One In A Million

Twelve years ago, I was at my first SfN meeting in Chicago. It was really a big thing. It was quite impressive to see millions of researchers and students from all the world, sharing scientific knowledge. One day, I was waiting for a coffee in a Starbucks, inside the McCormick Place, and then Eric Kandel came close to me and asked me if I knew where could he pick up the stuff of the annual meeting, and all. I couldn't believe it. Although for the wrong reasons, a Nobel Prize, talking to me, in my first meeting of SfN! What was the probability...? 

I was so naive and silly and romantic that I thought it was a signal for me to stop writing and desiring to be a writer, and to focus 24/7 on science.

The World Is A Vampire

8: 33. Sometimes life is a deep breath into the unknown, but, for many people, is just a glimpse, or a brief dive into a bathub. They are on the surface of everything, and, for example, ask you "What have you done to be recognized?”, but they only have kids and awful lives and seem to be convinced of their moral superiority. Or they buy cars, and fight to death for a spot in a parking lot. Or they travel around the world and they need to tell it to the entire world, as if the experience of taking many planes around the world, automatically could turn on the darkness of their minds, when they don't have a single personal opinion or thought about nothing... In the same way, some guys despise the government and make public statements against the government in their podcasts, which they record in their fancy Apple devices', in their nice apartments by the beach, at their small studios in which they collect signature guitars on the walls, just for hobbie. Other adults behave like geniuses with revolutionary ideas, when they only make a living of taking photographs of semi-naked women in underwear, which pretend to seduce the camera for pleasure, for money, for virality... or for all of them. It doesn't matter what's their worst experience: they seem to believe that their lives are tough and special —that they have real jobs and that they make an extraordinary effort to keep their jobs—, and so they make tough (and deep) declarations against the government, or anyone which they perceive to be an obstacle to them, from their very small perspective —totally brainwashed by their “smart” friends and gurus—, and they act like victims and survivors of their particular poverty (mental...?) That's the way we employ social networks. If you don't share it, it didn't happen.

How Did We Get This Far Apart?

As the dream elapses, this song hits my brain. It's a dark afternoon. Everything seems to be in black and white. I feel tired and annoyed and confused and weak. I am inside a house. It looks like an old big house. It's like a funeral. It's cold. 

From my place, I can see a pale garden thru an enormous window. It looks like winter. I am in the kitchen trying to get some peace of mind. Your mom cries and your dad tries to be strong.

We all know that you're dead. And we still cannot process it. Apparently, someone close to you killed you. Your dad tries to ignore the fact that you won't come back. Your mom seems to be more realistic. And I can't believe it. I hadn't seen you for years, and I cant' stop thinking that we used to be so close together. 

The song remains hitting my brain. I feel the music running like sickening blood throughout my body. I feel the voice of Robert Smith inside my ears, smashing gray matter. I feel so sad and guilty, and I cannot stop thinking about you. I remember you exactly as you were, when we were so close. 

Nobody Loves Me, It's True

We were three in the middle of a workshop, but the place looked like a VIPS. Apparently the table was our work table. In front of us, the dishes with food symbolized arts & crafts. You were on my left. An unknown woman was on my right. She seemed beautiful and she irradiated a strong sexual vibe. Both of us were attracted to her. She was irresistible. We were trying to impress her. 

Our teacher at the workshop was an old woman with glasses, gray hair and a kitchen apron, and she walked again and again close to the table. It seemed that we were terrible pupils and that she was annoyed of our attitude. I guess this piece of the dream symbolizes the way I feel about a few students who are super demanding and super self-indulging, without any kind of self-criticism. They complain about everything and they act like if they were perfect, but omit to say that they do not assist to classes, that they do not do homeworks and that they cheat on examinations. They expect immediate answers to their e-mails and demands, but they never answer e-mails. Only their needs are relevant. They have no empathy.

In the dream, basically, we were an example of laziness. We were chatting. I was starved and the food was a temptation I tried to resist. I also tried to ignore the sounds of my stomach. Once and again your face and my face were so close. It seemed you wanted me to kiss you. The unknown woman seemed to agree and to have fun. I was so sure that if we kissed, she would have an affair with us. This scene was so intense. I felt I was in the middle of a movie and that I was a movie star sham. Several times our faces were very close and we were about to kiss. Each time it happened, I thought that I'd always felt curious about kissing a man and that now that I had the opportunity, I was so afraid. At the same time, I felt nobody loved me and that I had to kiss you –like if it were the one last effort–, if I seriously wanted to not be ignored any more. It was like my most hard acting test.  

Before I went to bed, I accidentally saw one of your Tik Tok videos –I was so impressed of your work and I felt envy about your popularity– at the very same moment Spotify reproduced “Sour times” on the computer. For almost a decade I hadn't heard Portishead and the music evoked some volatile memories on me. 

