In the Principal cinema of Calatayud nothing happens anymore.
has closed since 2014.
And it’s not that I have a great memory, it’s that the sign of The Smurfs 2.
The other day I took a photo of its facade.
Clean, aseptic, without people inside or outside.
Captured instantly.
Also the ghosts that live inside, even if they are not seen.
The last time I entered the Principal was in 2004 to see Duplexthat of Ben Stiller.
And it’s not that I have a great memory, it’s that I write down all the movies I watch in a notebook.
It’s my tare, I don’t judge you or hurt anyone.
That time I saw a cockroach in the bathroom.
My mother would have gone crazy, but luckily she didn’t come with me.
I thought if it was a cinephile cockroach.
Like the rat Ratatouille in your kitchen.
If his shell had been a little more colorful, Pixar would have made a movie of him and my mother wouldn’t have been scared.
No little bug that likes movies can be scary or disgusting.
Not even in Vegas
In the Principal they never gave me personalized tickets, only those vintage roll, like those of Paradise cinema.
Paradise cinema is the favorite film of many dreamers.
Also many aspiring writers.
We write because we admire people who write.
We write because we believe that what others write represents us.
We write because we believe that what they do is easy.
The best writers are the ones who make us think we could have written their own.
But it’s impossible.
Because that apparent weightlessness is achieved through a lot of effort.
Of many balls of paper in the basket.
The best writers are also Joyce and Proust and Pynchon, but those don’t make us want to write.
Those put you in front of the mirror.
Only he saw Paradise cinema once.
It was in 2004.
I know because Tyler knows.
I know because I wrote it down in my TOC notebook.
Entries from the mid-1990s, featuring the film’s title printed in ink on a blue glossy paper background, have mostly been erased.
On a global scale, I mean.
I have friends who in frustration threw away their entire stash because they were so collectible but not anymore.
Empty of a continent, they were nothing more than moulting butterflies.
They were nothing more than the photo of Marty McFly’s brothers in the middle of a rock concert.
But that’s because my friends and other fetishists kept them in photo albums, they kept them inside books.
And they couldn’t know, then it couldn’t be known, that heat and friction cause that ink to evaporate.
Like the prices of tickets at El Corte Inglés.
Like discount vouchers from gas stations that you put in your wallet and forget forever.
Me what I saved all in a ceramic box I keep my memories better than others.
We are all a sum of movies just as bread is a sum of flour, water, yeast and salt.
My most valuable post is Traffic.
I went to see Traffic on Sunday March 4, 2001.
I know because Tyler knows.
I know this because that scratch-free embalmed entrance in a ceramic pot for more than 20 years is still mostly intact.
And I also took a photo of it.
And I have also included it in the cover of a book.
Es the only movie I went to see at the cinema with my fatherthe two alone.
There are people who ask you to send them by email when you take photos. airdrop.
Because they want to remember that afternoon.
That night.
That happiness.
And it’s not worth it for WhatsApp “because they lose quality”.
How much quality does a souvenir need?
Any graphic testimony, for a few kilobytes you have, is more robust than memory.
Even than the most nostalgic memories.
They prefer “by airdrop because that way the Live”.
Because that way they can extract the perfect frame.
Even more perfect than the one Siri has chosen.
Siri knows lighting and eyes open and closed.
But Siri doesn’t know how to manage egos.
Siri’s criteria seems Solomonic to me and I respect it.
But the ones who want you to relearn how to airdrop every time, the ones who want you to enable bluetooth when you always have it off, covet the perfect playful expression.
The perfect cheek thickness.
Perfectly combed hair.
The frame that makes less belly.
It’s playing god.
It’s using a morally acceptable photoshop but just as cheating.
It is playing to change history.
Next to the entrance to the Principal de Calatayud there are three garbage containers: one made of glass, one of containers and one of cardboard.
The one with dreams is the cinema itself.
Until hopefully, God willing, sometime, it’s unlikely but not impossible, they reopen it.
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