Alex Caldiero, My Colleague and Friend

The Mediterranean is warm yet feels sad this early spring morning. Its son, Alessandro (Alex) Caldiero died yet his brilliance and vitality continue.

While my heart is with his family and close friends, those of us not as close still feel the loss. I see it in the sad palms, their fronds turning down, and the many shades of funeral gray in the clouds, as well as the suffocated color of the sea. 

Alex was my colleague at UVU. I believe we arrived the same year. I was excited to be at a place that could appreciate Alex’ code breaking and reworking ways that were orthagonal to Utah’s academic culture’s rigidity and pretensions. 

He was sharp and bright, lemon among green beans, anchovies in a world of funeral potatoes.  

Instead of emphasizing bound and published texts, Alex spoke words, like those on this page, only spoken. 

They then shifted The become less words and more sound. The connection with meaning would fade, not all at once but as Alex went on.

Sound transformed into an outline of itself and then even more primal into grunts or maybe strikes on a jaw harp, reducing even further to a single sound and then silence until sound again and so on. 

While it lost referential meaning, it still maintained and created other contextual and metaphysical meanings that floated like the images in the heat of a summer road. 

First time I heard him, I was captivated by his boldness, his artistry, and the excitement of the performance. 

This was while I was at Brigham Young University in the early nineties. People I knew had been speaking about this performer, Alex Caldiero. They were fascinated and thrilled but did not know what to make of him. To them, his performance was entertainment, as if he were an intriguing clown—that troubled me. 

I found his performance serious and intellectually engaging, but even if he had been just clowning it was masterful. In worlds I am familiar with as an anthropologist, clowning is generative, it is part of the creation and recreation of the cosmos. It is sacred.

In this sense, Alex was close to a shaman, a priest, certainly in the way he could mobilize the sacred sounds of life and words and create sacred space through his art. 

His work intrigued me, without my being able to articulate why. But they quickly started making sense in my mind trained in issues of semiology, the study of meaning and its making.

Rather than showing something through belabored phrases and formal paragraphs, Alex practiced mimesis, the art of making the thing appear before us and change as we watched and listened. 

His art was poetry, but not just. It also relied on music not unrelated to minimalist performances, where sound appears, takes form with repetition and rhythm, variations in pitch, and then changes. 

Alex’s performances continued to delight me and stimulate my mind and soul. 

More than anything, I became friends with him through running into each other in the hall, almost daily. Sometimes we just said ciao, other times we talked, and sometimes our conversations were extended and involved. 

Alex was real in a way I found refreshing.  He was human and lived, pained. He enjoyed, sighed, celebrated, and mourned.  He was lemon—sharp, acidic—and yet able to transform even sweetness into something greater. 

My Spanish (and very little Italian) provided a bridge for us in language and the worlds behind the words due to the similarity of Romance tongues, even as far removed as Tuscany (Italian) or Sicily (Sicilian—his native tongue) or My Mexican and Andean Spanishes. 

We shared something in that I cannot define: a spirit, a view of life, a gusto, a tragic sense—the sighing of the winds on cliffs and crags, the joy of first flowers in spring, wailing with loss, calling bullshit when needed.  

It stood out against the wall of Utah’s Anglo-Danish, Mormon avoidance of conflict and difference, preference for speaking back stage about people and issues rather than direct address, a punctilious niceness like a tea cup which held only half as much tea because of all its un-mended breaks, and one that is unrelentingly bourgeois. A world that seals itself off from Mediterranean storms that beat the land, energy that rises from the sea with the roar of bulls and charges, a testosterone rawness.

Alex was Siciliano, even though passed through New York and Utah.  And, he was avant garde. 

He was apprenticed into that tradition and cultivated it. It's an art that runs cross wise against careerism and middle-class pretentiousness in its exploration of origins, of authenticity, its attempt to find frontiers and break the limits of the ordinary, even in its base where sound and meaning, signifier and signified are joined, bringing together other sets of not-the-sames in chains of connections that Alex could follow. 

