Of Course I Did It My Way

I’m supposed to create my own version of something old. Hmmm… does that mean really old or just vintage? When does something begin to be classified as vintage anyway? When it gets old, yellowed, crinkly? Out of style or recycled? Vintage wines are valued just as they are. People don’t change their chemical composition, they just drink them and rave over them.

I’m thinking I could redo a book, since I’m a writer. I’m the author of several best-selling cookbooks and self-help manuals. Maybe not classic works of literature, but what I do is writing too, and for the most part it pays well.

What do I want to give a make-over to? After all, something must be wrong with the original to want to redo it. What changes do I want to make? One must be careful when considering how to substantially alter a work known to many.

This isn’t going to be easy. I may only have one shot at it.

Do I make all the criminals in the noir novels face justice? Do I prevent the crimes from happening in the first place?

What about all the loved-and-lost tales? Should I mend broken hearts or perhaps keep the lovers from meeting in the first place? Does the world need Romeo and Juliet 2.0?

Probably not.

What to do? I would so love to redo Little Women, the main reason being I would not allow sweet Beth to die in my version. That could be risky. Certainly all the films based on that novel, even the most recent, are not to my liking. It seems like I’m trying to nitpick, to pluck out the parts I dislike, and fix those. That doesn’t constitute a complete overhaul of a book.

Is there a book I’d just like to redo from page 1 to the final page? Why would I have read anything that needed total revision? Even the tragedy of Don Quixote would resist rewriting. Anyway, fans of Borges will be quick to point out that his character Pierre Menard already rewrote the great novel. Or maybe he didn’t, because apparently he just rewrote it word for word.

This rewriting thing isn’t working out at all. Maybe I have too much respect for old literary works, even the ones with sad endings or misogynistic characters. I can only bite off small chunks and spit them out a little differently. This is a real dilemma and requires more concentration…

I’m going to steer away from writing and try my hand at some other type of make-over. There certainly are a lot of works of art I’d like to see done over. Not, of course, the way the little old lady restored a painting in the Santuario de Misericodia church in Borja, northeastern Spain. It was a recent painting, done by a woman, of Christ with a crown of thorns. The nineteenth-century work ended up looking like, well, like a flat-faced, mindless androgynous figure not unlike some cubist renderings by Picasso and company. Not pretty. Still, the end result was definitely the anonymous restorer’s handiwork. This was sometime around 2010 or 2012, as I recall. It eventually turned out that the restorer’s identity was Somebody-or-other Giménez and she demanded a cut of the money taken in after visitors flocked to see her outrageous work.

No, I would not redo the original itself, would not restore it. I would start from scratch. Some works of art can benefit from a rethinking, if done properly. Take the statue of Santiago Matamoros or Saint James the Moor-slayer, in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Most visitors know who he was, that he’s the patron saint of Spain because he fought against the infidels on the Iberian Peninsula as well as lending a helping hand when the Spaniards were slaughtering the native populations in the ‘New’ World.

The statue, whose creator and date I never bothered to learn, is a monument to brutality and intolerance. Politically incorrect on so many counts, it shows a warrior mounted on a white horse with struggle and massacre at his feet. The beheaded Moor is the worst part. 

Flowers have been used to obstruct the writhing limbs and disembodied head, but people know the story. Maybe the statue has been moved by now, but it won’t be destroyed. I think I’d like to remake it from top to bottom. Even the mighty sword needs to go. Now to construct my vision. Even a person not trained in art can improve on the image of religious fervor that got entirely out of hand, ever since the saint showed up at Clavijo or whatever battle it was. Violence is never the answer.

So here’s the plan:

We get rid of the testosterone and piety, the aggression and the arrogance, of Santiago. He wasn’t even from Iberia and had been beheaded far away and long ago. There is no justification for admiring a killer in the midst of destroying lives and it might be a good idea to put a woman in his place. The first that comes to mind is Saint Scholastica with her lovely, studious name, but she’s already in a nice spot across the way, in San Martiño Pinario. I have no interest in copying her statue. The point is to remake Santiago.

Perhaps there is no need to replace a saint with another saint. Maybe the cathedral could acknowledge other figures from the region. I’m thinking now of the very familiar Mouras, who aren’t always seen as seductresses. They are imagined as carrying stones on their heads to build the hill forts that abound in Celtic regions. They are seen as walking while spinning on a golden distaff. Great role models, even if they may have a darker side.

Moura coincidentally can refer to a Moorish woman, which could be considered poetic justice if such a woman were to replace the violent and politically incorrect Saint James. She would be raising a distaff, not a deadly sword, and she would smile with golden eyes. Her hair could be any color, but my preference would be flaming red. She could be astride a pure white stallion or simply standing in a meadow with flowers. Definitely no dead, bloodied heads, no twisted arms and legs, no silent shrieks emerging from mangled bodies. The stuff of nightmares and not appropriate for a sacred space, but that’s just my humble opinion.

To finish off my reconstruction of this figure, I might try to incorporate at bit of light and sound the way they do nowadays. No mystery here: a few birds and a gurgling stream will contribute to the utter calm my lady will offer visitors. I would also like her to have a book or two on hand, so those might be suspended from her waist. Girdle books, as they were called, were in use for three centuries, starting in the 1200s. They were especially popular among women. That shows women were literate, some even scholars. 

Now that I have my idea sketched out, it’s time to approach the person in charge and pitch my idea. I’m optimistic it’ll be accepted. The old statue of Santiago Matamoros can go into the storeroom. It’s a pretty big cathedral and surely there’s space somewhere.