The Party's Crashing Us

Even for Barcelona, what a night! Having been at home sick for three days and knowing that I had midterms the following week, I knew I had to seize the opportunity to have as much fun as humanly possible (without dying) at the Of Montreal concert last weekend, and it didn't disappoint. Having officially decided that we are "novios" (boyfriend/girlfriend) it would have been more fun to have Cristina as well, but she was still holed up in a Girona hospital trying to recover from pneumonia (thankfully she only passed her cold on to me). As is life on a Barcelona Friday night, there were also a fine assortment of piso parties to choose from, and since the show started at midnight (it was at Razzmatazz, the same venue as that Cut/Copy show) I managed to make it to two of them before heading out. "Que punctual!" said Roxana - my friend Devin's tan, beaming Peruvian roommate that every guy seems to be in love with - when I was the first to arrive at the going-away party she threw for her old friend from Portugal. Since the party (captured in the photo above) didn't get going until late, I also had to be the first to leave, which is a shame, because I apparently missed out on seeing all of my friends embarrassingly drunk (no surprise there) as well as seeing my good buddy (and 20-year-old) Evan necking with a 31-year-old Columbian woman. Such are the sacrifices of leaving a party at 11:30 in Barcelona.



I stumbled into the warm night of the Pakistani-dominated Raval neighborhood and grabbed a falafel to eat on the way to Ross's place, where he and some of UCLA friends were pre-partying before the show. Despite being frat-dudes all, they were all seemed pretty well-adjusted, and after a few cheap Spanish beers there, we all headed out together and packed into the already-crowded metro to get ourselves to Razzmatazz. We got ourselves inside and almost immediately got separated, which is usually impossible to rectify in Razzmatazz's labyrinth-ian maze of terraces and stairwells that connect four massive dancing-rooms. But by some miracle we found each other as well as Sophia and her righteously-soused Parisian friend (that's the three of us pictured above). I didn't catch his name the few times he accidentally stumbled into me, and generally I just tried to keep him from doing the same to other people holding expensive-looking cocktails, of which there were many. Sophia was rather tipsy herself and consequently flirted with me a great deal, which made me rather grateful that Cristina wasn't there to get jealous and protective, which is sometimes her way. We all danced (or something resembling that) until Of Montreal took the stage in all of their bizarre, eccentric glory.




As for the concert itself, well, I suppose in this case the pictures might just describe it better than I can. As you can see, mere words like "bizarre" and "eccentric" don't quite give proper justice to the acid-trip theater that is an Of Montreal show, which uses a revolving cast of musicians and performance artists, to flesh out singer-songwriter Kevin Barnes fractured, funky, electro-psychedelic pop songs. In all the hysteria, I didn't quite make out what some of the costumed characters were supposed to be, exactly, but seeing them jump and tumble around was half the fun (In case you're wondering, the ones in the picture above are a man in a tiger mask trying to pile drive a man in a chicken mask). Barnes is probably the only guy in pop music peacockish enough to stand out in such a crazy circus, prancing around androgynously like a slightly more geeky, sensitive David Bowie. He rarely said much to the crowd, but his crazed-genius charisma never faltered and his wardrobe changes produced increasingly shocking results. Near the finally of the show, he stripped down to a golden speedo and had his ninja friends spread fake blood all over his body (as you can see below). After tearing throw an hour and a half set, the crowd didn't seem like it good go any more nuts. Then the band went into a cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" like was 1993 and the crowd went even more nuts. When it was all over, I couldn't think of anything left to do but sleep as if I had just had enough fun for an entire week, which is basically what happened.

