Composers From Spain

"Not sure where to start with flamenco? Check out Paco de Lucía and have your mind blown. Paco casts a huge shadow over the flamenco world, and is arguably the finest exponent of the Spanish style, well, ever. The embodiment of Iberian fire and skill, Paco’s mastery of flamenco techniques and jazz leanings saw him acclaimed across the world for the genius he undoubtedly was. Emotive, innovative, astonishing to watch and heart-rending to listen to."

"Harbisson's antenna, hovering above his Henry V-meets-the-Monkees hairdo, is quite the lifestyle statement. I tell him he looks like a cross between an insect and a call-centre worker."

"Neil Harbisson is one of the world's first bona fide cyborgs."

"I had a very special encounter with him. Surreal and especially futuristic. He raises so many questions, so many lines of thought, that force you to think differently."

"Beware not to use the future as an excuse to ignore living in the present."

"I don't feel that I'm using technology, I don't feel that I'm wearing technology, I feel that I am technology."

"There are no white skins, and there are no black skins. Humans skins are of different shades of orange."

"Life will be much more exciting when we stop creating applications for mobile phones and we start creating applications for our own body."

"Technology is made by humans. If we modify our body with human creations we become more human."

"It's not the union between my head and the electronic eye what makes me feel 'cyborg', it's the union between the software and my brain."

"If salads sounded like Justin Bieber, children would eat more vegetables."

"When you're a little weird, you aspire to be normal; when you're very weird, you aspire to be recognised for it."

"If I have problems perceiving a color I don't know who to go to – an opthamologist, a neurologist, or a computer programmer."

"Light is slow."

"Harbisson meets two apparently incompatible conditions: shyness and exhibitionism. He speaks softly, never utters a word higher than another and his body language is that of someone slightly retracted. However, he walks all over the world with a cyborg eye dangling over his forehead in a kind of antenna that seems to sprout from within his head. Along the way, people nudge each other and point at him. But non of that stops him, he remains impassive and continues on his way."

"Frankly, Neil Harbisson, freaked me the fuck out. Both inspirational and terrifying. Like seeing a benevolent witch displaying her magic: even if you’re only using your powers to grow magic daffodils, it’s an ungodly talent that’s beyond human."

"I suppose he had the good luck to be executed, no? I had an hour's chat with him in Buenos Aires. He struck me as a kind of play actor, no? Living up to a certain role. I mean, being a professional Andalusian... But in the case of Lorca, it was very strange because I lived in Andalusia and the Andalusians aren't a bit like that. His were stage Andalusians. Maybe he thought that in Buenos Aires he had to live up to that character, but in Andalusia, people are not like that. In fact, if you are in Andalusia, if you are talking to a man of letters and you speak to him about bullfights, he'll say, 'Oh well, that sort of this pleases people, I suppose, but really the torero works in no danger whatsoever.' Because they are bored by these things, because every writer is bored by the local color in his own country. Well, when I met Lorca, he was being a professional Andalusian... Besides, Lorca wanted to astonish us. He said to me that he was very troubled about a very important figure in the contemporary world. A character in whom he could see all the tragedy of American life. And then he went on in this way until I asked him who was this character and it turned out this character was Mickey Mouse. I suppose he was trying to be clever. And I thought, 'That's the kind of thing you say when you are very, very young and you want to astonish somebody.' But after all, he was a grown man, he had no need, he could have talked in a different way. But when he started in about Mickey Mouse being a symbol of America, there was a friend of mine there and he looked at me and I looked at him and we both walked away because we were too old for that kind of game, no? Even at that time."

"Well, [Lorca had] a gift for gab. For example, he makes striking metaphors, but I think he makes striking metaphors for him, because I think that his world was mostly verbal. I think that he was fond of playing words against each other, the contrast of words, but I wonder if he knew what he was doing."

"it takes quite a talent for a playwright to internalize and remain distant at the same time. I think that is why all the great playwrights like Shakespeare, García Lorca, and several others have been poets as well."

"Enamored of the work of the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, Anna Margolin undertook to learn Spanish."

"I remember that Federico García Lorca was always asking me to read my lines, my poetry, and yet in the middle of my reading, he would say, "Stop, stop! Don't go on, lest you influence me!""

"choppy and unabsorbed a set of results as we have seen, during the last few years, in those poets who have used Lorca, whole and unassimilated, corrupting the fiery purities of his Spanish into a grotesque of English."

"18 August 1936 is the most likely date in which the gay socialist poet Federico García Lorca was taken from his jail cell and executed on the order of right-wing general Francisco Franco's military forces. The exact circumstances of his death are unclear, but after being arrested on August 16 he was probably killed on August 18 in the early hours of the morning. The Spanish civil War, which pitted workers and peasants against the military, nationalist and fascist, had broken out one month previously. And it was clear on what side Lorca's sympathies lay: “I will always be on the side of those who have nothing and who are not even allowed to enjoy the nothing they have in peace.”"

