dry storm, tempestad en seco
At 80 years old and still performing around Europe, Freddie Redd will always be the greatest jazz pianist for me. I know there are bigger names out there than Redd's — and my praise certainly would never diminish the contributions of, say, Fats Waller or Count Bassie — but so many jazz pioneers have such a large cult of personality built up around them that they are no longer human, they have attained mythic status, and thus are very boring. The only thing fun about a cult of personality is watching it crumble for all the right reasons.
Redd is brilliant, I think, because he embodies what I respect most in artists; he makes his music because he loves making music and everything else is just fate. In other words (if I can impose my own limited, highly judgmental criteria for what makes exciting art) give me an artist who is in love with the way any day over someone who is focused on the end product and I will be happy. I bring all this up because I think my translation skills fall under this line of thought; I have no idea how bad my Spanish is, I suspect it is very bad, but I had a great time working on this poem and so, in the end, that is all that mattered.
Still, unlike almost all of my other translation, it was interesting not writing in English then translating but rather the opposite. Someone might read this and think, “This boy has no idea just how much he is hurting Español.” But perhaps it is good to hurt the language you are working in? Perhaps it those who use the language like a piano — hitting a lot of missed notes but ending up with a thing of beauty — that are the successful ones in the end? One night the poet Frank O'Hara was giving a reading and who should be in the audience but a very, very drunk Jack Kerouac, who interrupted Frank by shouting, “O'Hara, you're ruining American poetry;” Frank countered with, “That's more than you could ever do!”
And that is so damn true.
Amor mío, fuego
que devora. No hay
pianista.
El piano es
silencioso. Yo
no sé.
Un castillo
en el aire.
Tempestad en seco.My love, devouring
fire. There is no
piano player.
The piano is
silent. I do
not know.
A castle
of clouds.
Dry storm.