For those of us who arrived at the work of Spinetta already advanced, Gloria Guerrero was a kind of involuntary exegete of El Flaco. If Luis’s music and lyrics radiated prolific universes without the need for any explanation, Gloria’s articles added a welcome context to the motley Spinette forest that sprouted from her songs.
To “la Guerrero” we readers owe –along with how much she captured in her three books, in Humor, in La Mano, in Rolling Stone, in Página/12, in Rock & Pop, among other media– the detailed plan the worldview of a foundational musician with luminous nooks and crannies.
Gloria, always testimonial and genuine, had the generosity on this anniversary to share with Télam the memory of a personal event that involves her with the day Luis Alberto died.
“You have to write”
“After two days without light in my apartment, I decided to go to dinner and sleep at my mom’s, without Wi-Fi or a computer. As soon as I arrived, Roque Casciero, editor of Página, called me on the cell phone to tell me that Luis had died. I vaguely remember that I threw myself in a corner to cry while listening to Roque, who told me ‘you have to write’. I explained that I was not fit; that I didn’t even have a pc with me, and he insisted.
So sad and without much perspective, I went down to the street, I went to a booth that was at that time in Rivadavia and Colombres, I asked for a computer with a connection and I sat down for fifteen minutes. I wrote almost in a row. I did not even comply with the scheduled extension. But, surrounded by strange people and so much noise, at nine o’clock at night, far from my house, in such a hostile time and place, I planted what came into my head in one fell swoop. And I sent it by mail to the newspaper: ‘Roque, this is what there is,’ I told him”.
Shortly after sending it, Gloria received a new call from Roque Casciero: the newspaper’s management had decided that those lines could not go “inside” (inside pages) but that they deserved to go directly on the cover. That’s how it went.
The result that became the cover that February 9 resonates and permeates. The musician, the poet, the exact “flow” that he was, had become text: another spinettean miracle; this time, through the chronicler that both Luis had given us in his notes.
As published, we borrowed those lines (from Gloria and P12 colleagues) to share here, below.
Water
By Gloria Guerrero
And now why. And how. They all talk muffled.
And we live paddling against the current the fools, the crazy pretty ones, and those who swim against the current the river bears them the same –it is known–; it still drags them. But the others, those who row easily and go with the current, those who think they are not being dragged, the river also drags them.
But Luis does not row.
Luis is the river.
All the water is behind him, and in front of him.
When someone has cried a lot and too much, it is often said that “there are no tears left”.
There are no tears left now, but a whole river remains.
