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The Underrated and Overrated Series: 4 - THE INFLATED HEROES

2009-12-06T16:12:00.000-08:00

As a child growing up in Venezuela, I spent a lot of time at the beach. And I really enjoyed it. Digging for mussels, building sand castles, feeling the warm sun over my shoulders and the wet sand under my toes, listening to the sound of my own breathing while snorkeling and perceiving the world above the water as distant and muffled… I loved it all.

One of the most rewarding beach activities for me, however, was also one of the simplest ones: riding waves to the shore on my way to buying ice cream.

Even from the water, it was still possible to hear once in a while the bell from the ice cream cart being pushed through the sand by young local boys toasted like coffee beans under the Caribbean sun. Every time I heard the bell, the conditioned reflex was immediate and strong --Pavlov would have been proud of me--, but I usually resisted the temptation to start running to the beach at once. Instead, I used to put my arms straight in front of me pointing to the beach --like Superman getting ready to fly--, and wait for the next wave, hopping for the best. Occasionally, on a lucky day, the next wave would turn out to be just the perfect size to take me all the way to the shore without walking or swimming. Whenever that happened, I felt like some kind of hero that had forced Mother Nature to work for me; and the ice cream served on a coconut shell became my prize for such a big “accomplishment”.

But even back then, I knew those feelings were silly. Simply riding a wave that was destined to hit the beach with or without me, couldn’t possibly make me or anyone else a hero. I still indulged on heroic thoughts, but absolved myself by concluding—well, I am just a kid—.

Today I am no longer a kid, but I see adult variations of my silly beach hero on a daily basis. These highly overrated idols can be found everywhere, but seem to flourish in areas like finance, business management and politics, particularly during good economic times. They are the Inflated Heroes, admired leaders who get an almost free-pass to fame and fortune by riding waves, this is, taking advantage of obvious trends in their respective fields to claim achievements that they didn’t really make happen.

The Inflated Heroes may not deserve the votes they receive from their constituency, the rankings they are given by analysts, the exposure they get from the media or the bonuses they are paid by their boards of directors, but it is clear to me that they deserve a place in my overrated series. Here are a few examples.

John Chambers is a good CEO. He has led Cisco Systems for a long time and has done a great job at it. I remember, however, the insane admiration journalists and market analysts had for him when Cisco was riding the wave of the early growth of the Internet (Cisco was the lead producer of routers and other hardware required to support the expanding Internet infrastructure). Fortune magazine ventured to ask… is John Chambers the best CEO ever? In reality, you could have assigned a college student or Mr. Bean to the job of Cisco CEO in 1996 and the company would still have enjoyed stellar growth. Only a tiny fraction of the company’s sales expansion during that period could possibly be attributed to John Chamber’s real and significant managing skills, the rest just came from the amazing growth of the Internet in the late 90’s, the time when people outside of the academia finally discovered the world wide web thanks to the launch of Mosaic and Netscape. The same Fortune Magazine recently ranked Chambers as the #1 of the biggest losers, highlighting that since March 2000, the market value of Cisco System has decreased by $425 billion.

Hugo Chavez was first elected president of Venezuela in December 1998. Back then, PDVSA (Venezuela’s state oil company), produced 3.8 million barrels per day and had plans to invest more than $40 billion to expand production to 6 million barrels per day by 2010. In 2002 Chavez fired 18,000 employees (40% of the total payroll of the company), in a successful attempt to replace PDVSA’s meritocratic culture with political loyalty to his socialist revolution. As a result, the company which constitutes the economic heart of the country and 80% of its exports will end up producing with luck 2.5 million barrels per day in 2010 rather than the 6 million originally planned. Luckily for Chavez, the growth in oil demand from emerging markets, particularly China and India, has been pushing the oil price up since he took office, from $11.9 per barrel in 1998 to a pick of $126 in 2008. This price increase of more than 1000% has allowed Chavez to finance significant spending in social programs that have made him a popular president among the poor in Venezuela and other Latin American countries. It is too bad that people forget about the other number, the much bigger figure that Chavez left on the table by throwing away PDVSA investment plans and the employees that were able to implement them. That number --perhaps $100 billion per year of forgone income-- is equivalent to almost $11 per day for every man, woman and child living in Venezuela, a country where roughly 50% of the people live under the poverty line, earning $1 or less per day.

But perhaps the most disgustingly inflated heroes are in Wall Street, even after this year’s financial debacle. Mutual fund managers, for example, are paid a percentage of the assets they manage in exchange for their investment ideas, with the goal of producing returns that beat the indexes representing the market. The reason why fund managers should beat the indexes is that there are investment tools based on indexes that are much cheaper than actively managed mutual funds. Therefore, rational investors should use index investment tools unless fund managers can justify their higher fees. In reality, very few fund managers get to beat the indexes and almost none beat the indexes consistently. According to Business Week, from 2004 to 2008, mutual fund managers failed to beat major indexes in every fund category. The S&P 500 outperformed 72% of actively managed large-cap funds, the S&P MidCap 400 index outperformed 76% of mid-cap funds, the S&P SmallCap 600 index outperformed 86% of small-cap funds and the emerging markets fund managers failed to beat their benchmark nearly 90% of the time during the period. And yet, mutual fund managers earn millions, regardless of their funds performance. How can this be explained? Simply, even the worst mutual fund manager has a big advantage: markets tend to go up. In the long term, a diversified portfolio will return close to 9% per year. Mutual fund managers just ride the market upward inertia, and even if they don’t beat the indexes, they still can impress unsophisticated investors with returns that are higher than those available by placing cash in a savings account or under the mattress. Why don’t investors use index instruments exclusively? Some do (index funds are growing quickly), but unfortunately most investors are as bad in their supervisory role as the mutual fund managers are in their investment picking strategies. One day, however, I hope the industry will change and make mutual fund managers receive just a salary plus perhaps a percentage of the gains they produce in excess of the index returns. That would be fair.

As the example of the mutual fund managers shows, sometimes it may be difficult for regular people to differentiate Inflated Heroes from real ones. That's why the media, with their journalists and analysts, should play an important role on this. Sadly, heroes sell newspapers and ads, so the media loves heroes, regardless of their authenticity and tend to revere Inflated Heroes with the same mix of admiration and respectful envy usually reserved for Hollywood stars: they interview them on prime time TV, but skip all the tough questions.

That’s too bad, because there are plenty of other Inflated Heroes out there that can cause serious damage to society before they go. Some, like Alan Greenspan, end up deflating only once the tide turns against them and it becomes very apparent that they didn’t have control over the wave in the first place. In Greenspan’s case, the wave was stable growth with little government regulation, and the result of our unchallenged admiration for him and his policies was the 2009 worldwide financial crisis. Others like Vladimir Putin, have a long way to go and a lot of damage to do before deflating. Putin's wave, shared with super-Chavez, is the Chinese demand for oil, and that won’t stop growing any time soon. If only Putin could be satisfied with a coconut ice cream…

The Legend of Martin McDonagh

2009-09-21T18:43:00.000-07:00

Padraic Hello? Dad, ya bastard, how are you? (to James.) It’s me dad (Pause.) I’m grand indeed, Dad, grand. How is all Inishmore? Good-oh, good-oh. I’m at work at the moment, Dad, was it important now? I’m torturing one of them fellas pushes drugs on wee kids, but I can’t say too much over the phone like…

James (crying) "Marijuana", Padraic

Padraic They are terrible men, and it’s like they don’t even know they are, when they know well. They think they’re doing the world a favour, now (Pause.) I haven’t been up to much else, really. I put bombs in a couple of chip shops, but they didn’t go off. (Pause.) Because chips shops aren’t as well guarded as army barracks. Do I need your advice on planting bombs? (Pause.) I was pissed off, anyways. The fella who makes our bombs, he’s fecking useless. I think he does drink. Either they go off before you’re ready or they don’t go off at all. One thing about the IRA anyways, as much as I hate the bastards, you’ve got to hand it to them, they know how to make a decent bomb. (Pause.) Sure, why would the IRA be selling us any of their bombs? They need them themselves, sure. Those bastards’d charge the earth anyways. I’ll tell ya, I’m, getting pissed off with the whole thing. I’ve thinking of forming a splinter group. (Pause.) I know we’re already a splinter group, but there’s no law says you can’t splinter from a splinter group. A splinter group is the best kind of group to splinter from anyways. It shows you know your own mind (Whispering.), but there’s someone in the room, Dad, I can’t be talking about splinter groups. (To James, politely) I’ll be with you in a minute...

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Once upon a time in the old town of London, there lived a young slacker with premature gray hair named Martin. Even though both of his parents were hard-working Irish immigrants, Martin didn’t like to study or work, so at the age of 16, he quit school and started collecting unemployment benefits.

When Martin was 22, his parents retired and went back to Ireland, but Martin decided to stay at their house in London with his older brother John. Martin didn’t have many friends, money or a girlfriend, but he was happy just fighting with his brother about anything, watching TV, sleeping a lot and surviving with his $50 weekly welfare checks. Whenever his financial assistance expired (every year and a half), Martin went out and found a job, but quit immediately after becoming eligible for unemployment benefits again.

In his free time, all-day long, Martin watched a lot of soap operas, but he also read whatever books his brother John brought home, including many stories by Jorge Luis Borges.

By the time Martin was 24, his brother John won a fellowship and moved far, far away to study screenwriting in the University of Southern California. Martin stayed in London alone. He still didn’t have many friends, money or a girlfriend, but he also didn’t have his brother John to fight with, so he quickly became bored, quit his job again, and decided to spend all day at home watching soap operas.

But one day, Martin got so bored that he grabbed a pencil and a spiral notebook and started writing the conversations he heard in his head, spoken by multiple voices in funny Irish accents and dialects. Since his brother John wanted to be a writer, Martin had decided that he wanted to be one too. It could give him an excuse to sit around the house all day. “It’s unemployment with honor”, he thought.

And once Martin started writing, he couldn’t stop. The voices kept talking and, day after day, he kept writing. Sometimes he talked back to the voices in his head, but he didn’t talk to anyone else and almost never left the house, filling notebook after notebook…

After nine months, his notebooks that once held only cheap paper had become the magic container that housed a world of crazy, amoral and violent characters, whose stories were, strangely enough, exciting, refreshing and totally hilarious. It turned out that Martin had the power to make us laugh at anything. Not even Pedro Almodovar could have gone that far. Martin had reinvented the fables of our childhood into an entertaining art form for open-minded adults. He had created human demons and witches of such unmitigated darkness that our lives in comparison seemed like a fairy tale.

