Cuesta abajo.

...o el poema del perdedor.

Perder es el gesto más noble de la vida.
Pero no hay que engañarse. Sólo quien tuvo pierde.
Perder es por ello un doble triunfo. El desdén
de ahora y el cortejo relumbrante del principio.
Aceptar la miseria tras el oro. Complacerse
en ser nadie, siendo rico. Deshacerse de todo.
Gustar el fango con paladar de príncipe.
(Creadores estériles o reyes en el exilio.)
Pero el verdadero perdedor no es el que busca,
sino el que acepta -realmente- su destino.
Luce lo que no es suyo. Y tiene deudas, alcohólico
y avejentado, como las tenían los jóvenes lords
de hace un siglo. Para comprar diamantes y caballos...
El perdedor nada quiere saber de cuanto amara
(ha puesto con desgana su firma en aquel libro).
Perder es ser otro y ser el mismo. Y vivir
al fin el tirón desgarrado de la carne, que ennoblece
y ensucia. Perder es un último acto de dandysmo.

(Luis Antonio de Villena: p. 98)

El gran sueño.

¿Un poema de desamor e incomprensión?

¿Por qué seguir, me pregunto, saliendo cada día
del protector olvido? Componerse el rostro,
dar jabón a las manos, y colonia al espíritu,
que se deterioraba. Si estoy harto de selvas
y marañas que no entiendo, de dolores inútiles
y alcohol como sedante. Harto completamente
del inasible tú; de la insatisfacción brutal
y cotidiana. Del sinsentido organizado como
torre, y sobre todo, de que realidad es
imposible, y la ficción, unos instantes solos
en la mente y en la noche cerrada. Y al corazón
de nadie nunca llegas, y nunca se comprende
lo que dices, ni —menos— las palabras. Si los días,
en fin, tan frecuente, me aburren y me duelen,
y me cansan, ¿a qué seguir?, pregunto. Si me apetece
sólo tumbarme blandamente, apagar la luz
porque la niebla empieza, y dormir, dormir apacible
un largo sueño, un largo olvido, sin médanos ni algas...

(Luis Antonio de Villena: p. 94)

Sensualidad veraniega (III).

Pido que fenezca este imperfecto mundo.
Que las ideas cobren la apariencia de cuerpos.
Que la luz sea tangible, pero que sea luz,
y que se vea música en los rizos dorados...
Nos pido a ti y a mí en la misma materia,
y que en la antigua y alta forma del amor,
el rostro confundamos y el deseo entre estrellas...

(Luis Antonio de Villena: pp. 91-92)

Razón de amor

El poema Razón de amor sintetiza buena parte de los elementos que caracterizan la poesía de Luis Antonio de Villena en este libro: clasicismo, espíritu mediterráneo, amor carnal, entrega apasionada a la belleza física, apolínea... el precio, eso sí, puede llegar a ser un amor que no es amor. ¿Acaso no nos recuerda a Cavafis?

Contestaré a tu pregunta:
La verdad es que historias de amor,
lo que se dice amor, yo no las he tenido.

El bellísimo amor coronado de flores
que arrastra al peregrino
(véase Geoffrey Chaucer, y el cuadro de Burne-Jones),
el amor que hace al alma brotar alas,
el amor constante más allá de la muerte,
el que obliga a escribir a sangre y tinta;
de vos no quiero más que lo que os quiero,
ese (posiblemente) aún no lo conozco.
Y me pregunto ahora qué me falta
(o qué me ha faltado) para ello.
Porque la pasión me ha raptado a menudo,
y he tenido locuras y delirio
por cuerpos muy concretos. Y con ciertas personas
(aunque pocas) una level inclinación sentimental
hacia algo más allá, desconocido,
empantanado luego en tal o cual laguna,
charco, aburrimiento,
que sería largo y sin gracia narrar ahora.
Tú entonces me decías:
Debes seguir, empeñar algo, insistir de nuevo.
Pero no. Me faltaba (y me falta)
el arrebato ese, que dicen, del amor verdadero.
¿En exceso he gustado la belleza física
o —platónico impenitente—
la quiero concordar con un alma perfecta?
Y es que el amor —lo que se dice amor—
llega muy pocas veces, aunque se obstinen tantos
en convertir el aureus en moneda corriente...
Porque debe la belleza picar dentro del cuerpo,
y debes sentir cómo las alas surgen,
y volar hacia arriba, y encontrarte a ti mismo
(diferente) es codiciable espejo.
Mas puede también ser que el amor —incipit
vita nova— no te aparezca nunca.
Pues ante lo tuviste, o —es justicia—
habrás de tenerlo luego.
Gota en ese caso de los mensajeros. Acepta
el cariño, la leve disposición al fuego...
Las camas (si es posible) y los hermosos cuerpos.
Pero ten presente (y ahí estoy yo contigo de acuerdo)
que eso no es el amor.
El verdadero amor, coronado de yedra y de violetas,
el muchacho de sandalias doradas,
que llega, como Alcibíades, al final
del discurso y del banquete, ebrio en la oscura noche,
hijo de Poros y de Penia,
gozoso, joven eternamente, limpio y puro,
y dà per li occhi una dolcezza al core...

