Things were not going well. It can't be said that they weren't going as planned because there was no plan. Only the somewhat volatile, perhaps candid, idea that living there, in Mexico City, could play before a wider audience than he had in Tijuana's bars. But things were not going well. She made little money teaching English in companies (banks, pharmaceuticals), and you have to imagine her small, 21 years old, putting her hair behind her ears in a gesture that works until today as an antidote against insecurity or shyness (just like the A rueful giggle that he dismisses sentences that sound judgmental, or that seems to shamefully dismiss a naive comment), teaching grammar and pronunciation, thinking about what I'm doing here, this is not what was supposed to happen. But what was supposed to happen? You have to imagine her leaving those offices, going to the center, pasting papers where you could read a phone number, the phrase "I'm looking for a drummer" and her name, Julieta Venegas, a girl from the north, a border girl, a newcomer to the City from Mexico to which things were not going well, to which he did not have enough money or to pay the rent, and that one Christmas day, visiting Tijuana, he said to his mother: "You know what, mother? I'm not doing well, I don't know if I can continue, I don't know if it's such a good idea to have left. " And you have to imagine her mother (in a conversation that Julieta Venegas remembers 30 years later, 20 million records sold later, six Grammy awards later, sitting in an apartment in the Belgrano neighborhood, in Buenos Aires, where she has lived since 2017, a two-room apartment with a kitchen without windows, a refrigerator the size of which closes the hallway, a room where there is a piano, a guitar, a ukulele, an accordion, two libraries, a sofa and absolutely nothing else) saying: “My love, you had the pants to go. Do not come back".
"I said, 'Mommy, I think I'm going to come back.' And my mother turned around and said to me: “All my life I had the dream of being an artist. I never could, they didn't let me. Now you are doing it. Don't come back, my love. "
And did not return.
***
"Bring Juliet a towel!" —Asks a technician who comes out of the bathroom where a video of Dom La Nena, a cellist and Brazilian singer who lives in Paris, is recorded.
But this afternoon of January 2020, when there are still two months before mandatory confinement is imposed due to the coronavirus epidemic, with the city of Buenos Aires at more than 34 degrees, Julieta Venegas comes out of the bathroom of an old apartment, picking up the black dress, laughing and saying: "Nothing happens, I love it."
"You tell us if there's something you don't want to do," says Dom La Nena, in a voice that reflects the awareness that one of the biggest stars in Latin American music is drenched because the scene was filmed under the shower.
"Nothing happens," says Venegas, concentrating on not wetting the floor.
She arrived at four-thirty in the afternoon, accompanied by her nine-year-old daughter Simona, carrying two garment bags and a bag with clothes. She greeted everyone - "Hi, Julieta, delighted" - and they took her to a room where the hairdresser asked how she wanted her hair.
"I don't know, I have a disaster." Maybe a little in shape, if it doesn't take long.
Now, as she takes off her wet dress, she says:
—When I played again, about a year ago, this dress was my uniform, my refuge, I used it for everything.
When she played again (after a year without doing it), she did it in the Notanpuan bookstore bar, in San Isidro, northern Buenos Aires, before 50 people who paid 7 euros each to see her.
***
Eight albums; uninterrupted tours from 2004 to 2017; stages and discs shared with artists such as Bebe, La Mala Rodríguez, Marisa Monte, Fito Páez, Kiko Veneno, Mon Laferte; six Grammy Awards; more than 12 million records sold according to Sony label; more than 20 million according to Wikipedia. The definition of the verb "leave" is "to separate or move away from a person or thing, temporarily or permanently". Julieta Venegas separated or moved away from all this, temporarily or permanently, when she decided to move to Buenos Aires. He did it as he only does things of extraordinary importance (marry, migrate, have a child): without reflection. Unexpectedly.
***
As the technicians prepare the set for another scene in the video, she watches that bubbly come and go as if it happened in a distant and fun world, while saying that her daughter likes sushi and Japanese culture, which outrages that the president from Mexico refers to women with stereotypes (“He says we are 'very sensitive'). She wears a stunning purple maxi skirt. Her lips are painted supernatural red. It seems, all of it, a splendid patent leather shoe.
***
-Do you want some tea? He asks from the kitchen.
His apartment in Buenos Aires does not have any particularity, but it was the first thing he got to rent when with his partner, Pablo Braun, owner of the prestigious Eterna Cadencia bookstore and founder of FILBA, the Buenos Aires International Literature Festival, one of the major literary events in the Southern Cone, they decided to stop living in the same house.
