Los hijos secretos de...

Rome, whose melodic intensity on Flowers from Exile goes far beyond anything that can be classified as "martial industrial" music, whose lead singer is out somewhere lost on a journey of self-discovery and whose official website contains nothing more than a succinct "WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR IS GONE FOR GOOD" (a prize quotable, by the way) - well, they have a song called "The Secret Sons of Europe". Along with "To Die Among Strangers", it took my breath away and put it in a box. The concept of the album borrows heavily from the story of the Spanish Republicans banished from their homeland after the Spanish Civil War, and the flamenco guitars and claps reinforce that sentiment. The sentiment expressed here is nostalgia (processed though it is), and the secret sons of Europe are those who drifted in a life of shame and virtual inexistence as the Franco regime encroached on what was once not a land of fascisizing nuts. I'm not a fan of making martyrs out of anyone, and the civil war was about much more than the good freedom fighters vs. the dark, ominous colossus of merciless military might. But the fact is every time a shameful, tyrannical time comes along for a country, the generation borne by it and bred in it is later a lost generation. The losers are silenced, smothered and obliterated. But to have been part of the great tyrannical machine and later subsist following its dismantling - that is also being a loser and having to slither and creep under rocks, hiding from the sunlight and the scornful faces of those around you. Because the loser always has to slump his arms and bow his head. Think of the simplest examples: the former people of Nazi Germany in 1945, still at least partly faithful to the criminal regime Germany spawned; die-hard Stalinists from the Russian countryside in 1956, whose Great Patron's face suddenly crumbled and fell apart like an old collage of facial feature cutouts glued together long ago and falling to pieces as the glue dries; Japan's post-war society of complete disillusionment with the free-fall of imperial authority; Poland's ex-communists -with Jaruzelski as their epitome - tainted by the (perceived) wrongdoings of their time. They lived, to some extent, between the cracks, in a hard shell of shame.

Here's a poem randomly lifted from this blog ("Noctívagos") that expresses more of the same:

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Soy el hijo secreto de Lee Harvey Oswald
Soy el hijo secreto de Unabomber
Soy el hijo secreto de un Pantera Negra
el hijo secreto de América...

Soy el hijo secreto de Franco
Soy el hijo secreto de Olof Palme
Soy el hijo secreto de Adolf Hitler
el hijo secreto de Europa.

Soy el hijo secreto de Hiro-Hito
Soy el hijo secreto de Mishima
Soy el hijo secreto de Pol-Pot
el hijo secreto de Asia.

¡Dónde están las televisiones públicas y privadas
para publicitar mi enajenada vida, mi propio horror!

Soy el hijo secreto del Primer Mundo
mis cinco minutos de fama ¿dónde están?

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I don't even want to begin elaborating on those, but interestingly enough, the references to Olof Palme and, to some extent, Mishima , seem a bit out of tune with the rest. Nice criticism of today's "First World" though - the secret sons of today's powers can float up to the surface riding the currents of cheap scandals and shock value.

Maybe subconsciously I'm posting this because I'm about to become a secret son of Europe myself - this being my last week in Poland before I go bumping into a Belgian afternoon. But hey - nothing new there. I've always felt a bit detached or excluded from the concept of nationality. I'm Polish by birth, by passport, by language - but not by spirit. And since I'm getting a bit too muddly and convoluted, I'll finish this up by saying that I hope I make it, hell, I believe I'll make it. 7 months in a foreign land alone is more than I've ever done. The challenges of the MA will come in a total package with the comings and the goings on the other side of the classroom. And an important relationship to maintain, to keep well watered and evergreen, and all that jazz. A big test it's up to me to pass. And last but not least, part of being a son of the world is moving around it, absorbing it as much as possible. After all, the road is the destination.



Titotazqueh.