Love notes from Siel is a monthly-ish newsletter from Siel, who used to live in Los Angeles but is currently traveling around. If you love the notes, subscribe for free.
Dear friend —
Sometimes a novel feels like it’s about you because you relate so much to a character. That’s kind of how I felt reading Calling Mr. King — not because the protagonist is an assassin for hire, which I am not, but because he travels a lot until he ends up in Barcelona, where I am now.
Basically, the contract killer’s work sends him to cool cities where he longs to spend his time taking in the art and reading books and listening to the music and just living — but he can’t because, well, he has to go around killing people, a.k.a. has to work. Oh, how much I can relate to this quandary! I’m lucky to have a remote job that lets me travel, but I don’t feel so lucky staring at a laptop when I’ve got a whole new city to explore —
Anyway. Arriving in Barcelona last week, I had two goals: To pack in all the things tourists do, and to experience what it might be like to live in Barcelona long-term. Turns out, these two goals are hard to pursue in tandem. The first requires running to and fro, embracing new sights and experiences every day, while the latter requires building a routine, becoming a regular at places, a familiar neighbor.
Still, I loved Barcelona immediately. It’s beautiful here, with its tree-lined boulevards and unique architecture and artsy, cosmopolitan vibe. You can find handmade empanadas and fresh-pressed doriyaki on the same block. My first taxi driver spoke six languages and, driving me to my hotel in Gracia, turned into an impromptu tour guide, pointing out a Gaudi house here, a popular park there.
Barcelona is a lovely and easy place to just live. The simple act of walking down the street is pleasurable, the city is made for pedestrians, with sidewalk cafes and cute boutiques that invite you to pop in, everywhere there are comfy benches and parks and public squares on which to sit and rest and eat an ice cream and people watch.
But how does one just live? This has become an honest question for me — I’ve been moving around so much I don’t quite know how to behave like a resident any more. I’m more adept at being on the move, from Barceloneta beach to Ciutadella park to Las Ramblas, from Sagrada Familia to Parc Gruell to Casa Mila. In between I ate crema catalana and saw a flamenco show and got lost for a while in a cypress tree maze —
I made a new friend who showed me around the city, though at this point, I think I’ve seen more of Barcelona than he has. Despite having lived here for more than a decade he’s never been inside the Picasso or Miro museums; the first time he entered La Boqueria was with me, last week. One night I dragged him to Poble Espanyol in Montjuic — an idiosyncratic outdoor museum showcasing different types of Spanish architecture — where we walked from a cute little fake Andalusian village to a cute little fake Catalonian village while listening, randomly, to Chris Isaak, who happened to be performing to a huge crowd in the nearby concert venue.
Is it always this way? In Los Angeles I remember running into locals who’ve never been to The Broad, or Olvera Street, or Malibu. Wherever you live, it seems incredibly easy to simply slip into a ho-hum routine, work-gym-home and the occasional nights out with friends —
Can you live in a place without losing your wonder for it? During my stay in Barcelona, I kept asking myself what my life would look like here if I really lived here. By day ten, I’d settled into a little bit of a pattern, starting the day with a slow breakfast on the hotel courtyard then toting my laptop to a neighborhood coffee shop to get some work done. I had little chats with the Argentinian guy who owned the local handmade empanada shop and the Italian guy who owned a nearby boutique featuring a New Zealand fashion brand. I went to a bachata class and met dancers who invited me to come to dance salsa rueda in Barceloneta on Sundays.
Sadly, I won’t make it. Tomorrow, I leave Barcelona. But I’ll be back —
Love,
Siel
Three links you might love — AI edition
Writing a novel with AI help. “Story Engine can’t think, but I loved making it pretend to think like a writer. “
Changing the economy of the web. “AI-generated misinformation is insidious because it’s often invisible. It’s fluent but not grounded in real-world experience, and so it takes time and expertise to unpick. If machine-generated content supplants human authorship, it would be hard — impossible, even — to fully map the damage. And yes, people are plentiful sources of misinformation, too, but if AI systems also choke out the platforms where human expertise currently thrives, then there will be less opportunity to remedy our collective errors.
Letting ChatGPT control your life. “After 35 years of living in relative control of my decisions, I had decided to see what would happen if I asked AI to control my life instead. Years of suboptimal performance, both personally and professionally, and numerous failed attempts at self-improvement had convinced me there had to be a better way.”