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Indio Gris
FUSIONED - DIRECTED - WRITTEN AND CORRESPONDED BY: MENASSA 2002 WE
DON'T KNOW HOW TO SPEAK BUT WE DO IT IN SEVERAL LANGUAGES
INDIO
GRIS, IS A PRODUCT INDIO GRIS Nº 119 YEAR III EDITORIAL INTERVIEW
WITH THE POET MIGUEL OSCAR MENASSA Carmen Salamanca:
Did you happen to think that you were going to set this mess, 40 years after, a
School, a lot of people writing? Miguel
Oscar Menassa: If you don't reformulate your question better I don't intend
to answer. CS:
40 years with Cero Group writing. MOM:
The first thing that comes to my mind is that I would like to be always at the
beginning of Cero Group… The
congresses are held to objectify the passing of time but also to make time go
back, because, how do you manage to say X Congress or XXI Congress and how do
you go about saying that word and not going back 16 years as a minimum? If the
congress is held every two years, it's 32 years ago. It is impossible. Because
when I say: "I'm already 62", how do I not to realise that I was born
62 years before? Impossible. On one hand I complain because I'm 62 but on the
other hand, in saying that I'm 62, I am reborn. Today
yes we'll paint till exhaustion. Why? Because it is the last day we paint until
next week, next week we'll hold a Congress. Do
you know why life is easy for me? Because I say "painter" and before I
built everything on a word which is called "singer", can you see that
it is the same thing? They are two syllable words, painter, singer, the same
song. Before the poet said "Agonising the song becomes stronger than
living" and now he says "Painting the song becomes stronger than
writing". CS:
That is to say that something has been modified during this time. MOM:
Yes, everything has been modified, because I know of what you're speaking about. CS:
About what? MOM:
I can't say it to you in front of the people. Well, let's start , Carmen.
Question. CS:
What has been modified during these 40 years of Cero Group writing? MOM:
Well, I want to tell you "your life" and sack you, because, what kind
of a question is that about what has been modified during these 40 years? For an
academic or… CS:
For an artist? MOM:
Ah, for an artist who has modified himself. Well, the truth is that I used less
paint before, and it would have never occurred to me that I was going to paint
such a big picture like this in 17 minutes. Then, the way of loving has been
modified. Before, one loved everything one saw and now one loves what will never
be seen. Did you understand the change? CS:
Yes. MOM:
For example, when I competed and I was young, what I wanted was to eliminate the
other one, to win over him. Now when I compete, I compete so that there are two
of us, so there are three of us, so that there are four of us, look what a
fundamental change. Before
I loved women and I spoiled their lives. Now I let them love me and then nothing
happens, because as they're learning to love… I'm
very nervous. Ask me quickly, don't let me think. CS:
Well, and what about your writing? Because I have the sensation that you don't
want to speak about Cero Group writing (or about your writing) MOM:
I don't want to speak like this, I don't want to speak as if you were one of
those silly journalists that are around, and each time they see me they ask…
You could ask me, for example, about the death of the larks. You always ask me,
are you a man? I always have to answer "what do I know", and the
interview ends at this point. Develop.
What do you want me to develop? I'm
sad, 40 years have gone by, very sad, like the cows when they laugh. How nice
when I only wrote poems, how wonderful! CS:
And now, what else do you do? MOM:
For example, to this that I'm doing now they call it painting, I grasp a whole
tube of purple and I turn it around here thinking that I'm going to mix it with
blue and I'm going to apply it immediately, so that it looks like the April sky. I'm
going to tell you the whole truth, Carmen Salamanca, even if Leopoldo de Luis
doesn't believe it, and here the interview may start. I
was born in a neighbourhood, in a town where Spanish was spoken. I had a strange
father, who never learnt to speak Spanish and more odd still because all of his
community, who were Arabs, taught their children to speak Arabic and if you
didn't speak Arabic they didn't even greet you. Well, I learnt the word whore in
Arabic, the word shit, the word water, the word mother and the word grandmother.
