Alone. Alone. Alone in the time of Virus...

We live in the time of Virus. There is a very real physical one that is growing in number. There is an infectious fear that has gripped many more. Times of crisis offer up the most fertile ground for opportunity, growth, and change.

We are all waking up to the reality that our worlds will never be the same again... What next? Where to from here? Who knows?

The Love Virus? An abstract idea, perhaps, but this crisis has given us an unprecedented moment as a species, the opportunity to either separate or draw near. The stakes, it appears, have never been higher.

WARNING: I do not share this story lightly! This is the heaviest of stuff!!! The biggest wrestle has been the ethics of offering up another’s story. Especially since they can neither be asked nor respond. This is pain wrestled from history. But also joy, even ecstasy. The only reason I feel permitted to share the following is because my partner in this dance spoke, over years, about sharing story with the hope that it may infect others. I feel its message is much needed now…

***

Solo, solo, solo…

Legs, weak from polio, years of painful surgery and medical treatments, shudder under the weight of this unusual exertion. Perhaps their trembling is more from the knowledge of what foul thing is about to unfold. Somehow this tired body drags its weary soul up the willing step ladder. Ironic, as stairs are a challenge for two legs permanently altered long ago. And yet now, it is desperation that shortens the distance between garage floor and timber beam.

And were the fingers steady as they knotted and secured the rope? Or were the liquid drugs quick in dumbing this spent emotional universe?

The passage of time from the end of joy to this day is unknown to all but one. The clues were there but went unheeded, as none should ever think such a life would unravel like this.

What torture must those final moments have been as the noose slipped over, pulled tight? Or, maybe the knot untied relief? Whatever the case, in those final moments flesh revolted against feeling. In a futile, desperate fight fingers and nails tore away at the hardware which smothered this gentle life, marking this beautiful face. A suffocating war between a story about a life and its chosen death.

But it is all too late. A shining life, unmade...

(A love letter from 2014 - the rise of H5N1, avian influenza)

Brother,

Your friend Thomas found you. I think what he saw cut to the deepest part of his being. Not even the dictates of faith are able to give him understanding and peace. He has prayed endlessly for you, a plea with his Maker to bend the rules just this once so that your soul might find a heavenly peace.

Your wife. She looked old and tired. Spent. Alone in the church pew. She played her hand, and now will forever carry this burden in her soul. And the three women who were your weekday world, what of them? I never thought there were tears in that iron Serbia-made soul, but today she was fragile and weeping.

Those among your friends and customer, we are stunned beyond disbelief. Tony, a shadow on the day, took care of the funeral arrangements as if you were a cherished older brother. Like a stuck record, he replayed the way you barged into his life and how it was forever changed. In his own dark and desperate moment you were, for him, a "God-send".

And me, mi amigo, I am left with little, yet so much to say. Our many conversations about the endless nooks and crannies of this complex life. Whisky and cigarettes, parables and stories, laughter and joy, frustration and disbelief, the big plans and bigger dreams, some now laid to rest. And yet, some things never die.

A diamond in a rough world, when your chips were down, lost, you had nothing left for yourself? “C'est La Vie” (That's life) is something you would always say. I could try and make it fit, but it seems so unfitting right now. Just over a fortnight has passed. Already things have begun to settle, change. The questions remain, but “why” does not easily fit in history’s picture frame. And so life goes on even though the smiles and heartache have yet to fade.

You once sang to the “Se?or” (Sir). Now, I reckon the pair of you are making sweet music in a heavenly sky. And the choirs of angels are being lifted by your healing song, and laughing at your endless jokes and playful games.

Amigo, in your chosen death you brought people together. Funny, that was your way in life. You should have seen us Friday? United in loss and sadness, but together. The shop, your living watercolour, was made for this! Of course, your music played. Then a video and more tears, silliness, and dance. Oh, and as usual, the whisky flowed! Aquarela was alive again!!!

I had a chance to read the letter. It translated angry and accusatory. In the end you wrote that you were “Solo, solo, solo” (Alone, alone, alone). Was it a relationship that was not only dead but decayed? Concerns over fleeting things like money and old age? Or was it pain that had no voice to make it’s song heard?

It is all so confusing. Was yours not a different kind of lust, one that had no price tag or brand name? Material things, unlike the everlasting nature of a full and generous heart, whither and fade. You knew this all too well, said as much – that a man by much more than things is made.

