Finding Federico

So I found myself alone in Madrid. Unexpectedly. I said goodbye to Darwin and I never saw him again. A text message saying he had to work. My first and only Saturday in Madrid. Woke up the following morning to the sound of absence. Realised I only had myself to think about. Managed to communicate with a guy who only spoke Spanish and worked out where I had to go. Got help from some women who only spoke Spanish and found the hostal where i needed to go. Located it, packed my stuff and made a definite decision to drag my case down stairs while wearing heels. It seemed appropriate somehow. Defiance or maybe I just didn't give a fuck.
I arrived at the hostal with the words 'No hablo espanol - parli italiano?' to discover the guy who ran the hostal was called Carlos, from Uruguay, and he spoke perfect Italian.
Deliberated about booking a single/double room. Tried to phone Darwin but no reply. So I booked a single room.
Went into Madrid and found a cafe. Menu in Spanish. Thankfully the day before I'd learnt that queso = cheese so I ordered una tosta de queso which I was sure was a cheese toastie and it was. I was sitting with a big cheese toastie in the sun in a cafe in Madrid when I got a text from Darwin.
'I'm in a police station. The police came into the place where we were cooking. Dunno when we're gonna be let out.'
I am sitting in a cafe in Madrid with a big cheese toastie reading the text and thinking 'What??????'
I wrote back saying tell me where you are and I'll come find you. Nada. Of course. Nada.
When i met Dolores the following day, I knew the universe was having a laugh. But what happened the following day and all the 4 days after made me wonder how far the universe was really laughing. the next couple of days in Madrid were far from pleasant. They were probably some of the worst days in my life...

Back to Duende and to Darwin

The synchronicity stuff that happened in 2004 has another place and time. This is supposed to be about the writing of Duende so I'll try and stick to this. Madrid - October - 2009 - and I'm stranded in a city where I can't speak their language and they can't speak mine. With basic Italian and a pocket-size Spanish dictionary, I navigate myself around with the introductory words 'No hablo espanol. Parli Italiano?' and then a lot of gestures on top. Somehow I survived 4 days in Madrid, not knowing why I was there and in a situation not of my own making and really not knowing what the hell was going on. I did a sort of daily routine which involved waking up, going to a cafe in the centre for a morning coffee, doing a circuit around the same streets which soon became familiar. One day, I was crossing the Plaza de Santa Ana for the I don't know how many times and I thought 'I feel as if I'm in a film...in which nothing happens.'
The last day, a Wednesday, and I woke up with a massive sense of fear. I was overcome with real and horrible fear.
Shit. Maybe i need to go back a few steps and explain exactly why I was in Madrid in the first place. I mentioned it in my previous post but haven't really explained at all.
I went to Madrid to meet a guy I thought I'd fallen in love with. A Cuban guy called Darwin (and yes, his name ended up providing many ideas for my novel in which a central character's a philosopher living in Spain at a time when Charles Darwin's ideas were being fiercely attacked by the hardline Catholic church)
I went to Madrid and I did indeed meet Darwin. All real. All passionate. We shared a pizza in a place I never found again during my daily walks round the centre of Madrid. We spent 4 and a half perfect hours together. When he kissed me goodbye on the Plaza del Angel, I had no idea I'd never see him again.
And I had no idea what a journey this would lead me on.

Synchronicity and the writing of Duende

My other blogs contain chapters of my novel but I'm going to use this blog to write about how the book came together and the strange things that happened along the way. I'm not sure what synchronicity is or why and how it happens - I just know that it does. And when it happens, it's sort of scary but also like magic. It makes you shiver but then you just have to accept it and also know that it's good.
My first major experience of synchronicity on a big scale happened in 2004 and, funnily enough, it coincided with a time when I was rewriting a previous novel, Vandalism. I'd started writing this in 1997 - the worst year of my life. In 2004, I felt the urge to get it out and rewrite. I also needed desperately to get in touch with someone who'd provided inspiration for the novel. Hadn't seen him for 7 years. I searched online but couldn't find an e-mail anywhere for him.
April. At work. A university in Edinburgh. A brutal day. Finally checked my e-mail and dealt with them one by one. Got to the end and there it was. Drew Anderson:
'Hi Lizzie. I was just wondering if you were somewhere out there and how you were doing. I'm in New York now and feeling homesick so thought I would try to find you again.'
That was just the start :)

Duende - Federico Garcia Lorca and Me :)

I'm totally new to blogging but am far from new to writing which I love as much as life itself. I think I set this blog up a year ago but totally forgot about it as I was in the middle of writing a novel called Duende - now finished.

It's a book inspired by a surreal 5 days in Madrid where I spent each day wandering around the Plaza del Angel, the Puerta del Sol, the Plaza de Santa Ana, not knowing why I'd ended up in a nightmare not completely of my own making. A Cuban guy I thought I'd fallen in love with did a spectacular disappearing act, leaving me confused, disorientated and reliant on my basic grasp of Italian, a pocket Spanish dictionary and a lot of gestures in order to survive. On my final day, I bumped into a statue of Lorca in front of the Teatro Espanol and realised he'd been my neighbour all along. He was standing a minute away from my hotel but because of the space I'd been in, I hadn't even noticed. At the time, and looking back, it was an amazing thing to happen during what has to be the most surreal experience in my life (and I've had quite a lot of these :)

A week after I got back, work started on excavating Lorca's body from a site in Grenada which eyewitnesses (now dead) claimed to have been his burial place after he was shot by Franco's Fascist supporters. This was the trigger for my novel and 6 weeks later, by which time my own writing was well underway, archaeologists announced they'd found no evidence of human bones or any signs of a mass grave. Newspaper reports referred to Spain's attempt to lay some of its ghosts to rest but the failure to find Lorca's body leaves another ghost without a resting place.

Ghosts are a fairly significant image and idea throughout Duende in which Lorca appears as a character. At first, I thought I couldn't possibly include him as it would be too ridiculous but then, given my main characters are an artist and philosopher living in Madrid 1918-1936, it became ridiculous to do otherwise. Salvador Dali's in there, too, but far less significant. A beautiful Spanish philosopher, Ortega y Gasset, also makes his way into the story.

It's a beautiful and sad story about two men, totally in love with each other at a time when being homosexual wasn't something you could be open about. It's a love story but the time in which it's set makes it much much more than that. All the brutal events leading up to the Spanish Civil War create the landscape in which the characters live and breathe and, ultimately, die.

If you feel like having a read of the chapters as and when I post them, your feedback would be immensely appreciated. If you want to drop me a note to say you'd be interested, that's be great too :)