Barcelona, Spain
Lindsay is turning 21, so Lindsay, Laura and I flee from our little university dorms in England, fill our backpacks with granola bars and a change of clothes, and hop on a weekend flight to Spain. Even though it’s November, it’s still sweater and cotton dress weather in Barcelona.
Days before we leave on the weekend, Lindsay talks a lot about Antonio Gaudi and how he is her favorite architect in the world. “You will love his work,” she tells me. “You’ll never see anything like a cathedral that Gaudi has designed.” I highlight his name in my guidebook and jot down some initial thoughts about his work in my journal.
*
My older brother has dark brown curly hair and his pockets are always full of pens and pencils. There are shelves of sketch books in his old bedroom in my parents’ house. We are about 11 feet tall when I sit on his shoulders. We when were younger, he used to sit on the couch and play his gameboy, and I’d drape myself over the back of the furniture like an old throw blanket, giving him advice on which pokemon to use for any given circumstance. He ignored my hints and tips, his face staying calm and reserved, even as I pinched the back of his neck and hissed instructions in his ears. He’s always been like that: so collected and composed and mild, pouring all his thoughts into journals and ink drawings.
*
Our trip to Barcelona has a rocky beginning. We miss our flight because there are “technical difficulties” with the Piccadilly line on the way to Heathrow Airport. When I call my dad from the airport to ask him to wire more money into my account to buy a new ticket, he answers his work phone and I burst into tears because I realize that I haven’t heard his voice since I moved away in September. Lindsay takes the last available seat on a flight to Barcelona that evening to meet up with her brother in Spain. Laura and I wait until the next morning to leave, camping out in the airport terminal in a fortress of magazines and backpacks and coats.
When we all reunite in Spain the next morning, Lindsay shows up with her brother, Nate. We are all too tired to act excited to see each other. As we ride the underground system to our hostel, Lindsay looks out the window and stares into space as if she were trying to remember a vague memory or the opening chords to an old song. I tell her that I’m excited to visit some of Gaudi’s work and the corners of her mouth move upward into a distant smile.
*
My older brother has always been an artist. During the early years- when he was only 7 or 8- he drew smudgy pages chronicling the life of a small, demanding girl named “Penny,” who traveled through life with speech bubbles hovering over her head, which were filled with dialogue that seemed suspiciously familiar to my own.
In high school, my brother settled into a group of kids who hung out in the art building during lunch and had pens behind their ears. They got along well because spending time in the studio was more important to them than attending prom. One of my volleyball friends called them “the nerd herd” and I just laughed because I couldn’t process how I felt about it.
*
When I think of Gaudi as a child, I imagine him as a pale, dark haired boy with thin legs and wispy arms. He had rheumatism during his early years, which turned him into a reticent child, always hanging on the outside edges of social opportunities. Later, he became a vegetarian to try to combat his health issues.
I think of these little scraps of him as we venture into the Barcelona, Laura snapping pictures of trees and menus. Lindsay insists that we start finding as many of Gaudi’s buildings as possible. Nate pulls out a map and we start tracing our way through the sunny cobblestoned streets to the sound of Laura’s clicking shutter.
*
During his junior year in high school, my brother wrote a piece of short fiction for a class assignment and received an “A” on the project. The teacher pulled him aside and suggested that he begin pursuing creative writing more actively. “You have talent,” he told my brother.
My parents, always interested in our artistic endeavors, read the piece during dinnertime and complimented him on their favorite scenes and scraps of dialogue. “I agree with your teacher,” my mom said. “I hope you pursue writing.” I mentally agreed, because I used to think that my older brother’s work was bland. He drew hundreds of pictures of somber people just staring into voids with stoic expressions on their pale faces. “Draw a picture of the time you fell over the tree root and got dirt on your face while we were camping,” I told him. “Or make a family portrait of us dressed up in ’80’s work-out apparel.” He sometimes laughed at my inane suggestions, but he didn’t deviate from his solemn sketches.
His short story stayed on our coffee table for months before he brought it back to his room to clip onto his bulletin board.
*
After hearing so much about Gaudi’s work, I feel disappointed as we stand at the foot of Casa Batlo, one of the houses he designed. It’s impressive and unique with its skull and bone-like designs, but I feel removed from it. I can’t imagine a family living there, sitting around the breakfast table with a copy of the New York Times splayed across a platter of toast.