I must admit my own feelings of anger and guilt. For months I stayed away because of the power of my own daily frustrations had me shut off to the world, not having the words to speak out. Could we have talked? Could you have shared? Would I have heard? Maybe in the lines between I would have read your tears? Could I have reached you? Would you have let me? This is a bitter melody.

"Mi pierna derecha" (My right leg)

And so those early lessons in Buenos Aires, the ones of suffering and pain, are now for those of us who remember and remain. Your wisdom that was birthed by experience of pain. In ways your youth was denied, yet you decided to respond by living:

“When you are in hospital if you don’t laugh, you die! Suffering taught me love.”

Love!

“If you don’t suffer you cannot know love. It’s impossible!”

You, the boy, who tamed Mr. Parody and made friends with the soul that had given up on the world. Witness to the transformation of a broken man into one who found life after losing it all. A new purpose inside of humble service, accompanied by your voice and guitar. That was 1974.

The virus left your body limited and in pain but you were never bitter about the fact that your path might have been different if the junta in the early days of the Dirty War had not blockaded the port, stopping the ships that carried the polio vaccine that might have changed your life.

“If I was born again, I tell people I want to be born the same. They ask me if I am mad, but it gave me the chance to see another side of life. If I was born normal, I would never be where I am today!”

Instead you discovered the healing power of music, then harnessed the artist’s heart to share it’s gifts in a sick world. Like the missing piece of your body, it made you whole.

“If you see how things are going in the world now, there is a crisis in environment, crisis in politics, crisis in finance, crisis in love, in everything, but music. Music has the power to heal us all!”

You entertained corrupt politicians and soldiers, some of those that would eventually sanction the killing of thousands leaving loved ones wondering about what happened to the thousands of "los desaparecidos" (the disappeared). Then you discovered hairdressing. A good way to meet girls! Your hands shaped the hair of the rich and famous, but still the corruption of the human soul persisted and perturbed. Your search continued.

“We live in the time of the virus. The AIDS virus, the bird and pig flu virus. We need a virus in the spiritual world. A big virus! One to change all the people. I wish we can all catch one virus, a virus to end all viruses. We need this virus…the Love Virus.”

You found your way to South Africa in 1990 during a time of struggle against separateness and hate. And here many doors were opened. Some of which, as is life, were later slammed shut in your face. Such is life, I heard you say. Through this though, you never lost sight of the virus.

“I was divorced, I lost my business, I was needing a new beginning. I was looking for the virus, always looking for the virus, and I thought I would find it here. My dream, like Martin Luther used to say, is that the virus, like the flu, comes to change the people, their attitude. If we can find spiritual love, where everybody finds understanding of each other and speaks the same language, then we can deal with all the good and bad…”

A virus to end all viruses?

“It could happen one day, who knows…I hope so.”

And so time marched on. You found fame and even infamy. Your music gained brief recognition on one of South Africa’s biggest music stages, note for note. But mostly it found listening hearts on stages far from the public eye. It counseled and healed in private.

In the end the barbershop was your final album. Your customers in all their technicolour. Princes and paupers, television personalities, CEOs, professors, and many others whose unique stories are lived far from the searching spotlight. The shop, a church. Antique barber’s chair the podium from which each occupant heard the truth of their own divinity reflected back.

Perhaps this is the last of the truly equal spaces left in the human world. Hair, the universal leveller? You welcomed without judgement. Scissors, your tools. An open heart and listening ear, your trade. To those who needed you were a willing friend, comforter, physiologist, joker, and spiritual guide. For some even, you were a lifeline in the darkness.

But in the end, it was that weight of loneliness that dragged your body down, down, down, choking the life from you. And here the haunting words of your advice-giving Italian father ring true.

“When the honest person becomes depressed, his mind becomes dangerous.”

And so this virus ridden world has devoured another life. I wonder, could it have been written differently?

“If we rewind my whole life: you see me in hospital, my family, working, playing music, it doesn’t matter now. It’s done. Like a pregnant woman who is almost at term, she wants the baby out. Now I just need to finish my book, that’s all…”

Funny how things seemed to turn after "Noot vir Noot". It was your music’s single biggest stage. And you did it your way, as was your way. In the moment you looked like Sinatra. Maybe you saw something on that stage in the Luna Park concert of 1981. Something that spoke of a different way?

