CESAR BRANA, A CULTURAL CENTER IN ANTIGUA (GUATEMALA)
As soon as I arrived in Antigua, I looked for a music school to practice the piano.
It is not easy to find a piano in Antigua. Their traditional instrument is the marimba, played with two small sticks.
Since I am not used to giving up, after many attempts to find a music school, at last I came across the Cultural Center Cesar Bragna.
It is housed inside a building with many rooms and a theater. In each room a particular subject is taught: languages, piano, painting, theater, cooking, violin, marimba, psychology, and so on.
The Center is open to everybody. I enrolled for piano lessons with a teacher who, although young, is very competent on the subject. A natural friendship arose between us.
Looking around the Center, I saw people of all ages and from all walks of life studying marimba, violin, painting, and English.
I wonder why in my hometown there is not a center like this.
My thoughts are with the elderly and those with mental problems. These last are at the mercy of psychiatrists who give them drugs. This way, they reach an equilibrium. But, the medicine can cure just the symptoms of the mental disease, not its cause. Once one stops taking pills, the disorder reappears.
Are psychiatrists able to administer the pill of painting? Of theater? Of friendship? The pill of love?
I don’t think so! It is much easier to give a medicine.
If in my town there were a Center like Cesar Brana, how many old people and social misfits could socialize!
Is art, music, friendship, and love more effective than psychiatric treatment? I think so!
Ettore Grillo, author of these books:
– A Hidden Sicilian History
– The Vibrations of Words
– Travels of the Mind
