(You are reading the weekly newsletter of "la Contra"; if you want to receive it in your email, click here).
If you get confused with the indications and contraindications of experts about our health, such as, for example, what they tell us about fasting, the interviewers, too: do not think that we are immune to the contradictions in which science-theses , antithesis, synthesis- progresses until it manages to falsify them in a Popperian way... Or not.
Is fasting healthy? Up to what point? If we fast to lose weight, doesn't that abstinence trigger in our metabolism, evolved to survive in scarcity, the reaction of saving calories, when what we want is to burn them?
Some will remember how Walter Longo resolved the dilemma in this case; but, also, this week Rafael Guzmán García gives us all the keys to interesting biochemical notes about our health and our bodies. And also the key to why, friend Víctor Amela, some of our great fabadas at the Casa de Asturias end up in flatulent afternoons is that we lack enzymes to digest the raffinose in legumes, which generates flatulence, because they are seeds. Soak them and a foam will come out, the saponin, with which the plants defend their baby and attack our intestines...And generate gases.
Tim Burton was a child who was also attacked at school and, a victim of bullying, sought refuge in the Burbank cemetery, his hometown, to find the peace that he could not find in the schoolyard and that he recovered with drawing and art until become one of the most unique creators of modern cinema with his tender monsters. Exhibition opens in Montjuic, Barcelona, and let me warn you, Victor, that you will get lost in it. Burton himself also got lost in his labyrinth on the day of the premiere when I interviewed him.
“Edward Scissorhands” or “Bittlechus” are some of his adorable monsters, like the ones that helped us discover the kind side of death, in the Mexican way, in “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
Burton assures us that the grim reaper doesn't keep him awake and I believe him; but I saw him sincerely distressed when he told us that some funnyman sent him a film generated by Artificial Intelligence in which he was seen drawing Walt Disney creations. The anguish of seeing himself, exactly the same as he is, doing something that he has never done… Anyway, Víctor, friends of “the Contra”, let's prepare ourselves, because it is only the beginning of the other world that is coming. And Burton's creatures are a delicious and childish approach.
Without leaving “the path from which no one has ever returned” I was at the Liceu recording a documentary for the BBC about Schubert's Winterreise, updated by the visual artist Joan Fontcuberta. You will remember this photographer for his images of impossible beasts, which he exhibited at the MOMA or at the Science Museum in London, where they are now preparing a biopic about his fascinating journey through the history of photography: from its birth as alchemy in the daguerreotype and its quality as the only irrefutable testimony of what happened to what it is today, a mode of relationship in which the subject who takes the photo is more important than the object.
We no longer photograph the Sagrada Familia, he concludes, but rather we use it as an excuse to take a selfie. And, let's see, Víctor: have you ever seen all the photos you have taken in a year? Have any of you dedicated that time to contemplating them? Maybe we spend our lives taking photos that no one will ever see again.
Children with cancer and a doctor dedicated to their cure, Dr. Josep Sánchez Toledo, who endorses the healing power of a smile, while the neuropsychologist Álvaro Toledo praises the virtue of respect for minors as a pillar of education; and the gourmet Toni Massanés shows that we eat better than our grandparents, but worse than our parents; and he recommends gastronomy and good cuisine as guarantors of well-being that will not provide us with medications that we are abusing.
So enjoy, dear readers, the delicious sardine spits during Easter with a handful of good friends so you don't have to use medications, which you already know who they will benefit from. Happy Easter, Contrero friends!
