1 — INSUBSTANTIAL MUSINGS
The best approach to a poem is tangential
Or so it seems to him,
When the Muse is insubstantial
A kind of daydream
Purposeless yet pointing to the rim
Of a not quite unexplored realm
Like the finger of a conquistador
On a statue in bronze
On a plinth of sooty stone
Which blocks the poet´s sight
Of the hero´s newfound land.
2—LIONISED NO MORE
The lion, toothless, cornered
Snarls and lashes out
Lashes and is laughed at,
Like any captive of his foibles.
To be brave, to be bold,
To be the devourer of living flesh
Uff! It´s so much hard work.
And but for hunger,
And the pride
He´d rather laze in the sun
And scratch at the fleas
In his buttocks.
Yet no, so much is expected of him
Crowned king by others
Against his will
He must bear the mantle
With dignity, they told him
As he pretended to
Until, teeth gone
Claws shorn
And paws worn
Majesty falls as well
And, feeble,
He is mocked, battered,
And shamed.
Yawning, he bares his gums
To the skies
Dribbles, stammers
And sighs:
“Leave me alone to dream
In the waning suns”.
3—SQUEEZING OUT VERSE
You can´t sit down and write a poem
You can sit and write
But all you do is groan
Unless hoisted by a hook
To a higher platform
Of the canonicals chat room
Shouting too loud
To filter out intelligence from noise
Attentive listening, plus poise, they spout
But to what or to whom
In the interloping prose
Of that elevated illogic of argument
Which deafens, numbs and drones.
You need a keen ear, they advise
Sure, so long as it isn´t distracted by the other
Eager to hear paeans of praise
How melodious your voice
How clever, how chaste,
How adroit.
No, better to be a simpleton
Eavesdrop rather than tape record
And then throw the whole longhand
Into the W.C.
And, constipated,
Sit down, groan, squeeze
And start all over again.
4 —THE PAINTERLY EX-PUG OF THE ISLES
[A poetically heightened, second-hand reminiscence of the Colombian painter, Enrique Calle, A.K.A. “KAT”, based on stories I heard from his ex-wife, Alicia Adorada
for a more sober bio, consult: https://www.elpais.com.co/opinion/columnistas/jotamario-arbelaez/kat-pintor-de-nubes.html]
To strip down to the essentials. To be fluid, weightless, freed from duty, money and future. In art as in life as in love, unpossessed!
The dream of youth unaware of corruptible years to come, unattainable except by the eremite in an asceticism of doubtful exemplar. Or a handful of the blessed perhaps, but certainly not attributable to that character who once asked me for a handout while on line for an art film at the Bogotá MAM.
A vaguely familiar fixture of the hippy/street-seller crowd on the séptima. Mediocrity his choice, not fate, like theirs. Painter by the stained jeans. Fifty, wasted by drink, smoke, rootlessness. Distinctive, though: tall, brawny, full grey curls framing dramatically squashed nose. Air of the ex-pug who once had a shot at the title, also in the gaze inward to an ephemeral glow, the colors of which I would have never known if I hadn´t had a fling with Adorada afterwards.
His ex from the Nadaist epoch, circle of Gonzalo, inspirer of Maga et. al., since rectified into a secretary of smart tweeds with mortgage.
Now disenchanted with all that yet distant enough to be nostalgic about the life led then, on Caribbean coast and isles, by an innocent girl open to an artist of radical gestures against the provincialism then reigning which suffocated both.
KAT was the name he took, signed on the works that spit on the face of the god of ownership through the joining of talent to conviction to facility (defects of a virtue still hostile to most critics and collectors). It was as if he had swallowed the shores whole, so that, in an instant, at the mere lift and sweep of brush, playa, mar y sol were distilled onto – not canvas, too expensive --- but any wrapper, sheet or board at hand, and to extract the essence (and spare purse) even more, monochrome in many hues of turquoise, chrome or umber.
Sold for small bills, exchanged for lodgings and meals, they upheld an eccentric errantry through not just places but habits. With the same impulsiveness that caused him to fly off whenever they were about to be comfortable, each flight was heralded by the destruction of practically all they owned, down to his pants, but for one new-bought outfit, all-white: just like that, in the eternal beginning of whim.
