Transcripts For LINKTV Democracy Now 20130904

The cultivation of the instinct of beauty, he observed, is a primary practical concern, especially under a government that makes no plans for an astocracy. On a day i1760, Young Thomas Jefferson rides into williamsburg, virginia. Back home, at the foot of the blue ridge mounins, he had already begun his study of greek and latin. [bell tolling] now he will enter the college of william and mary to gain what he called a more universal acquaintance. Though he is critical of the government and the architecture in williamsburg, he will return here many times over the next 20 years to study and practice law. And eventually to take up residence with his family as the second governor of virginia. I was bred to the law, he once reflected, and that gave me a view of the dark side of humanity. Then i read poetry to qualify it with a gaze upon its bright side. The books he was purchasing in these years embraced the whole spectrum of 18thcentury knowledge. None were more treasured than his books on architecture, and one man made a profound impression. Andrea palladio had measured the ruins of ancient rome and recreated her buildings with his pen. From the books of Robert Morris and james gibbs, jefferson learns construction as well as design. Then at the age of 24, he begins to envision and plan his mountaintop house in the blue ridge. Selftaught, he does the palladian calculations and drawings for what would be an art gallery, a library, and a house. The first monticello. A visitor from france said, mr. Jefferson is the First American who has consulted the fine arts to know how he should shelter himself from the weather. In collecting what would become the finest library in america, his eye discovers another art form never before seen here in the wilderness. The sculpture of the ancient world. From his art books, he draws up a list of his favorites. The statues, for which he has designed a place at monticello. Though chosen from a picture in a book, she proves that jefferson, even as a young man, had come to appreciate the best. The medici venus was the first on his list. In the year 1784, jefferson observes life through the eyes oa widower, yet he is on a journey that may help lessen the pain of his loss, crossing the atlantic as an american diplomat to discover paris. Behold me at length on the vaunted scene of europe he wrote. It is not necessary, for your information that i should enter into details concerning it, but you are, perhaps, curious to know how the new scene has struck a savage of the mountains of america. Were i to proceed to tell you how much i enjoy their architectu, sculpture, painting, music, i should want words. It is in these arts they shine. The hospitality of paris is beyond anything i have conceid to be practicable in a large city, he writes. His close friendship with lafayettes aunt madame de tesse brings him many times to her house for long talks on politics, architecture, gardening, art. And in his own townhouse. The hotel de langeac, jefferson entertains the leading figures of the city of paris. From here, he can look out over the champselysees and decide which part of the city he will explore next. About a mile away, he pauses often to watch the construction of a building that will become one of his favorites. I was violently smitten by the hotel de salm, he later wrote. Sitting on the parapet each day, twisting my head around to see the object of my admiration i generally left with a stiff neck. There was a pure pleasure in watching the construction of the hotel de salm. But Something Else was happening on his long walks through the city. Jefferson was storing up a reservoir of images that would echo in his memory for years. Early in 1786, some friends take jefferson to a studio at the college of four nations to observe a sculptor. In sculpting the most famous men of europe, this man had become one himself jeanantoine houdon. He is the worlds foremost artist, jefferson wrote to george washington. Destined to consecrate to immortality famous men in every walk of life. After negotiations with jefferson, houdon travels to mount vernon to sculpt president washington, establishing for the first time in america the use of public money for art. Mr. Jefferson would also sit for houdon, and before leaving paris, he would see himself on display at the paris exhibition of 1789 in a building that he much admired. The louvre. A treasure house. Jefferson was here for 3 of the great paris exhibitions. The unerring eye, which had discovered houdon, now leads him to another artist, dangly inventive for his time. I do not, he said, feel an interest in any pencil but that of david. The best thing here is his death of socrates, and a superb one it is. In the same modern vein is a painting by a younger man drouais. All paris is running to see it, said jefferson. It fixed me like a statue for a quarter of an hour. In another part of the louvre was a painting of a structure that had already touched jeffersons life in a significant way. Early in his stay in paris, the request had arrived at the hotel de langeac. A new Capitol Building in richmond was in need of an able architect. Jefferson contacted charleslouis clerisseau, who had drawn the ruins at nimes in the south of france. With clerisseaus assistance, jefferson worked out the modifications that would turn a roman temple, the maison carree, into a modern public building. It would be the First American building designed to accommodate the 3 branches of a democratic government. Their