Regular readers of these posts — and if you do not already subscribe to the email, please do so in the space provided on the right — will have noticed that last week I dropped the moniker Ricardo Blanco’s Blog, and adopted instead (or reverted to) the identity of Richard Gwyn, which, I feel, simplifies matters. Not only is this my name, but I am aware that there is a distinguished Cuban American poet named Richard Blanco, who read at Obama’s second inauguration, as well as a host of other Ricardo (or Richard) Blancos about the place. Not that this is an insurmountable problem, but I do not want to give the impression that I am someone I am not, and have, in the past, received messages from readers who thought I was the other Blanco, an understandable error, and one that actually feeds into this week’s theme quite neatly . . .
It might be argued that there are other Richard Gwyns also, including the respected Canadian journalist (who passed away in 2020) and — most famously — the Welsh Saint of that name, a poet and teacher, who was hung drawn and quartered at Wrexham in 1584, for being a Catholic.
The notion of calling this series of writings Ricardo Blanco’s Blog was enhanced, or fortified, by the fact that this title formed an example of Cynghannedd sain, which in Welsh formal poetry is a line of verse in which the first and second parts of a line rhyme (in this case the final vowels of Ricard-o Blanc-o) and the third section repeats the consonantal patterns of the second (Blanco’s Blog). My thanks to the Cymraeg poets Mererid Hopwood and Karen Owen for pointing this out to me, many years ago, on a tour of Patagonia. However, my concerns as a writer then — 2013 — were largely to do with my work as a translator; the preparation of my anthology of Latin American poetry, The Other Tiger, and the writing of a book which I regard as its twin (or double), Ambassador of Nowhere, which was ten years in the making and was finally published last month. And it seems appropriate, that with the publication of Ambassador, the persona of Ricardo Blanco fade into the background (or perhaps the Nowhere of the book’s title). I am not killing him off altogether — that, after all, would amount to suicide — but Blanco’s concerns are no longer my own. Either that, or else we have merged completely. In any case, things have moved on
Back to the present: I would like to continue posting meditative pieces about walking and the reflections brought about on these excursions, usually (but not always) in the Black Mountains of south-east Wales. These posts will often pursue a literary, philosophical and/or alchemical theme, and may, with time, make up the contents of a book. The next of these posts will go up on Thursday, and Thursdays will remain the regular day for all new pieces.
Richard Gwyn 
¡Adiós Ricardo Blanco! Te dejaremos en ese bar de Buenos Aires, con un vaso de chupito que por ahora permanecerá vacío, esperando que alguien inicie otra conversación….
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OK, estoy preparado para charlar con cualquiera, mientras su nombre no sea Gaston . . .
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My first job was with BBC Radio Cymru live breakfast show ‘Hyló Bobol’ (a miraculous turn of events, having only begun to learn Welsh in my late teens). I knew nothing and nobody in a deeper way than non-Welsh speakers can appreciate.
As an undergraduate jumping into the deep end, I recall at one of my first Welsh degree lectures, as each student introduced themselves, the lecturer would ask (or often devine) the exact location of their upbringing within a mile or less and then list the literary or historical ‘enwogion o fri’ (persons of note and acclaim) connected with their locale and even connect them with the family of that student, to the nth degree. Or so I best recall, being in awe of this vast three dimensional nest of connectedness in which I was profoundly ‘l’étranger’.
After a year at the BBC, a younger chap joined the office, who unlike me was already known to my seniors by his parental connections – the son of ‘X’. He also happened to be my exact namesake, to speak with a similar voice to mine, even a not dissimilar dialect and accent (mine being acquired but convincing to all).
I hastily awarded the scrappy mouse mascot on my desk a badge – ‘Mark I’ but in fairness, there were no significant mix ups at all. (Unlike my vain attempt to avoid the net of the Official Secrets Act, by returning autographed as mine the form intended for a similarly named colleague, (Owens not Evans).
In a while, I went my way into making S4C’s first television quizzes while he bet his future on a career making films for cinema, for which there was yet no demand or backing in Wales.
Then things got more interesting – he belatedly sent on a meagre cheque for a radio appearance of mine; I was mistakenly invited to talk about ‘my’ film ‘House of America’ at some far flung Celtic Film Festival (Uzbekistan or Tbilisi?).
While he spread his wings, directing Jane Fonda (!) and Minnie Driver and winning acclaim for ‘My Little Eye’ (and more recently, the ‘Pembrokeshire Murders’ my path took an ever more obscure and mundane route into policy wonkery.
But I took occasional vicarious pleasure discovering the careers of other illustrious namesakes, eventually drawing a line (for now) at the somewhat controversial career of a namesake Hollywood director/producer appearing in TV movie credits and a biography splashed on the Sunday Times’ front page.
If this was a story by Borges, I would now tell you of the time I sat down in a London railway café, simply too tired to take note of my surroundings, and was joined by a stranger who looked too familiar, too similar to be anyone else but me – and yet neither of us could bring ourselves to acknowledge it and open the door to conversation…
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Thanks Marc: I love stories like this, and it is a theme to which one or other of us will be bound to return. Funnily enough, the very first time you posted a comment on this Blog, I wondered if you were the ‘other’ Marc Evans, but someone (I forget who) assured me that no, you were a famous prankster with a collection of false moustaches.
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