A year or so later whatever he was searching for was found in San Andrés, or so it seemed to her. Still relatively unspoiled and tolerant towards dreamers, the island, guided by an enlightened monarch, was in its Green Moon ripeness of mendicant friars, artists and philosophers.
Its enchantment stilled KAT , centering him, as never before, on essentials. The ones he´d been destined for, in a marriage between eye and theme that is a painter´s flourishing. In the silhouette of strand and frond against sea under sky washed by a single pigment, he caught the languid spirit of the isle. Its heat, wind, wave, ease, beauty and … perfection perhaps too melancholic. Hence, just when a son was born, cabin built and reputation in bud, KAT wrecked all they´d acquired again in self-dramatizing binges, quarrels and bonfires.
“He wasn´t just brilliant at painting,” she told me. “He invented things, wrote poetry, studied religion, science; had this idea that petroleum is a cushion for the Earth and sent letters to the leaders of fifty countries to warn that drilling causes earthquakes. The restlessness that once fascinated me now made him impossible to live with. Even for himself, I realized. Just to survive, he had to burn and begin, burn and begin. Ideals, fine; but not great for me: raising a kid, place I loved, some kind of life at last”.
Yet in all the wandering which followed their break-up – poor or prosperous, alone or not,– he continued to outline the motif of his fate. Thousands, I´d guess, broadcast like seeds: most disposable, now lost; others surviving in apartments and picture-framers; and those polished, big-format works first exhibited 20 ago and now a treasure for collectors.
Then, a speculation thus-far unsuccessful, understandable in art-market terms insofar as the much that is slick, shallow and repetitive debases the coinage of KAT the remarkable at times. Yet the more I see of his work, the less my not liking it much matters to me. There is in his art a quality, beyond art itself, I can only define as something inescapable: a hot haze over all of that oppressive sensuality of the Island. Faults and all, by picturing what can be felt, not seen, he immortalized San Andrés.
In that he is as inescapable to me as my brief encounter with him, as an original “KAT” I once rescued from a trash can and my later knowing his second wife and mother of his daughter too. A sociologist from Boston, she was more detached than Adorada. For her, Kat had been a wunderkind: a hyper, obsessive, irresponsible trial to live with, but inspiring beyond judgment. For the talented fruit left to each, Adorada was ultimately forgiving as well.
If his career, health and private life were in ruins when I came across him (both agreed), he wasn´t quite at the end of his artistic tether. In a turn that surprised all his colleagues, he shifted his monomania from beach to mountain, Monserrate, over and over again, from the window of a crappy residencia in the Candelaría. It might be that by renouncing his theme he conjured a troubled past to enter what some say was a maturity that would have won him recognition . . . as a serious painter at last rather than the dirty, aging, anti-social arch-bohemian.
Whether his intransigence wouldn´t allow it or an instinct told him “too late”, he set off again like a homing pigeon. Taganga, Tairona, Guajira: familiar haunts, old gang, and in the welcome of sun, fish and palms: Thálatta Thálatta, the forgiveness of the sea !
Shutting himself off, hardly eating or sleeping, he fell into a feverish contemplation. The friends who occasionally visited his rancho littered with sketches were awed by what they took to be the absolute absorption of genius in work, without understanding that he was only gazing and not at the sea as such but its eternity.
Thus, they assumed that Kat´s decision to revisit San Andrés was the inevitable and long-expected culmination of the career of an artist already legendary around there. An exhibition or stipend, already arranged or sure to follow as soon as the Arts Council or such saw the masterpieces he´d been preparing in secret for months. So they chipped in for his fare, got him barbered and clothed and threw a riotous send-off party.
No news for weeks, such things take time, then a ghost glimpsed in Santa Marta, now gleaning in the marketplace, now bumming on the malecón. Not substantiated until KAT himself told them he´d been denied entry upon landing. Beggar, beatnik –– affront to image, skeleton at feast of tourism and contraband -- turned back, thrown out, refused a fitting death . . . by the island he´d immortalized. His point made, he expired shortly after.