CAHUN YOUR ENTHUSIASM (8)
By:
January 28, 2026
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… anti-fascist art! Series edited by Josh Glenn.
INQUIETUD
By the time I knew my Catalan grandfather, Ramon Vives, he was a courtly Ellingtonian fellow with longish white-gray hair combed straight back and a trim little mustache. Classically trained, he had found his way to jazz and popular standards and built a long career as a pianist, composer, arranger, band leader, and conductor. He kept musician’s hours, working late nights and sleeping in. My grandmother would leave a wedge of tortilla de patatas or some other regionally appropriate snack for him to eat when he returned home from a gig in the wee hours. I see him in my mind’s eye hanging around in the afternoon in their apartment on Carrer Bailèn in Barcelona, wearing slippers and a garment somewhere between dressing gown and bathrobe, chain smoking, teasing out a tune on the living room piano. In my mind’s ear, that tune is a haunting ballad entitled “Inquietud,” which he had composed decades earlier.
When the Spanish Civil War began in 1936, my grandfather, a Loyalist, joined up to fight against the falangistas. He was a gentle soul, and the prospect of killing was even more appalling to him than the prospect of being killed, so he became a stretcher bearer. At some point during the war, he found himself billeted on an armored train with a crew of militiamen — no doubt the usual antifascist mix of patriots, anarchists, socialists, hardcases, idealists, and guys who weren’t sure what they were doing but knew they didn’t want Franco to win. There was a piano on the train, and he played for the troops when they returned after going off to fight, fewer of them every time. It was at this piano, family lore has it, that he composed “Inquietud.”
I don’t know how the song goes. My mother recalls seeing sheet music for it in my grandfather’s elegant slanting hand, but apparently it has been lost. I can’t find a recording of it, either, though some recordings of my grandfather’s compositions do exist. So, unless somebody with better internet skills than mine (not a high bar) digs it up, I’m left to imagine it. My grandfather favored minor keys and melancholy airs, which would fit the bill here.
I think about “Inquietud” fairly often these days, now that Franco’s crowd has made a comeback in Spain, across Europe, and closer to home. And I think about the fact that despite having better poets and theorists, and much better musicians, my grandfather’s side lost.
CAHUN YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Mark Kingwell on ONCE UPON A HONEYMOON | Lynn Peril on ZAZOUS | Judith Zissman on DIE GEDANKEN SIND FREI | Annie Nocenti on MEDIUM COOL | Mike Watt on FASCIST | William Nericcio on LALO ALCARAZ | Josh Glenn on THE LADY VANISHES | Carlo Rotella on INQUIETUD | Heather Quinlan on CASABLANCA | Adam McGovern on HEART OF GLASS (Mad Jenny) | Matthew Battles on WOODY’S GUITAR | Carl Wilson on PALACES OF GOLD | Ramona Lyons on UPRIGHT WOMEN WANTED | Lucy Sante on CAMOUFLAGE | Adelina Vaca on AKIRA | Tom Nealon on THE BARON IN THE TREES | Nikhil Singh on PARIS PEASANT | Mandy Keifetz on THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED | Gordon Dahlquist on THE CONFORMIST | Alex Brook Lynn on WHY WE FIGHT | Gabriela Pedranti on THE ETERNAUT | Heather Kapplow on ANTI-FASCIST PASTA | Marc Weidenbaum on (WHAT’S SO FUNNY ’BOUT) PEACE, LOVE, AND UNDERSTANDING | Peggy Nelson on PUPPETS | Sonia Marques on CARNATIONS AGITPROP.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!