Well, the Mediterranean is in mourning this morning and I imagine Timpanogos and Utah Lake are also suffering his departure.

I can just say. “Grazzî, Alex, pi l'anni di culligialità e amicizia. Vivirai 'ntra mia finu a quannu avirò fiatu. Ora cadunu lacrimi e mi scuttu. 

A Finch

                  1.

bounces under leaves, across branches. 

A changing wind, unpredictable, different.

2.

Three women and a man in t-shirts saunter 

the plaza’s paths. Quiet and reflective.

Their backs, arm pits, and chests wet.

Slightly bent back, florid hair, a woman climbs

stairs with little effort though lots of attention. 

She may remember when she and her boyfriend 

sat in the shade here under encinos and kissed, 

a taboo broken not long before.

3.

From the avenue, a siren competes with chirps. 

Children turn cartwheels on rough sand 

by a dry fountain.

4.

A man, early thirties, races up a crowded 

street boxes in hand: out of my way, I’m in a hurry. 

His face bursts with tension. His nervous hands

fail to open his truck’s lock. Once, twice, three times … 

Finally. He gets in, starts the vehicle. Shriek of tires. 

He almost clips a family car leaving the grocery store. 

5.

A magpie flies to the ground and settles 

like sunshine, its feathers a bit ruffled.

David-Clark Knowlton

Face to Face in Spain

 Face to Face in Spain

You think seasons change slowly, from day to day though sometimes the change feels dramatic. A storm system rolled through bringing rain and colder temperature. Voilà it is fall.

in this way, I just roll along in my day to day life. Most things seem the same. With my focus on what I am reading, thinking, and writing, I miss much else until something breaks into my consciousness, such as this morning. I sat down in a cafe to have my breakfast of yogurt and granola with fruit when a pigeon suddenly flew up almost vertically in front of me. 

On the TV, replays of the encounter in congress between Pedro Sanchez, Spain’s presiden, and Alberto Nuñez Feijóo the head of the main opposition Partido Popular was playing.  After months of seeing this image weekly when I sit down … I mean,  this is news in Spain. Like a bullfight, the politicians wave capes at each other while hiding their swords. The only thing missing is a ground pawing, snorting ton of racing flesh, the bull.  I guess to each other, their opponent is that stinky and frightful beast with spear-sharp points on their horns. 

The debate per se is not what grabbed me. Like Spaniards, I am used to politicians throwing bull pies, at each other. Some of circular messes are fresher than others and splat, while others are hard and strike with a crunch.  One or the other, they stink and may hurt.

If we need to gather these redolent masses of bovine waste, I would rather it be as fuel for a stove to heat up some soup or a rich stew. We could all stand and sit together to share a fresh meal from a rustic stove, the kind that has fed humans for millennia.

The debate qua debate has not broken into my normal reverie of thought. Instead, it was three things. 

First, the country’s president and his main opponent or even the leaders of both main opposition parties, the two mentioned plus the ultra-right Santiago Abascal, stand at their seats in congress, in the hemicircle of wooden desks and chairs, as if the same as every other member of Spain’s lower chamber of congress, that of the deputies,

I cannot image a US president appearing in congress without first hearing the blaring sounds of Hail to the Chief played by a Marine band while everyone else stands to receive him. My county’s president needs a sound track as if in a hollywood movie and needs to have people show obeisance. 

In Spain, I have seen the president enter at the same time as other delegates, just one of the group of the country’s law makers and managers. This flattening of distance, literally because the US hierarch stands or sits on the dais raised above the members of congress arrayed before him—to date it has only been a him, stuns me. 

We Americans are supposed to be equals, though people love to reduce that to being equals in opportunity rather than in substance, while Mr Trump, the current claimant of the US presidency, wants to reduce it further and remove equality in his attacks on Diversity, Inclusion, and, Equality, the policy and training program that was found in many institutions throughout the country before a tide of orange tan sprayed it away. 

To vastly simplify, in the ritual and drama of our encounters between our president and congress, we emphasize hierarchy, exclusion, and difference, HED. This is an increasing norm in our supposedly class-free society. 

