"Linking" stories

The Stockholm club (May 2008)
I was with Matthew, Sarah and Damien, backpackers from the hostel, and we went to a popular rock bar near the Old Town. The blond bartender was serving his fellow blonds ahead of the Asian (me) and French (Sarah), but this was just the tip of the iceberg, when things just got worse over the next half hour.

After getting our beers, we were then told that drinks were not allowed in the queue (to enter the club), and that there was no point queueing as the club was crowded and was closing shortly.

Instead of walking around the railings to exit the queue, Damien climbed over a railing. The bouncer did not take the rattling railings well, and told Damien to leave the premises. There was no negotiation, and it was very disappointing to have one of our group forcefully thrown out. That incident left Sarah, Matthew and myself with a beer, no club entry and 1 friend less, and effectively killed off the evening.

The club was named Debaser.

Damien, myself, Matthew and Sarah, before Debaser

Salvador Dali (July 2008)I was first introduced to the surrealistic work of Dali during my trip to Spain in Summer 2008. I had read about his work and eccentricities in my travel guidebook, and saw a couple of his works in a Madrid museum which I found highly intriguing. Since then, I was fortunate to visit one of his exhibitions in Berlin, where I caught his shortfilm Un chien Andalou.

He is arguably my favourite artist.

 Illumined Pleasures by Salvador Dali. Pic taken from the New York Museum of Modern Art

Debaser by The Pixies (August 2008)
Debaser, to me, is a catchy (and rather meaningless) punk rock track by The Pixies, an American Alt-rock band, from the 1989 album Doolittle.

Amusingly, the lyrics are based on a short film by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali titled Un chien Andalou, most popularly known for a scene showing the slicing up of an eyeball. Weird. Read up about the song and film here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debaser .

Raiza - Piecing the pieces together
Raiza befriended me through couchsurfing. We had planned to meet during the San Fermin festival in Pamplona, but our schedules did not coincide.

We kept in touch and did manage to catch up a couple of months later in Mallorca where she was to be based for work.

Whilst sharing travel stories, I recounted the story of the Debaser club to Raiza, and she enlightened me with the music of the Pixies and their track Debaser. It took a Spanish-American to link the Stockholm club, an American alt-rock band and a Spanish painter through 1 song!

Somehow I do find it amazing how these significant and yet diverse experiences - racial, aural and visual have been able to be linked together so closely by a song, and how I have taken another step towards cultural enlightenment.