My coming of age: the thank yous and the fuck yous

Hi y'all:

I was supposed to write this email long ago, before the filming of Fear of Water started, which is the first feature I'm fully involved in. Finally. After all these many years. I still remember studying sound (thanks to all my awesome teachers there, it was so cool coming across in Font d'en Fargues) because of my love of music recording, how I failed at that and started working in a radio station with a legless racist cunt as a boss and how, just like that, Meritxell Laseras introduced me to Alba Soler, who had a friend called Ernesto Hidalga who required a sound recordist to make a short film. "Why not?" I said. I remember when, a few weeks later, I told Pancho Martín a decent sound recorder was around 1000 euros and no way I was going to buy one of those - "I'm not that passionate about film-making", I stated. I remember buying one from Germany a few months later, along with a couple of shotgun mics.

My favorite movies usually contain timetravelling devices, dinosaurs, explosions, robots or ninjas. Fear of Water is about the coming of age, getting to know oneself and other subtleties I always find hard to pick up (there's two beautiful girls making out at some point, so yeah, check it out).

Overall though, I've always found myself feeling uncomfortable around these themes, probably because I was --still am-- a late blossomer, and always thought everyone had it better and easier than me. I tried being a hippie, but my body can't handle certain substances and I find reggae boring (probably because of the first). I tried being a geek, but social interacting is weird and Bronism, even if 20% cooler than most things, won't cut it. I tried to be a sorta social activist person, but I'd rather stay indoors more often than not, and I just don't have the patience to deal with some kids, let alone their stupid parents. I tried feeling Spaniard and then I tried feeling Catalan, but still couldn't grow roots anywhere.

I've come to accept than the most interesting people are the ones that don't have it easy to fit in, or simply don't want to give in just like that. While I still firmly believe so, it can get annoying sometimes and drag oneself down.

I left a country and a family behind just to become a sound recordist, and after three hardcore weeks of hectic shooting, I can say it's the best decision I've ever made. It's been a really long journey, and the list of thank yous to the people that lead me here is wide and difficult to track back, but I'll give it a quick go. Forgive the fact I don't mention many Londoners as it's a bit hard to me to retain foreign names, and it's always the first and more recent memories that you keep closer.

Thanks to Ernesto Hidalga for teaching me the importance of a really planned and solid shotlist. Thanks Pedro Ortuño, RIP, for teaching me the importance of taking care of the herd and for being a really caring person under a harsh appearance. Thanks Levinson, for having a product-selling mindset in a country full of so-called artists and pulling out one of the best videos in my reel and one of the funniest shootings I remember. Thanks Pepa Arcioni for recommending me to him and being a brilliant AD. I hope everything's fine in Argentina. Thanks David Vilaplana for having an attention to detail from the first shot to the DVD cover, and pulling out one of the most tasteful products I've ever been even if it was your first short film. Also thanks for being the awesomest friend a guy can have - we still need to learn to differenciate work from bromance, but we'll get to there someday. Thanks Demian Sabini for showing it's possible to do a feature with a minimal budget and that social films don't have to be effing boring, and thanks for taking sound post so seriously - it is SO usually disregarded. Thanks Carol Magallón, for being my favorite person I've ever met in a shooting, and illuminating every set I've seen you in with a million smiles. I always expected you to be equally awesome when not shooting. Thanks English people, in general, (and one Polish, and one Chinese, and one Nigerian, and... Hell, London is awesome) for being more business-driven, understanding that a professional deserves to be paid and/or the importance of a working callsheet and a few pints after work. I'm so happy to work with you. Thanks to shooting minicrushes for bringing 'vidilla' to long-ass working days, even if it's sad to say goodbye at the end of such days. Thanks to people that do FX, severed legs, blood-oozing cuts and cool stuff like that - it's always so incredibly entertaining to have you around. Also thanks to Theatre, which I enjoy doing, perhaps on a more side-thing, and its people, who often interact with cinema. Gritos del Más Allá and Song of Seasons, to name just a couple, were a blast. Thanks El Racó for allowing me to play crazy movies in the cineforum.

If you haven't been mentioned so far, there's a check in your post.

After the thank yous, should come the fuck yous, I think someone said at the beginning of Fear of Water's production, which feels too long ago. I'll skip those, though, because the people who deserve them are still probably in my contacts. However, thank you all the same for teaching me which paths not to repeat and which companies not to get closer.