Martin’s stories were not like the ones our parents told us. The words that his characters so gracefully and rhythmically articulated, could have been better described as pure venom. But the end result was the same. Like children, we couldn’t help but laughing out loud with the stories, and even if at some specially shocking moments we felt the need to cover our eyes or our ears with our hands, we always made sure to leave enough space between two key fingers, because we needed to know what was going to happen next. And at the end, like the good old fables of our childhood, there was something deeper that we were left with, even though we couldn’t quite describe what it was.

Three years later, at the age of 27, Martin became the first playwright since William Shakespeare to have four plays staged in London at the same time. The six plays he had written during those nine maniac months in London, were being produced not only in London, but also in Broadway, Tokyo and around the world, making Martin a rich young man and a very famous playwright.

But by then, Martin had became bored again and refused to write another play. “Until I’ve lived a little more, and experienced a lot more things, and I have more to say that I haven’t said already, it will just feel like repeating the old tricks”, he said.

Martin had now decided that he wanted to do movies.

And so, at the age of 28, Martin directed a short-film that he also wrote called “Six Shooter”, which featured among other things, a suicide, several murders, and exploiting cow and a decapitated bunny… all in less than 30 minutes.

The following year, Martin won the Oscar for “Six Shooter”...

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I am Sorry, I have no idea how this story ends…

But fortunately enough, another chapter (or at least another paragraph) is coming soon! After finishing reading all of Martin McDonagh’s plays a couple of days ago, I went on the Internet searching for something to feed my newest addiction and found that a new play by McDonagh, his first since my favorite “The Pillowman”, will premiere in New York in March 2010. The new play is surprisingly unsurprisingly called “A Behanding in Spokane”, and is about a man who has lost a hand and wants it back!

If you haven’t seen or read a McDonagh play, you still don’t know what you are capable of laughing at.

I'll end with a short story that McDonagh included in "The Pillowman". One of the favorite tales of my childhood will never be the same...

Once upon a time in a tiny cobblestreeted town on the banks of a fast-flowing river, there lived a little boy who did not get along with the other children of the town; they picked on and bullied him because he was poor and his parents were drunkards and his clothes were rags and he walked around barefoot. The little boy, however, was of happy and dreamy disposition, and he did not mind the taunts and the beatings and the unending solitude. He knew that he was kind-hearted and full of love and that someday someone somewhere would see this love inside him and repay him in kind. Then, one night, as he sat nursing his newest bruises at the foot of the wooden bridge that crossed the river and led out of town, he heard the approach of a horse and cart along the dark, cobbled street, and as it neared he saw that its driver was dressed in the darkest of robes, the black hood of which bathed his craggy face in shadow and sent a shiver of fear through the little boy’s body. Putting his fear aside, the boy took out the small sandwich that was to be his supper that night and, just as the cart was about to pass onto and over the bridge, he offered it up to the hooded driver to see if he would like some. The cart stopped, the driver nodded, got down and sat beside the little boy for a while, sharing the sandwich and discussing this and that. The driver asked the boy why he was barefoot and ragged and all alone, and as the boy told the driver of his poor, hard life, he eyed back of the driver’s cart; it was piled high with small, empty animal cages, all foul-smelling and dirt-lined, and just as the boy was about to ask what kind of animals it was had been inside them, the driver stood up and announced that he had to be on his way. “But before I go,” the driver whispered, “because you have been so kindly to an old weary traveler in offering half of your already meager portions, I would like to give you something now, the worth of which today you may not realize, but one day, when you are a little older, perhaps, I think you will truly value and thank me for. Now close your eyes.” And so the little boy did what he was told and closed his eyes, and from a secret inner pocket of his robes the driver pulled out a long, sharp and shiny meat cleaver, raised it high in the air and brought it scything down onto the boy’s right foot, severing all five of his muddy little toes. And as the little boy sat there in gaping silent shock, staring blankly off into the distance at nothing in particular, the driver gathered up his bloody toes, tossed them away to the gaggle of rats that had begun to gather in the gutters, got back onto his cart, and quietly rode on over the bridge, leaving the boy, the rats, the river and the darkening town of Hamelin far behind him.

On Bach and Gould

2009-09-06T08:37:00.000-07:00

Warning: if you are a Pittsburgh Steelers fan with attention deficit disorder, who glanced at the title above and read “On Black and Gold”, you can stop reading here.

No doubt. Glenn Gould was a wacko.

During his entire career he sat at the piano crouched on a crappy folding chair that was six inches lower than the standard bench, and which by the end, with all the padding worn out and only the wood frame left, looked like something that the Bush administration could have prescribed as an “enhanced interrogation technique” for the Guantanamo base.

With the keyboard almost at the level of his nose, Gould played rotating his torso in a clockwise motion, using any free hand to “conduct” himself with his eyes closed, while simultaneously humming loudly, even singing, seemingly oblivious of where he was, --practicing at home in Toronto, in a recording session in New York or in a live concert in front of the Berlin Philarmonic and a sold-out audience--. His voice can clearly be heard in many of his recordings.

He disliked bright colors and argued that his mood was inversely proportional to the clearness of the skies. His motto was “behind every silver lining there is a cloud”. He was such an outstanding hypochondriac, he would had been considered an unrealistic and over-the-top character in a Woody Allen film. Afraid of colds, he usually wore wool coats, two sweaters and gloves during the summer and refused to talk to a sick person, even on the phone. He kept logs of his body temperature, pressure and hours of sleep. He showed at concerts and recordings sessions with his chair, water, a few towels and bottles of Valium, Trifluoperazine, Phenobarbital, Librax, Aldomet, Clonidine, Indocin, Hydrochlorothiazide, Fiorinal, Phenylbutazone, Gravol and Allopurinol.

Gould considered live concerts a demeaning blood sport similar to gladiatorial combat, and regarded audiences as a force of evil, so he begged friends and family not to attend his concerts. He also argued that public performances, particularly in large halls, caused musicians to distort the music in an attempt to reach and impress the audience. “Perversions” he called these attention-grabbing tricks. But being a perfectionist, his main objection to the concert hall was its “non take-twoness”, as he called it. And so, at 31, at the height of his touring career Glenn Gould stopped playing live concerts to focus on studio recording. No previous announcement. No farewell tour. He never played in a concert hall again.

Yes, he was a wacko. But even less charming is the idea that at least a significant portion of his eccentricity was a conscious decision to gain sympathy from friends and audiences. For example, I do believe that he was a real hypochondriac, but he didn’t shy away from using fake medical conditions as an excuse when convenient. He once wrote to Leonard Bernstein “I have several titles for diseases which I am expecting to use in later life and have not yet had occasion to make use of. I always find that a good disease title will impress your average concert manager no end”.

His need to be “special” also showed in his writings. He used to write the liner notes of his recordings, and he was good at it. He won a Grammy once for that. But sometimes he would use such a convoluted language that it is difficult to tell if he was actually trying to convey a complicated idea or just having fun at the expense of his readers. I believe he always though he was very funny, but nobody was brave enough to hell him he was not. I do enjoy, however, some of his weird jokes, like the time he faked a return to the stage, or those ocassions when he gave himself bad reviews, posing as a critic and writing about Gould in third person.

Perhaps more importantly, his artificially pumped eccentricity also showed in his music. Everyone had to be able to recognize Gould’s version immediately. But in many cases that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. I find for example his Beethoven unexciting and his Mozart just plain weird. In a famous episode, Leonard Bernstein felt the need to do a public disclosure before a concert featuring Gould as the soloist to explain to the public that he had nothing to do with the unorthodox version they were going to hear that night of a Brahms concerto.

But is better to let Lenny tell the story himself. This offers additional insight not only on what really happened that night, but also on the music making process and on the greatness of both Bernstein and Gould.

"Don't be frightened, Mr.Gould is here. (audience laughter) He will appear in a moment. I am not - as you know - in the habit of speaking on any concert except the Thursday night previews, but a curious situation has arisen, which merits, I think, a word or two. You are about to hear a rather, shall we say, unorthodox performance of the Brahms D Minor Concerto, a performance distinctly different from any I've ever heard, or even dreamt of for that matter, in its remarkably broad tempi and its frequent departures from Brahms' dynamic indications. I cannot say I am in total agreement with Mr. Gould's conception. And this raises the interesting question: "What am I doing conducting it?" (mild laughter from the audience) I'm conducting it because Mr. Gould is so valid and serious an artist, that I must take seriously anything he conceives in good faith, and his conception is interesting enough so that I feel you should hear it, too. But the age old question still remains: "In a concerto, who is the boss (audience laughter) - the soloist or the conductor?" (Audience laughter grows louder) The answer is, of course, sometimes one and sometimes the other depending on the people involved. But almost always, the two manage to get together, by persuasion or charm or even threats (audience laughs) to achieve a unified performance. I have only once before in my life had to submit to a soloist's wholly new and incompatible concept, and that was the last time I accompanied Mr. Gould. (audience laughs loudly) But this time, the discrepancies between our views are so great that I feel I must make this small disclaimer. Then why, to repeat the question, am I conducting it? Why do I not make a minor scandal -- get a substitute soloist, or let an assistant conduct? Because I am fascinated, glad to have the chance for a new look at this much played work; because, what's more, there are moments in Mr. Gould's performance that emerge with astonishing freshness and conviction. Thirdly, because we can all learn something from this extraordinary artist who is a thinking performer; and finally because there is in music what Dimitri Mitropoulos used to call "the sportive element" (mild audience laughter) - that factor of curiousity, adventure, experiment, and I can assure you that it has been an adventure this week (audience laughter) collaborating with Mr. Gould on this Brahms concerto; and it's in this spirit of adventure that we now present it to you. “

Considering all the admiration the music world still has for Gould –many consider him one of the two or three greatest pianists of all time-, some of the things I have mentioned so far would be more than enough to make this entry in my blog a part of the overrated series. But then of course, there is Gould’s versions of Bach. And there is nothing like them.

Gould practicing Bach’s Partita #2 at home in Toronto.

Gould’s sensational career really started when he played in New York in 1955. The head of the Classical division of Columbia records attended that night and signed him to a long-term exclusive contract the next day. Gould’s choice for his first record with Columbia was strange: Bach’s Goldberg Variations, a piece admired by musicians but pretty much ignored by audiences that Bach composed supposedly as a request of the Russian ambassador Count Kaiserling, who was the employer of Bach’s student Johann Gottlieb Goldberg and who suffered of frequent insomnia, so he wanted some custom made music to be played by Goldberg during his long sleepless nights. Bach published the set of one aria and 30 variations as a “keyboard practice” book. 214 years later Gould’s version of the Goldberg Variations became the best-selling classic album in history.