Second, Spain’s president gets sharp questions and slams to his face from his opponent, who stand for all the members of the opposition. You can imagine, Alberto Nuñez Feijóo standing up to the towering lodge pole that is Pedro Sanchez. 

Feijóo follows a custom I do not understand of some Spaniards using their maternal last name, rather than their paternal one, since his first surname is Nuñez. 

In any case Feijóo is reported to stand a respectable 1.79 m which translates to 5.79 inches. Nothing to sneeze at.  

In contrast, Sanchez is 1.9 meters, or 6’ 2”. You only really see the difference on TV when they stand close to each other. In congress they sit on opposite sides of the horseshoe- shaped forum and so seem much more equal, though the one is the president and the one is merely a deputy and the leader of the opposition party that came very close to winning the last Presidential elections. 

The head of government, Spain’s king, for the record, stands taller than Sanchez at 1.97 meters, or 6’ 5.52”. He is recorded as the tallest living king on earth.  I have to say I am surprised by how many very tall Spaniards I see on the streets around me. I often feel like I am in Amsterdam that way. 

Height aside, Feijóo has a strong intellect and experience. His team also spends hours tooling lines and data that can draw blood. His darts, spears, and sword are very sharp. He is very much a worthy contender. But then so is Sanchez sometimes, his are sharper and, they are often snappier. 

That the two submit to this public striking and bleeding is hard to imagine for someone schooled in American political life.  But in this ritual warfare, the public issues of the day are vetted and discussed, educating and providing talking points to the public.  

Third, these debates, and they are debates—not the schooled-for TV forums the US holds only during elections to show off the made-up, and well prepared candidates to the public in something that pretends to be a World Wrestling theatrical competition—take place regularly in what are called Control Sessions as part of congressional responsibility of oversight. 

In the US we hold committee meetings behind closed doors and call that oversight—well they do demand documents and so on, before hand, but the image is of a beleaguered member of government dominates. It is never the President sitting in front of a panel of inquisitors and always on the edge of burning with the hot chile that gets shoved down his pants.

As a symbol of democracy, the President of Spain appearing as an equal before the lower house is powerful. That it is frequent makes it even more stronger. 

In the land of thistles and olives, congress can also have the President of the country appear to answer on particular issues before the country and on the legislative agenda.  Today, for example, Sanchez will appear, comparecer to use the special verb in Spanish which rearranges power. Sanchez must respond to authority that is not him. He is the object and not the subject today. Just a day ago he and Feijóo did their thing in congress. In the US our President thinks he is always the subject and all of us the objects of his being. 

Can you imagine how this would rearrange power in Washington. His mighty orangeness would definitely fill his diaper were he subjected to such. 

We talk about co-equal branches of power, but that is a formality. The presidency has been seizing more and more power to itself. 

I shall not stay here before the TV. Instead I shall go look for leaves to kick through—oops, I forgot; I shall be lucky to find even one leaf. I guess I shall have to find pumpkins to carve. Nope, they are not here either. 

Well, I guess I shall just go hunting for things that like pigeons fly up before me. 

The Foghorn

A deep, intense sound booms from the sea. It shakes me from my fog of thoughts. 

At first I had no idea what is was: the voice of Neptune calling for the end of times? 

Deep, dark and menacing as if a tremendous beast had arisen from the deep, perhaps The Beast, letting us know the end times are upon us. 

Putting two and two together I decided it was a foghorn. Not being from the sea coast I had not heard one before. Occasionally, here I hear horns from cruise ships or even more the ferries that cross to Africa twice weekly. I mean, I only live a mile from the port. But those were neither as intense nor as loud as this. 

(After a while, I remembered that the local news had celebrated that one of the largest ocean-going cruise ships in the world would be docking here. The ship was enormous, dwarfing the fairly substantial old and oldest city of Alicante by the port. The city does continue inland to the west, as well as north beyond the guardian hill Benacantil and to the south along the coast. In any of these directions it goes until it becomes something else). 

