20 April

Photos, heritage

I struggle with the word, or the concept, of heritage. Not surprisingly, I must say. I am a latino and what is our heritage? The first ever article I got published was about Latin America being a mix of everything, a “Cosmic Race” as Vasconcelos wrote. Implicit in such mix is that heritage is irrelevant, or does not exists, unless we understand that the heritage of the likes of me is precisely something unclear, certainly inpure, without main lines. I suppose that my heritage is to embrace the chaos of many lines, known and unknown, mixing themselves in ways that I can barely see. 

Embracing the chaos in oneself opens opportunities, definitively. As much as the music of Piazzola resonates within me, in internal spaces of which I am barely aware otherwise, my feet start to move on their own at african drums, and my ears enjoy the waves in Debussy. All these, and more, is mine, it is my heritage. And it also always leaves me a bit confused. Some people, surely nowadays, talk about going back to their roots. But I can’t. Which direction should I choose? I can’t walk towards Africa and towards Europa at the same time! 

So then perhaps like those Nexus-6 people, I do tend to hang to little scraps of reality that give me a sense of straight time. I indeed feel that if I have an heritage at all, a simple, clean cut and straightforward one, it is to be found in the photos that I still have. Those things that have crossed decades, half south america and then a full ocean... and are still around. Those family photos that I have manage to hold on to. Perhaps those form my heritage. 

Consider a few taken in a party, the marriage of my parents. My mother as beautiful as she always is, but much younger. My father in a light suit, perfectly cut, almost “a la sains facon” as he would like it, with eyes only for her. One grandma in pearls and commanding, both my aunts in pale miniskirts, like about to go to a Beatles concert. A friend of my father stares at the décolleté of a girlfriend of my mother. My grandfather straightens his chest and doesn’t quite smile to the camera, but shows a pride that almost takes over the whole photo. I can see, or at least I can convince myself that I can see, what these people are thinking, or about to say. From these people I come, from these people I have gone further.

Perhaps this is all what heritage is, after all. The impression of a shadow in a fading paper, the probably mistaken belief of understanding our elders, a tale that we spin for ourselves, to give us a starting point that we, actually, don’t need. We don’t need heritage to create, to move on, to face the challenges of our time. If we need anything at all is the freedom of breaking with ancient uses, the strength to invent, and perhaps fail, and invent again. 

And yet I can expend hours looking at those photos, at my heritage.