Bach was not popular piano music when Gould’s first record came out. Chopin, Liszt, Schumann and Rachmaninoff were the standard repertoire. Purist had ruled that Bach’s keyboard music had to be played in the harpsichord or the organ since there was no piano in the times of Bach. Pianists who dared to break the rules romanticized the music to make it sound similar to the more popular piano composers.

But Bach’s keyboard music is more than beautiful sounds. It is pure mathematical perfection that goes beyond specific instruments and tempi. If you take the wonderful first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight sonata and play it in a trumpet, it will no longer have the ability to produce the melancholic feelings that so successfully achieve in the piano. Take Bach’s second prelude from the Well Tempered Clavier, play it in an electric guitar at twice the normal speed (if you dare and can) and you’ll probably get the most exhilarating, orgasmic rock solo ever. Play the same piece at half the speed in a Grand Piano with some background strings with crescendo dynamics and a Chopinesque style, and it will probably make you cry. Since we are at it, play it backwards, it will probably sound good too.

By implementing Bach’s ideas in the romanticized style that was popular since the 19th century, musicians were for many decades making more difficult for audiences to perceive the perfection of the essence of the work, which I like to call “the naked Bach”.

But then Gould came. Playing on a modern grand piano and with an attention to detail that required several days to record a two minute piece, his outstanding technique with no pedals avoided blurring notes together and allowed the listeners to fully appreciate what makes Bach the best composer in history, his unmatched harmonic sense. Not just one pretty melody with accompaniment, but two, three, four melodies, one of top of each other creating something that is much more than the sum of the parts, polyphonic heaven. Gould’s Bach made easy for the first time to jump back and forth from the big picture to the details, the individual voices. It was liberating. Listeners experienced something similar to the architecture fan who after having admired the Parthenon in photos for years, finally has the opportunity to visit it, and is able to get close to first admire the beautiful columns supporting the structure, then focus on the ornaments on the ceiling, and then pull back to contemplate the grandiosity of the whole structure. In 1955, with the release of Gould’s Goldberg Variations, the naked Bach became Gould’s Bach.

I don’t know if this was an effort from Gould to differentiate himself from the pianists of his time. His eccentricity always made him a contrarian to tradition, and tradition in 1955 meant playing a “romantic” Bach. But I prefer to think that his naked Bach was the result of Gould’s respect for Bach’s music. However, I don’t try to imply that there are no traces of Gould in his Bach. There are plenty. The speed of the 5th variation in his Goldbergs, for example, makes very apparent that you are listening to Glenn Gould. Only he could have recorded it that fast because first, only he could play that fast; second, only he and perhaps a couple of other classic artists were allowed such interpretative freedom in the recording studio; and third, only he would use his artistic freedom to go so far away from traditional views. But he managed to play it at inhumane speeds while still avoiding blurring the details, thus keeping Bach naked.

After quitting the stage in 1964, Gould embarked on a broad recording career that included most of the keyboard works of Bach. During the following 20 years he became a reclusive, neurotic, obsessive, manipulative, egocentric intellectual who ate scrambled eggs every single night at two in the morning in a nearby 24-hour dinner and called his few friends at any time during the night, expecting them to pick up the phone, even though he always let the machine pick up his calls. But during the same period, he created some of the best recorded versions of Bach’s keyboard music ever. It is Glenn Gould’s version of the Well Tempered Clavier that was included in the Golden Record aboard Nasa's Voyager in search for extraterrestrial intelligence, as an example of the accomplishments of human kind.

In 1982, Gould went back to the studio to record a second version of the Goldberg Variations. 27 years had passed since the first version, and he didn’t like it anymore. He had evolved to see the piece differently. While the 1955 version was a set of independent pieces that had little in common other than the bass line of the Aria and its chord progression, Gould felt he could made them more cohesive this time by creating, for example, a relationship between the tempo of each variation and the speed of the original Aria. He also felt that there was some showmanship in the first version that he wanted to avoid. Comparing both is an interesting way to note the evolution of an artist from an energetic genius kid who knew could play anything, to a mature musician, who still could play anything, but perhaps knew better. It is easy however, to see hints of the young Gould in the 1982 version. Even though the speed of the Aria is probably half the speed of the 1955 version, in variation #5 we can still see Gould in a race to beat his 22-year old self.

Gould playing variation #5 from the Goldberg Variations. 1982 version.

But for me, and millions of grateful Bach lovers around the world, is the Aria from the Goldberg Variations that will always remind us of Gould. Many times Gould mentioned his plans to quit his piano career at 50. On his 50th birthday, on Saturday September 25th, 1982, CBS released his second version of the variations. Two days later, Gould suffered a stroke and died. The Aria that opens and closes this mighty work also became the beginning and the end of Glenn Gould’s outstanding career.

Gould playing the Aria of Bach's Goldberg Variations. 1982 version.

Update

2009-09-06T08:33:00.001-07:00

I haven’t written for a while. Work and routine have kept me busy.

Recently, however, I received something totally unexpected, a praising note from a reader! What the hell! I didn’t know I had any!
So, I am back, at least for now… and Lilia, the next entry is for you.

The Underrated and Overrated Series: 3 - THE ROUTINE

2009-03-01T18:57:00.000-08:00

“Routine” is in many countries -including the U.S.- almost a bad word. It represents something dangerous that can ruin relationships, destroy dreams and waste lives. Even the strongest love can fade away as a result of long-term exposure to the R-Word.

The association between routine and unhappiness is widespread and largely encouraged by the media. How many times have we read or seen the story of the decent but dull guy who lives a routinary life that makes him miserable, cranky, obsessive-compulsive and destined to die alone; until one day, an energetic and adventurous girl comes to liberate him from his monotony, making him feel alive for the first time and transforming him in a better and happier person? A routinary life -they teach us- is unfulfilled, lonely, unexciting… sad.

One thing is true about all those Hollywood stories. Routine may be one of the biggest contributors to depression and life-long unhappiness in the developed world. But that’s not because routine is a natural source of suffering that we should try to minimize; quite the opposite. Our daily routine should be by far the biggest source of enjoyment in our lives. The problem is that routine is way underrated, so people don’t pay enough attention to it.

When I read holiday letters, those state of the union addresses for families that Americans enjoy mailing along with portraits of their kids and dogs around Christmas time, I always notice how focused on special events they are. It’s all about the special vacation the family had in Hawaii, the special birthday party the kids enjoyed so much, or the special Thanksgiving Day dinner that Grandma attended. As a result, the letter that was supposed to describe a year in the life of Family X, ends up describing only 10 or 20 extraordinary days.

This is understandable because the authors may believe that only exceptional events constitute interesting news for their audience. But, as a reader who actually wants to know how my friends and their families are doing, I wish people would focus more on their normal days, their average moments, their real life. For example, I would like to receive holiday letters titled “A regular day in the life of Family X during 2008”. That would tell me a lot more about how they are really doing.

Our special days may constitute the headline news for friends and acquaintances, but they don’t really represent our life or our level of happiness. Our average day does. Happiness, as I see it, requires either an unbelievable amount of good luck, or a life-long commitment of time and energy to improve our average day. And only 5% of our average day is made of special occasions, the other 95% is just plain routine.

The day I realized all this I woke up with a slight back pain. Some deformed coil springs in my old, cheap mattress were to blame. This wasn’t unusual, but the pain was never bad and I had bigger problems in mi life, so getting rid of this minor annoyance was not a priority for me. On this particular morning, however, I woke up wiser, or at least less stupid and instead of letting the backache fade away with my morning coffee, I jumped out of bed and said to myself (I think I actually said it out loud):

–What the hell am I doing? I spend 8 hours per day, one third of my life, lying on this damn bed!--

I had no money whatsoever, since the Nasdaq had imploded a few months before, but on the afternoon of that same day I used my emergency credit card to buy the best mattress and box spring I could find in the Pittsburgh market.

Constantly improving our average day certainly means big ticket items like finding the right person to share your life with, or choosing the right career path; but also means promoting those little things that make us happy on a daily basis and getting rid of repetitive annoyances, even if individually they seem insignificant.

For many people, however, is a lot easier to make sacrifices aimed at special occasions than routinary stuff.

A few months ago, I realized that I didn’t like the computer monitor I had at work. It was a 17-inch bulky, low resolution CRT. So I requested a new larger one. When the bank refused to pay for it, I immediately went to Amazon and ordered a fancy 24-inch HP LCD anyway.

Since then, almost everyone who passes by my desk stops immediately and stares at the device. They are usually impressed with the size, the clarity of the image and the way it fits several documents at the same time. Everyone one wants one too. So I tell them:

-It makes all the sense of the world. You spend at least 6 hours a day looking at that thing! You should get one too!-

They totally agree. After a couple of minutes they get all excited and are ready to go wherever they have to go to make the request. Then I tell them:

-I paid for it you know?-

After that, it usually takes them no more than ten seconds to lose all the excitement, and get back to work. I know a lot of these workmates are willing to spend hundreds or thousands in a fancy grill to be used only during summer weekends. But a monitor for the office for daily use? Forget about it!

Our life can’t be just summer weekends, so our goal shouldn’t be to get rid of the routine in our life, but to use most of our energy, our resources and our time to constantly improve it. We will never be able to perfect it. Circumstances will keep changing and our routine will have to be adjusted accordingly.

But this is a worthwhile and rewarding effort. When I look back at the last year of of my life, if you ask me which specific days contributed more to my overall satisfaction, I guess I could answer it was the New Year’s Eve I enjoyed in Barcelona, or the four nights I spent in Florence, or the day I visited a spa in the hotsprings near Padua. But I would be lying. Those days may have been good and in intense, but in the overall picture, they don’t add too much.

The right answer is probably the forty eight Sundays I didn’t spend in Europe, the normal ones. The Sundays I spent most likely at my condo in Shadyside, alone or not, drinking Spanish wine, listening to Bach, eating 8 oz top sirloins from Omaha Steaks and reading the New York Times... those repetitive, simple and almost perfect moments that many would call “routine”.

The Underrated and Overrated Series: 2 - SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

2009-02-14T16:12:00.000-08:00

I have to recognize that the idea was a really good one. The poor, ignorant kid who goes to Who Wants to be a Millionaire and knows the answers to one question after another, not because of a superior education, intelligence, or passion for learning, but as a result of the life of misery he has lived in the streets of Mumbai and the lessons this underworld and its inhabitants have taught him. Each question the show host asks him represents then an opportunity for a flashback to a new episode of his life, and a piece in the puzzle that explain his journey from childhood to the end of the story, the present moment, the “grand finale”, the last question in the show: Do you take it or leave it?

