Don't let it hurt your hair in farewell, Santi.

I am lying on my bed, in front of my window, listening to Santiago Feliú.

From my window you can't see the sea, only a blue house and some trees, and a pothole that always has water in it. I didn't have a good time to live, I don't know how to make it better and of course I'm grateful for everything I have, it's the years that I don't like. 

Maybe at other times I could see the sea, drink cola, or find books in public bookstores. 

Maybe in other times it would not be so hard for me to talk about Santiago Feliú. It is hard for me; and nevertheless a need is born in me to talk about him. I am not interested in telling who he is, because everybody knows it. I know what I have acquired from a couple of stories and videos. I didn't know him, I can't talk about the unknown, but I can talk about the pain of never having seen him. 

Ten years ago Santiago Feliú died. The circumstances of his death are for me like those of his guitar in reverse: alien. I was twelve years old and I knew of his existence, because I got to know him somehow. My mother told me then: don't be sad, the troubadour you like, Santiago Feliú, died. When I was twelve years old I did not understand his lyrics, but listening to him was nice. And I got sad, as if I anticipated that always, after that day, it would be a constant pain in me. An unnecessary pain. An exaggeration. But a pain very much mine. 

As well as now, I have tried five texts. In one I say that for me it is like the Easy Song by Marta Valdés ("he arrived without greeting / he took advantage of the song / he left all the memories unfinished, all the mysteries unexplained, all the questions unanswered / he left without warning / like someone who has to pass"). In another one, I tell that I was asleep on a trip, and he woke me up singing with Liuba The day you Love Me. In the last one I tried to explain -with the arguments of a friend- why it was so musically wonderful.

I try to write, to depersonalize the text, not to make the story of this melancholy absurd. But it doesn't come out. I always end up asking myself (asking him) why I will not have been able to see him; if he will have been a happy person; if he left, and others left, what is left for us? What do I feed myself and those who, like me, cannot drink of that beauty? Where do I go? Where do I find him? Sometimes, I think he did not deserve death, but life did not deserve him. And again I condemn myself for assuming things of which I cannot be certain. 

What could I talk to Santiago Feliú about? Of the lack of love, of not seeing the sea, of waiting, of emptiness, of sadness, of silence, of the death of songs and guitars?

And I go back and listen to him, and for every answer he gives me, I have another question. Who was Santiago Feliú? What did he dream at night? Why Cuba, and why that time? Who am I in the midst of all this that does not seem to me?

Writing about him is a risk. The risk of not getting close, of failing, of filling a text with his lyrics, of ending up crying, for me and for him, and for dreams and for Cuba and for all that we cry for -those of us who cry in these times, those of us who still have the luxury of crying. 

There are many storms. And one shuts oneself in, to protect oneself. But in the enclosure there is emptiness. Because we don't have anything of our own, we haven't been touched by any of that beauty. We don't know how to make beauty as they did, the ones from before, the ones with long hair and rock on the sly. So I have to live in an alien time. To miss things I never knew. And what comes next?

I hate the idea of making an allegorical text about his death. I hate the idea of his death. And as I write this, I know, with certainty, that there are many people thinking about it. At this exact second there is someone thinking about it. Then, for a moment, I realize that death is not the end of things, that he was so much more than death, than life, than things and people. It was almost everything that was in his songs, and a lot of sensations that cannot be explained and that cause me to be here, ten years later, trying to verbalize why I cling to Santiago, who died when I was twelve years old, why I come back to him in the midst of crisis and darkness, and also happiness. And I would like to believe more, to believe that he floats around, that he reincarnates, that he can answer me. I don't know. I'd like to believe that he knows I exist. But it's not easy to believe in the unknown. It's like believing in tomorrow. It's like having faith.