July 1st Sunday

Been in Spain all week - a day-and-night in Barcelona thence to Seville and back, all by train.

The journey had its adventures but the first real shock was getting onto the terrace of Hughs flat which we were renting for the week.  It was on the fourth floor in the middle of the old town and clearly visible, level with us and down a bit, was a statue of Hercules on a pillar.

I'd been dreaming of it, the statue- even talked about it, because I didn't know how I knew it was Hercules and thought  I'd seen it on a postage stamp. (Been looking at the stamps I have defaced to make the World King series and thought it had emerged from that.)
It was ominous there, looming, ugly, it scared me. It already had an importance in my mind. The terrace gave me vertigo - that is to say, I have vertigo and the terrace was high up - and the worst thing of constant vertigo, apart from the physical symptoms, is the urge to jump. Was this a presage of my suicide? Naturally I had to keep reminding myself not to self-fulfill, whilst at the same time trying to come to terms with killing myself.

Bravely I slept on the terrace for a few nights. Felt more in charge. Then the flying cockroaches arrived so I moved indoors. Unpleasantly hot or cold and windy with aircon on.    

Having said all this, had a very good time. Enjoyed Bobs company, enjoyed Hughs company, enjoyed the change in diet and the art of the city.

The one repetitive idea was about wind. In a hot and airless place, it would be.  Finding that the Arabs had twelve names for their twelve winds excited me though I couldn't find out any more. The little wind at night was like being played with by a beast that battered around me - impossible not to personify it - so representing these winds and trying to understand an historical relationship with them kept me awake. Seeing their shapes in the architecture ditto.

The art of the galleries was not terribly special though there were many little pleasures, chiefly Jose Villegas Cordero, La Muerte del Maestro, 1913 (death of a bullfighter; he is on his bier in a chapel which swarms with bullfighters - gorgeous) and Lucas Valdes, Retrato Milagroso de San Francisco de Paula, c.1710 (in which an angel completes the artists work, using the artist as a model as he lies exhausted on the floor -:)  )))
 They were hanging in the Bellas Artes de Sevilla, pleasantly cool, large and empty-of-people place. At the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporano  I enjoyed Ruth Moran and her large black papers with twitchy lines on 'em, worked well, (Psychographies, she calls them) and Jose Pinar who stacked around a hundred canvases so you could see that they were paintings though not clearly - called Greatest Hits, 1992 -2012, unsold work and nicely ironic. Laughed a lot.

Trouble was that the building is an old monastery and quite quite fabulous so art has competition there.

Most memorable time was the last night in the gardens of the Real Alcazar, where Marino Pardo sang to Juan Carlos de Mulder's guitar. She was floodlit in crimson against the hysterical green of a huge hedge, sang like something inhuman, the winds started playing...

Been back for two days and haven't got near the studio. Nor will I be able to tomorrow - have to pack up some stored work for repairs to the space they are stored in - trying to keep calm. Maybe Tuesday.