I exaggerate but that profound roar shocked and even frightened me a bit.

That experience is of the same sort as when I know something deep from within the recesses of my study and even my being and somebody, in that powerful roar, even if their voice is soft, tells me I am wrong. 

Of course, my immediate reaction is to armor up and grab my sword and daggers, since I sense a potentially mortal battle impending. My body starts flooding with testosterone.  

Because of age and learning, as well as a strong desire to cultivate humility and Christian love for other people—including when they attack me, I try to pull myself back and drain away that hormone. I force myself to listen. 

Even if it takes time to get me there,  My ethical discipline is to stop for a bit and listen in the midst of racing, armed forces coming to my defense me in my mind. Once I have brought them under control, I can think. 

That is when I often learn important lessons and knowledge.

Two potential examples: 

First, When I was a young professor at a religious university, despite my best efforts I was filled with myself thinking I was an enlightened and good professor, up to date on the literature and on critical theory. I left an important Brazilian film for my class to be shown while I was away giving a paper at a national academic conference.    

The film was the brilliant Bye Bye Brasil, directed by Carlos Diegues. It is the story Brazil in the midst of massive change—the coming of electricity and television, the post dictatorship, and the massive leveling and development of the Amazon though that was nothing like it is now—through the travels and adventures of an itinerant circus in the old style.   

When I got back and tried to lead a discussion on the film’s themes of modernization and development, as well as the differences of this internal Brazilian form of culture from more academic and outsider discussion, i.e. us. 

The students sat there silently and I should have known that for them silence was a sure sign something was very wrong. I waited, hoping to at least get an opening into their thoughts from some comment. 

Finally, an sharp young woman, blond as I was then, raised her hand and from the middle of the room gave me a tanning.

“How could you do that to us? You left us pornography. You raped us.”

I fell against the blackboard, hurt and defensive. I wanted to argue about the importance of the film. Yes it was “R” rated, a local shibboleth at the time, but I had thought its cultural significance out weighed that.  

I was right and I was wrong.  We did have after a while a good conversation about how can one as scholars, and especially anthropologist, learn about other societies when there ways strike us a wrong and even immoral.

One scene from the movie seemed the trigger. It was when one of the central figures, a young married man, Ciço, came into one of the performers’ tent, a beautiful and sensual woman named appropriately Salomé. They had sex while his very pregnant wife, perhaps close to giving birth, sat outside the tent and heard everything. 

This is such a visceral an necessary critique of modernization from the point of view of traditional rural Brazil, that I forgot how my students felt about portrayals of sex. 

In truth the portrayal was quite chaste. You saw little more than you would in the average James Bond film. Yet that was probably not the issue, I came to realize despite the desire to focus on body parts as a means of deciding what is acceptable and what not. 

Instead it was the betrayal of a self sacrificing and very pregnant wife, practically in front of her. That was a slap that I had not anticipated and did not intend. 

In any case, they learned something and I learned a lot, once I got over myself and listened. 

Another example, one much more recent. In a good conversation, the other day, over dinner, with some Colombians, we were talking about their experiences and different people.  

They showed me a picture of one of their friends while talking about that person’s effeminacy. I said, “yes he seems mariquita.” My friend stopped me and said “that sounds kind of homophobic” which pulled me up short.   

Yikes I spluttered something justifying what I said, and then I had to back up and think. I realized I had used an older language which this generation has thoroughly critiqued and organized against. 

I had to reevaluate and realize there was something homophobic in me behind that usage, going back to my own upbringing and to my years of experience in Latin America.  

Times had changed. I had changed, and so should my language. 

There is so much more I could say, but the vessel that booms its horn towards is is about to leave.   It sounds urgent.

Though I cannot go on a cruise on board it through the Mediterranean and god-knows where, it has given me an intellectual cruise through memory. I still have an awfully lot to think about. That Neptunian roar, whether from the ship, my students, my colleagues, or my friends is one of he most useful, if frightening and painful, things I know.