(Luis Antonio de Villena: pp. 86-88)

Sensualidad veraniega (II).

Otro poema igual de sensual, titulado Epinicio, estrofa de clara influencia clásica que conecta, además, con la tradición griega de los juegos olímpicos:

Salta al aire, y arde al sol en un brillo encendido.
El músculo se estira victorioso. Ondea el pelo rubio,
y bailan sedas de agua sobre una piel de oro.
Bulle un río, y el cuerpo es la sed de una batalla.
Los brazos se alargan, y las piernas armoniosas
y brillantes. Se cierra un bosque al cerrar los ojos.
Cantan las manos. El cuerpo adolescente reta al aire.
Como un himno se eleva la figura, y se ondula.
El pelo nada, la piel seduce al ámbar, y el impulso
se transforma en joven música encendida. Salta ahora.
Y es todo victoria. Quien saltó y quien baja es otro distinto.
Y va más allá el milagro porque es otro el que mira.

(Luis Antonio de Villena: p. 69)

Sensualidad veraniega.

El libro de Luis Antonio de Villena está repleto de guiños a Cavafis y su poesía sensual de claro sabor pagano y mediterráneo. Por ejemplo, el poema titulado Piscina:

Con un ligero impulso la palanca palpita,
y el desnudo se goza un instante en el aire,
para astillar después en vibraciones verdes
el oro y el azul y la espuma que canta.

Desciendes un momento. Y riela en los visos
del cristal transparente el fuego que galopa
entre las ramas verdes, y es túnica
de seda que amorosa recoge la selva de tu cuerpo.

Te detienes y nadas. El fondo es tu capricho.
Como un solaz de algas que amase tu cabello
te complaces en verte por grutas submarinas.

Y al regresar al sol, nos miras en la orilla,
mientras, toda codicias sexuales, el agua
deseosa, se goza solitaria en tu cintura.

(Luis Antonio de Villena: p. 51)

Un cómic de madurez.

Interesante propuesta la de Paco Roca con esta historia. La verdad es que hace ya tiempo que el mundo del cómic ha madurado lo suficiente como para que lo consideremos como miembro de pleno derecho del gremio de las bellas artes. Lejos quedan los días en que el popular tebeo se veía como mera introducción al mundo de la lectura seria (en el mejor de los casos) o corruptor de tiernas mentes infantiles (en el peor). En Las calles de arena nos encontramos con una historia que seguramente no acertarían a entender muchos chavales, aunque podrían seguirla. Es demasiado surrealista, demasiado artística, demasiado enrevesada y onírica como para poder ser entendida como mero entretenimiento. Para eso quedan las historietas de Mortadelo y Filemón o El botones Sacarino (sin tampoco menospreciar este otro género que continúo leyendo aún a mi edad, que conste). En el caso de Paco Roca, el dibujo tiene, sin duda, aspiraciones artísticas en el color, el claroscuro, los gestos, el detalle, la decoración. Pero es que, además, la historia es siempre original, creativa, literaria. Las calles de arena es un cómic, pero podía haber sido perfectamente una historia corta. Altamente recomendable, al menos para mentes abiertas y espíritus eclécticos.

Alejandrías (Antología 1970-2003)

Antología de poemas de Luis Antonio de Villena recopiladas por Juan Antonio González Iglesias, quien también escribe el prólogo. El título de la antología fue elegido por el propio Villena en clara referencia a la antiquísima ciudad egipcia. Con ello, el poeta inserta su obra en un contexto clásico que conecta directamente con Grecia y Roma en Egipto, así como con la cultura mediterránea y la obra de Cavafis y Durrell.

