LITERATURE / Performance / Et dono la meva paraula

Et dono la meva paraula

The Fundació Han Nefkens and the Institut Ramon Llull, organize a performance of Han Nefkens around the word. Han Nefkens, writer, collector and Dutch patron established in Barcelona, proposes to several people from different areas of Catalan culture who share with him a word in Catalan, explaining in three minutes what memories, dreams, and what wishes brings them. 

WORDS: L’altre ‘the other’; Explorar ‘explore’; Repantingar-se / repapar-se ‘sprawl out’; Marge ‘fringe’; Rodamon ‘wanderer’; Llostrejar ‘dawn’; Tolerància ‘tolerance’; Estimular ‘stimulate’; Seny ‘good sense’; Xerrameca ‘chatterbox’; Suau A refreshing drink made with cold coffee and soda water (and also ‘soft’); Carquinyoli ‘biscotto’; Comalats The name of a historic region of Catalonia; Serendipitat ‘serendipity’; Somiatruites ‘daydreamer’; Ancestral ‘ancestral’; Espurna ‘spark’; Canalla ‘kids’; Alba ‘daybreak’; Fasser ‘date tree’; Curiositat ‘curiosity’; Temós ‘irksome’, also used to indicate a necronym when taken by a brother.

At the end of the day, the poet Josep Pedrals, recite a poetry with all the words that have emerged during the action.

The Poem: 

FROM THE REMOTE CONTROL OF THE CUCUMBER BOAT

(or the visceral gas cylinder early in the morning)

Sprawled out under the date tree,
as a simple sun dawns,
I look out over the Comalats and know
that biscotti with a refreshing coffee and soda
signal a good day has broken.
It’s the time of day when the kids
are still asleep and everyone
is silent. Then the word
comes to me, like an ancestral
spark, daydreamer.
It appears unexpectedly,
like serendipity,
within my chatterbox head,
when it seemed dry of all inspiration.
What is it that stimulates it so?
What have I been thrown? What propels it
at a time when good sense
is an ocean of tolerance?
Perhaps a strange twist of fate has
instilled an phantom word in me
and my subconscious shapes it
with part of my irksome ego…
Curiosity seizes me
and, from some deep place,
a whole wandering lexicon
seems real to me, thrills me and
makes me keen to miss nothing on the fringes.
So off I set to explore the other
and, in the end, find myself,
since, by speaking, I am me and I am many.
                                                                —Josep Pedrals

Pictures from the event: http://www.hnfoundation.com/en/gallery-detail/24/et-dono-la-meva-paraulafotos. 

The event was on Monday, July 17, starting at 7 pm at the Institut Ramon Llull (Diagonal 373, Sala Rosselló).

DATA SHEET

Et dono la meva paraula

17.07.2017

19:00 hrs.

Institut Ramon Llull (Diagonal, 373, Barcelona).