Still there is something about Gaudi’s life that makes me wish I could engage in his work. Maybe it is the fact that he invested himself in nature so actively, joining the Centre Excursionista de Catalunya , which was an exploring group that accompianied him on trips to southern France and Catalonia. He used to walk as many as six miles a day. I picture him hiking through thick plant growth, ignoring his sore joints in the pursuit of the natural world. I don’t give up on him yet.
*
My brother struggled through his first few years of art school. He used to stay up late into the night, poring over design books while dipping brushes into watercolors. A lot of his work received poor marks because he didn’t always pay enough attention to detail and would leave smudges or eraser marks on the edges of his prints. I used to wake up to find a trail of black finger prints around the house after he had stayed awake all night working on a charcoal etching final project.
Those were also the days that I’d sneak into his studio space, pull out his art boxes, and lay the tools around me in a circle on the floor. I used to open all the boxes of paint and smell the colors and feel the silky bristles of the brushes. I would also flip though his portfolios, searching for a piece of art that would pull me in and move me. I never found anything that I could grasp, but I always looked anyway.
After his second year, he dropped out and took a semester off to work and “think about what he wanted to do with life.”
He got a job at a warehouse and spent his days lifting and stacking and cleaning, reading novels during his lunch break. He mentioned that one of his co-workers- a middle-aged man with an elementary school education- tried to knock the book out of his hands while he was reading one afternoon. “What did you do?” I asked. “I just ignored it,” he said. “You can’t reason with people like that.”
When he wasn’t at work, he spent hours typing novels and designing posters. I found his old fiction essay from high school when I was looking for something in his bedroom. It was in his sock drawer, still unfolded and crisp like the day he turned it in.
*
On our final day in Barcelona, we trek to La Sagrada Familia, which is one of Gaudi’s most famous cathedrals. A line of tourists wrap around the building, necks extended upward to see the top of the building. They look like thirsty young birds, craning and gaping in the sunlight. From the outside, it looks as if the whole building is melting downward. There are thousands of Biblical stories carved around the outside of the cathedral, but I can’t identify more than two or three scenes. After paying 12 euros to get into the building, we spend the first half hour just wandering around, running our fingers across the cool marble surfaces. The air in La Sagrada Familia feels majestic and full of light, but I don’t take many photos. I just sit on one of the pews and watch people exclaim over the vaulted ceilings and ornate woodwork.
*
We all felt relieved when my brother decided to go back to school. He finished a fine arts degree before transferring to a different school to study graphic design. He started getting better marks on his projects and the smudges and etches disappeared. I began to recognize familiar faces in his work- faces of people at the warehouse, faces of people he used to go to high school with, faces of dogs and cats we used to own.
*
Before we leave La Sagrada Familia, we visit the little museum on the bottom half of the building. I bury myself in an exhibit about how Gaudi’s architecture is grounded in the natural world and how if you look close enough, you can see elements of plants and animals in his work. Relief begins to wash over me, like I will begin to know Gaudi more if I keep reading about the things he loved enough to pour into his designs. I forget that I’m part of a group, and I move down the hallway to an empty corridor filled with pictures of Gaudi’s studios. In one picture, I can see the tiny cot where he slept in his studio along with all his art supplies and paintings. It’s a cluttered mess of supplies and tools, but it’s where he worked and imagined and created. There are also framed samples of his school work. I picture him sitting at an oak table, measuring tiny lines and sketching buildings with a dull, chewed up pencil. I restrain myself from touching the tiny models of his early design ideas. Maybe a half hour passes before I realize that I’m sitting on the floor of the museum, writing frantic notes about my impressions of Gaudi’s life, trying to piece together the type of person he was from his early work and studio space. Tourists start to spill in from the other exhibits, so I pull my things together and search for my friends.
As we fly back to England that evening, I stare out the window of the plane, trying to remember the details from the La Sagrada Familia. All I see is the photo of Gaudi’s studio. The place that the cathedral was probably born.
*
I think that my brother will be a great graphic designer someday. His work is clean and precise and bold: strong colors with white backgrounds, simple fonts, clear illustrations. It is of this blonde girl with a newspaper in her hands and a nose piercing and a striped sweater and red boots. She’s waving her hands and talking animatedly.
I smiled because in some ways, this moment is like using your finger to trace the wet ring left from a glass of water on the coffee table. It is like looking at the smudged cartoon of “Penny.”
When I look at my brother’s art, all I see is him at age 6 and 16 and 23 with a sketch book in his lap and pens and pencils in his pocket. I see his messy desk and a series of charcoal finger prints on the kitchen cabinets. I also see his essay, still lying in his sock drawer.
And I often worry that other people won’t see these things, too.