"I have green tea, do you like it?"
He lives here with his daughter Simona and a cat, Mila. She wears a long jean skirt , a white camisole with Mexican embroidery, flat braided leather shoes, an outfit that will vary slightly over weeks: the same shoes and a different blouse; the same blouse, the same shoes and pants. She does little makeup and sometimes, as now, nothing, but when she does, she wears a conceited red lipstick that suppresses a tragic severity of the face and dresses it with a splendid splendor. The eyebrows draw a burst that makes you think of fairies, sparks, enthusiasm. He speaks very quickly, sometimes with somewhat grandiose phrases, such as "I believe in processes a lot and I need to integrate the different parts of my life in such a way that I do not have to disassociate myself", etc., which form a shield behind which an intimacy is clustered. tight and impenetrable. In the room, which ends on a balcony where you can see a clothesline with clothes hanging to dry, there are two libraries with books by Rachel Cusk, Chekhov, Foster Wallace, Lydia Davis, Lorrie Moore, Siri Hustvetd, from floor to ceiling. He reads every day for hours, and if he doesn't, he feels bad: "Something's wrong with my brain."
“With love disappointments I lose weight and become super-active. I do not fall into self-pity ”
"Let's put this chair that a friend gave me," she says, pulling up a low chair, made of leather and rustic wood, to support the kettle and cups.
Green tea does not respond to any cult of healthy eating.
"I love junk food." My mom hates cooking. He sent us to school with peanut butter, tin cans, everything the other children couldn't. And we loved it. I love fast food because it is the flavor of my childhood. For me, childhood is the Taco Bell burrito. Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Campbell's Canned Soup. With lumps.
"You were a vegetarian."
—Yes, for 17 years, but not anymore. I love meat.
There are several misunderstandings around Julieta Venegas, and the idea that she is a vegetarian is one of them. Another is that, due to its small aspect, its humble affability, it is associated with the adjective "fragile". In 1987, because of an argument, he stopped talking to his mother for weeks (the woman was pregnant). In 1989 her father kicked her out of the house and she did not return in six months. In 2004, due to an exchange of opinions, he stopped answering his sister's phone for a year and a half. Fragile.
***
Her parents —Julia Edith Percevault and José Luis Venegas— met in Tijuana. Once married, they moved to Los Angeles so that he, a photographer, could study the advances of color photography. The first four children were born there in Long Beach; the remaining two, in Mexico. They are, in total, six brothers: a man and five women, two of them twins. One is dedicated to music; the other, to photography. One is called Yvonne. The other, Julieta.
***
—In the United States, babies have a small label on their hands. One said Twin A and the other Twin B. So we left them, to recognize them. “Gemelita A” we knew was Yvonne, and “Gemelita B” was Julieta. They were identical.
Julia Edith Percevault, the mother of Julieta Venegas, speaks on the phone from her parked car in front of a department store in the city where she lives, Chula Vista, San Diego, United States, a few kilometers from Tijuana, Mexico, where her husband has, For 50 years, a photography studio specialized in weddings.
"How do you remember those early years?"
"I don't know if I was innocent or half-silly, but I was always happy." I have always attributed it to God being with me, so I had a good time. And later we start having problems.
***
Venegas has no memories of Long Beach, where the family lived until their three years. In 1973 her father opened the photography studio in Tijuana, but they set up a house in Chula Vista, United States.
—Every day they took us to school in Tijuana and crossed us again. But they never came in time to look for us. I remember being with the nuns, because they sent us to a private school, waiting for my parents, having a milk. It was a drama.
His father's study became synonymous with status - he was hired by the entire elite of Tijuana - and he loved weddings, but what was charisma at someone else's party, at home became despotic rigor.
—When I was about seven years old, he came and we were watching television. We do not greet him. Then he said: "There is no more television." He took the television and gave it away. And there was never a television again. Since there was nothing to do, I started reading. In my house there were self-help books, so I read the novels by Corín Tellado that I found in that of my friends.
"No brother opposed your father?"
-No. There was obedience and that repressive figure was inherited. The older brother treated the big one badly, then the big one who followed, was a chain like that ... hard. My dad was this macho figure in every possible stereotype. Ultra-conservative, forget about gays. But now he is the sweetest man you can meet. Changed a lot.
