A new short by Omar Ramirez using a poem by Gustavo Thomas

Photograph by Omar Ramírez (Omar Ramirez © 2012)

 I knew about a loss and its pain, when I saw that image (posted above) depicting those moments in the life of someone very dear to me I could only write a poem about what this image evoked in me.

As the original poem is written in Spanish I'm publishing here both versions: the original one and an almost literal translation in English: 

Sigo tus pasos

Miro aquello que de tí me queda

y en tus olores me desvanezco;

no siento ya mi sombra,

que es tuya,

porque estoy solo,

porque tu color yo pierdo,

porque aquí sin forma 

tú,

descarnado me dejas.

(Gustavo Thomas © 2012)



Following your steps

I'm looking at that which I've left from you

and I lose myself in your smells.


I don't feel my shadow which is yours,

because I'm alone,

because I lose your color,

because here, shapeless,

you … leave me ...

fleshless.


(Gustavo Thomas © 2012)


Then Omar created his own poem in video, using my voice and the poem itself, which I greatly appreciate, because the product is absolutely beautiful and strong, very strong, and yet full of great tenderness.

Here you have the video:

Video: Volcano (Omar Ramírez © 2013)

 

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

A video with the poem "Hace Tanto" (It's been so long) (Read By Gustavo Thomas)

I've been recording in video some of my poems reading by me (in Spanish); first the reading and after the text. We'll see how it goes.

I'm a writer in Spanish so, my writings are in that language; sometimes I publish the translation to English, but sometimes not, it will be always an approximation to the original one.

Video of the poem "Hace tanto"

Hace tanto (Poema de y por Gustavo Thomas) from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.
Hace tanto

Possible translation:


It's been so long


It's been so long since I saw your breasts
uncovered when it dawns,
nor your smile when you see me
and those eyes closing again

I have lost your smell, or I mistake it,
 but not your sound that moans,
nor your hands that touch,
and those warm lips that welcome me./

I have them here.../

You're not who walks at my side anymore,
nor who sweats when I ejaculate tired

Woman, you're not anymore
she who receives my embrace!/

I don't have you here!/

I also know of something that I miss from you:
your buttocks, your feet so cold
and your hair so long./


Gustavo Thomas © September 2011
(Translated by Tadeo Berjon © 2012)

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

The Diva and The Poet (A Poem)

María Callas and Pier Paolo Pasolini walking near Nápoles, during the filming of Medea . 1970.*

THE DIVA AND THE POET*

Look at them both walking the dusty streets of the mythical Italy!

Smiling, with happy steps,  
living dreams others would soon shatter 
till they saw them both down, dead. 

She sings poems, shows her whole self off while in pain.  
He sings poetry, and dreams of handsome proletarians.

Oh, their feet are big,
as big as their amazed mouths!  

(Gustavo Thomas © 2012)
 

* This photogrpah has been published in several sites on the Net and none gives the author's name; if you know the name of the photographer, please, give it to me to put it as a credit.

 *Original in Spanish. Translation by Tadeo Berjon.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

How do you defend yourself? (A poem by Gustavo Thomas)

*Translation from Spanish with Tadeo Berjon help.

 

How do you defend yourself?

I

How do you defend yourself from those creatures who are your fears,
from the waves of death and devastation feeding from your past?

Lashings and thrashings,
Body-torturing guilts,
those who deafen you with their screams.

How do you face the sorrow that surges
when the arm of the departed caresses
and you weep without knowing what it was?

 
II

How do you defend yourself from the permanence we experienced in the past?

The hands of your father, or your mother or any of your other dead,
anxiously scratching their head,
the sound from their nails reverberating in your dreams
unsettling you, awaking you surrounded by fear.

How do you look at you without seeing those who were before
in the reflection of the memories of your self, in your own desert?


III

How do you defend yourself from the wound you inflict upon your soul
every time you replay what you thought you'd long ago parted with?

You frown, you beat,
you shut your eyes, clench your eyelids tight,
you yelp as if scaring birds away from you,
with no sound
you live the memory of the other in the morass of your impotent praying.

