Triptych landed (III): … and the beautiful complexity of living

A pair of well-worn wings, displayed (ready to fly when needed or desired), on a shelf in the studio that Joan Miró built in Mont-roig del Camp, after falling in love with the landscape at eighteen. The photograph, exhibited at the Fundació Miró in Palma, is by Jean Marie del Moral: in black and white, it portrays the atrophied – but possible – limbs, with all the grays we never speak of. To cut off the wings, to mow the grass underfoot, to close all paths. The tongue warns against systematic evil and the artist rebels against it: bravely, he mutilates himself to coexist with the other mutilated, while carefully preserving ancestral limbs to roam freely through his work.

In the photographs of La via Làctia that Joan Fontcuberta exhibits at the Fundacio Toni Catany, the almond tree consumed by xylella becomes a star that constellations in a nebula; the textures of extremophile lichens, resilient, carpet the next planet our species will inhabit; the inexorable passage of time is etched into the rings and the twists of a trunk that becomes the mystery of the black hole. As if everything happened for a reason. Because human eyes are only two, but there is the third (without pupil or eyelid) that sees beyond, inwards, and scrutinizes the blind spots of the borders that mark the imposed norm and the limits that are learned.

Today I walk with a triple gaze and wings on my back through the ruins of a culture that has become extinct. I am in Menorca, at the Talayotic village of Torre d’en Galmés, and the beating of my heart and the movement of my limbs mark a rhythm – natural, organic – that does not entirely or immediately synchronize with the others I discover. With Nou elogis de l’imparell (H&O, 2025), by the musician and journalist Edi Pou, I have confirmed that there is another movement to consider, another cadence: the pulsation of the brain. A polymetry that tunes into (and synchronizes with) the rhythms of the environment: with the now slow, now fleeting glide of the Italian lizard, with the heavy tread of the land tortoise, with the stridulation of the green grasshopper and the buzzing of the Balearic anthophora, with the tam-tam of the hoopoe, and the bleating, mooing, and neighing of the farm animals nearby. I have verified that my neurons have not lost the capacity to improvise: the ability that allows us to adapt to constant changes – to the precious and magnificent chaos from which, devoid of prejudices and binarisms, we get stuck in a sterile grid.

From the polymetry and polyphony that the book speaks of, we have already discussed in several articles, exploring The Great Animal Orchestra, by Bernie Krause. In both, a conductorless ensemble is intuited, an order without a concert. The chaos attributed to the immense apparent disorder of terrestrial biophony is, in fact, a sign that life resonates there. The beautiful complexity of living and coexistence is felt as much in ecosystems – where, the more biodiversity there is, the more exuberant and splendid the soundscapes are – as in life and art – where, the more variety of paths and journeys, of eyes and gazes (of thoughts), the more successful the improvisation. We tried this during 'La nit de les espines' (The Night of Thorns), last Sant Jordi, first at bar Flexas in Palma and then at Can Lliro in Manacor, a group of poets and musicians who wanted to rediscover the 'primal' rhythm on the feast day: upon arrival, all more or less scared and excited by the adventure; once we had entered into it (with head and heart, without pretensions or barriers), all excited and vibrant, very fun, among ourselves and with those who similarly dared to come and listen.

Another language, the word, behaves in the same way: paradoxically, the more polysemy, the more occasion and chance and power to broaden and transform the everyday and the unknown. A 'trast' is a beam that supports a concrete structure, and at the same time the frets on a guitar neck that produce different sounds; it is a delimited, classified, and privatized space, and at the same time the open corral adjacent to the house; it is the scarcity of the poor, and also the insubordination of the acrobat. “In the hand there are / twenty-six bones thirty-five / muscles / more than two thousand cells / nerves / in each touch of the fingers. / With this I can write / anything that sustains / meaning / between the sky and the sea / between life and death / between you and me / all at once”. The voice of Biel Mesquida, very personal but always working with the human chorus –, has studied the diverse meanings of the word for his Trast

(Labreu, 2026), and embraces them in an actively written book (triple-eyed, winged, polymetric, and polyphonic), which gives rise to a reading of multiple rhythms and a grandiose intensity. In his verses there is the wound – and the cure. I land: with thorns, the roses – and the beautiful complexity of living.