So, at this point, my life became odd, it turned uncommon, I was odd. I'm
telling you of the problem of exile, I see now that the Spaniards and the
Argentineans do the same to me. I went to the Arabs' party and they said
"this native Argentine child", I went to the Argentineans' party and
they said "here comes the Turkish". I wasn't comfortable anywhere. Now
I go to Buenos Aires and they name me the "Galician", I come here to
Madrid and
I don't seem to do well anywhere, I pay more taxes than the Spanish president
and they still go on calling me "Argentine?" Yes. although I say yes,
do you know why? Because that in Buenos Aires, when I was from Buenos Aires,
when they explained you about some mess, someone came and said "let's go
and buy I don't know what" I used to say "I, Argentine", which
meant "if
brother did something bad to you, go and ask brother", "will
you lend me two hundred dollars", "I, Argentine" and then when
the call me Argentine I remember that and I say "well, it isn't so bad to
be Argentine" especially for someone who has so much theoretic activity. POEMA CERO In
Madrid I learnt to look at the sky. I
remembered my mother so many times. I
was a bleeding wound. Who
is who in this desolate plateau? Who
is the last vestige of purity? Who
is able to stand the direction of a poem? I
left my hands extended under the sun Afterwards
I split my life in halves. DARLING, When
you asked me, desperate, an example of ethic change, I answered you rapidly: A
change of ethics is for the time being impossible. A change of ethics would be
like the savers going to jail and the thieves having their little home. Do you
realise?, that is now, impossible. And
yet you could say, "yes, I understand, as impossible as you being named The
Poet, which hasn't occurred in a thousand years. So, darling, I'll keep on
looking". We
were unwilling, austerity had permeated deep between us. Fear had no need to
exist between us, we have never raped anybody. There,
where no one could testify, the being surged, for not being, and that attitude
remained frozen by death. Annoying
task this one of verifying the sun against the wild effeminate jugglers. Lost,
also means: opened to any road. Not
even the trembling voice of the agonising man have I to offer you. Everything
seems unreachable to me, also what can be reached. Saint
Thomas of the experimental sciences, like Aragon says in his poem, I'm capable
of tearing off the poet's skin, to see if underneath the skin I have some soul,
or everything is the surface of my skin, of my words. To
grow, I say to myself, before falling, darkens any intelligence even one
elaborated in a thousand love verses.
She
came back and told me: -
Man is a shit. And
I wanted to look intelligent and asked her: -
And what about woman? And
she stopped greeting me for two months.
The
music sounded strident as if in a disco. We dimmed the light, although we left
enough so as to see our movements. They
helped themselves to whisky. I drank from their glasses and imagined to kiss
their lips in unison. All
of a sudden, I had a big gulp of whisky and my hot mouth, recalls me of their
mouths. I had another gulp and I ostentatiously rub my fingers over my lips.
I
fancy kissing her nipples, I imagine her shivering during two or three centuries
with the memories of our love. I
have another gulp of fire and holding them by the waist I make them dance around
me. Their
mouths shiver when they think of each other coming closer to me. They stimulate
each other thinking themselves in love with me. And
when they get closer they do it with such force, with such virility, that I feel
myself discarded until the next act. Satiated,
they compete now to see who is better prepared and alternatively one licks my
dick and the other my ass. We
embraced, the three of us embraced slowly and remembered the first moments of
the night, and our bodies tremble once more of fear and desire, as if we hadn't
had our first kiss.
1 The
pure alienation in the being is also a simple foolishness. Something exists in
us that is not, that cannot be filled with being. 2 Afterwards,
the intellectual moments will also come, where everything will be lyrics or
song. Enfolding examples of a lifetime, making itself of words, out of any
being. 3 Superior
sliding. Painful swarm. Sagacious belonging. Charming spring ennobled. There
is a reality which we will not be able to achieve. That is remoteness. As
is said in these cases, the countdown has reached zero. That
is to say, the engines have just been started, everything roars in the style of
the wild jungle which I have never known. My
work is little to maintain a family with six children and the rest. In one word,
I'm broke. This time is my turn to go back several steps. What
happens is that my place of work is full of junk which, on top of that, costs me
the soul to throw them to the garbage bin, where they should be. From the
panties of some dead beloved and at the same time, happy, till the notes on how
to conquer America with a pair of poems and some money. In
the midst of this new failure, I have learnt something. In this country, which
is mine, no one loves the intelligence in itself. No one is interested in the
human thought without limits. Everyone desires, with some sort of stupidity and
conceit, what is useful, what can be interchanged rapidly for money or something
similar or equivalent (a kiss, a caress, a little shit). Sometimes I realise
that I am a decisive step for the history of man. I don't know very well if they
will allow me to become something. I
am surrounded by solitude, but also by grandeur.
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