The first things that strikes the visitor to Valparaiso is the color. At the very first I thought it was simply graffiti, the artists having been diligent in using the downtown area as a canvas. But as the car rolled on I saw that nearly every surface had been defaced, the art growing more refined the classier the neighborhood. I've always thought that the most repressive regimes tend to produce a fairly literary culture, and perhaps these artists are acting in the same spirit. It would be interesting to see the effect of social media on graffiti. Because when you think about it, those of us who use Facebook are acting as graffiti artists aren't we?
The first stop was Neruda's house, a strange vertical labyrinth that was almost like a towering jenga, all jutting corners resting on a central spine staircase. The rooms were small and well decorated, though the ability to see how they interrelated was disrupted by the number of visitors, most standing around, listening to those infernal headsets. I'd first seem these in Avignon last summer, and immediately hated them. Like when we are on a mobile phone, we tend not to notice what's happening around us. I've always disliked how the Japanese visit art exhibits, moving around the walls in a single queue, which makes it impossible to change the angle or perspective as a viewer since to step back leaves a space that the next person with fill, completely obliterating your view. These sets are even worse since these people become static objects that must be navigated around, and detracts a great deal from the visit. As I mentioned before, this changes our ability to engage a place, so immersed as we are in the flow of subjective information. If you want to learn more, look it up later for God's sake.
The city itself made for a better exhibition space anyway, providing constant color in a landscape shrouded by summer fog. The gloom and the hills really did channel San Francisco. We killed time at the surprisingly impressive (and free) Natural History museum downtown, waiting for J. Cruz Malbrán to open. When it did, we sat at one of the long tables covered in sticky plastic, as a cat settled in above, curling itself at the foot of the familiar ceramic dog listening to 'his master's voice.' The shelves were littered with old nic-nacs, as if everyone in the neighborhood had contributed the contents of their attics. The meal (singular) consisted of chorrillana, basically grilled slices of beef piled atop a mountain of fried potatoes. There being no menu, this was it; the only real choice being red or white, in regards to the half bottle of wine serving as accompaniment.
The streets outside were bustling with a lunchtime crowd, with people sprawled in the park, and a brass band blasting their horns off the marble facades of the old buildings at the center of town. We left this all in climbing up to Cerros Concepción and Allegro, where we meandered around the narrow lanes, admiring the street art now highly refined. These mesas act almost as islands of wealth and culture above a gradually deteriorating downtown.
I left LYL at Palacio Astoreca, then descended again to the lower depths. The city has a certain reputation for danger, so it was best I was alone and unencumbered by a backpack. It was certainly one of the roughest places I've been in for a while, where every single resident seemed drunk, and the cars would swerve at you if you stepped into the street. I would not want to be here at night. A large portion of the Barrio Puerto was crumbling ruins, victims of the 2010 earthquake.
I took a similar stroll the next day at dawn, keeping to the safer highlands. The murals seemed to shift with the coming light, so I looped a few times, picking up a dog somewhere along the way, the only life I saw, but for the life being rekindled in a dying city, in the vivid faces of its street art.
On the turntable: Joni Mitchell, "Shadows and Light"
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