plaster of paris model was shipped across the atlantic, along with jeffersons plans, to guide the builders on the banks of the james river in virginia. Jeffersons inspiration was to give the fledgling State Government a symbolic structure, thus launching the classic revival in the united states. I have met a young man of increasing reputation, wrote jefferson in his fourth year in paris, who proposes to employ himself solely in painting the events of the american war. John trumbull of connecticut, inted by jefferson to pursue his work at the hotel de langeac, they become friends. The central figure in trumbulls most famous painting is jefferson at 33. His declaration of independence is being presented by the committee of 5 to the Congress Assembled in philadelphia. In paris, jefferson would sit with trumbull for hours, describing this room, even sketching the floor plan. He described the appearance and location of the members, remembering clearly the men with whom he had shared this moment. Now, a decade later, the aging franklin had retired, and jefferson, the new minister, is urgently invited by john adams to come to london for negotiations with the british jefferson has never gotten on with the english too well. Their architecture is in the most wretched style i ever saw, he says, not meang to except america, where it is bad, nor even virginia, where it is worse. But the gardens of england are another matter. The gardening in this country, he says, is the article in which it surpasses all the earth. Jefferson has read for years about these romantic places, where all nature seems to have been turned into a garden. But it is in the parks of paris where jeffersons life will be, for a short time, transformed. He has met a young woman. His capitulation is complete. His love letters to he are unlike any other words he has ever written. Our friendship is precious, he writes, not only in the shade but in the sunshine of life. And on the days we have lately passed, the sun has indeed shone brightly on the presence of my charming companion. She is maria cosway. At 27, she has a musical voice, an air of intelligence and sophistication. And a husband. They have met here, the halles aux bleds, where trumbull had introduced them and jefferson had pronounced the design of the dome as the most superb thing on earth. How beautiful was every object he would write to her later. The gardens of marly, the chateau, the statues, the hills along the seine. And recollect, too, bagatelle, the pavilion of louveciennes, he desert de retz. How well i remember them all. How imprudent it is to place my affections without reserve. On an object i must so soon lose. But every moment has been filled with something agreeable, and the wheels of time have moved on with the rapidity of which those of our carriage gave but a faint idea. What a mass of happiness have we traveled over i feel more fit for death than for life. But when i look back on the pleasures of which this is the consequence, i am conscious they were worth the price i am paying. Jeffersons trip to the south of france just a few months later may have been an attempt to put maria cosway out of his mind. But it was also a business trip. He would see if it might be possible to transplant grapevines, olives, rice, and other useful plants to america. From the ancient city of nimes, he writes to madame de tesse. From morn to night, i have been nourished with the remains of roman grandeur. Were i to attempt to give you the news i should tell you stories 1,000 years old. Now it appears before his eyes for the first time. His replica of this building that was put up in the time of the caesars is now coming into being again in the wilderness of virginia 4,000 miles away. In september, 1789, jefferson embarks for america, where he will continue to serve the new republic for 2 decades. On arrival, he learns that the nations new capitol is to be carved out of the maryland and virginia forests on the banks of the potomac river. He immediately sends to the designer of washington maps of european cities he has collected on his trip. A stream of suggestions and ideas for the new city flows from jeffersons pen. Recalling paris, he suggests that rows of poplar trees be planted along pennsylvania avenue, enhancing the grand boulevard that will link the executive and legislative branches of the new government. He suggests that lots in the city be a minimum of 50 feet wide. He sketches several ideas of his own for the town, favoring a block plan running east and west at the confluence of the potomac and anacostia rivers. When major Pierre Lenfant lays his own wide radial streets over the blocks, there emerges the most famous city plan in america. Jefferson now proposes a Design Competition for the president s house, submitting his own palladian entry anonymously. Though he endorses the winning design by james hoban, when he takes up residence in this building a decade later as president , he immediately calls on architect benjamin latrobe to help him add terraces and a portico. Again, jefferson finds many ways to improve the space in which he lives. Designing, encouraging, collaborating, inspiring. Thomas jefferson had become over the years the most influential figure in american architecture. The supreme statement of his genius stands on the top of the hill near charlottesville. In 1796, the original monticello was torn down to make room for his new design. From his pen came a complex monumental house. And many of the objects in it all finely attuned