On the Rooftops of Europe
Live, laugh, love and the alienation of the creative pursuit
I was sitting on a rooftop in Cádiz drinking beer with a group of Europeans in May this year. We were from Eastern and Northern regions respectively. Cádiz is a small coastal city in the south-west of Spain. Over the ocean you can see North Africa. It has historical connections to Cuba, due to its importance as a port, and it looks like an Andalusian mini-Cuba. I live in another slightly-larger city nearby called Jerez de la Frontera, which is inland and 20-odd kilometres away from Cádiz.
Cádiz is trendier, with a higher proportion of international inhabitants from wealthy countries than Jerez, and it's a third more expensive to live in. I regard Cádiz with the suspicion of a Jerezano. It is beautiful, and great for a weekend jaunt, but it can seem rather “fantasy” from the outside. For UK-dwellers, Cádiz to Jerez is what Bristol is to Leeds, or what Edinburgh is to Glasgow.
We’d just finished our final Spanish exam. We were speaking English, which disgruntled me. I was embarrassed that we were on a rooftop bar. It was such a “guiri” thing to do (this is the word that some Spanish people use to describe Northern Europeans). Someone was complaining about the fact that Cádiz didn't have more rooftop bars. It was under-utilising its roofs and sunlight! I was trying to explain that the reason there were no rooftop bars in Cádiz is because it wasn’t culturally a thing here, and the reason people liked Cádiz was because it maintained its traditions, and therefore its “authenticity”. Even in the face of significant tourism, which had expanded and strengthened under the Franco regime.
This is what I love about Cádiz and its surrounding areas, that it caters to the people that live there, and not to visitors. They certainly welcome incomers, but on their terms, and their schedule. Gaditanos (Cádiz-dwellers) like to keep low to the ground and greet each other in the street. The street is the public arena. It is where you bask in the sun, or hide in the shade. Heights are for peeping at people from windows. They are where you hide your sadness, behind the blinds. And from late May to September, no Andalusian would be caught dead on a roof in the late afternoon, as that’s what you’d be if you stayed up there drinking.
Socialising after the pandemic
At some point on the rooftop, the conversation turned to “break the rules” holidays during the pandemic. A couple from Ireland went to Paris. A family who lived in Switzerland went to London. Chuckling confidentially, someone in the group asked me where (not if) I had gone. I replied that I’d mostly spent the pandemic in hospital. I was exaggerating, but I was trying to make a point. They all went quiet. After a pause, one of them commented that my Spanish must be very good if I had spent all that time in hospital. At the time, I read this person’s riposte as hostile. On reflection, I believe it was her way of trying to lighten a moment that could have taken a dark turn. It was for the common good.
As I get older, my desire to be the centre of attention has considerably dwindled. I do not enjoy taking the limelight when I feel that my personal life, beliefs and ideas are under scrutiny. In groups I am mostly quiet. With many of my friends, I keep my cards close to my chest. In fact, I prefer to consult tarot cards about what troubles me, over confiding in a friend. And yet here I am again, pouring my heart out in my monthly newsletter. Because writing, as well as making films, is the best form I have to express myself adequately. It gives me space to reflect on my ideas, rationalise them, and create a map of thoughts and feelings.
That day on the rooftop, I was troubled. I felt that the others didn’t understand, or want to understand the culture I had spent three and a half years getting to know. A member of the group mentioned that he knew a French man making a documentary about Cádiz, the premise of which seemed to be that the people from there were “poor but happy” (for European standards, I guess). I wondered why the notion appealed so much to him. This man, who owned a shipping company in Switzerland, looked comforted by the idea as he told me about it.
I thought about this the other day, walking around the streets of Jerez. Roughly ten people asked me for money in the street. That day I didn’t have any change, only my card. Later, sitting outside a bar with my partner, a man came over and asked us for money, and when he found out that neither of us had any, he burst into tears. He was tired of hustling. The illusion of separation shattered. We sat him down and gave him water. He was poor, but he didn’t seem happy at all, and I can’t get his face, streaming with tears, out of my head.
Did they not understand sickness?
The people on the rooftop, I mean. How could they, if they had put other people’s health in danger by holidaying during a major public health crisis? But what I presumed isn’t necessarily true. We are social creatures. We are fearful creatures. When we are well, we turn our back on sickness and try to forget it. When we become socially mobile, we want to forget where we came from, affording our family the largest privileges possible so they don’t have to go back there. We resent the people that remind us of where we came from. And even if we don’t, and are self-aware and conscientious, we blunder all over each other’s sensitivities. When I left that roof terrace, I said I’d come back to Cádiz and have dinner with them before they left. But I didn’t.
It doesn’t matter that I didn’t connect with these people. In the past I may have reprimanded myself for being difficult or awkward. But we were on different paths. We were drunk, bleary-eyed from studying and no one would have gone on record with what was said, I imagine. We didn’t really know each other. The only common ground we had was the desire to improve our Spanish.
However, even if I’d been able to go on a “break the rules” holiday during the pandemic, I wouldn’t have. Not because I don't like breaking rules, because I do! But because I felt closer to the people who would suffer as a result of me doing so. Because I wasn't part of the economic class of people that could pay to break the rules. And I don’t know what it’s like to believe that life is meaningless if you are not going on holiday and drinking cocktails on rooftops.
