I have won a few prizes in my life—very few. The one I am most proud of is one I received in a children’s painting competition organized by the Burgos fire department. The award ceremony took place in a hotel a bit outside of town, the Hotel Landa. You can recognize it from the highway because it has a medieval tower. I always thought it was fake, but apparently it is real. They just moved it there in the 1960s from somewhere else, stone by stone. The internet tells me they also have a gothic swimming pool, whatever that might be. I assume that swimming pool is legitimately fake. Some people have way too much time and money. But I digress, as I often do.

As a kid, I did a lot of drawing and painting—mostly with oil pastels or charcoal, but also watercolors or oil. In fact, I still keep some of the paintings I made. Among them is the one from the fire department prize. But I also keep an oil painting that my sister, to this day, claims was actually painted for me by my teacher. I want to make it clear that all evidence speaks against her: my name is clearly visible in the painting. Also, my sister was probably 4 at the time. I was 7 or 8. As I see it, it’s just envy.

Anyway, I always painted boats. Lots of boats. As I already told, I have a fascination with everything that floats. I also painted lots of landscapes, mostly urban ones. For a while, I was fascinated by painting trees. In school, I spent years of German class painting trees. Later, as an adult, I went through a phase where, if I was waiting for someone or something in a café, I would draw what I saw. Often just with a cheap ballpoint pen and on the first piece of paper I found. Although I can’t draw people or cats, I can still do a decent drawing, I think. But I don’t do it often.

What I do very often is sing. I love singing. I love singing at full volume. I often listen to music while working, and there are songs I always sing along to. For a while, in Ann Arbor, I was obsessed with Édith Piaf. I used to listen to her while walking to the department. I suspect that at some point, I must have been heard singing Mon légionnaire while crossing the Diag. I also often sing to my cats songs that, perhaps lacking humility, I consider my own creations. Amazingly, they answer—at 5 in the morning, with a concert of meows. But they answer.

Actually, when I think about it, it’s a very common occurrence that there’s a bit of lag between my singing and that of others. It happens, for example, when we sing Christmas songs: after very few chords, everyone else gets out of rhythm and ends up going either a bit faster or a bit slower than me. What’s amazing is that, like the cats, they tend to do it in unison: either all of them too slow, or all of them too fast. It makes no sense. In fact, this is something that has always surprised me a bit. At some point, I joined the school choir. I guess I saw it as an activity that offered both the opportunity for artistic expression and the chance to meet girls. Even in that choir, everyone else was always out of sync with me. I guess that’s why, after only two weeks, the teacher asked me to reconsider whether my talents were being wasted there. They were. And I left. I guess I also left behind the dream of meeting girls, but that’s another story. We’re talking about art here.

In my musical past, there have been a few memorable recordings. Nothing exciting, but I’m proud of them. At one point, I called Jeff to congratulate him on his birthday. He didn’t pick up, and the call went to his voicemail. I sang “Happy Birthday to You”, and it was recorded. Apparently, it was an exceptional rendition. Jeff, who is not only an outstanding mathematician and rower but also a very accomplished singer and bass player, seems to have been particularly impressed by my ability to sing every single line in a different key. Coming from him, this praise encouraged me to pursue my small musical career, perhaps seeking a larger stage. So, I did it again. When my sister’s birthday came, I called her and left “Cumpleaños feliz” on her phone. My sister is a musician—a flutist. She knows about music. I take it as an honor that, as she dutifully informed me, that recording of “Cumpleaños feliz” was the absolute hit of her birthday party, where she kept playing it for all her musician friends. Imagine… La gloire! I blush when I think about it.

You get the point: I suck at singing. Totally. And not only at singing, but at anything that has to do with music. I have really bad memory for music. If I try to hum “Bella Ciao”, I might end up humming “The International” or “O Tannenbaum” instead. I also have a horrible sense of rhythm, as anyone who has ever tried to dance with me knows. In school, when I was 10, I had to learn how to play the recorder. We had exams and such. But failing was not an option: the “exam” was repeated over and over until you passed. I guess that by May, I was still trying to “pass” what we were supposed to have learned in October. Not only was the music teacher desperate, but so were my parents. They—I suspect it was my father, but I’m not sure—came up with the brilliant scheme of having my sister teach me. She was 6, and I was 10. You can picture it. I have a strong feeling I wouldn’t have described it as “la gloire”, even had I spoken French at the time. Anyways, although it was a great move, it didn’t work and I never learned to play the recorder. But neither did it have lasting psychological effects, which I guess is a positive.

Anyways, I am a world-class bad singer. A walking singing disaster. But I like to sing. And to sing loudly. Christmas is coming, and this year I am going to give it my best in front of Christian’s family. Christian, el cuñadísimo, is yet another musician. Then, to celebrate the New Year, I will walk and sing a few songs for the neighbors, in the little plaza just outside of my house. I will probably be a bit drunk. And hopefully will have my daughter with me, blasting her saxophone, although she might by now be too conscious of the embarrassment caused by her father and might play too well to be part of it. If she doesn’t come, I will sing alone. I have reached a moment in my life when I couldn’t care less about what people think about my singing. It helps to know that my cats will listen. Maybe because they know I often give them treats while I sing to them, but they will listen. And answer. At 5 in the morning. The fuckers.