Immortality

“We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, less restless and rebellious, and the critical spirit—the engine of progress—would not even exist.

Just like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life.

Those who seek in fiction what they do not have are saying—without needing to say it or even know it—that life as it is does not suffice to quench our thirst for the absolute, which is the foundation of the human condition, and that it should be better.

We invent fictions in order to live in some way the many lives we would like to have when we only have one."

— Mario Vargas Llosa | Excerpt from his Nobel Prize in Literature acceptance speech, 2010.

I don´t know if it´s because he was Peruvian, like me, but I deeply connect and feel every word of Mario Vargas Llosa´s novels.

There are very few people in the world I would´ve wanted to meet and have a conversation with. One was David Lynch, who passed away this year, and another is Vargas Llosa, who passed away last week.

He used to live in Madrid, where I live. We just didn´t move in the same circles.

Once, I was playing a concert in Málaga, and as I went down the lobby of my hotel, right before going to perform, I saw him sitting there. He seemed to be calmly waiting for somebody.

I wanted so badly to go to him, tell him how much his novels meant to me, how deeply I lived the stories that he so vividly painted out with words… but I didn´t.

I know that famous people get approached constantly by strangers, and it just didn´t feel right for me to disturb his peace. I was respectful. I thought to myself, “someday, I´ll meet him in the right situation.”

Now, I know that will never happen.

A few days ago, a writer and journalist ended a Facebook post about Vargas Llosa like this: “And now, beyond any applause or criticism, the writer Mario Vargas Llosa deserves the place he holds and is beginning to inhabit: immortality.”

Beautiful. Just beautiful.

Have a great day,

Claudio.