Homecoming

Things I've done instead of updating this blog: got a Catalan girlfriend, got a cold (consequently), spent three hours renewing my student visa, six hours at an extreme sports festival, and went on a nice hike with Alex, Andrea and Magalee. It might not seem like a lot, but that - and some breaks of sitting around - easily managed to fill up the ten days since I last bothered to write anything down, and it's frankly still hard for me to process all of it. Since I only have pictures of the hike and the extreme sports festival and only words for my new romantic pursuits, I'll divide them evenly that way: I met Cristina at a language exchange event at the University of Barcelona that I arrived at late and almost didn't bother going to at all. The Education Abroad event was supposed to help us meet more Spanish students, but instead of pairing us up with students one on one to explore the city (as they did in Morelia), we were all on a balcony together and told to make nice like infants in the play room at an adult party. When that didn't work, they introduced a ridiculous charades-type game where we each got a word that we had to describe in our non-native tongue to find the other person who had it. Zander, as is his way, was so disappointed by how the event was progressing that he decided to leave after twenty minutes. And I, as is my way, was almost swayed by his skepticism to do the same.




Thanks to my eternal luck, I decided to give it another five minutes. Cristina first caught my eye when, after our program coordinator explained that it was "to help us get to know each other and exchange info" she laughed sarcastically "Oh really? That's the point? Cause I wasn't sure what we were doing, exactly, with this game." Had I been so bold, I probably would have made the same joke. With her cropped, raven-black hair hanging just below her ears, she looked like Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs but without the frigid, art-chick stare. She was nonetheless a little intimidating, though, being six-foot and joking around with everyone in the room like she'd known them for years. I thought "I have *got* to talk to her" and immediately found an excuse to ditch the neurotically-timid Peruvian girl I was speaking with. You know those moments of fleeting romance in which you feel a sense of déjà vu but then realize it's only because you've seen the exact same situation in five John Cusack movies? Meeting Cristina was like that. Everything seemed to flow so naturally that I felt like I'd fallen into a movie I would have scripted for myself: I was curious about Catalan identity within Spain, she happened to identify deeply with Cataluña and not so much Spain (later she told me that she found it attractive that I wanted to talk about politics; seriously!), she likes Cut/Copy, I had unthinkingly thrown on my Cut/Copy shirt before getting up that morning. Rarely have I ever had to try less to win over a girl, and that was made all the sweeter because I actually liked her, too.



When the event died down (I never bothered to find the person with my word, and I can't even remember it) we went out to the Obeja Negra for a beer with Marc and Incredibly Young-Looking Dude (whose real name I also can't remember), two guys from Illinois who I've never really talked to before but ended up being fun drinking buddies. Cristina kept ordering pitchers of sangria, and as the night went on seemed to pay more and more attention to me until she told Mark and IYLD that she had a problem: she wanted to take me out for a date but didn't know where to take me. I thought she was joking at first, but when Mark and IYLD went to play a game of foosball she took me by the hands, said she wanted to see me again, and asked me wouldn't I kiss her now that we were (temporarily) alone? It was enough to make me look around to make sure my friends hadn't set up some elaborate, Punk'd-style prank to squash all my hopes and dreams. Unfortunately, there was one catch: she was sick with a cold when I met, and now, a week later, she has been hospitalized for pneumonia and I have a cold of my own. Thus, we still haven't had that first date that she talked about, and I won't be able to take her with me to see Of Montreal tomorrow like I had originally hoped (if I can even make it myself). But I'm still riding high on that thrill of new romance, trying to forget that the romantic comedy déjà vu can't last forever and basking in how much more I seem to love Barcelona the more I immerse myself in it.

Strange Lights

In the week we returned from San Sebastian, my life has become far less solitary - I've made an astounding number of new friends and acquaintances, seemingly spent not a single night alone - but as things are wont to, this has made my life seem far more complicated. That is to say, life has gotten better and more exciting, but ever more busy and difficult to manage - hence, my continuing negligence of this blog. For instance, my new roommate, Andrea, has seemingly transformed my house from a sometimes empty and antisocial place to one far more united. Since he arrived, him, myself, Magalee, Ruth, and Pablo have all spent the nights together until very late talking, smoking, and generally acting like good friends. It's not that this camaraderie didn't exist before, but somehow Andrea's gregarious, teasing nature has brought us all together in a way we never were before.



