The exercise consists of putting half a distance between you and the nougat or sausage ads, just like you do with the lottery: we know it’s hard for us to win, but we buy a few tenths because “what if…”. You know, the conditional is the salt of life. When perfumes are advertised on TV promising an irresistible appeal, don’t be completely suspicious, because at Christmas the word inspiration is spelled with glitter. We complain about the waste of curriculum and think that we are treated like children lacking affection, but we admit that being one hundred percent adults 24/7 is real torture. Stealing a little naivety from children, nephews or grandchildren is essential in order to avoid the sugary menu.
While the Ibex companies wish us happiness as if we mattered to them more than anything, we think that it has taken us a lot to mature. We have passed through transit stations and caught connecting flights with a certain taste for provisionality. Going from one side to the other, physically and mentally, is covered with a magnetic force thanks to the conditional mode. What if there was something better waiting for us? What if our wishes were tattooed in a corner of destiny? Then, among the boxes of marzipan and crunchy, the anti-Mozart spirit will emerge, which will tell us that no, there is nothing true, only crooked streaks of cynicism.
Mozart, even though he was the son of the most beautiful couple in Salzburg, came out in awe, not much, but he is described as kind and attentive, a genius who transformed himself at the piano. I look for information about the anti-Mozart expression, which the protagonist of the recommended series Nada (Disney) repeats, and I find a portentous author with an agitated life: Alberto Laiseca, author of Los Sorias, a monumental novel of 1,300 pages. Ricardo Piglia considered it the best novel that has been written in Argentina since Los siete locos, by Roberto Arlt. Orphaned by his mother, Laiseca confessed that his father’s abuse pushed him to books. The Phantom of the Opera whetted his appetite and he began to write “delusional realism”. Borges refused to read one of his stories, Matando enanos a garrotazos, because of the bad taste in the choice of the gerund.
Laiseca carried the manuscript – which she rewrote four times – in a supermarket bag for thirteen years. On one occasion, a thief tried to steal from him, but he forced himself in time and saved her. Teacher of literary workshops, one of his pearls states: “Only what is exaggerated is alive”. He was a cult writer who ceased to be one when he appeared in a television series of horror stories. On set he wouldn’t unstick his cigar under a ceiling fan. Laiseca claimed that he was fighting the anti-Mozart, following the idea that Mozart is absolute good, “but the enemy of good is not evil, but the anti-good”.
I ask around about the anti-Mozarts, and my friend Ignacio reminds me of an anecdote revealed by Simon Leys, in which he questions the search for ugliness, or the terror of beauty. He explained that in a cafe, suddenly, the piano of the composer from Salzburg sounded and everyone was uncomfortable, paralyzed. People stopped talking and a pool of disgust hung over the bar and tables until someone changed the dial. Immediately the noise returned. Those present returned to being the same as before, relaxed and resumed the conversations. In his act, they showed that Mozart acted as a kind of distorting agent. Because beauty challenges us and at the same time isolates us, but it is fatal to lose it. Merry Christmas.
