From the Gypsy to Geese

The last time I spoke with him, he repeated to me again that he didn't want to be Elvis Presley. "Now I don't care anymore. Elvis Presley doesn't appeal to me anymore. Now I want to be the shepherd of the flock because people must be helped." This week Joan Porta Salse died, the Gypsy of Balaguer. That kid who at eleven years old wanted to be Elvis Presley.

He lived in a world that no longer exists. An iceberg Catalonia, sunken, frozen, despite being real. A country of young people like Joan. It was the 80s and 90s. Kids who wanted to be musicians. Who formed groups and more groups. Who played in the hundreds of nightclubs, pubs, venues, dives, holes, bunkers that existed. They were masters of the night. Thousands and thousands of young people going up and down. There was a country that was local, regional, but universal. Since this didn't happen in the dictatorial Barcelona, it wasn't seen, but it was massive, energetic, decisive. There was a real Catalonia. It was a happy and sad country.

There were farmers who died in toilets from heroin overdoses, but since they weren't official urban junkies, of the asphalt, of the city, they didn't count, they didn't want to be seen. Everything was in bulk and in abundance: joy and sorrow. The Gypsy of Balaguer is a metaphor for everything. The young man who believed he could change his life and life changed him. Psychotic episodes, schizophrenia, depressions appeared... His head like a walking car bomb. The weakness, the frailty, the impotence, wanting to cure it with addictions to ground himself to the earth. He explained it to me: joints, alcohol mixed with medication, "coke," speed, MDMA, ketamine... "The bugs, the bugs, they aren't bugs that fly, they are LSD." Hooked... "From 18 years old until 38, 40, 42..." The ellipses like a hypothesis of the future.

Between a reality of being a bricklayer by day and a singer-songwriter by night. Between drugs. Hooked, grabbed, clinging, magnetized, frozen to a guitar as if it were an addiction to cure the other addictions. It wasn't just the lyrics: it was the voice, the face, the eyes, the bangs, the gestures... He carried the tattoos, the scars of life on his vocal cords. The kid who wanted to be a musician sang to his mental illnesses, to the basket of toxicities, to the disappointments, sadnesses... Music could be a redemption, a salvation. As if only what is not seen but is felt could rescue him.

I believed that music could heal him. And that if he healed, he could heal others: “Music is like the word of Jesus Christ, which has gone from one to another, through all generations. And I believe it is the medicine for everyone. What we speak of psychologically, mentally, educationally, everything that has been the behavior of human society”. Amen.

Music. The music of El Gitano, or the music of Oques Grasses, because the group is saying goodbye, but not the music. Joan explained it to me: “Now, when you die, it will happen like an onion... An onion grows in any case. With the seed from the little ball it makes at the top when it has matured and makes a little ball and makes a thousand or a million seeds, which are very small black dots and every black dot is an onion. Or if you plant the whole onion, it makes the calçot onion, which makes eight or ten onions around it. In life, we will sprout again in another place, or in another way, but we will sprout again, for sure”. That is why we want Oasis to return, for U2 to return with a new tour… Whoever you want, whoever you believe in. Music: what cannot be seen can be a salvation.