Ficha técnica:
Título: Alejandrías (Antología 1970-2003)
Autor: Luis Antonio de Villena
Editorial: Renacimiento
Edición: primera edición, Sevilla, 2004.
Páginas: 230 páginas, incluyendo índice ybibliografía.
ISBN: 84-8472-149-3

Las calles de arena

Un olvidadizo joven llega tarde a una cita con su novia para firmar la hipoteca de su casa y, en un último esfuerzo por llegar a tiempo, se decide a coger un atajo por el barrio antiguo de la ciudad. Sin embargo, se pierde por sus enrevesadas calles y, a partir de ahí, se encuentra con una serie de extraños personajes que llevan una eternidad perdidos en el mismo lugar. Pero, lejos de desesperarse, optan por hacer de tripas corazón y acaban, mal que bien, conviviendo en ese surrealista mundo.

Ficha técnica:
Título: Las calles de arena
Autor: Paco Roca
Editorial: Astiberri
Edición: primera edición, Bilbao, abril 2009.
Páginas: 102 páginas
ISBN: 978-84-96815-91-9

Lee algunas páginas del cómic en el web del autor.

Abstracting networks to find a true nugget of knowledge.

As human knowledge of our surroundings has increased, so has the level of abstraction of that knowledge. However, the abstractions have led us to some interesting findings:

Detailed maps of the Internet have unmasked the Internet's vulnerability to hackers. Maps of companies connected by trade or ownership have traced the trail of power and money in Silicon Valley. Maps of interactions between species in ecosystems have offered glimpses of humanity's destructive impact on the environment. Maps of genes working together in a cell have provided insights into how cancer works. But the real surprise has come from placing these maps side by side. Just as diverse humans share skeletons that are almost indistinguishable, we have learned that these diverse maps follow a common blueprint. A string of recent breathtaking discoveries has forced us to acknowledge that amazingly simple and far-reaching natural laws govern the structure and evolution of all the complex networks that surround us.

(Barabási: pp. 5-6)

Does that get us any closer to a theory of everything? Perhaps. Network science is still too young to tell. In any case, it is already uncovering certain facts that we completely ignored until we started adopting this new paradigm, just as it happened when the structuralists renewed the social sciences back in the 1960s. For the time being, all we see is the correlation between disparate fields. We still don't understand the real reasons why they behave in such similar ways. That's precisely the challenge now.

Linked. How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life.

Albert-Lászlo Barabási describes an intellectual adventure that tries to prove how social networks, corporations and living organisms are more similar than previously thought. This introduction to network science guides us through the fundamental concepts underlying neurology, epidemiology, Internet traffic, and many other fields united by complexity. A very enjoyable book that makes difficult concepts easy to understand by the regular reader.

Technical description:
Title: Linked. How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life.
Author: Albert-Lászlo Barabási.
Publisher: A Plume Book. Penguin.
Edition: First Plume printing, New York (USA), May 2003 (2002)
Pages: 294 pages, including index.
ISBN: 0-452-28439-2

The beauty of a simple design.

Now, here is a question people have been struggling to answer for quite sometime now: what is a good design? How do we recognize a good design? Lots of companies would give plenty of money to answer those questions in a simple manner. Well, Graham gives us the answer:

It seems strange to have to emphasize simplicity. You'd think simple would be the default. Ornate is more work. But something seems to come over people when they try to be creative. Beginning writers adopt a pompous tone that doesn't sound anything like the way they speak. Designers trying to be artistic resort to swooshes and curlicues. Painters discover that they're expressionists. It's all evasion. Underneath the long words or the "expressive" brush strokes, there's not much going on, and that's frightening.

When you're forced to be simple, you're forced to face the real problem. When you can't deliver ornament, you have to deliver substance.

(Graham: p. 133)

Yet, somehow one gets the impression that most companies wouldn't buy that answer. Why not? As Graham says, we still associate the term good design to original and artistic and, in turn, we also associate those to something overly complex, cool. We fool ourselves. In reality, what we like is what's simple and yet it works, what helps us achieve our goal in the most sensible manner. While most geeks tend to despise the end-user as a simpleton, in reality simplicity is one of the most difficult things to achieve in design. Few people get it. That's why Steve Jobs makes the big bucks. That's why Apple still kicks butt and, in a different order of things, that's also why GNOME and Ubuntu have been winning the battle on the Linux front.

On how hacking and painting are quite alike.

For quite sometime (perhaps since computer science became a subject taught in our colleges) programming has been viewed as software engineering (i.e., a somehow scientific discipline that can be learned and applied in a methodical manner). We just have to find out its intrinsic rules. Graham, though, strongly disagrees with this approach. To him, programming is actually hacking and, therefore, its' more like an art than like a science. Yes, the programmer has to use a series of techniques to put things down in the form of a program, but that's no different than the way an artist does things:

Hacking and painting have a lot in common. In fact, of all the different types of people I've known, hackers and painters are among the most alike.

