I am who I am
The 10 + 2 Commandments of the para-journalist
1. We have not invented yet a new form of lighting fire without matches. When we backslide into the Nihil novi sub sole it is not by empathy with the traditional postmodern exhaustion, but because time ago Ecclesiastes dixit and since then on with a lot of reason. Please note that if historians and archaeologists have just checked that indeed Troy burned under the Achaean torch, the Antiquity would have had in Homer, clairvoyant or blind, its first para-journalist. And Plato as his historical continuator, if he was who invented the entire Atlantis’ story or when he “reported” conscientiously the whereabouts, dialogues and death of Socrates, without using a laptop, recorder or notebook and a good ball pen.
2. There is not AC without mainstream. As Psychology itself, with its catalogue of subjective events, “scientific and objectively proven”, it has its Parapsychology: that bastard library of psych or paranormal detritus phenomena that those cultured give to the credulous and miracle-smugglers; Journalism can also has its Para, where all the events that nobody confirmed that happened would fit, or those that nobody guarantees that are happening, neither nobody will be at death’s door convinced that they will happen tomorrow.
3. There is any product to last a hundred years neither mark to endure it. “Para-journalism” is hardly a small label for not being out of fashion or for that crazy humans’ stubbornness of classifying everything. It could be also called “para-literary journalism”, “para-journalistic literature” or, we do not care if somebody fancies considering it “journalitefilth”, or just “filth”.
4. Not all unreal is uncertain neither all real is true: (this is) a basic slogan that para-journalistic union translates comically as “A lie is worth more than a thousand words” or “Thousand and one nights of absurd dream reveal the same as the World Press Photo Prize.” Para-journalism is Literature’s brother in its polytheistic cult for all which is merely “credible”, in opposition to the “de facto”, that unique God of journalistic religion.
5. There is not news without means to cultivate it and people to eat it. All that “it is” and “it is not”—vulgar, but not ontologically speaking—can be constituted into “news” or highlighted fact to lure common people. It is enough that a communication means infiltrates it in its Agenda for intrinsic or superior interests, “to manipulate”—“to guide” could be used as euphemism if the previous verb scandalizes you —the public. Para-journalism also has its own Agenda, as well as its own war.
6. You won't read here “what you were not told” by another communication means, para-journalists clarify, so that it is not reactivated the suspicion syndrome and the surveillance systems. The point is NOT to be assumed as “alternative information means” spread by the hidden Agenda or distorted by the reputed and/or by official means. It has been said before: ours is not merely journalism, (it is) the objective one, pure and though. We are sincere, but not like Orson Welles; if tomorrow we describe a Martian invasion to Havana, it is not for panicking and going out to swim in search of a promissory beach.
7. We neither want to make a remake or reload New Journalism. Neither to aspire to names as New Post-journalism or Post- brand-new journalism. How we para-journalists would like to count the histories of reality in a way so exquisite that they might look as just make-believe and taken as novelty! But, with the Yankees Wolfe, Capote, Mailer, Thompson & Co., and Latin Americans Walsh and Garcia Marquez, is enough; although we do not totally discard remitting, from time to time, to the literary make-up of real events and of true characters.
8. There is not good text without bad luck or at the beginning or what it is the same: there is no report without a good story to support it or sublime novel without a comprehensive investigation or life chronicle ahead. In short, Para-journalism intends formally to demolish the Iron Curtain between Literature and Journalism and liberate the genres trapped inside one and the other state monopoly. Apocryphal interviews are accepted, exemplary or disastrous portraits of writers, artists, workers and nonexistent politicians, reviews or essays on art works, books, concerts or movies that were never made, the detailed description to the reportorial style of fictitious events, the reader's letter that does not have Internet, old wives’ tales, the chronicles of the she-wolf, the newspaper of an illiterate, etc, etc & etc...
9. There are no happy endings outside Hollywood either cataclysm or elections turn out with which a news bulletin starts up: this it is the way that para-journalists have to explain that they are not interested in the appearance of those “apocalyptic” or “integrated.” Those para-journalists do not write to offer consolation or to be didactic; or to incite to the hardened mess or to condemn despairing. No condom or HIV.