The execution of this wonderful idea, however, is another matter.

In few words, I was not able to get through the amateurish acting, the conventional characters and the melodramatic love fable, to focus on the general idea, the interesting cinematography, the philosophical aspects of a life in the slums of Mumbai, or the historical significance of India's growth in the late 20th century.

Elevating a dull TV show like Who Wants to be a Millionaire to become the core of a passionate, human, enlightening movie would had been a great cinematographic achievement. Robert Redford accomplished a similar trick with Quiz Show (1994).

But with Slumdog Millionaire, just the opposite happened. A movie with great potential to seduce us, inform us and inspire us became just cheap entertainment, like most TV shows. And by subtracting realism, especially to the love story, to make this a Bollywood-kind fable, Slumdog Millionaire lost all its power to move me at any deep level.

So I didn't feel cheated with Slumdog Millionaire and hated it, like it seems my friend Jose did. It's inability to move me works both ways; you don't really hate a cheap entertainment TV show, you just change the channel.

But I know that some of these shows have a large audience. And a lot of people feel better about third-world suffering when someone tells them that the poorest in Asia, Latin America or Africa also have an opportunity to become happy and wealthy. As a result, Slumdog Millionaire may have significant chances of winning some of the most important Oscars, including Best Film.

If that happens, this film would sink down in history, along with Titanic (1997), as one of the most overrated movies of all times…at least in my book.

The Underrated and Overrated Series: 1 - INTRODUCTION

2009-02-14T13:58:00.000-08:00

Last year I wrote about why I considered Sydney Pollack to be an underrated filmmaker. That wasn’t a random thought. Trying to identify underrated and overrated things is one of my favorite sports.

As the financial world has shown us lately, markets are less efficient than we would like them to be. One reason for this is that enthusiasm, not just about stocks or mortgage-backed securities, but also about movies, artists and everything else is more contagious than a common cold in a kindergarten classroom. This is understandable. For most people it is just more fun to agree with their friends when they are passionately trashing a movie or praising a politician than having to raise a conflicting view.

Groupthink, the need exhibited by group members to minimize conflict by reaching consensus at the expense of individual analysis and critical reasoning, is a real and tangible phenomenon in every day modern live.

Consciously or not, most people often find themselves adjusting their views at least a little to agree with their spouses, bosses, piers or the market. Then they try to justify themselves for doing so: “he knows more about this and he loves it”; “this is the most expensive, so it must be good”; “maybe I missed something since everybody seems to like it…”

Of course the result of this is that every day the opinionated people and the media end up dictating what the majority like or dislike, or at least what they think they like or dislike (I swear I wasn’t thinking in Oprah’s Book Club when I wrote this sentence… but what a good example it is!). This is dangerous and foolish, particularly when applied not to movies or books, but to our priorities in life… or jury duty.

“12 Angry Men”, the Sydney Lumet classic of 1957, highlights the negative impact that group-thinking can have in the effectiveness of a jury deciding a murder trial. It’s not until juror #8 starts painstakingly challenging the “guilty” consensus of the other jury members when any kind of deliberation takes place, even though everyone knows that a guilty verdict will result in the electric chair for a black, troubled kid accused of killing his father. Some aspects of the original film may be outdated (there are at least two remakes of it, including a very good one for TV with Jack Lemon as juror #8) but the basic points about group behavior and the fairness of a judicial system based on jury trials are still –how scary this is– completely valid.

Outside of court, the consequences of this herd behaviour may also be devastating. By assuming the idea of happiness that family, friends or the media have, someone can be pushed unknowingly to pursue someone else’s dream, squashing any chance of real happiness.

An exercise to find underrated and overrated things from our very particular point of view is therefore, not just healthy but critically important. It’s a very personal game, since we are not supposed to feel the same way about everything. Market winners should be a reflection of the taste of the majority, not the preferences of the opinionated.

But this is also a worthwhile and fun game we should all play more often; definitely, an underrated game.

The World is Flat... so is this book.

2008-06-18T19:07:00.000-07:00

Tom Friedman is one of my favorite journalists. As the foreign-affairs columnist of the New York Times, he raises awareness on important global issues that tend to be overlooked by most of the internationally myopic American media.

He leverages his three Pulitzer awards and the Times credentials to gain access to very impressive people, and travels the world interviewing them. Then, on Wednesdays and Sundays, he comments on these experiences from a progressive, but very American perspective. As a minimum, he offers some colorful anecdotes about his trips. Often, he provides interesting arguments and intelligent conclusions about important topics. Occasionally, he can change your mind about a critical subject, by being brilliant, inspiring and utterly convincing.

I was therefore excited to read his best-seller: "The World is Flat". If Friedman could awaken the international consciousness of the Times’ readers in 1000 words or less, I had to see what he could do with 500 pages.

Unfortunately, I finished the last page with the feeling that I had just read, not 300,000 words of wisdom, but a really long, average column... with a hardcover.

But we shouldn't jump to the end yet. The book starts with a 50 page "introduction" designed to highlight how imminent, inevitable and scary the new wave of globalization is (and to make sure that you finish the book, unless you want to lose your job to a smart, young, ambitious Indian). Then Friedman proceeds to present his framework to analyze the globalization process, buried among relevant and irrelevant interviews and anecdotes. Since this framework is perhaps the most useful content of the book, I'll summarize it (or should I say "right-sized" it?) here:

Globalization has been developing for a long time. Globalization 1.0 (1492-1800) started with Columbus and was about countries expanding their power thru "muscle". Globalization 2.0 (1800-2000) was about multinational companies driving international trade. Globalization 3.0 (2000-) is about individuals who collaborate and compete globally by leveraging the "flat-word platform".

Globalization 3.0 has been enabled by 10 forces or "flatteners”. The first three act together to create the flat-world platform:

Capitalism and PCs – The fall of Soviet communism forced the world (including China) to start playing by the rules of capitalism. The rise of the PC allowed individuals to create digital content, quickly resulting in the digitalization of the world’s information.

Digital infrastructure – The telecommunications act of 1996, which increased competition between American telecom companies, along with the Internet bubble of the late 90’s, resulted in a huge overinvestment in fiber optics that lost billions for investors but created a powerful and cheap infrastructure to facilitate exchange of digital data across the globe (e.g. between U.S. and India).

Digital Standards – Friedman calls it "work-flow software", but he is actually referring to technical standards for communication and systems development that are necessary to collaborate in a digital world.

In Globalization 3.0, people and business leverage the flat-world platform created by these three flatteners to create new ways of doing business. These new business approaches represent the other seven flatteners:

Uploading – Refers to open source development and user produced content (i.e. Linux, wikipedia, blogging, podcasting), which are new ways to empower individuals to create and collaborate.

Outsourcing – According to Friedman, it started with the Y2K bug, as U.S. companies in desperate need of techies to update their legacy computing platforms were forced to hire Indian companies to do the work for them. The success of these projects convinced American corporations that they could rely on other countries for their critical business processes.

Offshoring – The movement of complete operations to other countries to take advantage of local factors and conditions (i.e. cheap labor) gained significant traction as a result of China joining the WTO in 2001. This meant that Beijing agreed to follow the same global rules governing imports, export and foreign investments that most countries in the world were following. As companies started moving operations to China, other countries tried to become as attractive as them, or in Friedman’s colorful prose, they said “Holy catfish, we had better start offering these same incentives.”

Supply-chaining – Horizontal collaboration among suppliers, retailers and customers to optimize the production, movement and sale of goods is very difficult to do well, but very valuable. It's also the key to Walmart success. Friedman quotes someone saying "if Walmart were an individual economy it would rank as China’s eight biggest trading partner, ahead of Russia Australia and Canada."

Insourcing - Friedman spends 10 pages explaining it, but it is no more than outsourcing plus supply-chaining. Some companies like UPS make a business of managing complex supply chains for other companies.

In-forming –The democratization of information, or how Google is empowering individuals.

Steroids – Technologies that amplify the effect of the other forces by facilitating collaboration (e.g. wireless, video conferences).

When the former soviet empire, China and India moved toward capitalism, the number of people taking part in international trade and commerce increased by 3 billion. This added 1.5 billion to the workforce of the global economy.

The “Triple Convergence” of (1) the flat-world platform (flatteners 1-3), (2) the new ways of doing business (flatteners 4-10) and (3) the new largely expanded global workforce is according to Friedman “the most important force shaping global economics and politics in the early twenty first century”.

That's Friedman's framework to explain the current trends in globalization. Despite the excessive focus on technology (the author is a confessed technological determinist), I think it is a useful tool. It would have made an excellent Sunday column. But instead, it takes Friedman 250 pages in the book to finish this description. And from there, it's all downhill...

The book supports the view that globalization is positive for the U.S. As American companies send knowledge work to India, poor Indians lift out of poverty into the middle class "will surely start consuming American Products". But this key topic is treated lightly. Much more emphasis is given to a series of "recipes" for Americans to keep their jobs in a flat-world. At some point I started feeling like reading a self-help book, and I am not a big fan of those.

There is a list of safe jobs that won't be able to be exported, a detailed explanation of the skills and the sides of the brain that American kids will need to develop to survive in this environment, and an attempt to scare parents into improving the educational system and the support for sciences in the U.S. In the process, some awful terms pop up like "compassionate flattism" and "globalution". These 130 pages could have been replaced by just one sentence I really liked, from a section of the booked called the Bottom Line:

"In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears - and that is our problem."

Later, in another self-help kind of chapter, this one for business, there is even a list of top rules for companies in the flat-world. For example: "Rule #1: When the world goes flat - and you are feeling flattened - reach for a shovel and dig inside yourself. Don't try to build walls.".... Kill me now!

The important topic of the disappearance of cultural differences among countries as a result of globalization is not covered in the original book. However, a new chapter was added in the new edition to address this gap. The additional time to think about the topic didn't help Friedman to make his "Globalization is not Americanization" argument convincing. He believes that the flattening of the world will not necessarily pave the way for a red, white and blue cultural homogenization because uploading (one of the ten flatteners) will make possible the globalization of the local cultures by enabling, for example, podcasts of Indian music that reach people across the world. It seems that he believes an iPod may save the millenary traditions of rural China. Not even Steve Jobs could have made that up.

The section on the energy requirements of globalization focuses too much on China's growing needs, and not enough on the disproportionate role of the U.S. in energy consumption. This however, I don't mind because I know of Friedman's more recent and much more powerful statements on that topic (see here).

