1st fortnight of Juny 2011 Barcelona. Montanyans 1 (Bº La Ribera)
A new dad’s first steps are always clumsy and imprecise. Luckily, babies, though have no patience, do not get frustrated with their caregivers (in that, they are clever from day one) and that’s the reason why they provide such broad possibilities: laughter mixed with weeping, calm and quiet moments mixed with anxious and hurried ones. Moreover, if your windows are wide open to the street, as the morning goes by the sounds of people passing by, of children playing in the park, of birds, of noisy shops (like the saw cutting at the butcher’s shop beneath), of people whistling, of the wind chimes on a neighbor’s balcony, of bells, of sirens, or the neighbor’s dog barking amongst others, configure a continuous flow of sounds that merges the public and the private, the articulated with the simple, the environmental sounds with those from specific activities, the meaningful with the mere anecdotal... and all this is spiced up with some music and other T.V. incursions. In the end, it all conforms a totum revolutum that involves and accompanies us in our daily routines, whether we pay attention to it or not: whether we take advantage of it or not.
English version: Noemí Aznar

Cooking for lunch... Today: cream of vegetables (6/6)



I'm sure now that Alea is going to sleep a bit longer and that she will let me prepare lunch. Today I’m going to prepare cream of vegetables... with leeks, onions and potatos, a little bit of oil and salt. The sounds of a couple birds singing and a dog barking slip into the house and it makes it seem like a country scene but, the sound of the crane working at Borne’s Market infiltrates itself amid the sounds of my first cutting attempts… It’ll be better if I start by getting the pot on the stove… the wáter, the cover… I turn the stove on and now I can go back to cutting the leeks, onions and potatoes, and to listening to the soundscape. There is no rhythm, no harmony, no melody, but the birds’ songs with their almost constant repetition, the voices down the street (now it sounds like an arabic language; then like a family of Nordic tourists; and the crane, subtle and obstinate) and the indoor sounds braid themseves in chorus, following each other, meeting and drawing away, coming and going…

(05:10) The pot’s lid rattling with its irregular rhythm tells me that water is boiling... Warned by the bell of a biclycle down the street, I turn off the stove, take the blender out of the cabinet, assemble it, test it, and I pump up the volume on the computer in which I watch the news on TVE 24hr’s channel. With everything prepared

(08:15), the symphony for blender and boiled vegetables, crushed inside the same metallic pot, begins, being performed by Braun 300 Watts hand blender. A slow and scattered beginning is nothing but the preamble to the composition

(09:39), the final little taps… and Alea doesn't notice a thing (lucky me).

 (10:00) Back after the blender and vegetable concert (which masked everything) the news continue, the birds, the voices, the pot, the salt…

(11:18) Mom comes in... Alea's still half asleep, I’m relaxed and about to have lunch.
After lunch I’ll let mother and daughter enjoy the afternoon together, and I’ll join in.
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