Why do you hear what others have said only when you are calm? 


IV

Spirits inhabit my chambers too,
their warmth lingering on the objects,
I feel them tepid, like their forgotten portraits.

They're images in the window of my brain,
they harass,
feed from me,
chew my face off,
and feel under attack if I look at them.

From the void they enter my life in hordes,
and set camp for hours, and days...
some have lived during long years buried in my eyes,  
I suffer with their eternity pouring from me
while I frantically try to scratch them away.


Tell me, how do you defend yourself...?

Because I'm like a sepulcher for my own dead.

(Gustavo Thomas. June, 2012)

*

* The original in Spanish:

¿Como te defiendes?

I


¿Cómo te defiendes de esos seres que son tus miedos, de las olas de muerte y destrucción que comen de tu pasado?

Látigos y golpes,
culpas que torturan el cuerpo,
aquellas que te gritan y destrozan tus tímpanos.

¿Cómo enfrentas la tristeza que te invade
cuando el brazo del ya ido te acaricia
y lloras sin saber qué fue eso que te ha tocado?



II


¿Cómo te defiendes de la permanencia de aquello que ya vivimos?

Las manos de tu padre (o de tu madre o de cualquiera de tus muertos)
ávidas se rascan el cuero cabelludo,
el sonido de sus uñas reverbera en tus sueños
al grado que te altera hasta despertarte en miedo envuelto.

¿Cómo te miras sin ver frente a ti a los que te antecedieron
en ese reflejo que es tu recuerdo de ti mismo y en lo desierto?



III


¿Cómo te defiendes de la herida que te infringes a ti mismo
cada vez que vives esa imagen de la que ya te creías partido?

Frunces el ceño, das manotazos,
cierras los ojos, te aprietas los párpados,
truenas los labios como espantando pájaros,
sin sonido
vives la memoria de lo otro en la ciénaga de tu impotente rezo.

¿Por qué cuando te calmas escuchas lo que otros ya dijeron?



IV


En mí también los espíritus pueblan mis cuartos,
su temperatura queda en los objetos,
los siento tibios como sus olvidados retratos.

Son imágenes en la ventana de mi cerebro,
aparecen acosando,
se alimentan de mí,
mastican la carne de mi cara,
piensan que al verlos yo los ataco.

Entran por hordas y de la nada a mi vida,
se quedan por horas y por días;
algunos han vivido años enteros en mis ojos, enterrados,
sufro con su eternidad cayendo de mí
mientras me rasco enfebrecido para tirarlos.

Dime, ¿cómo te defiendes…?


Es que soy como un sepulcro de mis propios antepasados.



(Gustavo Thomas. Junio. 2011)

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

De sueño en sueño. A poem in voice and letters.

(Sorry, there is no translation of this poem yet)

De sueño en sueño

Image of De sueño en sueño

Y uno va así, de sueño en sueño, andando, saltando, volando,

viendo pasar la muerte de los otros en un rito incomprensible de cada noche,

de cada sueño, de cada sensación de letargo…

Uno va por ahí matando todo y a todos,

mira su tumba, la del amado, la del perdido, la del odiado.

Uno va de sueño en sueño rodando, con lágrimas que despiertan al otro,

con gritos que no dejan dormir,

y ese se sobresalta, y ese suda, y ese se levanta:

-está dormido- nos dicen, -déjalo soñar en paz, que está descansando-

Sí, uno va, de uno a otro, en una vida completa, entera, donde no más razonamos;

mitad de nuestra existencia o más, mucho más, que se siente plena;

una vida siempre más intensa, más amplia, más extensa,

y de ella sólo un vago intento de recuerdo,

un recuento que se difumina al hablarlo y en poco ya no lo recordamos…

Y sí, uno va así, de sueño en sueño, sin demora,

de sueño en sueño, con los brazos apretados, las rodillas doliendo y los dientes rechinando,

uno va, de sueño en sueño, palpitando hacia la muerte o hacia el sentirse despertando.