A huge thank you for the Fear of Water crew. From Rebecca, for putting herself in such a risky-bananas project, to Greg for being an awesome AD and putting his audio equipment in, Ben and Simon for helping me when I bossed them around. Also, Simon, I found your story about Ninjas inspiring - believe it or not, I had this as a backup plan if finding myself didn't happen anytime soon. Thanks Sophie for being aware of everything and absolutely helpful, attentive, fresh, clean and ready to rock, Nick for being as sharp as a blade, Michael for being close on that category and reminding everyone of health and safety on set, Bobbi for allowing me to work side by side around someone's breasts (I have some of your hairpins, but I look fabulous with them, so consider them lost), Chloe and Lily, the actresses, for learning quickly how to be OK with me fiddling stuff on said breasts - believe me when I say in a job like this you desexualize this kind of things really quickly. Thanks Liz for the patience. Thanks Hannah for sewing my trousers. Thanks Chloe fucking Harwood for being cool and laid back on certain situations that might've arisen - we must be relatives after all. Also thanks for having the coolest Catalan grandma and being the best of companies, wether it's with a pint in hand or DITing the shit out of those hard drives. You're awesome, girl. Also good luck with your Spanish classes and your journey to the States.

As a said, Fear of Water is about getting to know oneself, finding what makes us feel alive, but as we cinema people know, the resulting film is just the tip of the iceberg. You could make several 90-minutes, ranging from absurd comedy to heartwarming memories, of what happened during production. To all the people mentioned here and many, many more that I haven't mentioned: you are my coming of age, my somewhere to belong, my herd and my roots, wherever it is your shooting. "Home is where your heart is", Captain Hammer once said. "Late is better than never", it's said in Spain.

*holds beer up* I fucking love each and everyone of you, motherfuckers!!! *throws up*

CS: Cops that (actually) Serve

One of the things I'm liking about London is what here is called Costumer Service. "Costumer Service" is a term that is loudly bragged about all the time. Any major franchise, store, supermarket and restaurant around here has the words "Excellent Costumer Service" somewhere in its walls or web page. Now that I'm a permanent jobseeker, even low profile jobs need you to provide superior CS - "CS"; like that, in initial letters. At the end they usually don't give a duck about "CS" or is poorly applied, but the concept is always there.

On average, as a costumer, I've quite felt the impact of this whole CS concept being on vogue. It's useful, they make me feel valued in this cold impersonal world we live in, it's entertaining and I get to admire individuals and businesses, which is an emotion I don't feel usually when turning on TV or reading newspapers. And aside from all that, it creates jobs.

I could describe multiple good experiences (and also awful ones) about being well attended, but the one that impresses me the most is the British Police. Like every other police I know, the police in GB is divided in departments. There's a department that is close, if not equal, of what in Spain (our parents) use(d) to call "policía de barrio" or "guardia civil", that is, police officers that wander around a determined area being nice and helpful to people and managing small eventualities that could arise.

When I lived by Swiss Cottage, most of these police officers worked single and were African-British. I asked for directions to one of them and was excellently attended. Today I've been in the Woolwich area looking for a tax office, and since Google Maps missed the location and London street's numeration is as absurd as any other British thing that relates numbers to common sense (or more exactly, doesn't relate), I've been forced to ask around. In the distance I found a couple of officers (man and woman, both British) wandering. I asked them once and they politely responded thinking I was looking for an H&M store. I asked them again, and they apologized for the confusion and recommended me to look for answers on the HM&R web. I asked them again, stating that I always get lost in that web and the helpline has proven so far to be everything but helpful, and the police woman took her iPhone out, went to the HM&R webpage and looked up a more appropiate phone number for me to call. Being insistent, I asked them a fourth time for a physical location, given that I came from far with the sole purpose of finding a physical tax office and speaking to a human being about my taxes, since in London everything is done via web, which is awesome but has its inconvenients, and they gave me physical proper directions to the tax office.
The whole process took about 5 minutes, which is loooong for a standard "where's this?" question. Hell, I even took my phone out and showed them my Google Maps and asked directly THEM about taxes. These people are the reason I'm WILLING to pay taxes.
And also, women look cute in that uniform.

5 minutes later, I found another couple (both British males) managing a situation where a girl in her 20s was discussing with a store manager about letting her 50kg San Bernardo in the shop or not.

What intrigues me the most is why these officers work in couples or single and feature different racial backgrounds depending on the place. Or why are they inexistant in my current location. Or even more, why did we get mostly rid of them in Spain.



Or even more important than that: will I also like other police departments when I go to a demonstration?

Camden actually

So the other day I said I had visited Camden inadvertedly. Well, not so.

According to the little I know about London, Camden is a whole quarter/barriade/local name for several streets of metropolitan territory. The touristic hotspot is Camden's market, and it's definitively worth taking a look.

Camden's market, I think, is active everyday of the week. It's a market that has nostalgia, second-hand stuff, cool posters to pin up on your walls, funny T-shirts and lots of food from around the globe.


And THIS.