"What specific things do you remember about your father's behavior before that change?"
"I just don't like going into it very much, really."
When he says such things, a strange lycanthropy ensues and his face takes on a stony expression, his eyes heavy with mistrust and rebuke.
"No one comes out of childhood unscathed." And less if he had a dad like mine.
***
Yvonne Venegas, Julieta's sister, speaks from her home in Mexico City, where she has lived since 2009 with her two children, ages 8 and 11, and her English husband.
—My father would come and we would pretend to be asleep. It was a hostile presence. He had a preference for me, and did not hide it. It was horrible. It said: "Juliet, look at your sister." I was always more sociable. Julieta was more private and nobody could play the piano: it was hers. It was very territorial. In the teenage years, it was a weirdo for my dad. The relationship between them was quite unpleasant. He wanted her to dress pretty and have a handsome boyfriend, and when he went to Mexico City he never supported her. Later, when she was famous, everything was "Ay, Julietita", and that charged me. Now I see my father, that romantic character who keeps asking for forgiveness, and I think that was part of the fury that he had.
"Do you remember any specific scene of that fury?"
"No, they are many." I don't think it's necessary to give you a visual.
***
"I think since we had our children, the thing with Yvonne swayed. She wanted to be closer in the relationship and I am very phobic. I think they raised us by making us compete. The good twin and the bad twin, the pretty, the ugly.
"Who was the good one and who was the bad one?"
"Yvonne." Yvonne was the good one and I was the bad one ”, says Julieta Venegas with the severity of someone who exposes a fact of blood, a crime. She was very sociable and I was not. That became almost a cartoon: the good vibes and the bad vibes. And when it started to go well, Yvonne felt stripped of that character she had.
"She was sick in Mexico, she was not happy, and she went to Argentina and she is divine," says her sister.
The good vibes twin was engulfed by the world fame of the dark twin.
***
"We are border-bound," says José Luis Venegas, Julieta Venegas's father, from Tijuana. Now we live again in Chula Vista, and we cross to work in Tijuana, in my studio.
At first, the plural seems to include someone else, but then it becomes clear that it is the plural of kings.
"I am of the old generation." When Julieta told me that she was going to be a rocker, I felt a lot of anguish. I didn't know another Mexican rocker and I said, "Who are you going to be, Gloria Trevi?" She was always very stubborn, persevering. More serious than Yvonne. It was not very communicative, a little surly. And when he left he did not seek an opinion, he said: "I'm going to Mexico," and we were cold. But back then the dad was nagging and angry. You arranged everything with “Here it is done this way”. It was the attitude of a retired general.
"They were afraid of girls."
"Well, I think there was spanking at that time." I do think they were afraid of me. But that also made them strong of character, because I am not very neglected.
***
Arguably, everything that happened next began with the absence of that television and the presence of a piano.
—My father was paid a job with a piano, and he sent us all to private classes with Margarita Valles de Estrada. One day the teacher said to my dad, “Your children don't want to come. The only one who does seem to like it is Juliet. " My dad told me: “The teacher Margarita told me that you want to continue. Is that so? ” I said yes, and he said, "The piano is yours." I adored my teacher, and because of her I began to think about dedicating myself to classical music. But when I was 12 years old, he died during an operation.
There were other teachers: a Mexican one that he treated badly (he didn't even look at him); a Russian who didn't like it either. Meanwhile, the Mexican peso suffered a devaluation and living in dollars became impossible, so the family moved to Tijuana. She was a lonely girl, who spent her days reading, playing the piano, and dressed oddly
—At that time, my father had concerns about me taking drugs. We were coming from a party and it was “Blow me”, to see if he had had or had smoked. The gringos for him represented debauchery. "I want to go to Tijuana because I don't want you to become a drug addict," she told me. We left because of the devaluation. He was a specialist in blackmailing us with things that were not true.
However, debauchery lived in Tijuana in the form of a teenager, Alex Zúñiga, who had a gang, Blackmail.
"He invited me to play and I said yes." My dad was shocked. These "Jesuits", as I called them, came to my house and drank alcohol, ate food. I adored them. We were unleashed buying us used clothes. With my mom it was always the same conversation: "Your clothes are horrible." One day I got home from school, opened my closet and it was empty. Imagine, at 16 years old. Well drama. My mom denied it was her. And one night my dad came and said, "I didn't go, huh?" He didn't say "It was her," but he blamed her. And I stopped talking to my mom for a month. It was 1987, she was pregnant with my little sister. I was crying, he was doing dramas for me. And I didn't even turn to see her. Very hard.
