempts to censor the film. Alexandra Beech discusses the film and the polemic surrounding it at vcrisis.
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