I have just reached my home after a week in Barcelona. It was a bit difficult because of some problems with my friends, I was there with, but the city itself was just amazingly inspiring.
Barcelona is beautiful, has good food, and things work. But what really inspired me, to the point where I actually shed a tear, was the workings of the famous architect Antoni Gaudi.
I know that it is pretty touristic, and yes, I did do the obligatory guided tour in the Sagrada familia, and yes, I did stand there with my camera googling up on the high vault. But I think that perhaps I do understand the secret message that Gaudi tried to convey to us, because of his obvious base in mystery.
Gaudi was a man of a profound faith. He thought about spirit everyday, and at the same time he was able to create, inspired by spirit perhaps.
The sheer genius of the Sacrada famila cathedral is a testimony to this. It is innovative in so many ways, it leaves you baffled.
Gaudi was a man of a time where everything in Europe was industrialised, and we lost our innocence. A time where the slow means of transportation was changed to fast transportation, where people started living in smog and industrial waste. The same time when Joseph Conrad blasphemed in a sorry tale about the old sailor coming ashore, because noone needed his girth and strength anymore. A time when the shallowness of fast travel started creeping in on us.
Gaudi rebelled against this, and started building edifices that was inviting to the craftsman, quality beyond what had ever been seen in the world. To put up a fence against superficiality and lack of faith.
Today we have come full circle, right? We cannot even defend ourselves against the most absurd crimes, because we are so hollow, so left of all faith, have nothing to hold on to. Everything just was left in the trenches.
Gaudi tells us not to believe so. He built a cathedral over hundred years in the making. Knowing that this sickness would be long in flourishing, and difficult to trample down.
He built an edifice to faith, beauty, craftsmanship, doing things slowly and depth in faith that would stand there when we are again ready to latch on to our own roots and culture.
When we stop to be demoralised and are ready to take up Göehte and Kierkegaard again. When we start defending our faiths again.
We would be able to look at the genius of the work of Gaudi, and say; ah now we get what you were trying to say. You were trying to tell us not to lose faith in the beauty and eloquence of our own culture.
G-d bless the genius of Gaudi and the beautiful city of Barcelona, and thank you.