"The day that hunger is eradicated from the earth there will be the greatest spiritual explosion the world has ever known. Humanity cannot imagine the joy that will burst into the world on the day of that great revolution."

"Caballito negro. ¿Dónde llevas tu jinete muerto?"

"Verde que te quiero verde. Verde viento. Verdes ramas. El barco sobre la mar y el caballo en la montaña."

"Los caballos negros son. Las herraduras son negras. Sobre las capas relucen manchas de tinta y de cera. Tienen, por eso no lloran, de plomo las calaveras. Con el alma de charol vienen por la carretera."

"Las heridas quemaban como soles a las cinco de la tarde, y el gentío rompía las ventanas a las cinco de la tarde. A las cinco de la tarde. ¡Ay qué terribles cinco de la tarde! ¡Eran las cinco en todos los relojes! ¡Eran las cinco en sombra de la tarde!"

"¡Que no quiero verla!Dile a la luna que venga, que no quiero ver la sangre de Ignacio sobre la arena.¡Que no quiero verla!"

"Pero ya duerme sin fin. Ya los musgos y la hierba abren con dedos seguros la flor de su calavera. Y su sangre ya viene cantando: cantando por marismas y praderas, resbalando por cuernos ateridos, vacilando sin alma por la niebla, tropezando con miles de pezuñas como una larga, oscura, triste lengua, para formar un charco de agonía junto al Guadalquivir de las estrellas. ¡Oh blanco muro de España! ¡Oh negro toro de pena! ¡Oh sangre dura de Ignacio! ¡Oh ruiseñor de sus venas!"

"No te conoce el toro ni la higuera, ni caballos ni hormigas de tu casa. No te conoce el niño ni la tarde porque te has muerto para siempre.No te conoce el lomo de la piedra, ni el raso negro donde te destrozas. No te conoce tu recuerdo mudo porque te has muerto para siempre.El otoño vendrá con caracolas, uva de niebla y montes agrupados, pero nadie querrá mirar tus ojos porque te has muerto para siempre.Porque te has muerto para siempre, como todos los muertos de la Tierra, como todos los muertos que se olvidan en un montón de perros apagados.No te conoce nadie. No. Pero yo te canto. Yo canto para luego tu perfil y tu gracia. La madurez insigne de tu conocimiento. Tu apetencia de muerte y el gusto de su boca. La tristeza que tuvo tu valiente alegría."

"Verte desnuda es recordar la Tierra."

"Como no me he preocupado de nacer, no me preocupo de morir."

"El remanso del aire bajo la rama del eco.El remanso del agua bajo fronda de luceros.El remanso de tu boca bajo espesura de besos."

"Un muerto en España está más vivo como muerto que en ningún sitio del mundo."

"¡No me mires más! Si quieres te daré mis ojos, que son frescos, y mis espaldas para que te compongas la joroba que tienes."

"Las viejas vemos a través de las paredes."

"Siempre has sido lista. Has visto lo malo de las gentes a cien leguas... Pero los hijos son los hijos. Ahora estás ciega."

"The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border? There is a brotherhood among all men. This must be recognized if life is to remain. We must learn the love of man."

"What I particularly admire in him is the firm stand he has taken, not only against the oppressors of his countrymen, but also against those opportunists who are always ready to compromise with the Devil. He perceives very clearly that the world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it."

"His playing . . . is one of those rare things that may only come once in a lifetime and even not in one person's life, it may be centuries before there is anyone like that again. He is a funny little fellow only about 30 and plays with his eyes shut practically the whole time, every note every pause and tone colour is reflected in his face and to hear him again, to draw the bow across is a revelation."

"I have not played the cello in front of an audience since long years but I think I must do it this time. I am going to play a melody from the Catalonian folklore: The singing of the Birds. Birds, when in the sky, go singing: Peace, peace, peace. And this is a melody that Bach, Beethoven and all great people would have admired and loved. And, in addition, it springs up from the soul of my country: Catalonia."

"This is the greatest honour I have ever received in my life. Peace has always been my greatest concern. Yet in my childhood I learned to love it. My mother—an exceptional, brilliant woman — used to speak to me about it when I was still a child, because in those years there were also a lot of wars. What is more, I am a Catalan. Today, a province of Spain. But what has been Catalonia? Catalonia has been the greatest nation in the world. I will tell you why. Catalonia has had the first parliament, much before England. Catalonia had the first United Nations. All the authorities of Catalonia in the Eleventh Century met in a city of France, at that time Catalonia, to speak about peace, at the Eleventh Century. Peace in the world and against, against, against war, the inhumanity of the wars. So I am so happy, so happy, to be with you today. That is why the United Nations, which works solely towards the peace ideal, is in my heart, because anything to do with peace goes straight to my heart."