un chien andalou de cádiz

if you are a film-buff or an art-lover, i’m sure you’ve seen or at least heard of the surrealist masterpiece “un chien andalou” directed by luis buñuel. and i guess, like me, you found the film too difficult to understand. among my favourite avant-garde films i prefer jean cocteau’s work to his. to tell you the truth, despite being always a film and art enthusiast, although i saw so many art films when i was a londoner, i had only known the film by its famous title for a long time. i had never watched it until one saturday afternoon when mr geek showed it to me at his home in hampstead. he and i spent weekends together at the time. and luckily, he happened to have a copy of its video.

when i visited andalucía of españa with mr geek back in late march of 2002, he wanted to show me around cádiz that once was his adopted home town. it was already an early summer’s day. some people enjoyed swimming; young girls splashing about along the seashore. we strolled down to the sunny beach and i saw a jack russell terrier jumping into the water to catch a ball the dog-owner had thrown. a real andalucían dog. he stopped running as if he struck a pose. i snapped a shot of the dog. it was an image that would forever be imprinted in my mind. and the dog has been in my mind since then, even if i hadn’t taken the photograph, which a tokyo band, rose-unlimited, asked me to use it for their cd album cover.

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i loved it in andalucía. i was enchanted by the beauty of alhambra and generalife in granada. picturesque ronda and foodie cádiz satisfied all my senses. and i now recall one episode. a pretty but wacky middle-aged spanish woman approached us as soon as we took seats of a long-distance bus from ronda. she, wearing her hair in two plaits and zany clothes like a sioux tribal woman, kept talking to mr geek en route to cádiz. she spoke perfect british english, though. her intriguing stories silenced both mr geek and me. “i went out with jimi when i lived in london, in the 60’s, you know” – that jimi hendrix. the legendary rocker. that’s what she said. all mr geek and i did was kept nodding “wow!” while her kookiness made us wonder if she was serious and real or nutty as an andalusian fruitcake.