will bore you a little...

[Mila A. Parot Zubimendi]

Dear members of Basque-l....

there is so much that i would like to share with you
from my running around this summer and so little
time to do it... but quickly i will share some of
my experiences with you...
first of all: Ireland is breathtakingly beautiful..
the ppl i met and had the opportunity to spend some
time with, were v. hospitable and interesting...
i had the opportunity to see and read some original
letters that were written by Eli Gallastegi (historical
leader of the PNV) to some Irish friends and
colleagues during the time he was in exile in Ireland
in the 1930s... some of the letters were very sad..
and most of them conveyed his compromise in the
defense of a national Basque identity.. as well
as the struggle of Irish and Basque leaders in the
defense of freedom in a Europe dominated by
fascism...

i couldn't leave Ireland without having seen its
atlantic gems, the Aran islands.. but hey, the familiar
40 shades of green that color the rest of the
country.. are suddenly replaced by gray.. gray... and
at times, even gray sea and sky..
but is this shift in palette on the treeless terrain
of limestone reefs that makes it one of the most
fascinating places to explore in all of Ireland for
its sense of mystery, history, and wildness...
my friend Marta was right.
i could spend hours telling you about the beauty of
the Aran islands but i don't have much time to do it
and would like to tell you about other things too..

at home.. i had the opportunity to view a collection
of archeological pieces donated to the museum of
guethary by Dominique Delmas, an archeologist..
for more than 20 years, Delmas collected these
pieces from his searching all over the pyrenees
zone especially in Iparralde.. the collection is made
of stones.. yes, they are all stones.. but you can
see how the stone, through the hands of our
ancestors, were transformed into knives.. spears..
objects for hunting.. to build other materials..
and yes.. into beautiful objects of art..
fascinating.

and yes.. there were nice concerts too this summer
in Iparralde.. especially the music concerts
of the basque coast, one had Basque soprano Maite
Irudin singing works by Galuppi.. Pegolesi.. and
others.. there was a nice concert in Donibane-Lohizune
with Niko Etxart who also presented his last
record "Hapa Hapa" and a singer from Corsica,
Muvrini who plays traditional music from his country..

In Irunea I saw an exhibition of about 20 something
etchings made by Eduardo Chillida.. most of them
from his series Euskadi all in black and white..
i was told that Chillida's graphic work is little
known in Euskalherria.. surprising being that he is
considered among the best contemporary printmakers
in the world..

but nothing else impressed me so much this summer
as the work of Goenaga.. i saw..
i think Goenaga is one of our greatest contemporary
painters.. not only for the matter of his work,
but for its manner, which is the manner,
the passion of remembering..
my dear friend Marta once told me that modernism
was a culture of forgetting.. of euphorically or
elegiacally saying good-bye. No better way to
define modernism. But our Goenaga, forgets almost
nothing, least of all things that many want to
forget...
In my humble opinion... Goenaga's great theme of
Basque culture is just a master metaphor,
of his vision... the paintings i saw, thanks to the
courtesy of a friend, the favourite motif was
the landscape, both urban and rural.. and a few
others seemed to be inspired in the wall paintings
in our caves.. one that most impressed me had a
ploughed field with a high horizon, rendered
in vertiginous perspective but smashed flat to the
picture plane by an emphasis on material and
process.. the painted topography is that of European
abstract expressionist flatness and scale, given
a spin of sensuous, sort of nature-derived nuance..
he seems not to forget anything of the modernist
legacy either...
it may be possible to overestimate Goenaga's
importance to Basque culture but looking at his
paintings i don't quite see how...

well delinquents.. enough chit-chat..
have a pleasant evening... night... or morning
and til next time..

Mila A.