10. You shall not fall in the double temptation: either shall you provoke yawns or shall you sell popcorn. Genius and lucidity, sarcasm and responsibility; not foolishness, it is not worth this way; we do not want to be labeled as “banal” or “frivolous.” Neither we would jump with joy if nicknamed “sensationalists”, but it would be worse if we are incapable of overcoming the pattern of the “pastoral bucolic journalism.” If the reader enjoys what we make, well, we get 7 points in the Mercalli scale (up to 12). Furthermore, if we achieve that he/she “feels” (be this to offend, question, deny, or tolerate, sympathize, or admire) and that he/she “thinks”—Oh, Logos, express yourself!—about their individuality and particular patio or on human essence and wide universe in general, then: great Earthquake and journey for unrestricted time and economic prices to Never Land or to Andromeda (for both: para-journalist and reader).
11. There are no limits or period at the end. Eternity, finally, starts today (para-journalist’s private utopia). There is not Abu Ghraib that contains the entire (un)reality. The only unreal thing is the bar: we are dictated in the ear by poet and journalist Urondo. It is not necessary to implant mousetraps inside each man's mind. And there are not enough cutting edges in Damocles’ sword to cut imagination and yearning. Revolution does not end with Neo’s death in Matrix III. Para-journalists without frontiers, let’s say: “there won't be Holocaust(s).” And don't stop saying this once and again: there won't be Holocaust(s), there won't be Holocaust(s), there won't be Holocaust(s), and there won't be Holocaust(s)...
12. Para-journalists are not as much blinded by the Lord’s authoritarianism and his envoy Moses as not to accept changes to their Charts of the Law. For such a reason, and in an expression of ample and legitimate democracy, besides inviting anyone to send their own texts that abide to the rules of the Club, they also promote the possibility to be suggested the addition or the subtraction of commandments and the introduction of sensible reformations to those existent.
By Rafael Grillo
1. We have not invented yet a new form of lighting fire without matches. When we backslide into the Nihil novi sub sole it is not by empathy with the traditional postmodern exhaustion, but because time ago Ecclesiastes dixit and since then on with a lot of reason. Please note that if historians and archaeologists have just checked that indeed Troy burned under the Achaean torch, the Antiquity would have had in Homer, clairvoyant or blind, its first para-journalist. And Plato as his historical continuator, if he was who invented the entire Atlantis’ story or when he “reported” conscientiously the whereabouts, dialogues and death of Socrates, without using a laptop, recorder or notebook and a good ball pen.
2. There is not AC without mainstream. As Psychology itself, with its catalogue of subjective events, “scientific and objectively proven”, it has its Parapsychology: that bastard library of psych or paranormal detritus phenomena that those cultured give to the credulous and miracle-smugglers; Journalism can also has its Para, where all the events that nobody confirmed that happened would fit, or those that nobody guarantees that are happening, neither nobody will be at death’s door convinced that they will happen tomorrow.
3. There is any product to last a hundred years neither mark to endure it. “Para-journalism” is hardly a small label for not being out of fashion or for that crazy humans’ stubbornness of classifying everything. It could be also called “para-literary journalism”, “para-journalistic literature” or, we do not care if somebody fancies considering it “journalitefilth”, or just “filth”.
4. Not all unreal is uncertain neither all real is true: (this is) a basic slogan that para-journalistic union translates comically as “A lie is worth more than a thousand words” or “Thousand and one nights of absurd dream reveal the same as the World Press Photo Prize.” Para-journalism is Literature’s brother in its polytheistic cult for all which is merely “credible”, in opposition to the “de facto”, that unique God of journalistic religion.
5. There is not news without means to cultivate it and people to eat it. All that “it is” and “it is not”—vulgar, but not ontologically speaking—can be constituted into “news” or highlighted fact to lure common people. It is enough that a communication means infiltrates it in its Agenda for intrinsic or superior interests, “to manipulate”—“to guide” could be used as euphemism if the previous verb scandalizes you —the public. Para-journalism also has its own Agenda, as well as its own war.
