"Many good ideas have come out of the shower"

BarcelonaAn abandoned sofa in the middle of the street, a piano that shelters childhood dreams, a private visit to the Altamira caves, a blue blazer that makes her see that red is a dangerous color towards the north... The stories collected by Eulàlia Bosch (Barcelona, ​​​​1949) in In the land of wonders (Angle Editorial) were written at vital moments and in very distant places over the years, but as the author explained during the book presentation on Tuesday at La Central, they can't exactly be considered an autobiography, neither vital nor intellectual, although it's inevitable to do so. "I didn't think of the book as a biography, which would be impossible for me to do, but rather I aim to explain how everything ends up becoming a story for me. This happens to me and to many other people, but the truth is that this is how I relate to myself, telling myself stories based on any everyday event, and that's how I am." From those stories she was writing and accumulating in a drawer, this selection emerged, which she initially didn't even think of to publish.

They are, as Judit Carrera, director of the CCCB, said, a hymn to life and art in a combination that "links reason and emotion, reality and dream" in the spirit, surely, of one of her great friends, John Berger, of whom she wrote the prologue to the reissue a few years ago. Ways of seeingBerger, as she pointed out to Carrera, does not appear in the book, bashful about the many artists, writers, and intellectuals this expert in art pedagogy, curator, and editor has encountered throughout her career. "The present, everyday life, what happens every day, is the greatest stimulus that awakens my memory and makes me reorder what I know, have seen, and experienced," she commented to a complicit and attentive audience. "Everything seems surprising to me and invites you to follow the thread that will lead me to a story, which is the way I tell myself." Therefore, she acknowledged, it is important to leave room for chance, to be open to what one will find, and to try to grasp the thread that appears in the most unexpected places to make associations and weave together stories that connect past and present interests.

"Many good ideas have come out of the shower," she launches at one point as a challenge, and explains that it's there, sometimes, when after sleeping and clearing your mind, the connections between dreams, what you've read, what you've lived, and what you've thought appear. And what you've traveled, too. Although, she affirmed, she doesn't travel to discover worlds but to meet or reconnect with people. Almost always with friends, because, as Carrera said, the book is also "a hymn to friendship," which is, for Bosch, "the most important thing there is." "And I'm clear that friendship is a process in which you have an active participation, whether you are there or not, you build it or you don't."

In the land of wonders It's an essay, Carrera recalled, that above all encourages us to live life through imagination and a love of culture, education, and friendship. This isn't so easy to find right now.