In one of the final chapters, Friedman acknowledges the world is still far from flat, that only a minuscule portion of the people in India, China and other emerging markets is actually benefiting from globalization, and that the process can still be stopped at any time by politics, terrorism or war. Readers who buy his "sky is falling" approach to the previous 450 pages may feel cheated.

I have heard Friedman in interviews saying "one example is worth a thousand theories". In the case of this book, one thousand examples and interviews don't get around the fact that there is not really one breakthrough idea here. Yes, there are some interesting facts that my terrible memory will quickly erase, but unless you have lived in an island without TV and internet for the last ten years, this book is unlikely to change the way you think about globalization.

There was potential for insightful material though. For example, a section on the recent success of China at the expense of Mexico in international trade raised an interesting question about the effectiveness of democracy when compared with an authoritarian state in its ability to implement needed reforms in developing countries, but the topic was not further developed. Maybe that was on purpose... now I have to keep checking the New York Times columns waiting for a follow up.

Sydney Pollack... dead and still underrated

2008-05-29T17:15:00.000-07:00

It is true that all important newspapers dedicated a note to his death this week; and yes, he was considerably successful and made millions in Hollywood. They honored him with Oscars as both director and producer and I would bet anything that at the next Academy Awards ceremony, the obituary section will end with the orchestra playing those sad notes composed by Marvin Hamlisch that Barbra Streisand famously hummed in the 60’s, along with a beautiful picture projected in black and white reminding us: The Way...he was. (fade to black… and cut to commercials!)

But I always thought and still believe that Sydney Pollack was underrated.

Critics called him an actor’s director. I agree. As a filmmaker, he didn't try to revolutionize the industry or create a trademark style or technique. He focused on making his big stars shine brighter. And he was so good at it that most people only remember the names of the actors and actresses in his movies. But, "Tootsie" wasn’t a Dustin Hoffman movie. It was a Pollack.

It is widely known that Hoffman and Pollack argued constantly while filming "Tootsie". But most people don’t know why. Dustin Hoffman wanted to make the film funnier, lighter, more family-oriented. We would be missing an American classic from the 80’s, if it wasn’t by Sydney… but I guess we would have a prequel to "Mrs. Doubtfire".

Sophisticated movie-goers and critics shunned him because his specialty was mainstream romances or dramas. But look at anyone’s list of the Top Ten romantic movies of all time, and along with “Casablanca” and “Gone with the Wind”, you are also going to find Pollack’s “Out of Africa” and “The Way We Were”… assuming, of course, that people are not too embarrassed to admit it.

And then, there is the acting. He left the most colorful roles to others. Even in movies he produced or directed, he remained in the background in supporting roles, representing the “normal” guy who made the film more believable and the main characters more distinctive. Like that little human figure at the bottom of a picture of the pyramids of Egypt, he provided the perspective and the contrast needed to fully appreciate the film protagonists. But in spite of how important these roles were and how well he performed them, or perhaps because of that, people didn’t even notice him that much (think Eyes Wide Shut or Michael Clayton).

Even when he was in the foreground as a lead character, he was so natural, so real that I didn’t record his acting in the same way I committed to memory other great performances. “Husbands and Wives”, perhaps my favorite Woody Allen movie, is a good example. Since I first saw it, Sydney Pollack’s scenes moved me and got stuck in my memory… but they did so in the wrong side of my brain. Years later, I still fully remembered the scenes, but not as part of a movie. It wasn’t Woody Allen in a duo with Sydney Pollack… it was these two guys at the grocery store talking about a hot new aerobic teacher one of them was dating after leaving his wife... I didn't see it on the screen, I was there!!

Of course, Allen’s masterful hand-held camera work (very innovative back then) helped to create that impression, but as a result, if you ask me on a normal day to name my favorite actors, I will probably search in that part of my memory that stores movies, scenes and artists, and will forget to mention Sydney… there is such a thing as being too good at what you do. I’ll miss him.

Consistent vs. flexible governments

2008-05-27T20:45:00.000-07:00

At a recent event that started as a barbeque to celebrate the graduation of my friend Jose from his PhD program but ended up as an endurance competition in wine tasting, I had the opportunity to talk with a funny Norwegian guy who runs marathons, loves Argentinean soccer and enjoys Malbec wine like a “gaucho”, but also happens to be the winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Economics: Fynn Kydland.

In one of his most famous papers "Rules Rather than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans", Fynn and E. Prescott attempted to explain why economic policies fail unless the governments can commit to a steady course in the future.

Having not used any advanced math skills since leaving the engineering world to enter the dumbed-down business side, I didn’t even try to understand the models of the paper, focused on monetary and fiscal policy, but the general idea got me thinking.

How effective can a government’s policy be if people have reasons to believe -based on previous experience- that the rules of the game can change at any time in the future? Imagine for example, Cristina Kirchner trying today to implement policies to encourage Argentines to save in pesos, or Hugo Chavez trying to attract U.S. investments to the Venezuelan oil industry. Certainly, more savings could help to tame Argentine inflation, and American technology could reinvigorate Venezuelan decimated oil barrel count. Savers and investors could benefit and help the countries at the same time, but they are unlikely to act if they assume based on past observations that it’s just a matter of time before the government makes drastic changes to the system that may result in savings devaluation in Argentina or new nationalizations in Venezuela.

It could be argued then that part of the U.S. economic success is due to the strength of its constitution and the independence of its institutions, which represent permanent “rules” that survive changes in governments and political trends, rules that by limiting the amount of change that can occur in the short term, encourage long term thinking and planning. Not even the mighty Franklyn D. Roosevelt, at the peek of his popularity and in the midst of saving the country from its worst economical crisis, was able to quickly implement changes to the rules. Beginning in 1935 the Supreme Court started invalidating some of the measures and programs that as part of the “New Deal” FDR was using to successfully get the country out of the Great Depression. In 1937, FDR fought back by proposing a judicial reform that would add 6 members to the 9 members of the court and make it friendlier to his proposals. Even with the original support from people and Congress, the Senate eventually decided to kill the bill… someone pointed out that FDR was asking for more power than a good man should aspire to, or a bad man should get.

Of course, total consistency with the past shouldn’t be the goal either. Policies and rules need to evolve with new technologies, new knowledge and new problems. As usual, balance is the key. Is the U.S. model as defined by its constitution and institutions the optimum balance between consistency and flexibility? That’s doubtful. The American quasi religious adoration to its constitution could be blamed for great delays in very important changes, like women’s voting rights, which only came to pass well into the 20th century.

Discussing this topic with Jose at Cappy’s the day after the barbeque, the Ecuadorian constitution came up. I read somewhere that counting Rafael Correa’s new version, Ecuador’s constitution has been re-written 19 times (yes, re-written, not just amended) since the country’s independence. Ecuador’s very flexible but inconsistent policy making framework can be seen as the opposite of the American one.

Somewhere between the Ecuadorian model -with a new constitution every ten years- and the American one, -with its obsolete right to bear arms from 1791 still in place-, the perfect balance between consistency and flexibility exists.

If I were an economist, I would like to spend some time trying to find this perfect balance. I would expect the optimal balance to be dynamic, moving away from consistency towards flexibility as time goes by, because the speed of change in most human areas have exponentially accelerated in the last century and governments may need to react faster as society evolves more rapidly. It’s silly to think that the balance created when the U.S. constitution was written, even if perfect back then, can still be the optimal today or in the future.

Since I am not an economist -to my dad’s big disappointment-, I can't work on the answers myself. All I can do is to share a few thoughts and many glasses of wines with the disciples of Adam Smith. But I don’t mind. Getting to the questions is at least half the fun.

El Sistema

2008-05-26T20:11:00.000-07:00

I am not the most patriotic Venezuelan; quite the opposite, as those who have heard me talking about the current state of my country can attest. Those things that provoke feelings of nationalistic pride in a more standard “Caraqueño” don’t mean much to me. I see the largest oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere, the tallest waterfall in the world, the white sand beaches and the highly successful soap operas, beauty pageants, and baseball players, as either the result of geographical good luck or the fruits of hard work wasted on the wrong priorities. I am, after all, the guy who doesn't blink before saying "no" when asked "would you ever move back?". And, every year, as more family members and friends leave the country in search of better opportunities and less psychotic politicians, there are fewer reasons to even look back.

But still, there is one thing in Venezuela that often makes me wish I was there. Something that makes me as proud of my country as Hugo Chávez says he is in his regular six-hour long rants on national television. That magical thing is " El Sistema": the National System of Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Venezuela, created by José Antonio Abreu 30 years ago. El Sistema and its children, people like Edicson Ruiz and Gustavo Dudamel, are the best thing that happened to Venezuela since oil was discovered. Edicson Ruiz, was the youngest player ever to be selected by the Berlin Philharmonic. He joined the most respected orchestra in the planet at 17. Gustavo Dudamel, is the hottest conductor in the world today. He is 27. But for each famous musician, there are also hundred of anonymous faces that were "saved" by El Sistema. Lennar Acosta, for example, had been arrested nine times for armed robbery and drug dealing before becoming a clarinetist and a tutor for younger kids.

El Sistema helps a multitude of mostly underprivileged kids, 270,000 as of today -in a country of 25 million- by giving them access to a world-class musical education that not only trains them to play an instrument, but also teaches them important values like teamwork, communication, respect and discipline; values that are needed for a good orchestra but, more importantly, are key for the successful social integration of kids raised in poor neighborhoods, embedded in crime and drugs.

There are in Venezuela hundreds of orchestras spread throughout the country, organized in a meritocratic hierarchy that ends at the top with Dudamel’s jewel in Caracas: the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra (SBYO). The 200+ members of the SBYO are 25 or younger, but their technical prowess, passion and energy, particularly when conducted by Dudamel, have to be seen at the concert hall to be believed.

That’s why in 2007 Dudamel was appointed principal conductor of the Los Angeles Philarmonic and was invited to lead all the top orchestras of the world, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony and La Scala Orchestra of Milan, among many others. That’s why Simon Rattle -the principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic- called El Sistema "the most important thing happening in music anywhere in the world"; and why just in the first half of 2008 El Sistema won the Prince of Asturias award for the arts in Spain, while its founder Dr. Abreu won the Glenn Gould Prize in Canada and was appointed honorary member of the Royal Philharmonic Society in London, which also awarded Dudamel the Society’s Young Artist Award.

After their latest international tour, critics everywhere just went crazy:

L.A. Times: "Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, the greatest show on Earth"

San Francisco Chronicle: "Fiery Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra sets Bernstein ablaze"

The Boston Globe: "Dudamel and the orchestra are now officially the most exciting thing in classical music."

