Welcome to “Muros de absenta,” a personal blog where I dedicate myself to talking about many of the things I like in this life (and also about myself, which I don’t like as much, but what less than introducing myself after so many years writing here). Until recently, as an author of film opinions and reviews in Cine Maldito or Filmfílicos, the presentation he gave wherever it was required was the following:
“In my never-written autobiography, I will say: There are people whom you ask who they are, and they tell you what they do. I am Bartleby, Elisabet Vogler, Rob Gordon, Andrew Largeman, Antonius Block, A Man Asleep by Georges Perec, Domenico Cantoni, Nicola Carati, Antoine Doinel, Scott Pilgrim… About my life, I will think: With potential; without any projection. And on my gravestone, they will put: Nothing happens.”
And yes, the one in the photo is me with an intense face, but normally I tend more towards jokes and the sense of humor.
Here, on this page, I would also add that if you ask about my tastes, they would be summarized above all in three, which would turn anyone into a music lover, cinephile and book lover, but in an amateur way, without high understanding or studies acquired with the time, beyond the time dedicated to listening to music, watching movies and reading everything.
In short, I would say about myself that I live in music every day (I don’t know what would be of me without it), making musical lists for myself and for the users of this blog, I experience what I don’t experience through cinema, and I hide of other lives in books.
Muros de absenta was born with the intention of talking about all this, although over time I have focused above all on writing about music (my great passion, probably also because getting into it requires less time and also allows multitasking, while listening to it and discovering the new sounds of the moment and the old ones).
Although I have gone from writing about my favorite bands to mainly making playlists (which I blame on my profession since 2020), I like to think that I write because I like it, and I write about what I like. At least on this blog.
If you are interested in knowing the slightly more cynical and critical side, I invite you to learn about other texts that I have written for pages such as Cine maldito, Cinemaadhoc or Filmfílicos, where I collaborate or have collaborated since 2012. Also on Letterboxd, where I basically show all the cinema that I see regularly.
“Un puente con vistas,” my first novel
After writing more than 300 articles on this blog alone, in 2016, perhaps thinking about accomplishing one of those three things they say you must do before turning 30 (plant a tree, have a child and publish a book), I dared to give the step I had been preparing (mentally) for more than a decade: publishing a novel.
This is how in 2020 I ended up publishing, after more or less a year between writing and revising, Un puente con vistas, self-published and therefore available on digital platforms such as Amazon or Google Books, and both in digital version at US$2.99 and in physical format from US$16.72.
The plot is as follows:
“In the year 2008, Paul Newman died; in 2009, Michael Jackson did. Between those two events, something much less important was happening: Lucas’ Erasmus.
“A Bridge with Views” is the story of a young man without initiative and somewhat confused, who by chance and with some interest on his part, decides that spending a year abroad is the best thing he can do with his time.
Since then, every time Lucas tells his relatives what he’s going to do, they almost always react with surprise. “Knowing you, you’ll end up sleeping under a bridge,” they predict. That says enough about him.
Without initiative but with a lot of vertigo, our protagonist will face the biggest challenge in 21 years of existence: to fend for himself (to a large extent) and live alone. In an environment where everyone he knows seems to have fled, and yet they failed to escape, Lucas will try the (perhaps a little) ambitious mission of conceiving that exact moment when life begins.
Because we all live in fear, most remain silent about it, we all suffer from it, few say it, some transcend it.”
- Alberto Mulas Caballero on Amazon Authors
Not sure where to start reading within the blog?
On the other hand, since if you are here it is because what really interests you is this musical blog, I leave you some links to my favorite articles.
Some are still in development, others already finished. The idea is to continue at least until the end of the 90s. In any case, I have proposed to continue also in the following decades until the present day, although starting in 1999 they will begin to be much more personal lists.
Mainly because it was then that I was first aware of my tastes and not what I heard at home. Although the latter clearly helped foster attraction to certain genres, without a doubt.
If you are also a fan of making musical lists of everything, or you love discovering new songs, whether from the past or current, here you will find many ideas for your playlists, some of them as alternatives to the most mainstream, but others more similar.
There are also movies and guides, where I include comparisons on musical platforms and other topics that are sometimes completely unrelated to what the blog offers.
I hope you like everything you find here, from the anecdotes I provide in relation to each artist and their songs, to listening and reading. That, at the very least, are pleasant to you. And if you also like French music, maybe you’ll like it a little more. Thank you for your visit!
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Asian cinema Beginning of the musical decades Classical music Comparisons Don Hertzfeldt films Famous movies Guides Movie soundtracks Music Groups Music in the interwar period Playlists with 100 songs for… Pop music Rap Rock Singers Songs about cities Spotify Playlists The 50s The 60s The 70s The 80s The 90s The 2000s The 2010s TV series Unknown movies