61: The crutches of victory

After “so much time and so many storms,” as the troubadour Gerardo Alfonso sings, the Cuban Revolution needs crutches just to dream, let alone sing. It’s like a concert with defective audio, echoes, screeching feedback, ambient noise, scratching and parasitic sounds. On top of this, the audience is massively exhausted from marathon days of listening. Our audiences were always autistic. They never participated in anything spontaneously; they always had to be summoned, herded like cattle to the event of the day, then sent home tamed. Today it’s hard to hold your head high in Cuba or to raise your arms for more than half a minute. We’re tired, we fall down. We’re skeptical of every enthusiasm. Young people are the most exhausted. With them you can only count on hypocrisy and exodus. The youth is ancient and senile; with no desire to stand up any more, they want wheels, even wheelchairs. They lean artfully on crutches, calculating each step. A-one and a-two and a-three: how heavy, how very heavy, my anguish is…