Hemingway said that, in the face of blank, it was enough to write a true prayer. The most true one knew. In Cuba this exercise is dangerous, because the first truth that appears is not bright; It carries frustration and disenchantment. And one wants to write something encouraging, not polluting.
I have been in front of the blank paper all these weeks. Not for lack of stories, but for excess reality. One feels that others deserve to read good news, hopeful texts, but do not arrive.
Like that Santa Clara troubadour who has dedicated himself to learning classic songs, because what he has to say is too sad. Wait, patient, better energies. Me too.
The school year began. My eldest daughter reached the first degree and, beyond expectations, there are so many things that are no longer like before.
I wanted to write about everyone’s song, a meeting of troubadours starting September, which celebrated 25 years of having been a project founded by Vicente Feliú. Artists and promoters from several countries, a troubadour apprentices, wielding their maxim: “If the singing does not machaca does not bear fruit.”
The event happened in spite of everything: the fall of the SEN, suspended concerts, changed scenarios, program in constant mutation. But it happened. Amid the collapses, it is an important victory.
I could have broken the curse of the blank paper, again, if I had let me guide for the experience in the “She and I”, the meeting of singers dedicated to Marta Valdés and Eduardo Sosa. Women of the continent giving concerts such as fresh breaths.
There I missed the public. Both festivals occurred, above all, for organizers and guests. The lack of transport, the electric uncertainty, the solera that exhausts us, moves away people from poetry, of beauty.
Some foreign participants stayed in Havana waiting for Silvio’s concert. And there, I could write without pauses. Seeing the university full, so many people united by the same song, is renovating. It reminds you that there is still a country. That the collective spirit can relieve us of our own pains, even for a moment.
In September, other finals have left: Oralitura Havana, an event for the tenth and traditions from the prism of young people; Pedro Pastor in the house of the Americas; exhibitions to insist from art.
However, before and after Silvio, I see that the blank paper has trouble sustaining my truths.
I dare not flow from my consciousness. It does not drive me the exception of a September overflowing in activities; I am in fear of a dry October, as was August, as these long months of survival have been for most Cubans.
On the way to Old Havana on a Saturday night and find the empty streets, the bars closed early, the corners flooded with masonal waters and garbage. It looks like an abandoned city.
The concerts should last all year, the exhibitions. Art and beauty should be the rule, not the exception. Theaters, cinemas, museums need people and people.
I imagine the open planetarium, the Pablo vibrate center, the crowded dark chamber. The cannon of 9, again, as a family event. The couples in love waiting for the sunset on Sunday at the foot of the Christ.
The normality of Cuba is overwhelming, and as the troubadour who does not want to write his songs, such as those who prefer to stay at home before surrendering to the ungrateful adventure offered by the city, conserving the blank paper seems to be the best decision.
However, one who listens to teachers dares. “I am boring,” I wrote following Hemingway’s advice, and I seemed to be five years old, sitting in a dark room in the city of Matanzas in the 90s and listening to the answer in my grandmother’s warm voice: “Never say that word; there is always something better to do.”
