This March break, 11 students and two faculty members are traveling to Spain to explore the life and works of Teresa de Ávila, a renowned Spanish mystic. Please enjoy the blog post below from Abdullah ’25 shares the unforgettable experience of meeting Paco Diez, exploring his vast collection of musical instruments, and enjoying a night of music, storytelling, and a soulful meal.
Today we met probably one of the most enchanting and remarkable people I have been given the chance to know. Paco Diez took us into a convent a few days earlier to speak with cloistered nuns. Paco plays music for them every Christmas. How lucky they are indeed to be able to listen to him every year.
What he showed us in his museum of musical instruments is hard to articulate. It was a rainbow of music across time and culture. We learned about how these instruments came to be, how they evolved, and how they sound. He even had us play several of them.
He began with explaining that everything is rhythm – that we are rhythm. The first rhythm was the beat of our heart when we were in our mother’s wombs. Then the second was the first breath we took after our birth. Then the rhythm builds and harmonizes as we continue to grow.
He painted a mental image for us of monkeys in the prehistoric age, taking two bones from a dead animal. He picked up two bones from a glass case and effortlessly began a one-handed rhythm with them. Then he took two rocks and told us to picture cavemen doing the same. Then he took two spoons, saying that people searched for music in the tools around them. He played a rhythm with them, before handing them to Bishop, who was surprisingly good.
Paco told us about how people in poverty, slaves and workers would search for music with the tools that they had and used objects one would never think of using to produce music. We saw so many instruments and each one was so unique, that I feel I could surely author a novel inspired by each of them. However, I will choose two that I remember well:
To begin with, I must say my favorite is a rather simple one – a large seashell that can be blown into to produce a sound as deep and as rich as the ocean itself. (I may be biased because it’s the one instrument I was actually good at.)
I will also highlight a moment when he told us all to close our eyes and produced one of the loudest sounds we had heard during the tour. He asked that we imagine the size of that instrument, then had us open our eyes to see a flute no shorter and no thicker than a paperclip.
I must save room in the entry for the rest of our night. But I would like the reader to remember that he knows how to play all of these instruments: Drums, accordions, bagpipes, guitars, pianos, flutes and more. He has never studied music theory. Since he was gifted a guitar as a boy, he has always played by feeling, and feeling is what got him to play in places all over Europe, Asia and the Americas – notably in the Royal Palace in the presence of the King of Spain.
We then set off to meet Paco in the centuries old wine cellar that he has made into a hangout spot. There he had prepared for us chicken, which he bathed in the richest of spices and kept in an oven for four hours. He asked that we waste none of it, and we surely did not! For that lunch, we ate in complete silence because we were experiencing one of the most enlightening meals of our lives.
After that and having some dessert, he handed us each a songbook and pulled out his guitar. He alternated between Spanish songs that he (occasionally alongside Abby) would sing, or songs in English that the entire group would sing. For those songs he would choose one, or a few students who he thought knew the song to begin it with before we all joined in. There was also a moment when Jordan took the guitar and sang a Texas folk song with incredible talent.
Later that night we had a similarly great dinner at a very experimental restaurant. That dinner we spent merrily conversing in much joy and laughter. One of the most interesting items, the first we ate, was a squid ink eggroll!
A truly unique experience that I hope remains with me. Though we may not explicitly have been visiting Convents and learning about Theresa of Avila, there was something deeply spiritual about it.