to the needs and the tastes of the architects most discriminating client. At the age of 74, mr. Jefferson will build in the shadow of monticello his most enduring monument celebrating his belief in the power of education and of the rights of man. Instead of one great building containing everything and everybody, jefferson explained to latrobe, we propose to build an academical village. Perhaps there was a memory of marly when he went to his drawing board to lay out the grand design of the university of virginia. This institution of my native state will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind, he said. Here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead nor to tolerate error so long as freedom is left to combat it. It was only fitting that the building which dominated the entire design was a library. The university of virginia was his final creation, his final vision realized. You see, i am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts, but it is an enthusiasm of which i am not ashamed, as its object is to improve the taste of my countrymen, to increase their reputation, to reconcile to them a respect of the world and to procure them its praise. red grooms everybody thought he was the greatest. He was like a god. fischl he invented or developed a lot of ways of picturing the american experience, which becomes a metaphor for a bigger experience. berman he certainly was a realist in that he painted what he saw. His pictures are made out of facts certainly, but also memory and improvisation. narrator Edward Hopper didnt belong to a movement or a group or a school. The consummate outsider, he belonged to himself. In the 1920s, at the beginning of his career, he painted the plain, unadorned face of america factories, telephone poles, small town streets, and touring cars. And he pared them down to the raw essentials. In the sense of a white wine, he certainly was a dry white wine. He wasnt fruity in any way. Its very sparse. He didnt do more than he had to. No one, no figurative artist was as bare bones as he was. In a sense it perfectly fitted his subject as well the hotel rooms, the barren offices with minimal pieces of furniture, filing case. I think thats the extraordinary, thrilling thing that he achieved. narrator art critics saw hoppers work as the latest chapter in the history of american realism. They compared him to Thomas Eakins and winslow homer. But hoppers paintings lacked their dynamism and verve. That restraint seemed to come from within. Even his closest friends found the six foot seven inch hopper a little daunting. reader hopper had no small talk; he was famous for his monumental silences. But like the spaces in his pictures, they werent empty. narrator hopper was equally deliberate about his paintings. He worked hard and his ideas came to him slowly. Its very hard to define how they come about, but its a long process of gestation in the mind and a rising emotion i suppose. narrator as the confidence of the twenties gave way to the uncertainties of the thirties and forties, his subjects increasingly became uncommunicative figures, often alone in empty rooms. He translated their small dramas into something timeless and universal, in images of stillness and solitude that suggest but never describe a narrative. I think hopper is a great painter of images that evoke rather than narrate. His best pictures almost tell a story, or they tell stories that we have to complete for ourselves. His pictures engage our imaginations in ways that other realist painters dont. narrator Edward Hopper was born in nyack, new york, in 1882. From his bedroom winw he could see the hudson river. As a child he walked and played along its banks. The river and the boat yards that dotted its shore fed an early interest in the play of light on water. His fascination with the geometric precision of boat building led to dreams of a life as a maritime architect. Images reflecting that early interest figured in his work years afterwards. In 1900, after a year studying illustration, he entered the New York School of art. A promising selfportrait emerged in 1903. He studied with robert henri, leader of a group of painters committed to depicting the citys gritty side with an unsentimental realism. Hopper went to paris in 1906. Encouraged by his teachers, he sought out the works of manet and degas. Their unassuming, everyday subjects had a lasting impact. Paris also influenced his style. Impressionism brought light into his canvases and brightened his colors. But he was unaffected by the revolutionary innovations of cezanne and picasso. After 1910, hopper never returned to europe. His interests and his future lay in the subject matter of america and its greatest city. The saloon in new york corner, painted in 1913, is fully grounded in manhattan. The sidewalk curves gracefully through the rectangular red brick city. The strong verticals that would figure so prominently in his work the smokestacks belching in the distance, the lamp post in the foreground are firmly in place. Edward hopper was home. Later in 1913, he was accepted into the show at the new york armory an exhibition that launched modern art in the united states. European avantgarde artists such as Marcel Duchamp and vasily kandinsky caught the limelight, but hopper sold his first painting, sailing, for 250. At the end of 1913, he moved into greenwich village, into a rented apartment that doubled audio. He led aorked there for the rest of his fe, surrounded by simplicity in a city that celebrated power