[ essays ]

[For some unknown reason, all these things –cooked, merged and blurred in some deep layers of my spirit over the last few years- suddenly came out in a strange cascade while I was in Cuba in late 2001]

I have no interest in changing the world. Actually, so little that I have interest in not changing it.

I want to be socially invisible. In any society.

I refuse my nationality. As I would do with any nationality. Patriotism is a form of tribal sickness that is not cured by travelling -as many believe-but rather by simply considering people as what they should be: individuals.

The nomad doesn't "go out to see the world". He / she lives it, and "out" has no meaning for him / her.

The best virtue of the nomad: to not rely upon possessions, neither material nor personal.

These boots were made for walking... in a restless search for nothingness.

Why pursue happiness when we have intensity?

I don't understand at all what I'm doing. That's what keeps me going.

Purposelessness, that's what we really need.

I work really hard to create useless things. And I'm proud of it.

I have never been able to grasp the spirit of ethics.

Pragmatism is a predator of soul.

What we learn has no substantial effect on what we are.

I feel my life so far as a Big Bang of meaning. What seems to be "evolution" for others is dissolution for me. A Big Blur. It's so beautiful...

Nothing more powerful than blank phenomenological substance.

Losing beliefs without acquiring new ones is a form of purification.

Since I was very little I have this recurrent bizarre fantasy that at some point in the future I will be away from myself.

Without uncertainty my life would be over.

I have the hope that I'm contributing to create a nonsense world. For nobody.

An alluring mystery: the coherence of bossa nova and Cioran in my spirit.

I have such a hard time faking I'm an adult...

Be careful if you are a mutant; there are many Blade Runners out there.

The act of collecting is one of my worst nightmares.

Let me be as I am. The Dr. Jekyll in me can be helpful and my Mr. Hyde is innocuous.

The advice to my nonexistent disciple: don't be like me.

If I could choose a film to make a trip inside it, I would travel to Stalker.

A virtuoso is an admired monster.

Winners are victims of social order. Losers too, of course.

Either way, the avant-garde is a humiliating concept: who wants to be or wants others to be the "garde"?

It is equally sad to see art creating "beautiful" things or making "statements".

There are two particular instances in which I can't stand the "anything goes" attitude towards creation: when it becomes a tabula rasa and when it asks for communion as a proof of respect.

When I was seven, I started studying what they call music. Fortunately enough for my musical spirit, I quit after two years.

For some reason, I feel that the music I create can only be experienced individually, even in the public performances.

When the music creature is taking shape you have to let it grow.

I love the feeling when one of my music pieces sounds to me like created by someone else. And this happens very often.

Whenever I'm going through my recording notes from past work it's like contemplating an alien manuscript. Achieving this situation is one of the very few pieces of advice I could give to a young composer.

If "music is organized sound", many clocks are composers.

Composition or performance are not essential for music creation; listening is. Understanding the consequences of this makes a radical change in our role and our possibilities.

To think that music is only certain sounds or all sounds is the same mistake: music is not an aural entity -whatever the kind- but an act of will and spirit upon it.

Today, any sound recorded on an audio CD and marketed as music is socially recognized as such, regardless of the aesthetic opinions on it. In this situation, individual will is only respected through market. Another amazing twist of social self-control.

Even more important than creating music is sustaining it. An aural entity remains music as long as there is will and spirit behind it.

The rule of The Instrument -real or conceptual- is over.

Music as a tint for language: so often and since such a long time, so good for story-telling, so bad for music.

Pythagoras had such a great idea... All the concert halls should have a curtain to hide the orchestra; for the dignity of music.

Nowadays, one of the most absurdly obsolete elements of music presentation is the stage. Music should be, once and for all, liberated from theatre.

I once read an interview with Joe Strummer in which he was criticizing technology in music. He said something like "I am a musician, I don't want to be a fucking computer operator". Surprising to see he didn't realize about the fucking guitar operator in him.

An unnoticed revolution: in the last two decades of the twentieth century, music has been socially liberated from the grip of musicians and composers.

I don't feel the appeal of open form in music, especially in my flesh. Half a century wasted on this should be enough. We need open content, as much as possible, as soon as possible.

Knowing is destroying, especially in music and love.

What makes scientists so boring is their ethical fundamentalism and their belief in Truth.

One of the most dangerous anthropomorphic fantasies: bucolic nature.

Many times I feel nature as a giant ghost with no language and without the slightest interest on me. That's when it becomes a thrilling experience.

Ticks are more noble than birds: they don't hide their nature behind a song.

The most destructive instance on our experience of nature is not human destruction but human presence itself.

There should be special labyrinths for explorers. Unknown places need a break. We should be concerned about the loss of unkonwnness in our world. Another option is to go back to legends.

Zoos and museums share an obsolete principle: they show cleaned out things.

Parasites are our ultimate pets.

One of my three wishes to the genius of the lamp: change the music soundtrack of all nature documentaries.

Those interested in holistic ethics are in trouble with the right to live: there exist bacteria.

What if plants in pots and fruit trees in plantations were told that their seeds are not going to where they think they are?

Any insect is a challenge to a purposeful world.

A civilization of mites is one of the most beautiful historical fantasies.

Medicine is a trap for humankind; an individual saver, a collective doom.

Technology seems to be determined to turn machines into organisms and organisms into machines. This could be an interesting game if it wasn't for the fact that it is directed to increase our fitness. As if we hadn't enough already...

The only virtue I really appreciate in computers is their character as anti-matter devices.

Sometimes, when they are working alone, machines don't look like slaves but like organisms proud of themselves.

My beloved Futurists, dreamers of intensity...