Gustavo Thomas
(Toronto, Canada. Septiembre, 2011)









Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

My blood has turned into ink...

Cocteau was right: 

"My blood has turned into ink". 

I'm ready to write anything, 

I have enough in my arms and legs.

Pain / Dolor (Photo Manipulation by Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

Cocteau avait raison

 "Mon sang est devenu de l'encre". 

Je suis prêt à écrire n'importe quelle chose, 

j'ai plein dans mes bras et jambes.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

My body is a space (from my Butoh Vlog)

My body is a space/

ghosts are moving in it/

beings I invoke and convoke/

They travel from feet to head/

euphoric cry in my hands

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Teaching without pupils... A poem from the Brechtian's exile.

Brecht during his exile in Denmark. Seated close to him, Hellen Weigel.

Sometimes life outside your country and your artistic field seems unbearable, sometimes is only a melancholic sentiment of emptiness and impotence.

These poems (quoted by Hans Burger) were written by Brecht during his exile in Denmark:

 "Teaching without pupils/

Writing without fame/

Are difficult."

"There speaks the man to whom no one is listening:/ 

He speaks too loud / 

He repeats himself / 

He says thing that are wrong: 

/ He goes uncorrected."

A Walk Through Basho's Garden... and his Haiku.

閑かさや岩にしみ入る蝉の声
shizukasa ya iwa ni shimiiru semi no koe

oh in the quietude
seeping into the rock
the voices of cicadas

The first time I heard of Haiku was by feeling it.

During an exercise guided by my acting teacher, Antonio González Caballero (1), he was constantly repeating a few sentences translated from Japanese poetry. The immediate response within me, perhaps an explosive one (if explosions were so slow as powerful), was the opening of a door leading to the unknown; the inner self of my sensibility had an entry (perhaps it has more) and I had discovered it that day.

The teacher's words were listened to and repeated after a while by me, with my voice, ever lower, as wanting them to enter me; then I heard them in silence, I heard them traveling through my body, inside my body, and I started to feel.

The feeling brought tears to my eyes, but they were not tears of pain or sadness tears, or at least they were of a kind of pain and sorrow so big that they seemed near infinite, therefore intangible, and therefore neither sad nor painful, and they were only in me, and tears flowed as in a river, only because.

My body became more relaxed, my eyes were clouded by tears while listening to the poem.

Already on the ground and in a period of time without memory, that afternoon, I was enjoying all this, looking at the sky and laughing while the tears still came. It was all, It was much, and it was of such extreme softness!

My teacher’s voice and mine had long faded, but I was still listening to the poem in me. It was the first time I could say I felt a soul, that thing so intangible that only becomes tangible through poetry.

Since that exercise each time I hear the word "Haiku", I feel it through my body (and soul) and identify it with my experience as an actor, and each time I hear the name of "Basho" I identify it with the creator of that experience.

I’ve crossed paths with Basho (Bashō) several times in my life, since that day at González Caballero’s workshop and till now, when he crossed my path during a trip to Tokyo in January 2008. I was looking for a Sumo stadium, I wanted to see huge men in a ritual fight, instead I found this Japanese poet, I found his house museum that held me for a few minutes.

The house was almost destroyed by time and bombardments, there was nothing left of it, a new building replaced the original house with a small museum, and over there a garden which even in Winter remained alive.

I strolled around the garden and recorded some images, they are more beautiful for what they mean that for what they are. Showing them is a joy and reading his poems while watching them is a pleasure.

Trips are pretexts that lead to wisdom.

A Walk Through Basho's Garden

Basho Museum. Tokyo, Japan. (January 2008)

Basho Museum. Tokyo, Japan. (January 2008)

Basho Museum. Tokyo, Japan. (January 2008)

(1) Under González Caballero’s Acting Method this exercise is part of "Naturalismo chejoviano" (Chekhovian Naturalism), and the exploration work was precisely "Apoyo Haikú". There is a Blog I'm writing (in Spanish) called: El Método de actuación de A. González Caballero.