Stupid behavior is domain-dependent and a puzzling paradox: one can be a genius in a given area and act like a natural-born fool, a jerk, a moron or a cretine in another.
But sheep behavior is even more a mystery: the crowd buying in the same things, the same myths, the same lies, the same political ideas, the same religion. The crowd going to the same places, expecting the same unrealistic things, watching the same cretinous reality shows and acclaiming the same mediocre, insipid and artless idols just to go on belonging to the disquieted majority as it were a merit of some kind, a contest of purposeless renunciation, the Herculean harvest of an inexistent self. The crowd picking Paris Hilton or Chiki Chiki as buffoons and role models or making Antonio Vega a posthumous best selling just because he is now dead.
Txema Rodríguez
photographer
Sheep behavior
Beauty for granted
“Ahora tú, no dejes de hablar”
Some people wagered his name for years in betting pools of early evanescence, but a couple of weeks ago, he sort it out the best he could to sing La chica de ayer in a crappy and mawkish TV show called The battle of the decades. After the song, almost breathless, visibly weak and ready to drop, he answered a hollow question of the host about why should the 80′s had to win over the 50′s.
That was his last public appearance.
Watching the video I see Anabel, one of the eliminated contestants of the last edition of OT (a kind of cross between Pop Idol and Big Brother), visibly touched by his performance and his frailty.
It’s almost an oxymoron to see Antonio in that context, the heartbreaking afterglow of his talent in such a splurge of mediocrity. However, Anabel’s expression was surprisingly honest and maybe for the first time, I found in her something worthwhile to look at. Perhaps it was not her merit, but his shy and wounded gift.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things and he had the outstanding capacity to bring that love to the surface through his compositions and his presence.
One cannot run away from weakness. It’s all about fighting it out or perishing and he was a light flyweight warrior of his own brittleness, yet always ready to let the blaze unfold.
I read somewhere that grace comes often clad in the dusky robe of desolation and in this case it’s true without question and beyond doubt. He struggled inner demons and he had a great craving for ingravity, but he wasn’t as sad as we imagined him to be. He wanted to have a child, he was about publishing a book of poems, he was excited about his new album, and even though his body was running away through the back stairs, he didn’t want to die and he didn’t mention death in any of his songs.
I’m afraid that whatever I write about him in the aftermath of his departure, will result in a platitude.
The truth is that his two guitars were close to the coffin, available to whoever wanted to say good bye with a few accords but no one had the guts to do so, as if the only acceptable eulogy was silence.
We owe him more sweetness and kindness than we are able to pay.
The biggest curse of our times is to take beauty for granted until it’s irrevocably lost.