But literature says… (Go abroad?)

The second thing I feel is gratitude when I am invited to a literary festival. The first is lazy. Singapore, Macao, Hong Kong. I wouldn't travel on my own to these places. That is why I do not allow myself no. I'm convinced that this is one of the goals of literature, and you have to let him take you to places where you wouldn't go on your own. It's a very beautiful thing.

Postpost

Twelve hours are nothing. The sinister plane in Frankfurt has left you in Singapore for that time. Marlon James is in charge of pronouncing the opening conference of the Singapore Festival on Saturday. He was the first Jamaican to win the Man Booker Prize in 2015 with A Brief History of Seven Killings (I know the Man Booker Prize is important, but I've never wondered why. It's a topic for another day, to create a brigade to question the pedigree behind those fantastic medals of strangeness that we take for granted.) The room is full. Rather than post-colonialism, James speaks of post-colonialism. It has imitated different English pronouncements and has defended Jamaica ' s jargon and syntax. “We live colonized... colonized by a linguistic model. Enough!” Then he talked about appropriationism. “The black community has nothing to object to anyone telling us our story… it’s about how it is done. As with black music, you can steal it right or wrong. You can be David Bowie or Vanilla Ice.” Marlon James is an empty showman who uses humor to put the audience in his pocket. The approvals who I think will try to guess who Euskal-Marlon-James is. I didn't think of anybody.

We're born to see Jamaica

Among other things, Bob Marley's assassination attempt in the lauded novel of A Brief History of Seven Killings. What's more Jamaican than Bob Marley? Disdainful of the critique that had been canonized before, Marlon James is currently in other occupations: Writing a fantastic trilogy in the same line as the tradition of the lord of the rings. It has not been so successful with this. Maybe because it's not what you expect from a Jamaican writer? That is why he wants to write; that is, according to him, to be postcolonial.

A possible recipe to ensure the success of a Jamaican writer

1) Talent. 2) Quote Bob Marley. 3) Humor.

I think the only thing that is compulsory is the second, the other two are optional.

Ask any editor what book/topic you want to translate: if you are Finnish, fjords and sauna, if you are Dutch, mills and canals. What if you're Euskaldun? I tried to explain to a Finn the day of Lekeitio's goose. The next day he didn't sit down for breakfast with me.

Singapore Airlines

Don't say it's not admirable. Eighty years ago, there were people thinking about what this artificial city would be like today. They learned the Dutch to get rid of the sea. They planted trees to fix the land and then the apples. In Singapore they live together, but they live in different neighborhoods, Muslims, Malaysians, Chinese, Europeans… They are proud of their cosmopolitan character. “There are no poor here. Nor can we welcome immigrants because we are small.” Will it be possible? It can be a pretty Czech city, it's the heartbeat of money. In return, they have a huge budget devoted to research, which we would not even dream of in Europe. Singapore Airlines, like most of the public air carriers, was born to embellish ourselves before we stepped into the country: more places to put legs, a sleek upholstered, second-hand food, cutting-edge series… Lufthansa itself looks like a low cost company next to it. Part of the acuity of the State perspective is to try to seduce it in the air, especially in countries that have a small land surface or an unpleasant climate.

Txernobil

I have seen the Chernobyl series on the flight to Macau. As a result of that accident, we learned even the children of ten years old where Ukraine was. Nothing like a tragedy to study geography. If the disaster is necessary to be known, it may be better to be unknown.

Perhaps Gorbachev is right: It was Txernobil who really made the Soviet Union jump.

Macau

A dystopia. All the street names are in Portuguese, but they only speak in Chinese. At the University, a series of events with Australian writers in which no student has participated. Writers speak shamefully to other writers. Cultural endogamy and simulacrum are not just our own thing. This trade is at the best of our decay. It was writers. Young and old, women and men, in the casino there are people of all ages and conditions. It's hundreds. Selfiri's not here. Play is not a game. These three hundred ludopasts from Macao are the ones who move the world in a pedaly way.

Own scale

In the end you always find your way. I have managed well with the Latvian writers. Not thirty years since independence. Just two million people. Over half of them speak Latvian. Independent cinema is gaining strength. They have public television, but their television shows are scarce. I felt like I was being mirror and inevitably remembered by Txillardegi: “With a state, perhaps, the Basque is not saved; but without a state, I am sure not.”

Hong Kong

Posters naming the Chinese president chinazi everywhere. In the absence of empty walls, the painted ones are made in white stripes of braveras, some of the faces of Catalonia, among them (Stand With Catalonia; Catalans we connect! ). One of the wounded in the Ertzaintza protests has died today in the hospital. Where does all this come from? The Chinese Government has issued 150 visas a day over the past twenty years, so they can travel from mainland China to Hong Kong, according to Reuters. Do a little math: it's a million people. Two million, plus their heirs, will be another twenty years. An entire Latvia or an entire Basque Country. These numbers did us a long time ago in the world of irrereading. Not just us. Lufthansa, too. And also the Western alphabet.

AirBaltic

These days I have a fixation with the airlines. I wanted to know whether they are owned in Latvia. They have. It is called AirBaltic and founded it with the help of the Swedish group SAS, which was recently founded by the Latvian state in the 1990s. It is one of the two airlines that survives in the three Baltic republics following the collapse of corruption and the terrible economic losses (Lithuanian Air and Estonian Air were closed).

I wondered who our “natural allies” would be if a Basque airline were to be set up. How would we seduce travelers from the air to take our own? What would we tell you?

Limits

The border environment is so interesting and has created so much literature… Perhaps it is not a question of removing borders, but of making borders bigger than statues.