“I had a black dog, his name was depression. If you walk, it follows you; If you wake up, he wakes up with you, he never leaves you.” This phrase is from former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill and, since he uttered it to give visibility to the mental disorder he suffered from, popular culture has borrowed it, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world. Also the singer Nick Drake, who in his song Black Eyed Dog showed the anguish he felt shortly before committing suicide, at only 26 years old, due to an overdose of amitriptyline, an antidepressant. The British musician strums the guitar strings as he sings: “A black-eyed dog knocked on my door, a black-eyed dog called for more.” It is not surprising then that Miguel Ángel Oeste (Málaga, 1973) has chosen this title, Perro negro (Tusquets), for his new novel, which, he insists, “talks about Nick Drake but is not his biography.”

Sitting in the cafeteria of a bookstore in Barcelona, ??the writer meditates well before defining his latest work, of which he finished a first version in 2008, and which, years later, he has recovered and rewritten. “I talk about bonds. I was interested in the reader reflecting on how they relate to other people. That is the true essence of my pages.” Drake seems to be the excuse to get to this issue. “It’s like the figure of Dracula in Bram Stoker’s book. “He is always talked about, but he is absent.”

As happened with previous novels, such as Arena (2020), in which the protagonist had to decide his future without counting on his family; or I come from that fear (2022), in which the terror of his father’s mistreatment is glimpsed; The book puts mental health in the spotlight. “In a society as demanding as ours, almost all of us have moments in life of depression, depression and anxiety. Hiding it is absurd. And, although it is sometimes difficult, we must end the taboo, starting with literature,” says the author.

To do this, it provides its lines with reality and fiction. Real characters, such as record producer Joe Boyd, who discovered Drake, are intertwined with others from the mind of Oeste, such as Richard, inspired by actor Heath Ledger, “who also committed suicide and who had a project about Nick in mind Drake. In fact, he even made a short documentary that already includes the Black Eyed Dog song. “I had his music very much in mind.”

Fictional or not, the characters allow us to paint a portrait of how the singer of Pink Moon – his third and last album, and surely his most popular – was seen and how he related to others. “He was not very fond of social relationships. He had chronic depression that made it impossible for him in many aspects of his daily and professional life, as he preferred to avoid mass events. In addition, he was hypersensitive, although he took advantage of that characteristic to create his songs.

Music was his lifeline. “It kept him afloat. She lived to sing, although during her lifetime she did not enjoy much success. She released three albums that did not sell much more than a hundred copies. On the one hand, that frustrated him and may have created some pressure. But the benefits he obtained were many more. Composing made him feel better. The promotion was something else.”

His voice was appreciated decades later, “after resurfacing in television advertisements and in some series. She was very characteristic. Apparently fragile but disturbing at the same time, like his lyrics, which seem simple at first glance, but have a lot of metaphorical and symbolic components. Her mother, Molly, was a big influence. “They always sang together and played the piano and, beyond what she taught him, the rest of her taught herself. He never attended music classes. He was an innate talent.”

When trouble arose, he always returned to his lap and the large family home, Far Leys. “But there comes a point where that refuge also creates a contradiction, because in that decade, someone who was 26 years old was already mature and had to make a living for themselves. Now, young people have a harder time and life is more complicated. No matter how much they want, it is not easy to become independent. But, at that time, it was understood that one had to fly on his own, whether he could or not. The pressure in this sense was greater.”