14 June 2006

I came here to scream

Reinaldo Arenas led me by the hand through his Cuba. At times we ran. At times we strolled. He showed me some places I couldn’t quite understand. And some places that I will be glad if I never see again.

He showed me a life lived within limits laid down by others - in a country where regulation increasingly restricted the modes of expression for both love and writing.


‘A sense of beauty is always dangerous and antagonistic to any dictatorship because it implies a realm extending beyond the limits that a dictatorship can impose on human beings.’

Within my mind he forged new unbreakable links between writing and love. About the necessity for both and the vital need to express them freely.

‘Writing crowned or complemented all other pleasures as well as all other calamities.’

He raised questions that ask if forbidden love is more passionate because of its desperation? and whether authors writing under censorship can learn to thrive on their limitations?

Above all he showed me how he lived as quickly and as passionately as possible with the time allowed - before his time ran out. And how he wrote while he could, with the light on his side - Before Night Falls.

the circumnavigator

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