Mateo Acuña
Prague is large, littered, and woven with a sense of danger in its shadowy back alleys. Cigarette butts bury themselves in the grooves of the square stone-tiled streets, where fog clouds of pollution mingle with the rising smell of gasoline from speeding cars, unconcerned for crossing pedestrians. Its rich history is as pungent as the plumes of cigarette smoke puffed from Czechian lips.
Through the smoke a sharp, barbed figure forms; the vision of the Prague Castle in all her glory on the top of a rolling hill, a sight achieved from riding the funicular up a steep incline where locals take their children to sled. Halfway up the top is a balcony and a walking path covered in snow dotted with dirt, mimicking the interior of a dragon fruit. It leads to a white two-story rustic house crawling with vines and covered in a sheet of snow. The front door is wooden and paneled, one of which contains a slot closed off with a piece of stapled carpet. Three arrows point to a doorbell on the side of the wall. The man in a pirate hat does not answer our rings or knocks. There is a sign that we have willfully ignored which reads CLOSED TODAY. Snow has a way of shutting life down.
When we come back that night, the sign is switched to RING ONCE, WAIT THIRTY SECONDS. Perhaps it was not the snow that prevented its opening, but the pirate man sleeping in, or grocery shopping, because this also seems to be his house. The interior is small and contains a black iron spiral staircase going both up and down. Pirate man is older and wider than us, and says the price is four euros and that we must start by going down the staircase. He says the place is known as The Magical Cavern, but we will soon find it to be more of a magical man cave.
We spiral down the stairs like DNA polymers, passing walls of textured, painted plaster and fantastical oil paintings of a realm called Argondia. They have names like Great Guardians of the Garden of Secret Initiation and Desired Night of the Dreaded Grave of the Countries of Concealed Forces. We do not know what this means.
At the bottom of the stairs, in the basement, are more textured walls painted an odd orange and more vibrant paintings with deep shadows and naked women, a defining feature of his work. All of them are thin, young, pale and have identical circular breasts. Some have disproportionately long torsos.
one of Reon Argondia's fantasy paintings. Violins are also a recurring theme.
On the wall is an article in Czech about how the members of Led Zeppelin were there and bought one of his paintings. Across from the article is a cheap portable table where there are two trays, both containing used cups and two jars. The first is water, the other is emptied with nothing but red droplets of sangria. The water and wine are both free to the public, unlike at the decadent opera houses and concert halls where we watch symphonies and operas.
There are mostly elderly people at these concerts, but there are a fair number of middle-aged and younger attendees, unlike in the United States. Many people our age are going with a partner as a date. Perhaps the most shocking turnout was for Kate and the Devil, which parents took their children to. However, as the curtain lifted, revealing the storybook-like set and costuming, we knew at once that this would be a strange and wondrous show. Kate and the Devil was a timeless opera suited for all ages.
The care for the arts in Europe has shone an unfavorable light on the United States’ attitude towards classical music. At least, there is certainly a lack of support and understanding of the arts in the U.S. stemming from its belated conception of a unified nation identity. As musicians, knowledge of this issue is the primary lesson to be learned from a short glimpse into the pulse of Western classical music.
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