The place

The stuff

The staff

Cyberdog store is what you obtain building up a place that looks like a spaceship from Ridley Scott's Alien, guarded by two giant silverish cyborgs a' la Fritz Lang's Metropolis, populate it with dummies looking like cyborgs, workers looking like cyborgs, a DJ and two dancers that pretend being in a cyborg club (in fact, there was some club lighting, specially UV) and stuff that can fulfil your wildest appetite for neon-colored, flashy, exhuberantly futuristic er... stuff. "Stuff" meaning clothes (awesome T-shirts), complements, pongos, a sex-shop, etc.

The place is abolutely amazing, and technically is a shop, but could be a disco or a museum. The time I went by, there was QUEUE to get in, and a porter dosificated people in - like clubs do. Right after that you have to go downstairs, so the experience is more immersing. Aha, experience, that's what it was. In there, people flips out all the time. Some of them even go around bumping to the music being played by the DJ (really good one, by the way), and there's a nice mixing of locals, strangers, workers wearing impossible hairs and clothes and some urban tribes that look from outer space (mostly the workers themselves).

If you've been to Barcelona's barri gòtic you get the feeling I'm trying to transmit with some of these words. But the cyber-kitsch thematic is unique, so make sure you experience Cyberdog (as well as the whole Camden market) when you come by.


HOWEVER, they didn't have light gloves. Tsk tsk.

1st day: recon

The first day after I arrived I did a recon mission of the vecinity. I'm next to Camden market, so inadvertedly I visited all of it - and it's not that big. A bit bigger than Carretera de Sants, maybe. Of course, I haven't seen it on Sundays, when it truly shines. Even if it reminded me of almost any commercial street in Barcelona, the Londinense comercial landscape is quite different.

I swear to God there's one of this every 15 meters

It seems English people don't wash their clothes themselves, though I can't blame them for that. No one particularly likes it, and if you have a whole economic system based upon that fact it's OK for me.

What I can't forgive them about is the food. It's expensive. It's so expensive fruit prices are indicated using units and not kilograms. Being this my first recon, I was looking for basic supplies. Food, drink, a place to print copies of my curriculum, a bank, your typical general-purpose shop *todo-a-cien* (not too many, tho) and a library to study and read Marvel comics. Yes, you read right. They have Marvel comics. In a library. Recent ones. 

For free.

I also found a small commercial center, if a commercial center can, in fact, be small, that has a bookshop containing a section that can make any geek drool (everything to Star Wars books to Terry Pratchett and DC volumes), a multicinema and a restaurant that features the cheapest typical English Breakfast -which is always too expensive for what it offers, no matter how cheap you sell it. I'll feel like a cosmopolitan rat having a typical breakfast in a commercial center and not in any of the bazillion lovely cafés in Camden, but oh well.

I will leave the food to another occasion, since I need another 2 whole entries and a bucket next to me to talk about it. I will leave a joke, tho.

Three cookers enter a kitchen; one's Spaniard, one's French and the last one is English. The French one says "Moi, I'm going to cook a canard avec some frites served along with some bouquet wine and it's going to taste magnifique". And he did. The Spanish one says "I'm gonna make a Spanish omelette and it's going to taste awesome". And he did. The English one says, "I'm going to prepare a sandwich consisting on plain tomato, cheese, mayo, lettuce and CUCUMBER as well and it's going to taste bloody awful."

And he fucking did. 

Personal

The obvious question rises every five seconds: "so, why are you leaving exactly?"

For starters, my country doesn't deserve me anymore. I don't want to live in a country where politicians send cops to shoot the crap out of the citizens thew swore to protect, where the future looks darker every day. I'm young, brave and prepared, so I will live wherever the heck I want to live. A country where me and my future (if any) children can live like citizens and not slaves. If UK is not the place, somewhere else will be.

Work

A job. Yeah, I love what I do - it's just that I don't do it often.
I don't have a job right now. Nor do +5M people in Spain. And let's be fair: I have LOOKED for one, only not DEEPLY. Jobs are to be found when they are searched with passion, and I guess I'm not very passionate about working in Spain anymore.

Suppose I stay in Spain. Suppose I'm the best of my promotion, and, among those +5M people, I'm the one to get a job. Suppose it's really well payed. So what? What happens to the ones who couldn't get it? What's the use of being filthy rich in a poor country? What's the use of having an incredible and expensive travel for holiday if you can't share it because it's just too cynical to show pictures of Bora Bora to some friends who struggle to sleep warm every month? What's the point in having a car if your friends can't even afford their part of the gas? I don't want to be rich. I want the whole place to be in a decent status. It's not only about personal benefit. Society, friends, family and myself.

The patriotic aspect

I guess I've never been a very patriotic individual, if you take patriotic as someone who is fond of the traditions and culture (music, cinema, ways of life) of his country.

