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“Malagueña” I tore up – actually, deleted – the first draft. It was just another damned poem about poetry. When you write one of those you’re competing with something, though you pretend to be oblivious of it, communing with an imaginary friend. And poetry can’t compete. In this era it’s a guitar, however it might wish to be an orchestra and chorus or even a marching band. And I tore up the second and third drafts, which told how when I was very young I stacked 78s and then LPs my parents bought, and sat on the floor and listened. Because parents and childhood and “I” are like covertly unbuttoning one’s pants after a heavy meal – of life, I suppose, liberally seasoned with art; which, however cleverly spiced, is a poor paella. It wasn’t Spain I visualized at seven; rather an outer, and still one of my favorite provinces of the true land, where my presence was already urgently required. And the tune still bobs up – never fully digested by the noise-acid; not the classic Segovia version or Carlos Montoya’s, but with synthesized strings attached to what, originally, before Albéniz got it, was improvised by a gypsy in a small coastal town, grimy and torch-lit: the fishermen standing in the square one evening; the contempt on both sides age-old, with loopholes; the musician hoping they would give him a fish.