Quite honestly, I do miss aspects of being quarantined
I don’t want to go back there, but I remember the time fondly. Without distractions, I began to build a stronger sense of self. It was a painful, laborious process, but I arrived there, somewhat near the beginning of the process. I wasn’t perfectly content with life, but I gave myself space to be with that thought, instead of scrabbling around to find a diversion to fill the hole. Do you know the hole I’m talking about? I remember having it as a very young child. I remember feeling as if I had a pain in my stomach, knowing that I wasn’t hungry or thirsty, looking for my mother, and not being able to tell her what I needed. Does this gap, or the hole in one's tummy, exist in all of us? If so it seems normal that we’d want to fill it up.
There is a flip-side to the “inner awakening”. You rarely drink alcohol (okay, hawk-eyed reader, I had a few drinks on the rooftop) and you’ve stopped using social media. That’s where I was in May. This blissful period of about five or six months off social media. The exception was my Twitter account. But on Twitter I have two friends and I don’t understand what anyone’s talking about, so I rarely engage. It felt good being off social media. But I knew I was being esoteric, and possibly irksome as a result. I also find it irksome when people become too esoteric. One of my mottoes is that having no vices is a vice in itself.
Back on that rooftop in May, it was present in my mind that I didn’t want to be totally disconnected forever. I wanted to be more present. But I wanted to do it more consciously this time. I asked the person there that I like the most about her business. She has a successful business and is charming and funny. She posts about it on her Instagram account but is not a fan of influencers. When she talks to people it sounds like she is effortlessly negotiating a business deal. She is the sort of person who goes into a room and leaves with more than she went in with.
I am intrigued by people like that. This way of being in the world is alien to me. I am the person that goes into a room, gives everything away, and leaves depleted. So recently, I have been curious about the other side of the spectrum. Wondering whether I could understand this more expeditious mindset better, balancing myself out in the process. Anyway, we ended up having a terse, drunken exchange. She asked me, with her business hat on, what I wrote and what it had to offer her, and why she should take the time to read it. I struggled to answer.
I started this newsletter as a reaction to ableist attitudes in the creative industries, but my intention has changed
Uncomfortable with the idea that I could be a spokesperson for ableism, I prefer to write about my personal experiences. I put them out into the world as provocations, rather than facts as truth. And in the past six months since that event, my writing style and output has changed. I’ve begun making films that are visual poems. I have written more stories. In fact my focus and interests are continuously expanding and changing. I feel unable to say what I do in the “elevator-pitch” style that the business world demands.
Rather than saying this to her, I answered that I didn’t care about what people wanted. I asked her, how do you think writers write and artists create if they sit around thinking about what other people want all the time? She said that my answer was pretentious, and it was. I was defensive. Ultimately we misunderstood each other. My defensiveness, I believe, came from the exhaustion of years of pushing to write or make anything that served a “useful” purpose; ticking buzzwords and fulfilling the criteria of what is hot and what is not. Every time I do this, it burns me out. My dad always says to me that your best idea is your first idea. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do think the best idea is the one that comes to you easily, grabs you by the gut and pulls you with it.
It’s the one that makes you think, oh god, this is a bit silly, but anchors you. It won’t let go. You sit at your desk, or on your couch, munching snacks for hours, wild-eyed. You keep going and you don’t stop until it’s done. At first, it’s a bit shit, half-formed. It’s not an A-star effort. But, as I said to one of my students the other day, you will learn more by taking risks. She had just lost an English language game we’d been playing in class. She offered original, interesting words that she wasn’t sure about, whereas the other student gave safer, well-established answers. According to the rules of the game, and also the rules of society, she lost more points. But I praised her efforts. I told her it was better to try something new and get it wrong, because it would make her experience of the language richer and more varied.
Trying something new means that you appear to fail in the eyes of others. However, if you can surpass the questioning looks and humiliation that goes along with it, I believe you succeed at being truly creative.
More Projects
I have tentatively crept back onto Instagram. I share things that my brain tells me are silly, but I do it anyway. Because I am bored of the correct, but tried and tested answers. They are not correct, only familiar.
Follow me at @rebecca_maria_videos
Hablando en Case de Mercedes
This the final film in the series, En Casa de Mercedes. I made it in Jerez, three years ago, with a dear friend, the flamenco artist Mercedes. Mercedes loved flamenco. It was her world. She was always learning, teaching, and inviting people to her house to practise with her. A year has passed since she died. It was a huge blow to me and her friends. So I republished the films with Spanish subtitles for her friends to enjoy them too. It is a homage to her and her bright spirit, all that she gave to us, and what remains after her passing. Here is the last film we made together.
You can find the rest of them on the En Casa de Mercedes channel.
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Cinetones
This project is also dear to my heart. It is an article and film about two musicians I met in Jerez, and who I am lucky enough to call my friends. I like to make work that feels close to me. When I edit or write work about subjects I am passionate about, I plant parts of myself in the work, and I believe it is then easier for the viewer/ reader to empathise with the story.
Click here to read and see the article and film in my online publication, Those Who Were Dancing.
The film, if you’d rather watch it directly:
P.s. If you want to help me keep doing what I do, donate on Kofi. A wee bit of loose change will help. And I ALWAYS share the change when I can.