In the Catalan side of the equation, I've grown up in a metropolitan city that looks like everywhere else, and I wear clothes that can be worn by everyone else, so I've never specially felt the core of the Catalan way of living, whatever that is. I've never been in a group of castlemakers, I thought I didn't like Sardana until recently, and Catalan rock is one of the worst phenomenae of the music scene ever. Christ, I don't even follow Barcelona FC.
Don't take me wrong; an individual can choose to develop a rich culture, one based in the neighbourhood and the warmth of human connections. Some of my acquaintances seem to do that with satisfactory results. But for me - I hardly know any name of my nearest neighbours.

In the Spaniard side of the equation, add the lame cinema and also the musical arts which, even if they can be extraordinary, I don't play. I consider killing bulls to be cromagnonesque. I rarely go to the beach, I rarely drink a sangria outdoors on a sunny afternoon and I'm too pale and clever to upload photos of me posing tanned on Facebook. I can live at night, away from the sun, during weeks, and it feels intimate and comfy.

Furthermore, I also think traditions and local culture are often used by politicians as tools to manipulate citizenship, so fuck everythink that it's not useful, meaningful or pretty anymore. I'm outta here.

Alt-radio

Ya tengo fecha de vuelo. El 23 de abril es el día en que dejo España. Estoy intentando organizar el viaje, además de cerrar asuntos de mi vida pasada y presente. Rehaciendo listas música para llevarme (lo cual no tiene demasiado sentido si en el albergue hay WiFi), me he acordado de la lista de canciones que me hice cuando trabajaba en Radio Ciutat Vella. Llámame melómano (o irresponsable), pero en lo más que pienso antes de irme a UK es en música. Gigas y gigas de música.



Radio Ciutat Vella es una radio con más música alternativa y raruna que moléculas de agua tiene el océano pacífico. Durante un año entero, fui apuntando canciones y grupos musicales que sonaron ahí en post-its, esperando descargarlos para mi disfrute algún día. Pues bien, todavía no lo he hecho - los he pasado a Evernote.

Si alguna vez te has preguntado qué suena en una emisora donde la audiencia es una cifra irrelevante, allá va esta lista.

Que conste que no va en ningún orden en concreto ni sigue ninguna lógica interna.

http://bit.ly/altmusic

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I have news.
April 23rd is the day I leave Spain. I'm trying to organize the Journey, and also dealing with some final stuff of my past and present life. I was re-elaborating music lists to carry with me (which doesn't make a lot of sense since Youth Hostels have WiFi) when I recalled the song list I wrote down when I worked in Radio Ciutat Vella. Call me music-lover (or irresponsible), but all I can think of before flying to UK is to carry the appropiate music. GB and GB of music.

Radio Ciutat Vella is a radio with more alt-music that you could ever imagine. For a whole year, I wrote down in post-its songs and music bands that played there, in order to download them, some day, for my personal use. Well, that day hasn't yet arrived - but I rewrote the list in Evernote.

If you ever wondered what does a local radio sound like - one where audience it's an irrelevant number - here goes this list. Be warned, the list follows no order nor internal logic.

http://bit.ly/altmusic

London Calling

A unas semanas de marcharme a vivir a Londres, esta es la música que me voy a llevar encima, no sea que el WiFi del albergue o piso donde viva sea cutre.

En la lista hay tres conceptos:

• Grupos afines a mis gustos, pero que todavía no he escuchado, como Chemical Brothers and Moby.
• Cosas que me encantan, como Nightwish, Epica, Infected Mushroom y recopilaciones de Trance, para cuando me aburra de experimentar cosas nuevas y quiera escuchar lo mismo de siempre.
• Música viejuna que he de escuchar antes de morir, me guste o no, como The Beatles o Ramones.

En la lista que llevo ahora me falta este tercer tipo de música. Pretendo poner a bajar las discografía enteras de Queen, The Beatles, The Clash, etc, que uno no puede ir a Londres sin saberse London Calling ni el White Album. Dios, cómo odio a los Beatles.

***

In a few weeks I'm moving to London, and this is the music I intend to carry with me, just in case the WiFi connection at the hostel or flat where I'm going to leave is shit.

• The list is based on three concepts:
• Bands I might like, but that I haven't listened to yet, like Chemical Brothers and Moby.
• Things I love, like Nightwish, Epica, Infected Mushroom and Trance compilations, for those moments where experimenting new music is boring and I want to hear the same old songs.
• Prehistoric music I must hear before I die, wether I like it or not, like The Beatles or Ramones.

So far, the list above is missing the third concept. I'm going to download full discographies of Queen, The Beatles, The Clash, etc. No one can go to London without knowing London Calling or the White Album. God, how I hate those Beatles.