When I met him in person, I let him know that his raucous quejío had been present in many moments where flamenco helped me move forward.
There was a time in my life when I felt like a sleepwalker looking for the light switch. I was lost, staggering in the dark, with the dizzying compass of my steps always on the edge of the precipice. Then I learned that it had a clinical name as hackneyed as it was incurable: depression. If I got out of it, if I found the change in time, it is thanks to flamenco and, above all, to a singer from Los Jereles nicknamed “El Torta” for whom I have a special affection.
When I met him in person, I let him know, telling him that his hoarse moan had been present in many moments when flamenco helped me move forward, regardless of the mining companies talking about landslides and blind explosions, or the fandangos singing to the grief of the deceased mother; flamenco had managed to rid me of the feeling of the rope in my hands and that was something I wanted to thank him for.
El Torta ordered a whiskey and then told me that he had seen death several times. “But he didn’t want to take me, he hid,” he said sarcastically. Then he started telling me once he was close to her, or so he thought. The story has its joke and its spark, which is why it deserves a separate article.
It was a night that lasted several nights, “I don’t know if I can explain it,” El Torta told me, who was with some people and they entered a club, but he didn’t know how or where and he He had such a morao that he moved away, on one of the sofas, to sleep a little, stretching out and putting on that black coat with lapels that he wore to the Jereles when the cold started. And so he fell asleep. When he woke up, he didn’t know where he was; there was no one there anymore. People had left thinking that Torta had left too, that the scare had struck. And that the lump on the sofa was a coat that someone had left behind. The owner of the restaurant must have thought something like that too, who turned off the lights and locked the door without worrying about anything else.
But all these things, El Torta learned later; At that time, he had woken up in the dark with a very large onion and had lit a cigarette, and in the light of the lighter, he could see Egyptian coffins that served as decoration. Then he had the impression of being in an ancient temple, that is why he believed that he was already dead and that he was going through purgatory.
So he put on his coat and, lit by the glow of his cigarette, he went to the bar and poured himself a Marie Brizard. “Wait for God.” While he drank the anise, he thought that the first thing he would say to God was to take him to where Camarón, la Paquera, Terremoto, Moraíto and Luis el de la Pica were, who were surely having problems there. But God was late and El Torta, impatient, poured himself another drink. At that moment, the door opened and the cleaning lady appeared with the mop and the rag, and El Torta asked her very politely if God was going to take a long time. To which the cleaning lady replied that God did not work on holidays. So since the door was open, Cake went out into the street and there he understood that it was Sunday and that he was not dead.
He actually died shortly after, on New Year’s Eve in Sanlúcar; because we already know that destiny has these disorders. Sometimes I imagine him partying with Paquera, Moraíto, Camarón and the whole gang, and I remember those days when I was a living dead, wandering in the dark in an unknown house without finding the light switch. I didn’t yet know that for depression, the most important thing was to choose a good discography.
