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These days they rehearse Els pastorets in the Foment Hortenc, those of Folch i Torres lightened so that they do not exceed two hours.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
13 December 2022 Tuesday 16:40
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Memorize or start each time

These days they rehearse Els pastorets in the Foment Hortenc, those of Folch i Torres lightened so that they do not exceed two hours. In my childhood they were also set up in Nou Barris, but my parents worked every party in the store and they never took me. The first time I saw them was at Foment. My daughter was four years old. It fascinated me to hear words like escarransit in the mouths of kids from Horta and Carmel. She will make twenty-three years of that. Today my daughter co-directs them, sector diablos, which are the sauce of the show because they would like to cook Lluquet and Rovelló over low heat, but they never succeed.

Folch i Torres is mass culture prior to screens and small screens and everyone who knows all the roles. From memory. That fascinates me. One year they tricked me into playing a narrator role. I only had to learn three very short fragments and recite them together with a narrator. It took me the unspeakable to learn them, and in one of the functions I even got confused. I said beaver instead of shepherd. I never liked memorizing to repeat like a parrot. I love being a trabucaire. There was a time when I suffered from not being able to memorize an entire poem. I remember that I was relieved to read the considerations that Steiner makes about the relationship between poetry and memory in Real Presences.

The Clarbooks editors invited me to participate in their collection of wacky professions. All titles begin "Why am I...?" before an unusual profession (Egyptologist, pastor, chef, meteorologist). I participate in it in my role as an enigmist: crossword puzzler (here in La Vanguardia since 1990) and creator of oral enigmas (in Catalunya Ràdio since 2006).

The why of things is always incomplete, but I am clear that if I am an enigmist it is because I do not like to memorize. Most of the things I remember I learned out of curiosity or by chance, not because one fine day I set out to memorize them, in the same way that, playing at repeating what they told me at home, I learned to speak. I like to ask. Since I am not one of those who think they know all the answers to the great enigmas of existence, I always ask a lot. Those who never forget anything they memorize believe they already know everything and stop asking questions. Those who forget things have to learn them again and learn others along the way. The forgetful ones manage that memory is not an iron cage.