Cool

I was never big on Spanish poetry. I knew who Garcia Lorca was, knew the important role he played in Spanish history. I've read a few of his poems, but couldn't repeat a single line of any of them even with a gun held to my head. I knew he knew Dali.

I know who Dali was, although I freely admit I often confuse Picasso and Dali paintings even if I could picture both men in my mind and can easily separate them by remembering that I recall when Dali died, but that Picasso was gone long before I was born. I remember that both were born in Spain, both had really long names (20 words for Picasso, Only 7 For Dali...but still.), both married Russian women, and both were generally known as amusing assholes. I always remember that Picasso painted Guernica and Dali painted The Persistence of Memory (the melting clocks...duh) but I often get confused and think Picasso painted The Crucifixion and Christ of Saint John of the Cross (one of my favorite paintings) even though Dali actually painted both. I sort of assumed that being as they were two of the most famous painters of the past 100 years, and Spanish contemporaries that they would have met at some point, but I never really thought about it until tonight.

We went to see Little Ashes at this theater in Montclair and the basis of the story was the relationship between Dali and Garcia Lorca. It wasn't that great of a movie but it got me thinking. One of the other main characters is referred to in the opening minutes of the movie as "Luis" and it wasn't till a few minutes later that I realized it was the Spanish film director Luis Bunuel. I studied Bunuel in school and have a better grasp of how important he was to film then Garcia Lorca was to literature. It's hard not to understand how important Dali was to art. Later on in the film it's pointed out that Dali was introduced to Picasso by Bunuel and it sort of got me thinking. There are these extremely important people in history who just sort of hung out together. There were famous people going all the way back in time who were just sort of buddy-buddy. I mean you'll always have people who were famous because of their association (Nobody would remember Mussolini without Hitler, if not for Cheech then Chong would have been just another stoner.) But here were four people, all famous and important in their own right who just so happened to repeatedly cross paths. I didn't catch if Garcia Lorca knew Picasso so let's drop Pablo out of this one, but Garcia Lorca, Bunuel, and Dali coexisted as close friends in some combination for over a decade and likely would have continued on for many more decades if not for Garcia Lorca's untimely death.

You see it all throughout history, people who will be remembered for hundreds of years and who just so happened to be close friends from Byron and Shelley to Pitt and Clooney. Sometimes it's a byproduct of traveling in the same circles or just repeatedly working together. Other times it's a common origin, or a common desire for greatness. Either way it's something that has always interested me because it provides for a fascinating "What if" scenario. What if you were the third person in a conversation with one of these famous pairings? How cool would that be? How interesting would it be to walk into a cafe in Spain in 1922 look up and realize you're sitting at a table next to one of the greatest artists of all time (Dali), one of the most important poets of all time (Garcia Lorca) and one of the most influential filmmakers of all time (Bunuel)?

It would be fantastic...or at least a hell of a lot better than that fairly shitty movie I watched tonight.

I guess that was just a really long way of saying don't waste your time going to see Little Ashes no matter how great you think Robert freaking Pattinson is.