When referring to ‘And one is believed’, the book in which he tells how he composed a song with Joan Manuel Serrat, the novelist Jordi Soler presumes to have made a journey to childhood, when he met poetry.
“I have once again the child who listened to Serrat’s songs. In the book I make a trip to the community of Catalans where I was born in Veracruz (Mexico). For me it all started with his album dedicated to the poems of Miguel Hernández; from the songs I went to the poet and then to the desire to write,” Soler said this Saturday in an interview with Efe.
The volume edited by Random House has a chronicle, essay and memory of the children’s time in the 60s.
The story of the four -handed song began two days before Valentine’s Day in 2021, the second year of the plague. Serrat called Jordi to comment on the passage of the novel ‘The prince I went’, in which the Mexican mentioned several colored birds, including the Xirimicuaticololorodícuaro.
The singer -songwriter asked what kind of bird that was, the novelist confessed to having invented her. Then Serrat proposed to write a song together from the winged creature.
Run from pedantry
Soler’s first challenge in the creation of his new book was to write in the first person without giving prominence to the self. That is, not to appear as a presumed to enjoy Serrat’s friendship, whom the Mexican based in Barcelona considers the alpha singer -songwriter of the Spanish language.
“We had to avoid the pedantry that means telling my relationship with Joan Manuel Serrat. To solve that I had to maintain the perspective of the artist’s admirer. The narrator looks up at his favorite singer; that facilitates the narrative self I put there because there was no other way to narrate,” he explains.
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In ‘And one believes’ the reader finds out that Serrat is precious when composing, he hates that they put their songs if he eats in a restaurant and is a kitchen lover, determined to improve his culinary repertoire and interested in the way his friend prepares the quesadillas, popular dish in Mexico.
“I did not intend to create a book, but I have the mania to take notes of everything in a notebook and when I was writing the verses, I put on the other page of the notebook what Serrat and I were talking. A few months later I had a log with the work on one side and its references to the side,” he reveals.
A crazy world
As in several of his novels, in the newly edited non -fiction work, Jordi Soler returns to the issue of exile by retaking his parents’ memories in Veracruz, where they settled when fleeing from Franco’s Spain, which also forced Serrat to live a few months in Mexico.
“I was born in a family of exiles who sighed to return and knew that after certain years it was, there is no country to return because everything has changed,” he explains.
With the sensitivity that it has when dealing with the issue of emigration, it regrets reality, with deportations such as those of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, and the lack of opportunities for those who emigrate, a custom of the human being since the beginning of time.
“We live in a crazy world, but I prefer to think that after this selfish fever, we reach something more social democrat, empathy with others,” he says.
The Mexican is grateful, who for Serrat contracted “the virus” of poetry and half a century presumes to be a convalescent without a priest.
“I love Pesoa and a lot of more poets. I still return to André Breton and during an era it was Nerudian (Pablo Neruda). Anyway, I have many loves in poetry; these days I read the Mexican Julia Santibáñez; I am delighted with her most recent book,” he confesses.
Jordi Soler will return to Barcelona in a few days and there will work with Serrat the song of the Xirimicuaticololorodícuaro, which for now has been a bit long.
With EFE information.
