La Voz de Galicia – February 7, 2020 →
A few months ago, I watched a documentary about Ramón Sender Barayón, the son of the writer Ramón J. Sender, that reviewed the life of this fascinating composer. Sender Barayón was one of the pioneers of American contemporary music and the founder of the San Francisco Tape Music Center (a historic center for electroacoustic music). At a moment in the documentary, speaking about his philosophy, he said, «I don’t want to be a single career person,» and with that phrase, he made me think about the freedom offered by the idea of being able to be what one wants when one wants it; one can be several things at the same time…
Today, Dositeo would be 83 years old. During his life, my father was an accordion player, a photographer, a framer, a jeweler, and many more things; but he was always Dositeo. Regardless of what he did, what mattered was the person.
My father’s business was to sell on credit. And since he died, seventeen years ago, my search for the stories of his journeys are pending: Dositeo went from bar to bar selling jewels that then his clients would pay little by little. My father revered his clients. And even though he did not speak much about them, at home we knew that he very much trusted the Ladies (his way of referring to women who engaged in prostitution), and that itinerant travelers and bar owners were men of their word.
And I always wanted to know about the lives of his clients, those who came to pay my mother their debts when my father died. Those who, like him, had a thousand careers to get ahead and performed them all with nobility and dignity…
Happy birthday, dad: I will also switch careers to write your story.