The Guardian (United Kingdom): “I am not sure anything quite like Gustavo Dudamel and his extraordinary group of young musicians have ever hit the Proms before”

Telegraph (United Kingdom): “It was a night that anyone who was there will never forget… the most joyful Proms performance ever”

When I was still living in Venezuela in 1996, the SBYO was just starting to shine. Dudamel wasn’t conducting it yet but I was a regular at their concerts in Caracas, which were usually half-empty and priced approximately at $3. Back then, the biggest expense in my budget was my Internet account, since I was busy doing research on the web using a ridiculously slow dial-up connection charged by the minute, trying to select an American university to pursue my graduate studies. My final list of schools included the University of Pittsburgh among three others and, interestingly enough, it was the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra conducted by Lorin Mazel and one of my favorite orchestras at the time, which tipped the balance toward Pitt.

It’s not without a lot of irony then that 12 years later, and still living in Pittsburgh, I realize that my favorite orchestra in the world is now the SBYO made up of boys and girls from poor areas of Venezuela, but in order to have a chance to see them, I need to buy the tickets one year in advance, pay $100 for a seat and travel to New York, Berlin or London.

Last year, I saw them making the earth shake at Carnegie Hall in New York City playing Shostakovich’s 10th symphony; next year, I am looking forward to seeing them perform a similar trick at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Travel and Entertainment has become one of my biggest expenses... but these kids are worth it.

Shostakovich's 10th symphony, 2nd movement at the Proms Festival in London

Having fun with an encore. Leonard Bernstein's Mambo at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland

And the 60 minutes segment that introduced Dudamel to the masses in the U.S.

Ópera en New York

2008-05-26T06:46:00.000-07:00

Sábado 8 de Octubre del 2005. El glamour, la diversidad, las celebridades, las ratas, todos nos esperaban ya en nuestro punto de entrada a la gran la ciudad: la estación de Penn Station. El viaje en tren desde el aeropuerto en New Jersey había sido bastante corto. Normalmente sólo me habría dado tiempo de notar la seriedad de los newyorkinos, su esbeltez, su ropa elegante y su multiplicidad de lenguajes. Pero esta vez yo iba con Pedrito. La llegada a Manhattan fue por lo tanto una triste despedida porque tuvimos que decir adiós a todos los amigos que habíamos hecho desde el comienzo de nuestras vacaciones, hacía más o menos una hora. Buena suerte le deseamos a la pareja dispareja, besos le dimos a Cristina.

Los Disparejos daban una nueva dimensión a la famosa diversidad de la metrópolis. Ella era seguramente citadina y probablemente newyorkina; seria, sofisticada y mayorcita, pero muy bien conservada. El era viejo, arrugado, 100% made in Arkansas, jodedor, folklórico, ex-barbero y actualmente vendedor de autos usados; pero aún demostraba mucha ambición y hablaba de su sueño de convertirse algún día en vendedor de autos nuevos. Parecían compartir nada Los Disparejos excepto el vagón del tren. Sin embargo, él la presentó como la madre de uno de sus hijos, o al menos eso creímos que captamos de su diatriba sureña.

Cristina, vieja amiga de los tiempos del aeropuerto, y quien se nos unió también en el tren, destacaba en la multitud por ser la única que vimos sonreír desde que aterrizamos. Su piel blanca, suéter verde y ojos claros daban pistas sobre su ascendencia irlandesa. Su característica más irlandesa, sin embargo, era el cabello rojo. Pero era obvio que no era natural y estaba pintado encima de un color mucho más oscuro. Parecía que Cristina intentaba infructuosamente esconder su mitad italiana. Cristina y su sonrisa resultaron venir de Pittsburgh, y aunque no nos dimos cuenta durante el vuelo, habíamos compartido el mismo avión, o más bien, uno de los cachivaches voladores con que US Airways intentaba, en sus delirios de enfermo terminal, escapar de la bancarrota. Cristina nos contó que trabajaba para UPMC haciendo investigación en pacientes bipolares, pero luego confesó que no estaba segura de que la enfermedad existiese. Interesante ejemplar Pittsburghiano este.

El glamour y las celebridades de Manhattan estaban bien representados en Penn Station porque mientras tratábamos de averiguar como llegar a Harlem, nos encontramos un Stradivarious de 1712, de unos 3 millones de dólares en un estuche azul brillante, y a Yo-Yo-Ma quien lo cargaba en su espalda como si fuese un bebé andino. Parecía decidido Mr. Ma a no repetir la aventura de 1999 cuando dejó su preciado instrumento olvidado en un taxi. Más de cinco años después, todavía los entrevistadores de todo el mundo le hacían bromas al respecto. Graciosísimo ver a Pedro tratando de sacarle una foto sin que se diera cuenta. Muy exitosa misión después de todo, porque Yo-Yo parecía no tener idea a dónde él-él iba y estaba muy concentrando en entender sus mapas y no olvidar su cello.

Las que sí parecían saber a donde iban eran las nada glamorosas pero también muy newyorkinas ratas del metro. Tan grandes como gatos, se movían con agilidad pasmosa por los túneles y rieles. Asombrados, decidimos tirar nuestro mapa a la basura y perseguir a las ratas.... En pocos minutos estábamos en Harlem. Allí, tal como habíamos acordado, Juan Augusto, el amigo imaginario de Pedro, NO nos esperaba.

Fue la lluvia la que nos recibió al salir del metro. Una de esas lluvias incipientes, engañosamente mansas, que parecen no requerir paraguas o techo urgente, pero que luego de unas cuadras te dejan empapado hasta la medias y listo para una pulmonía grave. Harlem, sin embargo, no lucía mal. Lejanos parecían ya aquellos tiempos en que lo mejor del barrio eran las ratas. Bill Clinton había abierto su oficina ahí recientemente, y una fuerte inmigración africana que era obvia en las calles, hacía especular a Pedrito acerca de un futuro cercano en que finalmente los negros americanos se dejarían de excusas racistas y se pondrían las pilas, como hacían los inmigrantes, para aprovechar las oportunidades del país. Cuando finalmente llegamos al apartamento de Juan Augusto ya goteábamos bastante, pero esto parecía incomodarme sólo a mí, puesto que Pedrito, como de costumbre, estaba feliz cantando bajo la lluvia. En cualquier caso, yo estaba contento de que el apartamento no fuese imaginario.

Laura, la roommate de Juan Augusto, sí nos esperaba. Bueno, estaba ahí digamos. Medio dormida, aún en pijamas y recuperándose de una noche de quién sabe qué, esta finlandesa fuerte, de ojos verdes, con un diamante incrustado en un diente y un tatuaje grande en la baja espalda, no nos causó muy buena impresión de primer momento. Cuando salió a abrirnos la puerta nos quedamos todos encerrados en el corredor interior, puesto que había dejado las llaves arriba. Hay que reconocer, sin embargo, que después de vivir con Laura durante algunos días llegamos a comprender que nuestra primera impresión había estado totalmente equivocada. La realidad era mucho peor.

Luego de unos minutos ya nos encontrábamos disfrutando de plátanos fritos y otras delicias caribeñas en un restaurante cercano. Allí bastó una cerveza para que Laura se despertara y comenzara a contarnos su vida. Sus historias surrealistas llenas de lugares interesantes y personajes inverosímiles nos mataban de risa, pero también escondían infinito drama; y es que con 24 años Laura podría haber servido de inspiración a unas 5 novelas y 7 óperas. Una ópera en particular pasaría siempre a recordarnos a Laura a partir de este viaje: Carmen. Hubiésemos preferido que la asociación se debiese exclusivamente a lo mucho que disfrutamos viendo Carmen con Laura en el Metropolitan Opera House.

Entre cervezas y música reggae, no tardamos mucho en enterarnos que Laura había aprovechado el excelente sistema educativo 100% gratuito de su país para graduarse de “bar tender”. Con su diploma se las había ingeniado en los últimos tiempos para trabajar 9 meses al año y viajar 3. Toda una gitana. En el 2005 le había tocado a New York, el año anterior Río, antes Londres. Como esta vez no le había alcanzado el dinero para viajar, se había visto “obligada” a vender su apartamento en Helsinki y ahora estaba aprovechando su estadía en New York para jugárselo a pedazos diariamente en los casinos de la Internet.

De todas las historias que escuchamos ese día, sería difícil de olvidar la del ex-novio brasileño que obsesionadísimo con ella, le robó el diario que Laura esperaba algún día usar como la base de su autobiografía. Lo cual podría llegar a sonar como un desesperado y hasta tierno intento de adentrarse en su corazón, hasta que uno se entera de que el dichoso cuadernito estaba escrito en finlandés. Un total huoranpenikka (hijo de puta) el tipo. Pero bueno, quizás crasa estupidez o tamaña maldad eran predecibles de alguien que una vez le pidió a Laura que se fuesen a vivir juntos a Finlandia y cuando ella le preguntó que haría él en Helsinki sin hablar inglés o finlandés, respondió seriamente: tráfico de cocaína.

Pero estas cosas nunca le asustaron a Laura. Dispuesta a probar todo, excepto la falta de libertad, a su corta edad ya parecía haber pasado por todos los vicios. Describía emocionada su fugaz experiencia con LSD como uno de los mejores días de su vida, pues nunca observó tanta belleza junta. Sin embargo, un viaje de ácido sonaba tan peligroso como un paseo en el parque cuando se comparaba a sus aventuras con cocaína y como fue que pasó dos meses inhalando dos gramos diarios en Brasil. Fue ahí cuando un día unos policías vestidos de civil la descubrieron empolvándose la nariz y con un revólver en la cabeza se la llevaron arrestada. Así que tuvo que sobornarlos esa noche, todo para al final encontrárselos al día siguiente en un bar y terminar tomándose algo con ellos.

Pedro y yo a estas alturas nos limitábamos a escuchar con la boca abierta.

Pero no era sólo vicios Laurita. Tenía su encanto y por eso entendíamos como podía provocar, al igual que Carmen, tan exageradas obsesiones en los hombres. Obsesiones como la del brasileño huoranpenikka, a quién también un día se le ocurrió la brillante idea de firmar su nombre en toda la ropa interior de ella para marcar su territorio. El truco no le sirvió de nada. Laura no tuvo ningún problema en contarnos, luego de otro bocado de plátano frito, que hasta con el hermano de él estuvo. Yo ya necesitaba otra cerveza urgente, pero no me animaba a interrumpirla.

