Epilogue of an epilogue
I beg you all. Temper fear with reason, panic with patience, and uncertainty with education. (Abdu Sharkawy)
The year of the Monkey has long since ended, and we have entered a new decade, which at the moment has developed with increasing challenges and systemic nausea, although not necessarily induced by disease or movement. It is rather a psychic nausea, which we are forced to alleviate by whatever means we have at our disposal. Although the new year harbored messages of hope, its progression has overshadowed our personal and global concerns through a profound lack of judgment.
We welcome 2020 as our constitutional moral center is redesigned in an increasingly immoral way, governed by those who claim to be protected by Christian values but leave aside the essence of Christianity: loving one another. They turn their heads in the face of suffering as they voluntarily follow someone who lacks an authentic response to the waning human condition. He hoped that our new decade would provide us with a more tolerant setting, envisioning the opening of ceremonial panels, such as the sides of the great triptychs of the altars open at the feast days, which would reveal 2020 as the year of perfect vision. Perhaps those expectations were naive, but I assure you that I felt them with all my heart, just as I feel the anguish of injustice, a dark blur that will never go away.
Where is the luminosity? Where is prudent justice? We ask ourselves, carving out our land with a mental plow, overburdened with the task of keeping ourselves in balance in these unbalanced times.
A panel for the year of the Rat
There is a saying in the canons of lunar astrology that the Monkey needs the Rat. I am not sure to what extent, although there are those who say that rats are able to cheer up monkeys when they feel depressed, because when they are together, the atmosphere is filled with laughter. Of course, we are not only referring to the animal species itself, but to certain inherent qualities of people born in the year of their omen. In any case, at this precise moment we are entering the lunar year of the Metal Rat, which will be celebrated in style in our great cities, especially those with magnificent chinatowns, with impressive displays of fireworks, dances of sacred lions, confetti and multicolored streamers falling from the sky. Celebrations that will culminate with a parade on February 10, coinciding with the full moon, with floats and dragons and symbols of the name of the year that begins. In an abstract gesture of generosity, I dive into an old record box and unearth Frank Zappa's Hot Rats . The girl on the cover, peeking out of an empty pool, is miss Christine, a frail Victorian beauty from the group Girls Together Outrageously, aka The GTO's.
Hot Rats came out in late 1969. At the time I lived with Robert Mapplethorpe at the Chelsea Hotel and we used to talk to her in the lobby. She was an ethereal being, with a mane even more untamable than mine and skin like peach. At some point in the early 1970s, Miss Christine asked me to join her revolutionary rock band, and while that was not my true calling, I was flattered. When I shook his hand to seal the deal, I had the impression that he was facing a delicate bird of prey. Of that more than half a century ago, something that is difficult to get used to, because I can still visualize it with her big eyes and soft voice, with her head on one side, the beautiful daughter of a pirate who did not turn twenty-three. I nod at the young protégé of Zappa, take the vinyl out of the plastic sleeve, and examine it carefully, only to discover that it is covered in tiny scratches, like footprints of a colony of rats spinning around.
A record player spins naturally through time. I put the cover of the disc on the desk, momentarily hiding a small plate of an illustration of Tenniel in which Alicia appears conversing with the Dodo. Leaning next to the picture is a birthday gift from a very dear friend, a gold-plated upright glass rat whom I have named Ratty. It will preside over my room like a moon talisman. Is that how it works; we turn to the Metal Rat that stands tall with boundless optimism, as each new year begins with its assigned lunar creature, with its particular armor and distinctive personality, as well as with the holistic belief that things will soon improve. .
Panel of the holiday
"Things will not take long to improve." That was what I wrote a few days ago in anticipation of the celebrations that were to take place around the world; the atmosphere was already charged with the expectation of the new. The Metal Rat is the first sign of the twelve animal cycle in Chinese astrology, certainly a time for renewal and optimism. But, unfortunately, an unexpected turn, the sudden threat of a global pandemic has framed the entrance of the Metal Rat, and has undermined the spirits, to the point of waiting for the parade party. With China on the verge of complete confinement, I wondered how the Chinese New Year would be celebrated in our own streets and went with Lenny Kaye to Chinatown, hoping to glimpse the remnants of the welcome to the year celebration, with its traditional cluster of gleaming trash and perhaps a few colorful rats on sticks decked out in red and gold streamers, not to mention the general feeling of exhilaration. Those were our childish expectations, we expected to see crowded streets, we doubted if we would find parking, but, surprising as it may seem, there were plenty of free spaces. We sat at the Silk Route Café and shared a kettle of brown rice tea, before strolling for hints of action.
Although it was still midafternoon, the streets were so deserted that they were ghostly, few pedestrians were visible. The restaurants, except for our beloved Wo Hop, were empty, and we felt more and more urgency to find some glimpse of the first round of celebrations. I guess we were too late for one party and too soon for another.
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- Patti Smith, Martirio and Rossy de Palma, Fine Art Gold medals
At the end of Mott Street there are some disheveled remains of multicolored tinsel and small mounds of confetti. Where are the vaporous trails of the golden dragons waving between desires that, when the light captures at a specific angle, are undoubtedly fulfilled? In China, things have gone wrong for the revelers who had prepared for the biggest party of the year. In a swift operation, Beijing has canceled large-scale celebrations, even the temples empty as the deadly coronavirus spreads insidiously. Thus has been the herald of the poor Metal Rat, caught in quarantine along with several million more people. A virus that spreads hysteria as the disease ships from Wuhan to neighboring ports, causing travel bans and border closures. Right where we had parked I saw a wrinkled protective mask. In an effort to avoid contagion, many put on these disposable masks. Some stand on top of each other. "I have drawn a rat on mine," says a defiant citizen. And even if we are deprived of our lunar union, I will celebrate it on my own with sparklers at night. ” For despite the decrees prohibiting the holidays, people find ways to externalize their jubilant traditions. They kick around with Brueghel's own fervor and cling to the certainty that the world will not stop spinning, and that the lunar new year will always be there as long as the moon exists; it will reign, it will vanish, it will return.
The year of the Monkey. Patti Smith. Translation by Ana Mata Buil. Lumen, 2020. 224 pages. 18.90 euros.