“It was dark and then a single light came on and there he was. It was him! When he sang I started to cry. Here was such a big guy but such a simple intro…I did it my way!”

And now the end is near

And so I face the final curtain

My friend I'll say it clear

I'll state my case of which I'm certain

I've lived a life that's full

I traveled each and every highway

And more, much more than this

I did it my way

…

For what is a man what has he got

If not himself then he has not

To say the things he truly feels

And not the words of one who kneels

The record shows I took the blows

And did it my way

Yes it was my way…

…

Farewell my friend. Know that you are and were never alone, even though you may have believed it. Your song continues to echo in the lives that were touched by the music that was you. I hope that now, when all is said and done in this the “time of the virus”, you found the one to end them all...

With all the love and gratitude that is this man’s to give,

Adios bamboléo

Howard

“Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow. Solitude is the ally of sorrow as well as a companion of spiritual exaltation…That sorrow which obsessed me during my youth was not caused by a lack of amusement, because I could have had it; neither from lack of friends, because I could have found them. That sorrow was caused by an inward ailment which made me love solitude. It killed in me the inclination for games and amusement. It removed from my shoulders the wings of youth and made me like a pond of water between mountains which reflects in its calm surface the shadows of ghosts and the colors of clouds and trees, but cannot find an outlet by which to pass singing to the sea.”

Khalil Gibran - A Second Treasury

All photographs by Bram Lammers

"A la memoria de Juan Carlos Gorini (2014)"

Tributes by Marcel Gascón

https://lamusicaligera.tumblr.com/post/76123870535/202

"He was maybe my first friend in SA, from that day, my third or fourth one in the country, when I went into the salon, he recognised my accent and served me the first coffee.

He told me he was playing in a mall, and invited me to go and see him on the weekends. One Sunday I went there, looked for him under the Italian facades of papier maché. And he sang me song, with that old-days artist's optimistic and warm smile. He said on the micro something kind about the Spanish "Madrid fan freshly arrived", and I laughed, listened to him for a while and left grateful and uncomfortable, not knowing where to stay and to look and with which face. He had that old artist's aura also in life.

Always in the salon and often with the friends I introduced him. Always a frank look, a confident smile and a easy question, one of those questions that invite you to talk and don't demand. He had something (again) of an ancient hero, who lived through the others, seducing, trying to be liked, but also leaving here and there a spark of life that helped, how it helped!, to do the days warmer and keep believing. And this despite all his problems, that finally led him to kill himself.

It's ridiculous and merely rhetoric, since I don't think we go anywhere after we die, but one of these days I wished they treat him as he treated us in the salon wherever he is going now. I never saw him dry or disdainful with any customer. He used to invite to coffee, to drain the subjects, and they say that in his best days, when the word overwhelmed the scissors, used to leave some rebel hairs that everyone forgive him for, because to Juan-Carlos' salon you came specially to talk and listen.

He was sometimes pessimistic and complainant, but never cynical and never despiseful of others' reasons, even when they gave him hard time or clashed with his. On Friday we said goodbye to him, with a Catholic service with the coffin there. They played 'Don't cry for me Argentina' and for the first time in many days I could cry for him. After that, customers, partners and employees went to the salon to drink and it while remembering him.

We played a video of mine, made of images I recorded of him to make, the Lanzmann's way, a documentary about the salon and its people. A movie should have been also about SA, specially about the SA of the generation of the regime change, with its stories of immigration and destiny's turning-points, with JC's 90s TV show talent as a main role and conducting wire and edge.

I think everyone liked the video, because there is him as he was and as he lived his last months. Singing, joking, scruffy sometimes. Playing, laughing, often bitterly, and also, during an interview one pension fund made to him, pledging half joking for suicide as the solution of an elder with no money.

With beer and lots of whiskey we remembered his sentences, habits and manias, and told each other that we were not enough to save avoid him leaving but we appreciated, loved him. We ended up dancing and confessing ourselves how good we are, this bunch of people from our mothers and fathers (Spanish expression for 'different backgrounds', don't know how to translate), immigrants and natives, settlers, refugees, expats; the sheeps of that cripple and 'charlatán' pastor of the guitar and the raised collar."