Cuando contó que consumía dos paquetes de cigarrillos diarios en New York, dónde está prohibido fumar hasta en bares y que trotaba por Central Park con el cigarrillo en la boca, no sólo le creímos, sino que hasta nos aburrió el tema. –Hey, can I have another Yuengling, please?-

Más interesante estuvo el cuento del griego. El más obsesionado de todos. Su Don José particular. Este no se peleó a espada limpia con el Teniente del Regimiento de Dragones de Alcalá por el amor de su gitana amada para terminar desertando el ejército y traficando en las montañas, pero estuvo cerca... Al terminar su relación con Laura, pasó tantos días sin bañarse o cambiarse de ropa, que al final lo despidieron del trabajo, perdió su casa y terminó viviendo en un auto en la calle.

Las historias de Laura, relatadas todos jocosamente sin importar lo escabroso del tema no pararon en todo el fin de semana, así que entre risa y risa, nuestra idea de la sociedad perfecta finlandesa se fue al carajo. Sin embargo, entre tanta locura también percibimos una chica dulce que buscaba cariño y reconocimiento.

Una noche Laura se puso a cantar de repente a todo gañote. Todos nos impresionamos. Lo extraordinario no era que estuviésemos en un taxi, pues cosas más raras se veían fuera de la ventana, sino lo lindo de su voz y lo afinado de su “Porgy and Bess”. Cuando terminó y le comentamos lo bien que lo hacía, inmediatamente se lanzó entusiasmada a complacernos con todo su repertorio finlandés, sazonado con un millón de tosiditos crónicos de fumador empedernido y mucha ternura, para que así no regresáramos a Pittsburgh más nunca y le siguiéramos riendo los cuentos y alabando las canciones para siempre.

Pero al final, las historias de drogas, alcohol, apuestas y malas juntas, más los cigarrillos cada 15 minutos, nos dejaron un sabor amargo de efecto residual. El martes, mientras nos despedíamos con besos, abrazos, fotos y falsas promesas de regresar para su cumpleaños, Laura repetía –This is so sad!, this is so sad!-, y para nosotros lo era, pues no podíamos evitar pensar que Laurita, al igual que Carmen, no llegaría a los 40.

La lluvia nunca paró el primer día. Peatones por doquier compraban un paraguas tras otro, pero estos invariablemente terminaban destrozados por el viento o escapaban volando ágilmente fuera del alcance de sus dueños. De una u otra forma, la mayoría acababa en la acera. Yo, observando lo que pasaba, me concentraba en apachurrar mi nuevo paraguas con las dos manos y cuidarlo al mejor estilo Yo-Yo-Ma. Pero mi paraguas, made in China y digno de Walmart, tenía poco de Stradivarius y terminó dándole la razón a miles de abuelitas latinoamericanas cuando súbitamente se rindió a la intemperie en un amasijo de alambres y varillas que casi me saca un ojo. ¡Yo se lo dije mijito, lo barato sale caro!

Afortunadamente, para ese entonces ya era como si lloviesen paraguas en las calles de Manhattan. Me tomó menos de un minuto encontrar un reemplazo para el mío debajo de un carro estacionado y requirió sólo un par de cuadras sustituir el reemplazo con otro mejor. En ese plan seguimos por un rato. Cuando finalmente tomamos un taxi y yo, más Yo-Yo-Ma que nunca, dejé mi nuevo paraguas versión 4.0 en el asiento izquierdo, no me dio tiempo ni de lamentar la pérdida, pues me di cuenta que Pedro había salido por la puerta derecha con un espectacular 5.0 para mi. Parecía que no había límites para la generosidad paraguística de la Big Apple. Pedrito seguía cantando bajo la lluvia. Había que ver para creer la cantidad de agua que podía almacenarse en sus rulos. Cuando se le ocurrió sacudir la chorreante melena como un cocker spaniel, empapó a medio mundo. Afortunadamente para mí y los demás transeúntes, unos minutos después el viento le trajo directo a las manos un paraguas Louis Vuitton nuevecito, y Pedro decidió, ipso facto, que bueno… hasta Gene Kelly se resfría.

Me pareció que fue por culpa de Louis Vuitton que a Pedro se le comenzó a subir el glamour newyorkino a la cabeza. En un par de días estaría ya perdido, haciendo compras en Zara, La Maison du Chocolat y Fifth Avenue; mientras que yo, habiéndole agarrado el gustito a eso de recoger cosas gratis de la acera, dejaba mi tarjeta de Banana Republic en la maleta y me lanzaba a nadar estilo libre en las montañas de ropa barata del Burlington Coat Factory.

No fue ese la única ocasión en que nuestras personalidades parecieron intercambiarse en este viaje, como bien podría atestiguar Muhammad El Deprimido, el taxista más lento de la ciudad, quien nos llevó al aeropuerto y tuvo oportunidad de ver a Pedro estresadísimo porque podíamos perder el avión, mientras que yo casi roncaba de relajación. Y no fueron las personalidades lo único que intercambiamos en New York. En un evento que ocurrió la segunda noche y que prometimos llevarnos a la tumba, pero que terminamos contando a muchos por aquello de que entre La Masa no hay secretos, y ¡que carajo!, estuvo “cute” el asunto, y bueno si me das otra cerveza lo cuento, y ¡daaaale! ¡contáaaaalo! estos dos adultos contemporáneos, con sendos divorcios encima y hasta fama de mujeriegos y promiscuos en ciertos círculos, terminaron intercambiándose el puesto en el sofá-cama a las mil de la madrugada, rotando hacia la izquierda el uno, y brincado por encima el otro, porque –Pedrito, mi lado es el derecho desde los tiempos de Gabriela, y el tuyo?-

Al final del primer día la lista de personajes que habíamos encontrado en nuestra diluviana excursión metropolitana incluía los Disparejos de Arkansas, Cristina de Pittsburgh, Yo-Yo-Ma de China, el Stradivarius de Italia, Ayse y las banqueras lindas de Turquía, Lisbeth de Manhattan y sus amigos sifrinos del Nepal, además, por supuesto, de Laura de Finlandia y su ropa interior autografiada del Brazil. Habíamos bebido cerveza en Harlem, capirinhas en el Soho, vino en el East Village, y algo que preferimos olvidar en la fiesta de los sifrinos nepaleses en Park Avenue. La borrachera no nos impidió asombrarnos de la diversidad newyorkina.

En los días siguientes se añadieron a la lista, entre muchos otros, Andrea, Brooke, Bob y Juan Augusto.

Andrea era una simpática venezolana que Pedro rápidamente tildó de sifrina cuando respondió a su pregunta diciendo que no, no tenía amigos en el 23 de Enero, populoso barrio caraqueño y epicentro mundial del chavismo. La conocimos mientras nos servía arepas, cachapas, cocadas y café del bueno en el Caracas Arepa Bar, lugar miniatura pero encantador que quedó como visita obligatoria para futuros viajes.

A raíz de la cena la noche anterior con Ayse y las lindas banqueras turcas, todas ellas solteras y buscando pareja, Pedro y yo nos habíamos entretenido buscando teorías para explicar tanta soledad entre tanta gente. La hipótesis ganadora resultó ser que aunque era fácil conocer a alguien nuevo en cualquier esquina, resultaba poco probable volver a encontrarse a la misma persona entre ocho millones de habitantes. Pero esa misma tarde mientras viajamos por las vísceras subterráneas de la gran ciudad, la puerta de nuestro vagón se abrió y ahí enfrente de nosotros, sonriendo y saludando apareció Andrea. Otra idea que se nos iba al carajo.

A Brooke Shields la había querido ver en persona desde que en 1980 me hizo envidiar a muerte la arena, las algas, el agua y hasta los cocos de la bendita Laguna Azul. La escena de la nadadita submarina sin naditita de ropa la había visto tantas veces escondido en el cuarto de mis padres que el Betamax, del tamaño de una nevera, se había comenzado a tragar la cinta, lo cual hacía cada vez más difícil el necesario cambio instantáneo de película cuando se escuchaban pasos en la escalera. Esa tarde Brooke iba a actuar en “Chicago” en el papel de Roxie Hart. A mi me daba igual. Podría haber sido un documental de Batman y Robin y el papel del Guasón.

A las siete de la noche se abrió el telón del Ambassador Theatre y comenzaron a retumbar los asientos con el ritmo de “All That Jazz”. Pedro y yo esperábamos ansiosos. En la segunda canción finalmente apareció la hermosa, alta y morena Brooke Shields, pero estaba fea, bajita y rubia… esa no es Brooke, no puede ser, no me jodas, y ¿dónde está?, ¿y quién carajo es esa? pero que nos devuelvan el dinero ¿no? no, en Broadway no te lo devuelven, ¿preguntamos? ¡Que cagada!…. Cuando finalmente nos recuperamos de la decepción y dejamos de gruñir…el show había terminado. Lo único que nos quedó fue el recuerdo de “Mr. Celophan”, y de la linda bailarina de Hip Hop británica que se sentó a mi lado.

Las decepciones del segundo día no se limitaron a Brooke. Mis ansiadas “colas de langosta” de hojaldre rellenas con crema pastelera de Little Italy, resultaron estar viejas y rellenas con no se qué. Además, la ciudad que nunca duerme, demostró estar limitada a la isla de Manhatan, puesto que se nos ocurrió ir a comer tarde a Brooklyn y lo único abierto era el puente. Pero todo terminó bien porque camino a casa conseguimos un lugar abierto cuyo peculiar nombre hizo que inmediatamente decidiéramos detener el taxi y bajarnos, ahí en medio del Harlem latino y casi de madrugada. Desde la “Lechonera Sandy”, llamamos a Laura para que se nos uniese y así poder saciar nuestra hambre trasnochada de pernil e historias estrambóticas.

Eran como las 3 de la mañana cuando finalmente llegamos al apartamento. Laura quería que nos sentáramos a su lado en el sofá a ver una película de terror en la laptop que descansaba sobre sus piernas. La mandamos a su cuarto a dormir... se fue a su cuarto a ver la película.

En nuestra cama ya dormía, para mi mayúsculo asombro, el amigo imaginario de Pedro. Juan Augusto resultó ser de carne y hueso, aunque más del segundo que del primero. Era un tipo muy interesante: cantante de ópera, escritor de estupendas crónicas newyorkinas y novio de su ex-novia de 10 años atrás, quien después de un matrimonio fracasado en Argentina, lo había re-encontrado por estos lados norteños. Me alegró qué Juan Augusto fuese real y que Pedro no estuviese loco, pero nos tocó dormir en el sofá-cama de la sala... y Pedro se había agarrado el lado derecho.

