Ever since coming to Deià in 1997, I’ve been gathering stories about the village for a book. In 2015, Charles Marlow invited me to write their blog. It felt like synchronicity.
When I first arrived in Deià, it felt like the strangest place I’d ever been. But I felt oddly at home.
My uncle, a poet, had exchanged several letters with Robert Graves and Laura Riding, who lived in the village. My Grandfather was a well-known artist who painted landscapes. Maybe this was the reason Deià’s mountains mesmerized me. My Great-Aunt was off with the fairies so when people told me that this was a place where the veil between the dimensions was exceptionally thin, I didn’t bat an eyelid.
I too sense the power behind the mountains. I too have sat alone on a shaded terrace and heard strange voices whisper in my ear. I feel the presence of the spirits of those people who walked Deià’s ancient streets centuries before. It became my mission to share their stories.
As a writer and music scholar, I was startled to discover how many legendary characters had spent time in the village. Why didn’t I know that Daevid Allen, Kevin Ayers and Robert Wyatt had all lived here? How could I not know that this was where Luke Rhinehart – real name George Cockroft – had written cult novel The Dice Man. (I would later interview Robert and George.)
I didn’t know because the village was for many years a place where, to borrow a cliché, what happened in Deià stayed in Deià. Journalists came but they misbehaved as much as everyone else and didn’t write about the place. The ‘legendary characters’ I heard about or met included at least a couple of heavy-duty drug dealers who would most certainly not have wanted stories written about them.
But I couldn’t stop myself from asking the people I got to know to tell me about the village. After wincing at my utter lack of cool, they would open up and tell me great stories. Here’s one.
For many years, an American lady named Faye Emerson lived in the village. I’ve been told that TV’s Emmy Awards were named for her. One morning a friend got a call from Faye. For some inexplicable reason, her front room was filled with sheep.
Here’s another.
The artist and percussionist Phil Shepherd was walking home along the path that leads down from the village to the Cala one night after drinking in the bar. Passing the ravine where, during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, Franco’s fascists had thrown Republican sympathizers to their death, Phil slipped and went over the edge. Sliding down the ravine, he managed to grab onto a bush and save himself. He was too drunk to pull himself up but he held on all night, imagining ghostly hands reaching out for him. When the sun came up, he found the strength to clamber out and walk home. Every time I walk past that ravine I make sure I’m nowhere near the edge.
For almost 20 years I collected stories like these. Then one day Tomás Graves – who, along with his brother Juan, had become a friend – mentioned that Charles Marlow, a new real estate agency with an office in the village, was looking for a blog writer.
I met Patrick and Charlie of Charles Marlow and got on well with them. They seemed sincere in their desire to celebrate village culture and give back. And give back they did. They have quietly supported the Deià artists for years. It’s thanks to them that the village library has a complete set of Robert Graves’s Carcanet books. They make a point of recommending local businesses to their clients.
The blog I wrote for ten years became the heart of Charles Marlow’s online presence. People from all over the world contacted us to share their memories and stories, ask for answers to questions.
It felt good to offer a connection with Deià’s wild, spellbinding past and write about the artists and activists preserving the spirit of the village. Especially at a time when it felt like it was being devoured by tourists, when the high street was clogged with big shiny cars like giant, mechanical procesionarias, the clear air often thick with renovation dust.
I became friends with the singular Jackie Waldren who had lived here since 1959. Jackie’s book Insiders and Outsiders: Paradise and Reality in Mallorca became a touchstone for me. She told me many stories of Deià including several that are unprintable. Jackie would always ask when I was going to write my own book about the village. I promised I would.
Now it’s time for me to keep that promise and finish my own book about Deià. But I will never forget my time writing the Charles Marlow blog.
…And I remember my first morning in Deià, swimming out to the middle of the bay and surveying the olive terraces, the village church, the jagged bowl of the mountains beyond, the drifting wisps of blue smoke. Enormous ghost fish nosed their way through the waving green Posidonia sea grass below me. I was suspended in time. At that moment, Deià reached out to me. I will always be under its spell…