La belleza desnuda de las cosas, la mirada íntima y a la vez universal.
Escribo estas líneas escuchando a Antonio Vega. Como en tantas otras ocasiones en que sus manos huesudas trazaban esos precisos acordes en la acústica, como en los innumerables momentos en que su voz parecía absorber el aire para quedárselo. No existe un sonido similar al de su garganta, envuelto en una ternura descarnada, abierta; la de alguien que nunca sintió vergüenza de mostarse. La de un hombre que entró en mi vida (como en la de tantos otros) con una patada en el corazón.
La cercanía. Antonio es de la familia. Alguien sobre quien he hablado mucho. En especial con mi amigo Rafa (que es capaz de querer a una piedra) y que dio muchos tumbos y sufrió muchos escalofríos tras las canciones de este ser único.
La palabra {cómo expresar} {cómo evitar el tópico}. Es la hora de aprender. Hay que hablar de lo que se ama.
Recuerdo a las niñas cantando con él, un día tras otro, una tras otra.
Recuerdo a su primo Nacho diciéndome que la fortaleza de Antonio nos enterraría a todos.
Recuerdo tantos días.
Y siento amor, una sonrisa que sobrevuela las lágrimas.
Un brillo que me hace mejor.
Un deseo.
Archivo de Mayo, 2009
Antonio
Si me das a elegir
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Antiphon
I’ve gone through several nightmarish relationships in my life. As a result, my self esteem was damaged beyond remedy. The women I used to be attracted to vaccined me against any kind of complacency and self-absorption and made healthy vanity the fastest shortcut to shame.
Photography became the only acceptable excuse to demand approval and attention, the only source of comfort and relief, the emergency exit, the raw material of new beginnings after emotional downfalls and quakes. The spinal cord of my identity.
And suddenly, the biggest stroke of luck: her adventitious appearance, the unpredictable realization of all emotional needs. The struggle for survival mutated into another kind of primal drive: to give her something of great value in return. To let myself be noticed and succeed, putting this single virtue to a test. To clean up the mess left by past sentimental choices, working hard to earn her magnificent silences, giving the world something as precious as what I had been given.
I barely wheathered the storm until she reclaimed my name from obscurity. Maybe one must be completely emptied in order to be worthy of true grace.
I remember the first time touched her skin with my lenses, long before we really found each other, so even though times of economic recession are not the easiest for artists, I trust the means to find me like she did. Photography is not about distinction and celebrity, but love returning to the world like an antiphon. The privilege of channeling cardinal revelation through ordinary things.
Plate tectonics
Most of the people and things I love to the bones were beautiful, bountiful accidents at the very beginning. It would be risky to abridge memory without blotting out the essential. The true relationship between cause and effect is largelly concealed to the conscious mind.
My heart is the ball losing momentum before choosing black or red, odd or even and then falling on to the wheel. They used to sell cameras saying you press the button and we do the rest.
It never was that easy. The whole process takes so much responsibility that I fluctuate between elation and an overwhelming sense of failure from one click to the next.
Some days she arrives home from work totally worn-out. She barely drinks a glass of hot milk and passes away, chronically sleep deprived.
I stay awake with blurry eyes, looking at her, feeling like an impostor, wondering what happy chance put her in my way and how can I make myself deserving of such beauty.
While others spend hours playing X-Box or Wii, I have chosen impatience, expectancy, distress, distrust and fence-sitting fibrillation as my favorite entertainments. I take photographs of the other half of my whole. Starting from the bottom, attempting the way up.
I sometimes feel like things are starting to fall into place and suddenly I’m brutally assaulted by questions about my so called talent. Something goes really wrong with my self esteem.
Tailcoated men walk by the reflection I’ve built of myself on a fuzzy mirror.