La cita con Bob al día siguiente estuvo mucho mejor que la de Brooke. Para empezar, Bob nos aclaró por teléfono mientras cuadrábamos el encuentro, que Brooke Shields no apareció en Chicago porque estaba pasando la noche con él en Brooklyn, pero dijo que no nos lamentáramos porque a él también lo había decepcionado. Su sentido del humor siempre había sido inigualable. Años atrás, Bob y yo habíamos trabajado juntos en la universidad diseñando un club de renta de videos a través de Internet parecido a Netflix, y terminamos incluyendo a petición de él una sección de “adultos” con títulos como: Driving Miss Daisy, The First Blood (Rambo), Hanna and her sisters, Heat, The Untochables y Victor Victoria. Durante la presentación del proyecto algunas estudiantes coreanas se terminaron ofendiendo, pero el profesor se meó de la risa igual y nos dio un A+.

El otro que se meó de la risa fue el propio Bob cuando Pedro y yo lo llamamos desde el lugar acordado para nuestro encuentro, Times Square, y nos aclaró que él había dicho Union Square. Esto sin embargo no fue un inconveniente porque tomamos un taxi conducido por Yamín El Frenético, quien estaba necesitando una dosis de valium urgente. En segundos estábamos en NYU, bien estresados eso sí. Me preguntaba con qué iba a salir Bob esta vez. La última vez que nos habíamos encontrado, había aparecido con un pañuelo en la cabeza cubriendo una peluca con largos bucles rastafari que le colgaban a los lados. Pero esta vez se lo veía “normal”. Al verme con el estuche de los binoculares para la ópera amarrado en la cadera, saludó diciendo -My dad is cool enough not to wear those-... Ahora era Pedro el que se meaba de la risa. Tal como me había imaginado, Pedrito y Bobby se llevaron muy bien.

Al Lincoln Center Pedro y yo llegamos temprano para poder comprar la entrada de Laura. Tuvimos tiempo pues de ver la transformación del Metropolitan Opera House de un edificio interesante con ventanas ovaladas bajo la luz del día, a uno de los lugares más elitistas del mundo durante la noche. Aunque esta no era una de las funciones de gala asociadas con las noches de estreno y comienzos de temporada, igual vimos desfilar sobre la alfombra roja de la entrada innumerables zapatos de tacón estratosférico de Manolo Blahnick de 600 dólares y docenas de botas estrafalarias de Jimmy Choo de 1,500 dólares, junto a las sandalias anaranjadas de plástico de Pedrito: literalmente Priceless. Entramos solos, puesto que nos cansamos de esperar en la famosa fuente del frente a Juan Augusto, que intentaba hacerse el imaginario otra vez, y a Laura que no sabíamos en que andaba, pero que sospechábamos intentaba recuperar el baño de su apartamento en un juego de póquer.

Para llegar a nuestros asientos, el chino que se sentaba a nuestra izquierda tuvo que despertar a la china recostada sobre su hombro, quien ya estaba en pleno sueño REM antes de comenzar la obertura. Laura y Juan Augusto llegaron justo a tiempo. Laurita no había estado apostando en la Internet como pensábamos, sino que había decidido que sus zapatos no eran adecuados para tan magnánimo escenario y se había tenido que ir de compras. Pedrito no había tenido ese problema. El puesto de Laura estaba en otra sección, pero Juan Augusto se sentaba con nosotros así que tuvimos que despertar a la china otra vez. Las luces se apagaron. La música comenzó. Al ruso de atrás le sonó el celular.

Mi ópera favorita de todos los tiempos no decepcionó. La sexy gitana volvió loco una vez más al soldado Don José con sus seductoras canciones, su rosa fragante y sus promesas futuras, así que éste terminó el primer acto en la cárcel con la flor y un montón de problemas entre sus manos. En el primer intermedio, para poder salir a buscar a Laura, tuvimos que despertar al chino para que éste resucitara a la china.

Laura no apareció. En su lugar llegó un mensaje de texto: Out for a cig. Caímos en cuenta que ya para ese entonces debía tener un déficit como de cuatro cigarrillos. El hecho de que Carmen y sus amigas trabajaban en una fábrica de cigarros no debió haber ayudado mucho tampoco.

Don José salió de la cárcel en el segundo acto con la rosa ya marchita pero una obsesión floreciente por Carmen. Luego de un rato ya lo había abandonado todo para unirse a la banda de traficantes de los gitanos. Pero Carmen ya no le daba ni la hora porque le estaba comenzando a gustar Escamillo, torero de Granada. Don José se moría de celos y la amenazaba, pero no llegó a firmarle las panties.

En el segundo entreacto ni perdimos el tiempo en buscar a Laura. Un dúo entre la flauta principal y el celular del ruso de atrás anunciaron el comienzo del tercer acto. La impresionante escenografía de Franco Zefirelli era tan realista que la noche de nieve en las montañas hasta frío me dio. Mientras la mayoría de los gitanos en el escenario se unían a los chinos en la siesta, Carmen lanzaba las cartas y veía a la muerte en su futuro cercano… Yo por mi parte veía un codazo en las costillas en el futuro cercano del chino, puesto que éste comenzaba a roncar. El codazo nunca llegó porque la china a su izquierda ni con los ronquidos despertó y Juan Augusto a su derecha resultó más tolerante que imaginario. En las montañas heladas se escuchaba a Micaela implorarle a Don José que regresara con ella a la casa de su madre moribunda, y el teléfono del ruso se unía solidario en su desesperación.

Antes de comenzar el último acto, mientras Pedrito se volteaba e intentaba decir “pelotudo” en ruso, yo me imaginaba a la pobre Laura afuera, haciendo “catch up” con tres cigarrillos en la boca al mismo tiempo. De vuelta en Sevilla, Don José hecho mierda le imploraba a Carmen por última vez, pero ésta, que ya andaba en otra con Escamillo, le respondía que había nacido libre y moriría libre. En el fondo se escuchaba a Escamillo despachándose un torazo en la plaza cuando Don José, como Pedro Navaja, apretó el puño dentro del gabán. Ni siquiera el barullo de los caballos en el escenario, los coros y el asesinato de Carmen a cuchillazo limpio en el cuarto acto despertaron a los chinos. Nuestros estruendosos aplausos sí.

El tema de la cena esa noche fue obviamente la responsabilidad de Carmen en la destrucción de Don José, y como consecuencia, en su propia muerte. Yo argumentaba que ella era parcialmente responsable de los efectos que sabía causaba en los demás. Pedrito habría tenido que devolver la licencia para hacer lo que viniera en gana en caso de estar de acuerdo, así que decía enfáticamente que no. Juan Augusto, opinó que no era responsable. Ya yo estaba seguro que iba a perder cuando Laura comenzó a hablar de los paralelos entre la ópera de George Bizet y la de su vida, pero nos sorprendió a todos dándome la razón. Nadie ganó o perdió, pero todos la pasamos bien. Para cerrar la noche, Juan Augusto se dirigió a Laura y lanzó una de esas frases memorables que uno sabe cuando la escucha que es la primera vez que se pronuncia sobre la faz de la tierra: -You have been looking at my artichokes all night-.

El viaje se terminaba. Ya solo le quedaba un acto a esta opera: la búsqueda de mi pasaporte en el consulado venezolano. Esta en teoría había sido la principal razón del viaje, pero a estas alturas casi se me había olvidado.

Durante dos años yo había intentado infructuosamente renovar mi pasaporte con el gobierno revolucionario de la república bolivariana de Venezuela. Nunca había tenido éxito por la “falta de material”. Después de innumerables llamadas, mensajes electrónicos y cartas, finalmente había logrado sobornar con risitas telefónicas y promesas de chocolates ricos a Riccia Fernández del consulado de New York. Mi pasaporte nuevo supuestamente esperaba ahí. Sólo había que recogerlo el martes a las 2 pm. Pedro y yo llegamos temprano para tan riesgosa misión. Íbamos preparados. Habíamos pasado por la tienda Lindt a apertrecharnos de miles de bolsas de chocolate. También habíamos parado en la Maison du Chocolat, pero las dos cajitas miniatura que compré allí habían acabado con mi presupuesto para regalos hasta el año 2009, y estaban destinadas a gente de Pittsburgh.

Llegamos al consulado cansados por el peso del chocolate. El ambiente venezolano se respiraba en la oficina. La mujer de la entrada que estaba de mal humor me preguntó el nombre y que carajo quería. Le dije que venía a buscar el p… pero me interrumpió para preguntar –¿Tienes el recibo?- Yo tenía todos los chocolates y las sonrisitas del mundo, pero de recibo nada. Pedro me miró, se dio cuenta, se meó de la risa una vez más y dijo ahí en frente de la mujer malhumorada -¡Cagaste!- Yo mientras tanto metía la mano despacito en la bolsa de la Maison du Chocolat…

Cuando llegamos al escritorio de Riccia Fernández, ya estábamos más relajados. Pedro de hecho estaba tan relajado que le preguntó a Riccia qué había que hacer para convertirse en ciudadano de la República Bolivariana. Riccia, que no había recibido ningún chocolate de Pedro hasta ese momento, le comenzó a hablar de un millón de requisitos. Yo le puse una bolsa de Lindt sobre la mesa. Mi pasaporte apareció.

Epílogo

El martes 11 de Octubre del 2005, Carlos y Pedro llegaron tarde al aeropuerto de Newark. Pedro se encontraba muy estresado y Carlos muy dormido. Tuvieron suerte porque su vuelo se había retrasado pero iban a tener que esperar un par de horas, así que se dedicaron a comer chocolate y a recordar los eventos y personajes del fin de semana.

A las 9:45 pm, el pequeño avión de US Airways que los llevaría de vuelta a Pittsburgh finalmente despegó.

A 15,325 pies de altura Carlos pensaba en lo diferente que había sido este viaje a todos los anteriores que había hecho a New York, pues era la primera vez que iba con un amigo en vez de una pareja. Y lo había disfrutado tanto, que le parecía una pena que las conocidas limitaciones de su memoria no le permitiesen conservar todos los detalles.

En ese momento, un Boeing 747 de otra línea aérea que volaba hacia New York cruzó por la ventana.

Carlos pensó «voy a escribir una crónica». La niña malcriada del asiento de atrás pensó «si sigo gritando como si me estuvieran pegando, seguro me sacan de este lugar tan feo y apretado». La aeromoza pensó «esa niña del demonio no se va a callar nunca. Ni de vaina tengo hijos, ¡ni de vaina!». El capitán pensó «¡Rayos!, otra vez me tengo que quedar a dormir en Pittsburgh». El capitán del 747 pensó «Que adefesio ese avión, US Airways está frito». Pedro pensó...

Quién sabe qué carajo pensó Pedro, hasta el más omnisciente de los narradores tiene sus limitaciones.

Pittsburgh, Noviembre 2005.