Saturday, November 8, 2014

More on Granada and writing

To try and describe tonight automatically makes me a bad writer.  By no means am I claiming to be a good one, I am just saying that if I would even attempt to put into words this place or my time here, it would be a joke.  Places like Granada, dances like Flamenco, they´re beyond description by words because the entire experience I am trying to communicate is a feeling.  Sure, there are plenty of amazing authors, writers, bloggers out there that would circumspectly describe what I have experienced, but they would all fall short in the meat of it.  Or maybe they wouldn´t, and maybe that´s the sea to cross to become a "writer."  But I can tell you that I walked into a white washed cave tonight after two glasses of wine and the red lighting made me anxious.  The anxiety didn´t come from the light, though.  It came from the place inside my imagination that has cultivated this moment for as long as Granada has existed in my imagination.  Unfortunately, I can´t tell you how long that has been, but I can tell you that there is anxiety in experiencing something you have imagined, especially as an adult.  As a child, the excitement comes to you pure because there isn´t expectation to muck things up.  It is joy, experience, first time bliss that creates this platform that we jump off of into adulthood.  I am not being pessimistic, I am telling you my honestly.  That joy of discovery, imagination, creative thinking that comes as a child so naturally can be so diluted as an adult because of our advanced capacity for expectation.  Coming to a place that has held your imagination hostage can be a terrifying experience as an adult because it´s painful to let go of these places that exist as images and colors in your mind.  But when the real thing surpasses that, when the experience is even better than the imaged place, it´s life affirming.  It´s life inspiring.  It´s change and adventure provoking.  And with so many words, with way too much thought and not enough emotion, I describe to you Flamenco and maybe Granada.  But the beauty of it all is that it´s not a place or a dance that can really be described, it´s something you feel that makes your skin crawl and alludes coherent communication.  It´s something you desperately want to share with the people you love without the words or the means or the images to even begin to try.  It´s frustratingly perfect.  For me-not for you but for me- Granada is a place that will continue to hold my imagination and my inspiration.  And that, for an adult who has been here briefly, is profound.

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