Dear Eneko,
Your aita, our librarian, has asked me to write a few words here today to celebrate your 12th birthday. I usually don’t do what he asks because I don’t like him very much. That said, I do like you and think about you and your future quite a lot from the perspective of these shelves I haunt. I love watching you play – you seem so free compared to the weight of his library and books! Can you see yourself anywhere on his serious shelves? I always chuckle when he’s off on one of his incoherent rants and you say to him: ‘Stop going on about Artforum, aita!”. Today I watched him as he stood before me, hand on beard, trying to make some kind of connection with you so that he could turn to me to write this post. When he picked up Mattin’s book Unconstituted Praxis and proceeded to take a photo of it on top of the Athletic Bilbao shirt that your aitite bought you, I gave out a barely audible groan (or perhaps creak is a better way to describe the noise).
How was I going to write to you – amid your current cool interests in Minecraft, Star Wars, Marvel and ‘soccer’ – from these pages infused with artsy noise and anarchy? Then I stumbled across a section called ‘Effervescent Times Exceeding Politics’ and somehow I found this quote that seemed to address you in all your bubbly spirit – if not today, then somehow for your future. In it, osaba Mattin references improvisation in the work of Cornelius Cardew (so connecting this post to yesterday’s – just as you, your ama and aita ate half of your birthday cake yesterday as, presumably, you’ll eat the other half today – boy, I wish I had a mouth and a stomach! – that cake is the bomb!).
Cardew mentioned that political consciousness does not arise from one moment of inspiration. He may be right that one is not going to realise in one second how fucked up the world is. But one might be able to bring out those creative elements that the fucked-up-ness of the world normally suppresses.
If you look beyond osaba Mattin’s pretentious and frankly explicit language, the birthday message I want to send to you today is that a momentary effervescence, like that mixture of vinegar and baking soda you just concocted on the porch, may not be enough to realize what needs to be done with your life, but it can be used to cut through entrenched ideas that if given too much power can hold you back. In other words, enjoy the play of placing blocks on Minecraft today, because tomorrow the world may present you with blocks that cannot be so easily moved, like the oh so heavy books of your aita’s ponderous library.
Enjoy the moment, young Padawan, and stay effervescent!
Love your friend,
The Library Ghost