They told me about the people who have stayed in the house before, how Israeli guy who stayed in my current room and seemed schizophrenic tried to awkwardly seduce Magalee. She told me they were far happier since I took his place, and for the first time I felt like I completely belong here. To twist an analogy from Woody Allen's latest zesty picture "Vicky Christina Barcelona" (go see it and be even more jealous of me), it's almost as if he's the missing element that makes all the others fall into place perfectly. I've known him for a short time, but already I feel like we're good friends, and he also shares much of my (as my friend Andrew would put it) esoteric music taste. He also has me (and the rest of the house, apparently) addicted to his delicious Italian coffee, which is now practically the only way I can get myself out the door to class on time.



Then there's the matter of Minnesotan Alex who happens to be the Spanish Lit class I have with my good friend Californian Alex. Minnesotan Alex has Spanish relatives, speaks the language impeccably, and often tries to pass himself off as a native - if not of Spain than of Europe in general - when meeting actual locals. Hanging out with him is refreshing because he prefers to practice his Spanish even when he's with Americans, which is something I've been trying to do more and more but just doesn't fly with some of my American compatriots. He invited me to my first Spanish house party last week, a birthday celebration for his roommate - and it was quite the language trial by fire, but also a heap of fun. The Spanish girls there were vociferous, bold and self-assured, and made fun of even Alex's stellar Spanish skills. But teasing seems to be the best sign of affection in Spain, and they quickly took to him and I as we strained ourselves mingle with the 20 or so of them who maintained a cacophony of chatter throughout the night and morning. By the end I had at least two who wanted to practice their English with me (none of them are very good) and at three in the morning, four of us went out in search of a bar to avoid having to go to sleep. We never found it, but just making it that far after a party made me feel like I'd passed my first real Barcelona initiation.



But as my number of Spanish friends quadrupled, the situation with my American friends has suddenly become painfully complicated. Ashley is apparently falling for either Evan, Zander, or me (I'm pretty skeptical at the latter, but I'm clueless with these things), which explains her reclusive, testy behavior as of late. What's more, Peruvian Sophia, who I was about to ask out on a date, confessed to me that she fancies Californian Alex and spontaneously started necking with him two days ago at a metro stop. They haven't spoken of it since, and she's not sure she should make a move because she thinks he might have feelings for Argentine Sophia. If this makes your head hurt, imagine how I feel. Needless to say, I was more than a little bummed, but as I've learned from my vast experience in romantic disappointment, such things are usually obvious to us before we're confronted with them head on. At the very least, I'm glad I found out the truth without having to be directly rejected from Sophia, who I'd still like to be friends with. Whereas in the past I would have reacted to an event like this as though it were a car accident, this time I merely treated it like a speed bump. Instead of going home and moping, I met up with Zander and Ashley (thankfully not moody anymore) in gorgeous Plaza del Sol and forgot about it with a few drinks and some savory schwarma. As I rode my bicycle home and felt the air blow through my ever-longer hair, I sensed a new kind of freedom that Barcelona has imbued in me: it's a freedom that comes from realizing you're not trapped inside your life, but rather that you have the ability to choose how you react to what it presents you with.



To add a completely unrelated footnote, I usually keep this page dedicated to my personal experiences, but I felt compelled to post this music video because it's my favorite that I've seen in quite some time, featuring my favorite song by my favorite still-functioning band, Deerhunter. I posted onceonce about the blog of their frontman, Bradford Cox, but this video is the best introduction I can think of to the actual music of this unique and inspiring band. As for the song, "Spring Hall Convert" is the first one I ever heard by them, and it remains my favorite because of the way it seamlessly builds from brooding tranquility to climax after climax without ever losing steam, until it seems to envelope itself in a cleansing wash of echoed noise and disembodied phantoms of Cox's voice. The video captures this gradual drift towards sensory overload with beautifully-shot colored silhouettes of the group performing live, layering them with shots of wild animals until it's impossible to distinguish any of the images from the gorgeous smatterings of shade and color.