I have news for you, my silent friend of many distances. Since I published last February a podcast about Bob Dylan, dealing with his recent biopic A Complete Unknown, where I argued the many reasons why he deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature, it turns out that I have found an audience in Apple Podcast.
All because of a Dylan's fan site called Expecting Rain, which linked my podcast, and suddenly the statistics graph of downloads looked like a rocket on a mighty lift-off in outer space. I, who am as much a theatrical Cyrano de Bergerac as he was, already saw myself back from the States and Empires of the Moon. One never knows when chance of sheer luck might strike, so I keep writing and recording. I had many false auroras before, and my close friends know that.
It turns out that Apple Podcast wrote asking for my business compliance, in order to sell all my work worldwide and get nicely paid. I don't know what to do. I never had a business running or gone to the notary. I've been roaming too much to keep things in order and updated. I hope it won't be too expensive. I'm still waiting for the accountant’s bill. After leaving money on the table with the gig economy, I'm convinced entrepreneurial activities are the way of the future.
And I absolutely do not care about the format in which my work reaches the audience. The normal way would be through printed works because I write fiction, and that's what I've been trying for decades. But the gatekeepers, who are the ones who have the last word, haven't considered it commercial enough to have some skin in the game.
I don't share that point of view. And my natural market is so saturated with TV stars winning literary prizes that the whole business stinks, reason enough to write in English too instead of only in Castilian Spanish–my mother tongue–than to be trapped for the rest of my life in a shithole country, which has changed its old ambition for systemic corruption. And having the immense fortune of living in the multilingual Europe makes it totally organic. I know the monolingual tribe will tear apart their clothes for this statement. What can you do?
I recall when I opened this account on Substack, it was like going back to the times of the old Google blogosphere. But twenty years later, I could broadcast my post in high fidelity mixed with a soundtrack, if I were inclined to create atmospheres. And the capital difference was that I could pass the hat.
The fact that I also could publish in Apple Podcast just like that, it was great. And I thought from the beginning in the solo format, because I'm just reading out loud a column of a thousand words, not engaging in a happening of all sorts, which is what people mistakenly identified as a modern podcast, an old radio talk show with all the plugs to make profit. Moreover, I could write at large, but in times of the economy of attention, I have to go back to the rules of terse language, when the words whispered in the ear were a private affair.
The idea came from my bedside book: the Persian classic titled One Thousand and One Nights, translated by the British adventurer, Richard Burton.
Shahryār, a king who ruled an empire that stretched from Persia to India is shocked to learn that his brother's wife is unfaithful with a slave blackamoor. Discovering that his own wife's infidelity has been even more flagrant, he has her killed. In his bitterness and grief, he decides that all women are the same. Shahryār begins to marry a succession of virgins only to cut the head each one the next morning, before she has any chance to dishonor him.
Scheherazade, the daughter of the sad vizier at the service of the cruel Shahryar, offers herself as the next bride. On the night of the marriage, begins to tell the king a tale, but does not end it. The king, curious about how the story ends, is thus forced to cancel the beheading. Through Scheherazade long narration –1001 is concept of infinite like umpteen– she sought the healing of the jealous ruler, and stop the killing of young women.
Get your bucket list, and duly note this timeless classic is a must-read for those who haven’t had the opportunity. You heard about the missing girls in Mexico in the hands of drug cartels? Pure evil.
Finally, there are those who prefer to read a thousand-word column instead of listening to it. And that's what I would undoubtedly do if I hadn't grown up through the Digital Revolution. I recall the advertising of the German car brand Audi: progress through technology, in German, “vorsprung durch technik.” I never imagined by then that the classic figure of the reciter with musical accompaniment, performing in the floral games that precede the Walpurgis Night, could unfold today into an immersive sound experience, without listening ever again to how badly the reciter spit and breathed and popped and hissed over a cheap microphone. Or that horrible people applauding themselves on the stage like a herd of trained seals with music blaring out from the speakers to round off.
And here I feel the loneliness of the crossroads. Sometimes, I realize that I'm a poor fool who has spent his day dreaming awake, and the folding star arising shows. Other times, I think I'm just passing through. My time will end soon and I am not willing to stop doing what I am passionate about. All I know about the meaning of life and the shifting sands of my future, fits neatly on some books I have read and the poems of my avuncular Rilke.
And if the earthly no longer knows your name,
whisper to the silent earth: I'm flowing.
To the flashing water say: I am.
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