bordarretazos

Songs and rhythms in their relationship with our personal memories end up populated with ghosts. Radiohead’s song “There, there” (2003), evokes the hypnotic cadence to which the Brazilian performer Gina Montes used to dance every Thursday night along with the opening theme of a late 1970’s Mexican comedy TV show.

The chorus of “There, there” insistently repeats the slogan that Immanuel Kant was trying to refute in his second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason: “just ‘cause you feel it, doesn’t mean it’s there”. Kant’s first edition of the Critique (1781) was received as the work of an idealist. The section named “The refutation of idealism”, in the second edition of this book (1787), tries to neglect that interpretation.

Gina Montes’ infinite looped dance steps transform her precisely into the specter that inhabits Radiohead’s chorus. Gina is now the ghost of idealism and if Kant is able to move away from this skepticism towards our sensibility, he needs to overcome Gina’s spell.

“Ahí Gina, ahí” (“There Gina, There”) 5:25, by Jeru KHR