and excess. New york, raw, boisterous and largely oblivious to the rest ofhe planet, was on its way to becoming the capital of the art world. Like his contemporaries, hopper had no interestn the principal pictorial motifs of jazz age new york. Business in the city boomed, but hoppers career as a painter stalled; he didnt sell another painting until 1923. He began to make etchings, drawing his subject matter from the city. The subways and elevated trains that flew above the new york streets gave hopper subjects. The el also offed high sed glimpses into the private lives of new yorkers. dr. Judith barter you have a sense that hes seeing people from a subway train going by. Hes looking into their windows. And who of us havent done that . He was watching without the sense that the people he was watching were watching him. There is a certain type of voyeurism when we look at some of hoppers works. narrator ignored as a painter, he made ends meet as an illustrator, but he did it for the money. dr. Carol troyen hopper hated illustrator work. As, he said, all he wanted to do was paint sunlight on the side of a house. narrator the new england coast gave hopper the chance to do just that. Hopper summered frequently in new england. In the twenties, he favored gloucester, massachusetts. Gloucester was a working class town, home to fishing boats and canning factories. The clear light had attracted artists for generations. At the urging of josephine nivison, another new york painter working in gloucester, he began to work in watercolor. Hopper was drawn to the visual textures of the seaport. reader our native architecture, with its hideous beauty, its fantastic roofs, pseudogc, french mad, conial, mongrel or what not, with eyesearing color or delicate harmonies of faded paint, shouldering one another along interminable streets. These appear again and again, as they should in any honest delineation of the american scene. narrator the mansard roof, painted in 1923, was bought by the Brooklyn Museum of art at a show there the same year. Hopper was immediately praised for the vitality and directness of his works. They also admired his deft handling of watercolor. dr. Carol troyen hopper turned to watercolor for scenes and buildings he observed freshly and directly. Watercolor is a medium of freely flowing washes and spontaneity no accidents for Edward Hopper. His watercolors are very carefully controlled and again, made of careful layerings layers of color, one over another, and then scraped away and painted over again. narrator jo nivison and hopper became a couple in 1923 and married the following year. Also a former student of robert henri, jo was chatty and vivacious. Both in their forties, jo and edward were set in their very different habits. Artist and critic Brian Odoherty caught the essence of their relationship in a 1962 Television Interview with the hoppers, then in their eighties. Brian Odoherty what do you think of robert henri as a painter, mr. Hopper . I think he was moderately good. jo oh you dont agree with that mrs. Hopper . Oh, its so ungenerous. But you know men are not grateful creatures. bo you think not . No, i dont think so. Its women that are grateful. Now, youve in many ways been in the position of living with what is an american monument by now well, i dont know how mr. Hopper would like to hear me describe him as that. Have you found this difficult for your own painting . Oh we manage to get on. I have a studio of my own, so all my things are out from under foot, which is very fortunate. narrator hopper vented his marital frustration in occasional drawings he would leave for jo to find. Jo kept ledgers in which they jointly detailed edwards career to the point of obsession what, where, and when he painted including the time of day what materials he used, and where he bought them. Jo modeled for most of the female figures in her husbands works for the next 43 years. He would begin by sketching her in the studio. As the preparatory drawings moved closer to the final painting, the resemblance faded into a likeness owing more to hoppers imagination. I think that his wife, josephine hopper, was a great collaborator with him. And i think hopper is so good at showing women in states of contemplation, in reverie, in sadness. So he does endow them with an emotional life. He also shows them in various occupations theyre in the workplace, or theyre eating out, or theyre waiting on tables. But they arent all just a nude or a model in a room. So i think that he does see them as human beings, and although theyre caught in the same blighted social transactions as the men are, i think hes an equal opportunity depressive in that respect. narrator hopper had his detractors they pointed to his clumsy handling of human figures and the strange lack of sensuality in the women he painted. dr. Judith barter he could sometimes be an awkward painter. His figures in particular can be very awkward, but he doesnt concentrate on his figures so much, i dont think, as he does really on the space that they occupy. So that its the mood hes after and not a literal description of the room or the figure. narrator in 1924, at jos urging, hopper sent some of his gloucester watercolors to the new york dealer frank rehn. Impressed by his talent, rehn organized a one man show. The exhibition was a success. Hopper, now 42, was able to give up his career as an illustrator and concentrate on painting. In the midtwenties, the international influences that had shaped american modernism were waning. The