Monday evening, a friend of my age insisted in a street cafe while traffic circled close to us, that he and I are of a generation raised to be more selfless and with a sense of responsibility to future generations. He contrasted that to today’s adults and younger who live more for themselves.
Maybe. I think my generation was pretty selfish, but that aside, his observation made me think of the French phrase: the more things change the more they stay the same. (et plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose).
Both change and kinds of continuity are all around us; they constitute us and our lives.
There is no denying that roundabout on whose sides we met under umbrellas on a drizzly evening was not always there. We have photos with time marked that witness the changes to us. We can see how Alicante expanded and how city planners laid out that space and the streets that met there, seizing it from fields, gulleys, and more rustic constructions than the mid rises today.
Yet people were there. They ate fish and rice, as people do today. My friend had a beer. Chances are that people then rarely if ever drank beer. I had a “mineral water” and I doubt glass bottles of water ever appeared then on tables even if there was a cafe or bar near there.
Of course, there are many traps in this. For one, it is all a matter of what you focus on. Looking at physical objects—tables, drinks, streets, people—is one thing. Looking at something like moral qualities, especially when spoken as defining characteristics is so much harder. They are mostly invisible unless attached to physical qualities we can see.
OK, Knowlton. Stop. You are waxing professorial and terribly abstract. Take a sip of that acqua and get back to something easier.
In June, this roundabout looked very different. The monument in the middle was blocked away by protective boards, while chain link fences seemed to be everywhere. Fantastic sculptures in bright fantasy colors and themes punctuated the scenery, as did ephemeral bars, and cafes. You could smell grilling meat everywhere, along with the redolence of urine.
Alicante was living its month long celebration called Hogueras o Fogueres, named for how the sculptures would erupt in flames at the celebration’s end on the vispera, the night before the Day of St. John an ancient night of burning stuff in this part of Europe and in the Andes—La Paz, Bolivia—where I have lived.
Saying that is fine. It is a broad connection and pattern but the history of Fogueres/Hogueras insists it was created at the beginning of the twentieth century on the model of Valencia’s Fallas for the sake of tourism and city pride.
That is a nice statement though I am not convinced since I have not gone to the archives to see the loss of earlier forms and the appearance of Fogueres full grown from Valencia. What happened to San Juan’s feast with its bonfires and such? It was not simply folded into Fogueres.
Every midday, the roundabout hosted the mascletá, competition and show of fireworks and explosive sounds. During the rest of the day and into the nigh the area of this roundabout, called Luceros, was a staging ground for parades that left here and marched down the Alfonso el Sabio Avenue before turning downtown towards the coast by the old city.
Many events, a huge chronology of formal goings on, moved the city during this period. Along with the sound of music from the ephemeral (just for this month) bars and cafes) as well as marching bands in parades and just processing seemingly seemingly at random through the streets, the city filled with noise from people talking, shouting, singing, fighting as the days continued.
It was intense, huge, and overwhelming. The calm afterwards was almost as loud and intense in its silence and calm.
There you have it. Change in time. While living it, you are there immersed and only in reflection can pull yourself from it.
This all came back to me when I read an article involving a different meaning of change and a different kind of turning back, reflecting.
The Barcelona version of El Nacional published on September 7 under the byline of Marc Valle the following. “The Catalan word in Danger of Extinction that AI considers a symbol of Barcelona, An Expression Rooted in ordinary Barcelona that AI Claims is at Risk of Disappearing.”
Like Snail Darters, little fish in the US West declared at risk of extinction, and then delisted as new populations were found far away from the Western Rivers of the original declaration, all under a regime of US environmental law and politics, statements of this nature should be taken seriously and also be seen as suspect even if we do not have soace here to fully consider it.
The word is Xerinola. It describes a good part of that crazy month in Alicante. Valle defines the term as “Traditionally connected to collective joy, the noise of fiestas, and the environment an uninhibited celebration.”
Valle also contrasts it with the spontaneous, sui generis partying of fiestas when he says the word “is not just an expression of fiesta, but a means of understanding the relationship between neighborhood and community.” It is when peopple take over the space of the neighborhood—the town, city—and make it their own. By implication, Valle contrasts that with governmentally or commercially organized celebration.
He is critiquing the formality of top down nature of the official fiesta such as Fogueres. To be sure this level of organization is often more formal and structured on paper than in its realization. At even moment, people intervene and celebrate. The feast itself tries to contain this in fenced-in spaces, many by invitation only, though all that falls apart as people experience xerinola.
Very quickly, since I am out of space, this reminds me of a common word in Peru to describe fiestas. That is algarrabía. It is most easily translated as noise but as a symbol of fiesta it begins to encompass so many more meanings.
The word is from the same one as flamenco and is Iberian Arabic in origin. It point is to pick up the sonorous and sensory aspects of celebration and especially celebration as worship as people come together and legitimate themselves even in the absence of official recognition and acceptance.
Valle suggests change—the loss of that, while I see both change and continuity.
Valle must locate a potentially catastrophic loss in order to revalidate the words as a symbol, a new name for celebration in Barcelona not too far north of here and in a language close related to the Valencian of Fogueres.
In parting, let me—the professor—just say that, though unmentioned, Durkheim is somewhere haunting this for me with his notion of collective effervescence.
Ok. Enough. Good by and cheers.
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