On Fading Friendship
Tuesday, October 01, 2013
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| Juan Manuel Sánchez - September 2013 |
It seems that it was not too long ago that
my Spanish friend, symphonic conductor Juan Castelao told me that he kept tabs
with his family in Galicia
with something that he called Es-sky-pee.
Some four weeks ago I watched Nora Patrich
in her home in Bella Vista in the outskirts of Buenos Aires
talk with her just over a year old granddaughter who is in Gijón, Spain. Nora did go to Spain earlier
this year but I wonder if her granddaughter who smiles and does all kinds of
tricks for her grandmother on Skype knows the reality from the virtual image. And
yet I cannot criticize this modern advancement that beats that “long distance
feeling” by a mile.
For some years I had a
tremendous friendship with Argentine painter Juan Manuel Sánchez and his wife
Nora Patrich (also an artist) who did not live far from my Kerrisdale home. We
talked every day (any hour of the day or night) and we visited frequently. We
worked on all kinds of collaborative work. Best of all it was to speak my
mother tongue and to discuss stuff that I could only do so with a fellow
Argentine. And through Sánchez I obtained a wonderful art education. I often
told him that he reminded me of a slightly paunchy Picasso.
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| At El Cuartito |
Some 10 years ago the
couple split up and went back to Buenos
Aires on separate airplanes.
I was furious (!) with
both of them for having ruined this nice thing we shared. I expressed most of
my anger towards Patrich and for a few years I refused to answer her emails or
see her when she visited Vancouver. I was awfully silly. But I never did find anybody in Vancouver as receptive as they were to work on anything at any time.
With Sánchez I
kept up a pleasant relationship via Skype. I could never see him as he refused
to buy a computer so I had to call him via my computer to his phone.
Every time I would
call him he would ask me when I was going to visit him in Buenos Aires. This kept on for some years and
by then I had decided my fight with Patrich was stupid.
So when Patrich
invited me to stay at her house for three weeks when I told her I was planning
to travel to Buenos Aires
at the end of September I realized that my saving on the hotel made the
financial arrangements of the trip a possibility.
Via use of the
internet I obtained three Argentine models willing to work with Patrich,
Sánchez and me. There was a wrinkle when I informed Sánchez. In the end he said
he would allow his ex-wife to visit and work in his studio once.
I knew that Patrich
had a new partner, the sweet librarian Juan Boschetti. I also knew that Sánchez
had a younger girlfriend (an artist) with whom they shared a Woody Allen type
of relationship as Ruth (that’s her name) kept living in her house. I knew that
there was a level of possessive jealousy involved. But I planned accordingly
and even found that one of the models, Roxana was willing to return to Sánchez’s
studio once or twice a month to pose for him in exchange for the odd sketch.
I traveled to Argentina
with lots of hopes and plenty of cameras, two film and one brand-new digital.
I visited Sánchez and after
our first abrazo it felt like old times until I broached the subject of
bringing Patrich. That was a no. When I then pared down the idea of just the
two of us working with Roxana that became a no, too.
I saw Sánchez twice. The
first time we had pizza and moscato at the round-the-corner El Cuartito and he
met my first cousin Jorge Wenceslao. Ruth dropped in for a few minutes. After
that Sanchez refused all my overtures of going to his studio with a model to work
together. I suggested we work in another artist’s studio (a friend of Sanchez).
That was a no.
On my third week I
felt quite depressed in Buenos Aires
and I gave Sanchez a call. I told him over the phone that I was saying goodbye
and that I was disappointed that we had not worked together. He took this with
aplomb and did not question my motives.
I understand that an
83 year-old man who has a relationship with a woman in a large city and that lives
alone in a small studio/apartment has a lot to lose especially if he might
sacrifice all that for an artistic and collaborative fling with a friend (me). And
yet something in me makes me think that is the last I will see of the man as I
will perhaps not return to Buenos
Aires and both of us are not spring chickens.
I feel remorse for not
having properly said goodbye to him.
But that damn Skype
and all those promises that came my way from the man have been hard to forget.
It seems that every
time something like this happens I go back to Harold Bloom who wrote in How To
Read and Why (2000)
"We read not only
because we cannot know enough people, but because friendship is so vulnerable,
so likely to diminish or disappear, overcome by space, time, imperfect
sympathies, and all the sorrows of familial and passional life."
