Mes: noviembre 2012

Regresan los Red Hot Chili Peppers a México

Reflexiones sobre Fiona Apple

Ya todos sabemos que esta artista, que tanto esperábamos en México, ha cancelado su concierto; no sólo eso, también su gira por Latinoamérica. Su larga carrera está llena de miles de cosas. Su carácter fuerte ha sido causa de problemas que no han podido opacar su inigualable talento, que puede verse plasmado en canciones como Criminal, así como una voz ruda, poderosa, al mismo tiempo que suave y sutil, propia de una cantante de jazz. Pero en esta ocasión, todo queda de lado, el trasfondo es algo que debemos reflexionar mas allá de lo normal.

Muchas veces se puede cuestionar la decisión de una persona pero creo que en este caso uno debe leer la carta y abrir su mente y sentimientos ante lo que ella se describe. Dejo aquí el texto:

• It’s 6pm on Friday,and I’m writing to a few thousand friends I have not met yet. I am writing to ask them to change our plans and meet a little while later. Here’s the thing. I have a dog Janet, and she’s been ill for almost two years now, as a tumor has been idling in her chest, growing ever so slowly. She’s almost 14 years old now.I got her when she was 4 months old. I was 21 then ,an adult officially – and she was my child. She is a pitbull, and was found in Echo Park, with a rope around her neck, and bites all over her ears and face. She was the one the dogfighters use to puff up the confidence of the contenders. She’s almost 14 and I’ve never seen her start a fight ,or bite, or even growl, so I can understand why they chose her for that awful role. She’s a pacifist. Janet has been the most consistent relationship of my adult life, and that is just a fact. We’ve lived in numerous houses, and jumped a few make shift families, but it’s always really been the two of us. She slept in bed with me, her head on the pillow, and she accepted my hysterical, tearful face into her chest, with her paws around me, every time I was heartbroken, or spirit-broken, or just lost, and as years went by, she let me take the role of her child, as I fell asleep, with her chin resting above my head. She was under the piano when I wrote songs, barked any time I tried to record anything, and she was in the studio with me all the time we recorded the last album. The last time I came back from tour, she was spry as ever, and she’s used to me being gone for a few weeks every 6 or 7 years. She has Addison’s Disease, which makes it dangerous for her to travel since she needs regular injections of Cortisol, because she reacts to stress and to excitement without the physiological tools which keep most of us from literally panicking to death. Despite all of this, she’s effortlessly joyful and playful, and only stopped acting like a puppy about 3 years ago. She’s my best friend and my mother and my daughter, my benefactor, and she’s the one who taught me what love is. I can’t come to South America. Not now. When I got back from the last leg of the US tour, there was a big, big difference. She doesn’t even want to go for walks anymore. I know that she’s not sad about aging or dying. Animals have a survival instinct, but a sense of mortality and vanity, they do not. That’s why they are so much more present than people. But I know that she is coming close to point where she will stop being a dog, and instead, be part of everything. She’ll be in the wind, and in the soil, and the snow, and in me, wherever I go. I just can’t leave her now, please understand. If I go away again, I’m afraid she’ll die and I won’t have the honor of singing her to sleep, of escorting her out. Sometimes it takes me 20 minutes to pick which socks to wear to bed. But this decision is instant. These are the choices we make, which define us. I will not be the woman who puts her career ahead of love and friendship. I am the woman who stays home and bakes Tilapia for my dearest, oldest friend. And helps her be comfortable, and comforted, and safe, and important. Many of us these days, we dread the death of a loved one. It is the ugly truth of Life, that keeps us feeling terrified and alone. I wish we could also appreciate the time that lies right beside the end of time. I know that I will feel the most overwhelming knowledge of her, and of her life and of my love for her, in the last moments. I need to do my damnedest to be there for that. Because it will be the most beautiful, the most intense, the most enriching experience of life I’ve ever known. When she dies. So I am staying home, and I am listening to her snore and wheeze, and reveling in the swampiest, most awful breath that ever emanated from an angel. And I am asking for your blessing. I’ll be seeing you. Love, Fiona.

No lo traduciré no porque no quiera, si no porque hay pasajes que son difíciles de explicar. Sin embargo, algo es claro: el amor de esta mujer por su perro. Esto deja en claro la sensibilidad que hemos perdido ante el mundo, ya que tener un animal no es una cosa simple y mucho menos debe ser tomada a la ligera; es un miembro de la familia y como tal debe ser tratado.

Por eso en esta época tan cercana a la navidad, donde las emociones con buen sentido afloran, es un buen punto de reflexión para que apoyemos una noble causa. Los exhorto a unirse a albergues que están haciendo lo propio para cuidar a muchos animalitos.

En mi caso particular he sido hogar temporal y debido a que mi departamento es pequeño y no propicio para una mascota como un gato o un perro, no he podido adoptar. Algo que a veces nos cuesta entender porque “Donde come uno pueden comer dos”, dicho popular en nuestra cultura. Justamente en el albergue que les compartiré me enseñaron que una mascota es como un bebé, y como tal, uno debe prepararse… Ya saben; espacio, comida y tiempo para el cachorro. Antes de ir por un perro o gato recuerden todo lo que les comenté. Igualmente pueden ir a pasear perritos los fines de semana o ser como yo, un hogar temporal. Eso también es ayudar. Creo que eso me sensibilizó ante el problema de Fiona.

Bueno Hijos del rol, espero que si alguno andaba pensado en tener un nuevo miembro de la familia, le sirva el dato del albergue: http://www.enbuscadeunhogar.org.mx/ Cerrando con lo musical les dejo este video que a mí me voló la cabeza. Una vez más, Fiona actúa de manera magistral. Este es el primer sencillo de su último disco que si tienen oportunidad, deben escuchar. Espero sus comentarios acerca del mismo.

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