isolationist policies of the harding and coolidge administrations were taking hold. In works by such artists as John Steuart Curry and thomas hart benton, realism emerged as the essential, modern american expression. Hopper, hard working and largely immune to fads and foreign styles, seemed to embody the authentic american artist. dr. Carol troyen did he see himself that way . Yes and no. Hopper said that the critics give you an identity and sometimes you give it a push. So that, when in the 1930s, he was described as the yankee painter, stalwart, independent and upright, he was willing to be that even though he had another side of his personality, the kind of romantic, inward, turnofthecentury, brooding artist that always remained with him. narrator always restless for new locations, the hoppers spent the summers of 1927 and 1929 in maine. Working in both oil and watercolor, edward continued to paint real places infused with sunlight. Hopper was intrigued by the lighthouses that dot the rocky coast an intersection of strong verticals, diagonals and horizontals with light and shade. Sometimes he cropped them, chopping off what would be the picturesque subject for other painters, to make his own statement. Hoppers modernity was shaped in part by the american past. Early sunday morning, painted in 1930, combines his reverence for the architecture of the previous century with a tranquility rarely shown in paintings of new york. If you look at his work, its completely unrealistic. He doesnt adhere to realism in the strict sense of recording what can be seen, so that, he might want you to acknowledge that there is a chair in the room but not focus on the chair. So the chair is painted in a way that says chair and thats all it says. Window molding, you know, if he wants you to focus on the window molding, hell detail it. If not, its not even there. So you just look at it and go window. This is where his true genius is, is it gives you that immediate sense of reality that is to say, the believable, the accepted and believable, verifiable. And at the same time, you look at it and its highly codified, highly abstracted. narrator the city by day allowed hopper the opportunity to express his talent and affection for american architecture and industrial forms. The city by night revealed a different side of him. In paintings like night windows, finished in 1928, the lives led behind closed doors provided viewers with an unsettling truth. Real privacy was difficult if not impossible in americas crowded cities. Urban life also brought anonymity. Automats, the popular fast food restaurants, replaced servers with coin operated machines dispensing meals through windows. Hoppers automat, painted in 1927, strips away the glitz, focusing on a pensive woman alone in a spare, impersonal structure. The overhead lights reflected in the window seem to float above her in an endless sequence. He was also able to portray architectural exteriors and human interiors at the same time. And in looking at architectural facades, he also looked at the facades that people erect in between each other, and he was very clever at taking Something Like a window, which is supposed to help us clarify and see better he used it to isolate people. It does not provide psychological illumination. narrator the landscapes and new york pictures in the late twenties and early thirties secured his reputation as a major american painter. In chop suey, finished in 1929, the figures are as anonymous as the restaurant less characters than expressions of the essential facts of urban existence. eric fischl its like finding this moment which is on one hand incredibly familiar to the point of dismissal, and painting it in some way that seems so fresh and so iconic that it stands for a kind of profound existential experience, a kind of sense of isolation and, not loneliness in a defeating way, but just that kind of sense of isolation and inwardness. narrator many of his urban paintings from the late 1920s onward were set in what he called a brooding and silent interior in this vast city of ours. They enhanced a reputation already won with his new england works. In 1933, hopper was the subject of a retrospective at the museum of modern art a rare honor. From 1930 onwards, edward and jo hopper spent more and more time in cape cod. They had a house built to edwards specifications. The large studio faced north ideal light for a painter. His work on cape cod began to be, as much like his work in new york was, a combination of observation and imagination and memory. So he painted what he saw with what he had in mind mixed in, and the pictures became much more complex, less based on observation and much more based on a kind of story that he came close to telling, but never quite let you know the whole plot. narrator cape cod evening, its composed of sketches and memorized impressions of different locations around the town of truro. And it adds another dimension people and their messy concerns. Uncertain relationships stamped his paintings with an aura of alienation and estrangement. He made the commonplace events of American Life seem strange. Hoppers Public Places are often empty. There are no customers in his stores, no pedestrians on his streets. Filtered through his sensibility, modern life often lacks the trappings of modernity. There are no cars at his gas stations, nothing automatic in his automat. The dramas that play out are more about modern states of mind. dr. Judith barter for hopper, light, color, architecture, structure, create