The Polish Boxer

Then I washed my hands, thinking about my grandfather, about Auschwitz, about the five green digits tattooed on his forearm, which for all of my childhood I thought were there, as he used to tell me himself, so that he could remember his telephone number. And without knowing why, I felt a bit guilty.

mara her last name. I remember that it was Russian. Halfon is Lebanese, I said, but my mother’s last name, Tenenbaum, is Polish, from Łódź, and both girls shrieked.

I’m not Jewish anymore, I said, smiling at her, I retired.

Milan began serving himself generous spoonfuls of pepián and caquic, and I, considering him brave to attempt such a mixture, could only think about how some people flee their ancestors, while others yearn for them, almost viscerally; how a few run from their fathers’ world, while others clamor for it, cry out for it; how I couldn’t get far enough away from Judaism, while Milan would never be close enough to the Gypsies

Deep down, I’m a nomad, like them, even if my father wants to deny it. And a nomad doesn’t much like

Everything. Painting a canvas? Spectacle. Writing a novel? Spectacle. Playing the piano? Spectacle. And the Cuban revolution? Pure spectacle. The waiter came with our food, but I ignored him. Anyway, I said, sighing a hazy conclusion.

Because everything after that, Milan, is pure spectacle

p to a certain point, how and why someone is pushed toward a revolution of the spirit, whether it be artistic or social or whatever, strikes me as a far more honest search than all of the spectacle that follows

but I’m fascinated by internal rather than external revolutions. I’m obsessed by them

There are boundaries laid down somewhere that at the same time aren’t really there or shouldn’t really be there. For instance, boundaries within a piece, or boundaries between interpretative techniques, or even boundaries between genres. Why create boundaries between genres? Why differentiate between one type of music and another? It’s all the same. Music’s music.