What hackers and painters have in common is that they're both makers. Along with composers, architects, and writers, what hackers and painters are trying to do is make good things. They're not doing research per se, though if in the course of trying to make good things they discover some new technique, so much the better.

(Graham: p. 18)

If Graham is right, this concept of the programmer as an artist should also effect the way we view programming languages:

Realizing this has real implications for software design. It means that a programming language should, above all, be malleable. A programming language is for thinking of programs, not for expressing programs you've already thought of. It should be a pencil, not a pen.

(Graham: p. 22)

This takes Graham down a path where he clearly prefers "hacking languages" to the researcher's favorite tools, beautiful in their perfection but almost completely useless for real work. After all, what good is the best programming language if nobody writes programs in it? Researchers in their ivory towers don't appear to care about a language's malleability but rather about its internal logical consistency or originality. After all, academic research prizes that over anything else. The real world, though, cares about flexibility and ease of use. In that realm, a language that's highly malleable is far more important than a perfectly consistent but highly abstract paper. It shouldn't surprise us, really. It's no different when it comes to natural languages. How many times have people tried to design and new perfect human language without much success? We continue relying on our old, patchy languages.

Why nerds are unpopular.

The first chapter of the Hackers & Painters is an excellent essay on why nerds are unpopular (a complete transcription of the chapter can be found on the author's website here). A text that has become widely quoted over the last few years. To Graham, the core issue is popularity:

The key to this mystery is to rephrase the question slightly. Why don't smart kids make themselves popular? If they're so smart, why don't they figure out how popularity works and bear the system, just as they do for standardized tests? (...) The answer, I think, is that they don't really want to be popular.

(Graham: pp. 1-2)

Now, that sounds strange, doesn't it? Who doesn't want to be popular? Everyone, of course, if we put it in those simple terms. However, Graham realizes that being popular, like anything else in this world, requires some effort and, as a matter of fact, most kids are willing to make that effort into becoming the most popular kid in the school. However, nerds weren't born that way:

They also have to put an effort towards it. They have to make sure they set the trend, wear the right clothes, sound cool, mind their attitude... all that requires work. Therefore:
Nerds serve two masters. They want to be popular, certainly, but they want even more to be smart. And popularity is not something you can do in your spare time, not in the fiercely competitive environment of an American secondary school.

(Graham: p. 3)

Or, to put it another way, nerds (and, by extension, geeks too) want to be popular or, at the very least, accepted into the larger community. The problem, of course, is that they care more about other things. If the price they have to pay for becoming popular or integrated into the larger student community is to give up their love for puzzles, challenging problems and abstract ideas, then they aren't willing to pay it. It's too high for them. And, like it or not, in spite of all the suffering, perhaps they make the right choice. After all, it would require for them to turn against their true personality and who is the parent who supports that idea? Don't we tell our kids all the time that they have to grow to develop their own true self? Well, that's precisely what geeks and nerds do. They don't care what society all around tell them about what's acceptable and what's not, what can be done and what's simply impossible. And that's precisely the reason why it's nerds and geeks who guide us forward. They refuse to accept the world as it is and, in so doing, are already building our future while the rest of us waste our time playing the popularity game in high school.

This chapter of Graham's book is definitely a classic. He points out what's wrong with the American high school system and even manages to make a few recommendations on how to fix it (namely, make it more like college, where students can behave more like adults with a purpose, instead of like kids full of testosterone hanging around a secluded environment without any particular aim). This essay is definitely well worth a read, especially if you are a parent.

Hackers & Painters. Big Ideas from the Computer Age.

Hackers & Painters is a collection of essays written by Paul Graham about hacking and how this activity may relate to art (specifically painting). The individual pieces cover a wide range of issues: why nerds are so unpopular at school, the importance of startups, programming languages, heretical thinking, the process of wealth creation, etc. The title essay provides an interesting look at hacking and how it may relate to artistic activities in general, and painting in particular. A very suggestive book, judging by the reviews and what I could gather after quickly browsing through its pages.

For more information, check out the author's own website or O'Reilly's page for the book.

Technical description:
Title: Hackers & Painters. Big Ideas from the Computer Age.
Author: Paul Graham.
Publisher: O'Reilly
Edition: First hardcover edition, Sebastopol, California (USA), May 2004 (2004).
Pages: 258, including index.
ISBN: 978-0-596-00662-4