We were talking here seven days ago – when it was the middle of winter and there was a minute left until the heat that has already arrived – about the chilling action of snow on sound, how it extinguishes it and sucks it in, eliminating any hint of echo or reverberation, like if the world had become an airtight room, covered walls and ceilings with cardboard egg cups. The noise bothers us but its absence shakes us. A sound emitted that does not return, as if something or someone caught it and accumulated it, who knows with what intention.
The noise of the world guides us like bats, but silence alerts us and stops us, makes us rigid like a meerkat in the predators' meadow. Especially when he bursts into the middle of the hustle and bustle, making himself heard by silencing us. And that just happened in Madrid. The city is silent.
The scandal surrounding the regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso and her partner, which points to a plot around the purchase of masks that threatens to spread like a septicemia to health privatization and the millions of public money that surround these operations since the time of Esperanza Aguirre. “Public-private collaboration”, in acceptable language. But what was new has been silence. No one putting their hand in the fire, no closing of party ranks, not a single hashtag on networks of those who should make noise and fuss around those who claim to be the victim of an institutional operation of harassment and demolition orchestrated from power. Nothing.
A silence only broken by the screams on the WhatsApp of the communication director of the affected person, which became a trend for threatening journalists and the media, Eldiario.es, which raised the hare of tax embezzlement. And a president who uses the expression “bill curlers” to talk about B money, with a disturbing familiarity. And the silence around.
The da capo aria is a type of baroque composition that unfolds in three times, three acts like those of any drama: presentation, middle, ending. Three times that in contemporary politics tend to be rise, success, fall. The third beat is never written in the score, which only presents the note that gives it its name: da capo, “from the beginning.” And it was the singer who decided.
Da capo is, therefore, a memory note, which asks the performer to return, to remember who he is, to remember who he was. Who he is and who he was does not seem the same, but he always is. The parts of the da capo aria close with a calderón, an indication in the score consisting of a point covered by a semicircle, like an umbrella, which warns the performer of the arrival of silence. The current use of the calderón is attributed to Bach: a note for choral pieces that warns singers that the phrase ends and they should take a breath before continuing. And that's the lesson: the piece continues. And before it's over, it will remind you of who you were.
