Rhythm

How I need the rhythm. From lis­ten­ing to my heart, lit­er­ally fin­ger on pulse when my head be­gins to bully, to the fa­mil­iar­i­ties, smiles and con­stancy of Pri­o­rat com­mu­nity and na­ture.

I find such com­fort in this rural alchemy, when some­times – often - it seems they have turned the lead of sur­viv­ing into the gold of liv­ing sus­tain­ing, truth­ful lives. Am I a ro­man­tic? No. Just some­one who strug­gles with my bit­ter­ness at human prim­i­tive­ness and dis­hon­esty but who fell in love a long time ago with trust, home, truth and the tan­gi­ble.

The butcher nurses his cof­fee in the vegan café and beams. The baker will al­ways break off a bread stick for a child. In­jus­tice will weld peo­ple shoul­der to shoul­der. Time given will al­ways be given back. Death is stared full in the face. Laugh­ter is wa­tered. The table is the heart. The weave shines with the golden threads of se­niors and tod­dlers. Chil­dren know the sim­ple rules, the col­lec­tive pace and val­ues, and hence are all the freer to find their feet and them­selves in what can some­times seem a dystopian world.

It is a cir­cle, both in­ward and out­ward look­ing in equal mea­sure, a wel­com­ing one, a se­cu­rity as much as any that can be found, I reckon, and one that pat­terns the globe. These cir­cles mat­ter so so much. Laced to­gether, over­lap­ping, with wider un­der­stand­ing and trust, they are life at its most ful­fill­ing. Giv­ing com­mu­ni­ties the means and sup­port to keep the cir­cle has never been more cru­cial.

We bee­tled into town last night for a con­cert in the the­atre. The time printed on the tick­ets was wrong, but word got around. The Christ­mas lights were up. The man on the hill by the round­about had for the umpteenth time draped his house in blue neon, vis­i­ble in Aragon, iden­ti­cal to the pierc­ing blue of po­lice car lights, and hence doing a fine job of slow­ing the traf­fic on the N420.

The con­cert had sold out im­me­di­ately, the crown­ing mo­ment of a run of per­for­mances to imbue every­one pre­sent with the force of the now, liv­ing in the mo­ment. That is the magic of live art, the­atre and music, as rich in Cat­alo­nia as any­where I have been. And the wis­dom of mak­ing it pos­si­ble some dis­tance from so-called cul­tural cap­i­tals is to be lauded to the hilt.

What the Gen­er­al­i­tat and other sup­port­ers and local busi­nesses had the good sense to do was to recog­nise the am­bi­tion, cre­ativ­ity and need of com­mu­nity. That is sus­te­nance.

It was al­ways going to be un­for­get­table. We were lis­ten­ing and watch­ing An­drea Motis, voice & trum­pet, Joan Chamorro, bass, Ig­nasi Ter­raza, piano, Josep Traver, gui­tar, and Es­teve Pi, drums.

Words al­most fail me at this point. They were out of this world.

We joined the crush in the the­atre hall­way and re­cep­tion area for a glass of still white wine, the au­di­ence fizzing with ap­pre­ci­a­tion. Through the exit doors we could see the stage. Es­teve Pi, one of the world’s great­est jazz drum­mers, was beam­ing, sur­rounded by chil­dren of all ages. He was al­low­ing them to bang on his drum kit. He was home in the town where he grew up, home among fam­ily and friends, so very much in the mo­ment.