6. You won't read here “what you were not told” by another communication means, para-journalists clarify, so that it is not reactivated the suspicion syndrome and the surveillance systems. The point is NOT to be assumed as “alternative information means” spread by the hidden Agenda or distorted by the reputed and/or by official means. It has been said before: ours is not merely journalism, (it is) the objective one, pure and though. We are sincere, but not like Orson Welles; if tomorrow we describe a Martian invasion to Havana, it is not for panicking and going out to swim in search of a promissory beach.
7. We neither want to make a remake or reload New Journalism. Neither to aspire to names as New Post-journalism or Post- brand-new journalism. How we para-journalists would like to count the histories of reality in a way so exquisite that they might look as just make-believe and taken as novelty! But, with the Yankees Wolfe, Capote, Mailer, Thompson & Co., and Latin Americans Walsh and Garcia Marquez, is enough; although we do not totally discard remitting, from time to time, to the literary make-up of real events and of true characters.
8. There is not good text without bad luck or at the beginning or what it is the same: there is no report without a good story to support it or sublime novel without a comprehensive investigation or life chronicle ahead. In short, Para-journalism intends formally to demolish the Iron Curtain between Literature and Journalism and liberate the genres trapped inside one and the other state monopoly. Apocryphal interviews are accepted, exemplary or disastrous portraits of writers, artists, workers and nonexistent politicians, reviews or essays on art works, books, concerts or movies that were never made, the detailed description to the reportorial style of fictitious events, the reader's letter that does not have Internet, old wives’ tales, the chronicles of the she-wolf, the newspaper of an illiterate, etc, etc & etc...
9. There are no happy endings outside Hollywood either cataclysm or elections turn out with which a news bulletin starts up: this it is the way that para-journalists have to explain that they are not interested in the appearance of those “apocalyptic” or “integrated.” Those para-journalists do not write to offer consolation or to be didactic; or to incite to the hardened mess or to condemn despairing. No condom or HIV.
10. You shall not fall in the double temptation: either shall you provoke yawns or shall you sell popcorn. Genius and lucidity, sarcasm and responsibility; not foolishness, it is not worth this way; we do not want to be labeled as “banal” or “frivolous.” Neither we would jump with joy if nicknamed “sensationalists”, but it would be worse if we are incapable of overcoming the pattern of the “pastoral bucolic journalism.” If the reader enjoys what we make, well, we get 7 points in the Mercalli scale (up to 12). Furthermore, if we achieve that he/she “feels” (be this to offend, question, deny, or tolerate, sympathize, or admire) and that he/she “thinks”—Oh, Logos, express yourself!—about their individuality and particular patio or on human essence and wide universe in general, then: great Earthquake and journey for unrestricted time and economic prices to Never Land or to Andromeda (for both: para-journalist and reader).
11. There are no limits or period at the end. Eternity, finally, starts today (para-journalist’s private utopia). There is not Abu Ghraib that contains the entire (un)reality. The only unreal thing is the bar: we are dictated in the ear by poet and journalist Urondo. It is not necessary to implant mousetraps inside each man's mind. And there are not enough cutting edges in Damocles’ sword to cut imagination and yearning. Revolution does not end with Neo’s death in Matrix III. Para-journalists without frontiers, let’s say: “there won't be Holocaust(s).” And don't stop saying this once and again: there won't be Holocaust(s), there won't be Holocaust(s), there won't be Holocaust(s), and there won't be Holocaust(s)...
12. Para-journalists are not as much blinded by the Lord’s authoritarianism and his envoy Moses as not to accept changes to their Charts of the Law. For such a reason, and in an expression of ample and legitimate democracy, besides inviting anyone to send their own texts that abide to the rules of the Club, they also promote the possibility to be suggested the addition or the subtraction of commandments and the introduction of sensible reformations to those existent.
By Rafael Grillo
Comentario:
GRACIAS POR SU APRECIACÌÓN. Lo invito entonces a sumarse al club de paraperiodistas y contribuir con textos suyos o de otras personas que conozca que sigan estos "mandamientos"
Comentario:
M E GUSTA ESTE SITIO. ES DISTINTO. ENTREWTENIDA LECTURA. ESTE ES UN GRILLO QUE SALTA Y CANTA. ME GUSTA SU ATREVIMIENTO. ¿SERA EL GRILLO DE PINOCHO? OJALA LO FUERA Y NOS ENSEÑARA LECCIONES PARA LA CONCIENCIA.