mood. And if i look at hopper, sometimes i can be reminded of de chirico, and andre breton said that he thought that hopper was the only american surrealist, or the closest thing to surrealism. narrator movie going had become a part of the american experience, an escape from the gloom of the depression. In new york movie hopperepicts the theater as a dream space, one that sanctioned the riskfree, imaginative entry into the world of others. Hoppers usherette is an escort into the fantasy, but she stands apart and looks neither at the viewer nor at the screen, inaccessible and absorbed in her own daydreams. Hoppers interest in film took several forms. Like his glimpses from the moving el trains into the private worlds of the unsuspecting, movies allowed audiences to peer into a world oblivious to them. But movie going was also a refuge and a source of inspiration. I think he took a great deal of inspiration from the movies. I also think that hopper was influenced by some of the early noir movies from the late thirties, almost prenoir things like little caesar, public enemy. These were gangster flicks, and they were very popular in the thirties, and many of them were black and white. And so that also appealed to hoppers sense of structure and form, pattern, and design. narrator nighthawks, painted in 1942, drew on 40 years of hoppers painterly repertoire the play of street lights and shadow on the street exterior, the harsh fluorescent light inside the diner, the coffee urns and countertops, the uneasy loneliness of the diners clientele, and their ambivalence, to each other, the night, and the viewer. He loved film and he studied film. He would talk to his wife, jo, and they would actually work up the characters. They would give them names, or she would. And there was a sort of scenario going on about the types and what actually was happening. And that kind of attention to the drama of the scene is unique, i think, to his work. narrator hoppers art, fueled by cinema, in turn began to inspire film makers. Hoppers brooding exteriors influenced the sets for Alfred Hitchcocks psycho and Terrence Malicks days of heaven. Echoes of nighthawks appear in wim wenders the end of violence. The sets for pennies from heaven, a film i enjoyed making in 1981, quoted liberally from hoppers imagery. A later scene in the film recreated new york movie. The end of world war ii brought with it exuberance e nce he wor it ao brchange in thert wor. Edwa hper, w in his midsixties, was one of americas foremost artists, but he was no longer doing the kind of work that intrigued avantgarde critics. They turned to younger painters like Jackson Pollock for spontaneity and muscular forays into abstract expressionism. Hopper railed against abstraction. reader there is a school of painting called abstractionist or nonobjective, which is derived largely from the work of paul cezanne, that attempts to create pure painting, that is, an art which will use form, color, and design for their own sakes, and independent of mans experience of life and his association with nature. I do not believe such an aim can be achieved by a human being. Whether we wish it or not, we are all bound to the earth with our experience of life and the reactions of the mind, heart, and eye, and our sensations, by no means, consist entirely of form, color, and design. narrator entering the final phase of his career, the influence of abstraction hopper deplored began to seep into his work. The forms of sun in an empty room, painted four years before his death, were pared down to an almost abstract pattern. The man who had said he only wanted to paint sunlight on a wall forty years earlier had come full circle. Edward hopper died in may of 1967. Jo, his wife of 44 years, survived him by nine months. He died in an age unimaginably different from the one he was born into. But his work and reputation never really declined among artists. I dont remember anybody not liking hopper, ever. I think everybody thought he was the greatest. He was like a god. narrator red grooms created several works that referred to hopper. red grooms i think maybe that i cannot see myself as like his, the jester to the great sage. Obviously my work is overall somewhat humorous; and it was an idea of tailing him, or tease him a bit oromething. By that time, abstract expressionism had run its course, and pop art was coming to the fore. I think that painters like Richard Diebenkorn absolutely looked to Edward Hopper. He looked to hopper for his sense of the streets and pop symbols. Ed ruscha had the same interest in gas stations and signage that hopper had in his pictures. And even george segal created diner teriors. narrator eric fischl established his reputation in the 1970s and 1980s with paintings that echo hopper in their suggestion of enigmatic narratives. He invented or developed a lot of ways of picturing the american experience, which becomes a metaphor for a bigger experience. narrator hoppers work engaged our imaginations by drawing on what was universal in the american experience. They capture silent moments, like frozen frames from the drama of American Life. Annenberg media by narrator welcome to destinos an introduction to spanish. As you know, much of what you hear will be in conversational spanish. ¿hay algun mensaje para mi . No. Hasta el momento, no, senorita. Of course, you will not understand every word. Relax and let the actions of the characters and your knowledge of the story guide your comprehension. Perdone. Creo que deje mi cartera en el taxi