Roger de Gràcia: "The secret of life is not to look it directly in the eyes"

When Roger de Gràcia (Barcelona, ​​1975) explained to his mother that he was going to write a book about the social phobia he has suffered from since childhood, she warned him that he would never get hired again. That doesn't seem to have been the case. Since the publication of Tell me, crazy. In 2023, De Gràcia continued working on the podcast We keep our word. from Catalunya Ràdio, and with Júlia Otero on Onda Cero. In his book, and also in the conversation, the body, the head and drink appear, as a habit, as a learning process and as a limit.

So he prefers beer.

— I've tried it with wine many times. I can drink it. I don't dislike it. I can tell if a wine is superb or terrible. And I can say that I prefer red to white because it has more body, because it has that earthy quality, because white wine seems to me as if it's been refined and taken to an overly delicate place. I feel like white wine goes straight to my head, and that makes me nervous. Red wine, on the other hand, I feel more in my chest. But they're still two tastes that I feel are ahead of me.

As?

— It happens in life: some tastes evolve as you get older. As you get older, for example, you develop a taste for beer. But it takes a lot of work to really like it. You spend years drinking beer without liking it, and then one day you say, "Wow, I like it now." With wine, I still feel like it's ahead of me. I don't know if I'll ever get the hang of it or not. It's a taste I don't quite understand.

And when would you say that the beer "got him"?

— I think it was when my son was born, with the overwhelming responsibility of fatherhood. After school, snack time, dinner, after all the responsibilities, when the baby was finally asleep, we'd go out onto the terrace, open a beer, and it was like, "Oh, finally." Like you see them do in American TV shows, like Homer Simpson. I guess I associated beer with adulthood. It was an adult thing, and I wanted to do something adult. And it's true that often, things are more pleasurable if they take their time. Perhaps we should re-examine this obsession with constantly having pleasure.

In Tell me, crazy. (Column, 2023) the playful dimension of drinking appears: the game surrounding alcohol, but also the game as a way of relating to others.

— When you lose your playful spirit, it's as if you want to completely abandon childhood. As if you were saying, "No more playing: I'm an adult." But play saves you, because it's an indirect view of life. The search for absolute truth is like looking directly at the sun, and that's not good, because it hurts your eyes. Playing is looking at things out of the corner of your eye. It allows you to breathe, it gives you time. For a while, I was obsessed with the truth and purity of things, and this brings a lot of frustration, and you try to compensate for the frustration with pleasures, and pleasures are addictive. Until you discover that the secret of life is not to look it directly in the eye.

He also talked about how alcohol helped him "quit" his brain. Does he still feel that way?

— What I have now is the feeling that I no longer need it, and that calms me down a lot. I have bouts of anxiety, but I try to mask it or alleviate it with substances… I hardly ever do that. When I drink, I do it now for fun, to be with friends, to dance, and not to compensate for the pain. But it's quite recent. I haven't had this little bit of certainty for very long.

And why beer?

— I think the taste of beer is a lot like life: a touch of bitterness, but refreshing. It's refreshing and at the same time it gets on your nerves. You take a sip and think, "Okay, it's refreshing," and then you're left with a bitter aftertaste. But it's refreshing, and you have that doubt, and that's why you take another sip: "Did I like this? Oh, now I can't remember. Was I really that bad?" And you keep going.

Does he have any quirks?

— I don't have any.

No glass of wine for special occasions?

— No. To the point that people say to me, "Man, you can't even have a glass of wine at home." But I don't even think about it. Besides, I think if things are good, there's no need to make a big fuss.

This explains the video I saw, where he was toasting with warm cava…

— For many people it will be a horror. But I prioritize the experience and the people: the ritual is secondary to happiness. When you're truly happy, nothing else matters much.

Beyond taste, is there anything about wine that interests you?

— I'm in Northern Catalonia now, and this landscape seems wonderful to me because it brings everything together: the Pyrenees sloping down to the water, the Albera mountains, the coastal towns of Banyuls, Portvendres, Collioure… And, in the middle of it all, the vineyards, cultivated with an astonishing verticality. You see land that's almost about to tumble into the sea… All of this has a special magic. But the product that's just come out… I don't know if I lack years or experience.

Do you think it's also due to a lack of daily interaction with wine?

— Yes. In our world, wine is more of an exception: it's for parties, celebrations. That's why, when you go out for drinks and want to order wine, you're afraid of messing it up. Wine, if it's not already on the table, is hard to integrate.

Have you noticed a change from your parents' table to yours?

— I suppose so: my grandparents had more wine on the table. But what kind of wine was it? A more everyday wine. The daily wine, from the cellar, which was stretched out with funnyI suppose my parents thought this was rubbish. And then came the time when the everyday wine disappeared and suddenly, this amazing wine appeared. How is it possible that wines that just four days ago were being sold in the cellar for practically nothing, like cleaning the stairs, suddenly cost six hundred euros a bottle? Faced with this, my parents were a little overwhelmed and said, "You know what? When you figure it out, you'll let me know."

Do you get the feeling that young people are drinking less?

— My son's world is a bit distant from mine, of course. But I do get the feeling that they're more focused on the "hardcore lifestyle": the gym, protein supplements. There's always a tyranny pulling you along, a majority voice calling you in a certain direction: before it was about letting loose, and now it's about appearances. They live a double life, between their personal lives and their lives on social media.

But is there something about wine, in particular, that sets them apart?

— The other day on the radio, we spoke with a wine appellation in Castile, and they said that wine consumption was declining considerably among young people. They explained that perhaps there had been an excess of marketing or elitist discourse surrounding wine, which had alienated young people, making them afraid to enter this world because they didn't understand it. "What if I don't understand if this is a Priorat or a Don Simón, if it tastes like cinnamon or truffle?" This is off-putting. The language is there, and that's fine, and it should be learned. But there should also be the shared experience of enjoying a good wine.

How do you deal with the topic of alcohol with your teenage son?

— He talks about it much more calmly than we ever could. It's harder for me, because I'm still part of the old school of hints, of "Hey, watch out," of the idea that a subliminal message is all it takes. Besides, since I'm from a generation that went through getting drunk, experimenting with drugs, and saw that it wasn't so bad... If you told my dad you'd smoked a joint, he'd think you'd be shooting up heroin the next day. They made that terrible chain of events. We've had our share of rough times, but we've seen that you didn't die and you didn't get hooked either, unless you had certain personality traits or specific circumstances. It doesn't scare us as much. Now, with our son, we talk, but more through daily, ongoing observation. We're "doing it little by little," but without hiding it. Before, it was "doing it little by little" while hiding it.

Has your son shown interest in your book?

— Yes, but not too much. He's 15 and a very cheerful, happy kid. I've been explaining to him that I have this condition, but I've noticed a generational gap: while my mother never talked about feelings and my generation was just starting, they talk about it much more at school. The fact that I wrote a book about mental health didn't particularly surprise him. It seemed almost normal to him. Beyond that, he hasn't read it because he doesn't read. none book.

But would you like me to read it at some point?

— I think so. It's a way of getting to know each other better. And mutual understanding is never a hindrance, never too much: you never truly understand the other person, no matter how much you know, just as you never truly understand yourself. I don't believe in the fear that "if we know too much, the magic is lost." Nobody is smart enough to know everything, neither about the other person nor about themselves. There's always mystery.