“It makes me uneasy to go out without a pencil; I feel like I’m missing a fundamental tool. So, a pencil and a piece of paper to write things down. Shopping, a repeated idea or sometimes a word that triggers a song or a short story.” says this Argentine musician and actor who recorded more than 25 albums, acted in several movies and series. “Three” (Ed. Malisia) it is his first book. “With observations, stories, memories and tours of different cities,” she adds. Tony —as his father calls him, the celebrated musician Moris, a pioneer of Argentine rock— spent his childhood and part of his adolescence between Buenos Aires and Madrid. In 1986 the film director Marcelo Piñeyro summoned him for the film Tango feroz: la leyenda de Tanguito, where Antonio was going to play his own father. He arrives on time for the interview, all dressed in French blue. Birabent is playful. He plays with words, with his image, with his histrionics
News: Why “Three”?
Antonio Birabent: The book follows the path of three people, my father, myself and my son. The three of us are dancing in life. I wrote it because writing is a way of feeling less alone, more in communion with those around me. We live in an increasingly individualistic society. More than social networks, they are asocial, because they are egomaniacs. The social network that I cultivate is the street, dealing with others. And writing is a way to prolong that deal.
News: Moris is not interested in the past and you “stop in nostalgia to look at the past.”
Birabent: I “review” my life continuously, but, on the other hand, as I know myself, I am short. So writing about the past is a way to get rid of it. I am a great memorizer. Years go by and I remember details, people… but it’s also exhausting. Every once in a while, I try to clean up by writing.
Birabent lived in Madrid for 12 years (between 1976 and 1988) and says “We never ceased to be rare who did not quite fit into the pure Iberian box. It cost me a lot, when I came back, to get into this exchange. And it’s still hard for me. But on the other hand, I feel more like a product of this exchange than of the Iberian way”.
News: He remembers the father of his childhood “absent and free, today synonyms” but “for a child this was a confusion.” How are you as a father?
Birabent: I am not with my son, at all, as my father was with me. I am aware that this is also an error. But each one experiences him as a father and as a son.
News: You are very urban and very critical of cities. And I quote: “The city is a failure. Civilization is barbarism.
Birabent: If Sarmiento were alive today, he would have to completely rethink the terms. If he walked these streets he would wonder if civilization is the opposite of barbarism. Sometimes I think that the city is the most barbaric thing we can circulate. And like all barbaric things, it is very seductive.
De Moris says that he was a rebel and a different one. But Antony is too. “I hide a little, I like to be in the common and from that place observe life… I like my specialty as a mortal. I go down the street and observe what is special, I discover it in others”.
News: Said; “Communication killed conversation; there is neither the time nor the will to talk.”
Birabent: That phrase was told to me by my friend Andrés Fogwill, but I think that conversation is a way to humanize our lives. Communicate anyone communicates, TV channels, advertising agencies. It is an empty communication. Instead, with the similar, one can enter a place of conversation a little more pure. Establishing a dialogue is extraordinary.
News: Where are you more comfortable, cinema, theater, TV?
Birabent: I don’t feel comfortable anywhere. Yesterday I was working on a series for a new platform. I only worked one day and it is very difficult to join a team. Some time ago I sang a song at the CCK as a tribute to Malvinas and it was not comfortable. For me, comfort is in a much less artistic place. Singing is a release, but it is not a comfort.
News: He said that the couple is an impossible invention. Why?
Birabent: The monogamous couple is an attack against common sense. Afterwards, each one does what he can. I understand that in 200 years they will say “hey, here monogamy was still postulated as a virtue”. I also don’t know if a free pair would bank me. The traditional couple, in sight, is that it failed. That people continue to marry for life implies a great hypocrisy.
News: Are you in a relationship?
Birabent: (He makes a sign of exit and smiles)
News: “Nothing is forever” as Fabiana Cantilo says.
Birabent: There is a convention, oaths.
News: And there are children of divorce, new family models…
Birabent: I know. But that idea of traditional family does not work. If nothing is for life, why should a couple be? Perhaps it will last in the meantime, which may be 30 years. My parents have been together for 55 years; my closest experience shows me that the couple is possible. They had different moments but today they are together. I disbelieve the couple but for some it is possible.
News: What motivates you and what are you sick of?
Birabent: I am excited every morning by the possibility of continuing to connect with the environment. And I’m sick of hearing the same words. There are words I don’t want to hear anymore. Conjuncture, paradigm and dollar. he