I have a feeling that you'll have success as an artist –maybe, as a writer?– in the way I would love to. I have a feeling that my work will be ignored as usual. I don't want to be famous, but sometimes is so frustrating that nobody reads me. (Not even the ones I consider my friends). I'm not even sure that someone will if I die. As I know that this part of the dream symbolizes my thoughts about literary mob, I also know that I'm sort of paranoid. Nonetheless, I have the feeling that my colleagues and relatives think that I'm the copy of the copy of the copy of the copy, and that I always get more than I deserve. I smell their envy each second. I know I'm just a lucky guy and that I'm not the smartest guy on Earth, but I have made a lot of sacrifices to have what I have. No one has given me anything for free. 

Love Is Strong

The sound hit me like an iv shot of warmth, like if I were suddenly experiencing a discharge of neurons releasing endorphins from the spinal cord to relief me from the pain of an old war wound or of a cumbersome surgery. 

It was essentially your beat, your rhythm, your heart beating, your soul screaming “I am a Rolling Stone”. It was your brand. Like a tattooed sound in the walls of music of my memory. Like the fundamentals of your band. 

Didn't know you once argued with Mick. They say you were in the middle of a tour and he asked “Where's my drummer?” in a room of a fancy hotel, and then minutes later you abruptly appeared and hit him in the face and told him “I'm not your drummer: you're my singer!” Nor didn't I know you'd written a book of poems and drawings in honor to Charlie Parker. 

I just knew you were Charlie Watts, the low profile guy of “Their Satanic Majesties”. Vaguely I remembered listening to Get Yer Ya Ya's Out! in the firsts years of my life, when we lived in a small apartment and my dad read the newspaper in the living room on Sundays. Vaguely I remembered the cover of that album in which you were jumping all dressed in white and with a couple of electric guitars in your hands and shoulders. A donkey was behind you. It had pieces of a drum set and another electric guitar. Both were in some sort of abandoned highway. Somehow, the photograph made me think of the unknown paths of rock n' roll music. 

My dad listened to that album one Sunday after another (or so I remember) and I used to play with my toys in the living room one Sunday after another and so I learned to be happy and comfortable with the songs of The Rolling Stones, and they became a part of my childhood rituals. 

While I was experiencing this sort of iv shot of warmth, I was in the middle of another living room, many years later, and I was almost fourteen years old. We had recently moved to our own house. My dad did not longer hear Get Yer Ya Yar's Out! one Sunday after another. Then he had a weird fever for Miami Sound Machine, Santana and Charly García. 

Nonetheless, it was a rad feeling. Immediately, as your snare hit into the song, flashes of my childhood came to my mind. Again, The Rolling Stones emerged from a mysterious device –not a turntable in this case, but an old TV–, providing me happiness and comfort. 

Mick, Keith, Roonie and you were giants in black and white, with shades of gray, in the screen. A harmonica followed your snare drum and so the Telecaster riffs and the bass guitar lines. Mick sang “Love Is Strong” whilst everyone, except you, walked thru New York City. You were, as usual, this low profile awesome drummer, sat in the back of your drum set, holding the drumsticks with your peculiar jazz-style, and smiling and acting parsimonious, like if being the rhythm of The Rolling Stones was the easiest job in the world. 

A few women jumped here and there, until the entire band met at Central Park. 

Didn't I know that the aesthetics of that video in that afternoon in the middle of the 90's, sat in front of a TV, would bring me back to my childhood and to Get Yer Ya Ya's Out!; didn't I know that, a couple of decades later, whereas I still cannot process your death, I would realize that I've always been a Rolling Stone in my heart.

And Now My Bitter Hands Cradle Broken Glass

On the last days I've been thinking of you and now some posts on the Internet remind me of this show we attended together. It happened eighteen years ago. July 19th, 2003. We were so naïve. I will not exactly tell how our lives were –I guess you're still picky about it–, but I will say that we'd been together for an entire life. Or it seemed so. We were in the final years of college and they seemed an entire life. Back then you we were interested in science –I am still, but you're some kind of happy punk– and we passed all those last years of college performing the experiments of our thesis. Day after day, no matter if they were holidays, weekends or so, we ran our experiments with pigeons and Skinner boxes. We saw each other on a daily basis. It was pretty sick.  

Like a month ago, or so, I remember being formed in a long line with other guys, waiting for the box office to open. I had no cell phone, so I was there by my own. I waited for almost three hours, looking around and... 

I didn't have a lot of money, I didn't have a well paid job, so I bought three cheap tickets: one for you, another for my little brother who was crazy about Pearl Jam, and one for myself. 

I barely remember how did we get to the venue, but it was an awesome show. It was the first time Pearl Jam played in Mexico. They played three shows and it was the last show of their World tour. We had awful places. They were pretty distant from the stage. 

I'll come back later.

I Need Your Loving Like The Sunshine

 

We were at the end of the rainbow. After three to four chaotic years of deep feelings, wildly oscillating from love to hate and from peace to war and from tender to rage, things were leading to an end. 

We were at the movie theater. We went to the movies frequently. I guess I had never seen many movies in my life. Still remember that day. It was a cold and rainy day. 

The movie theater was almost empty. It might be early in the morning, maybe a Monday. Probably, an hour ago or so, we just had a meeting with our advisor at his office. We were about to have our degree examination. As I write these lines, he's dead. 

As I saw the movie, I felt like the main characters. They seem to be us.