The Zúñiga band soon dissolved and formed another, reggae and ska Tijuana No!
—In Tijuana No! I started writing songs. And one day Alex said to me: "We don't have a singer, do you sing?" I said, "I guess so." I sang Boys Don't Cry by The Cure, and Alex said, "Done, we have a singer."
Thus, at the age of 17, she played and sang in a contested band while her father watched the daughter raised by nuns become a witch's apprentice.
—When I finished school he said: “What do you want to study? Women, until they get married, must study ”. And I said "Music". "That is not a race." "Then Letras". "No, something that works for you." "Then I don't study anything." I went to work at a record store and decided to study musicology at the University of San Diego. But he ran me out of the house.
He thinks the fight was at night. Remember that you put your clothes in garbage bags and ended up in a place that you rented from a friend.
—I had to leave the university because I couldn't afford to pay the rent. My dad came every night to honk his horn and ask me to come back. I said: "This man is crazy, I'm not coming back."
"What generated the fight?"
"I was talking to a boyfriend and my dad took the phone from me. I started screaming and he said, "Get your things and go." But I feel that we are entering places that ..., I don't know if I like talking so much, the truth.
After a time he returned home, but the calm was short-lived. The lyrics of Tijuana No !, about revolution and inequality, were not his thing.
—So when they decided to make their album I told them: "You are my brothers, but I am not going to continue in the band."
He left the group, continued working at the record store, made music for a play. She was 21 years old — and looked with love and envy at the success of Tijuana No !, which got dates everywhere — when she was invited to a festival in Monterrey and she thought she could take the opportunity to go to Mexico City.
"I said to my dad, 'I'm leaving.' He said: "I am not going to help you." And I said, "Don't help me." But he had no plans to live there. And when I arrived I thought: "Maybe I can play here in a place that my mom and my aunts won't see me anymore." And I stayed.
“She was a vegetarian, but not anymore. I love fast food, it is the taste of my childhood. My mom hates cooking ”
He lived in a house without hot water, which he entered by reaching through a hole and pulling a wire. To survive, he began teaching English while trying to form a band.
"I hung posters at record stores, looking for musicians." That's how I put together a band, Lula.
One day, from a car, a stranger yelled at her: "Julieta!" It was Francisco Franco, an actor who had met his sister Yvonne in Tijuana. When he saw an identical woman in Mexico City, he assumed she was the missing twin and invited her upstairs.
"And I, very confident, got on." He said he was doing a play. I said, "Invite me to make the music."
Six months later, he had composed the music for the play - Caligula, probably - and there he played a gringo pianist who railed against the parents ("I let off steam"). The piece was on the poster for a year, it allowed him to have some income. One night he played in a bar called Rockatitlán and among the public were the Café Tacuba, already a renowned band.
—We became boyfriends with Joselo Rangel, from the Tacuba. We will have been together for three years, but it was very important to me.
Joselo encouraged her to buy the accordion, which she had always wanted to play - "I learned alone" -, to record a demo, and introduced her to the Argentine producer Gustavo Santaolalla, a midas who made up the Latin American rock boom in the 1990s.
"Then there was a record label, BMG, and they asked me to sign a contract."
In 1997 he released his first album, Aqui, with a production by Santaolalla.
—At that time, Yvonne lived in Mexico City. But I don't remember, because our relationship started to get bad.
***
"I really regret having married at age 21 to leave my home," says Yvonne Venegas. With one who was a rehabilitated heroin addict. I went with him to Portugal and soon he relapsed. I returned to Tijuana. But my dad said: "Now you are a marked woman, you are no longer a virgin." On Gay Pride day I said, "I'm going to Gay Pride." And he became hysterical, how could he go with those mentally twisted, that you are just like your sister. And I said to her: "If I were a lesbian, what would you do?" He said, "I would run you out of the house." I said, "Now, I'm leaving." And I went to Mexico City.
She lived there from 1994 to 1996, and she dated Quique Rangel, brother of Joselo, her sister's boyfriend ("She didn't like it that I was dating her boyfriend's brother"), but what finished souring it all were some photos.
—I take photos since I was 15. I started taking photos of Julieta. And a portfolio I made about her was published in a photography magazine. Julieta comes out naked in a tub, beautiful. There is another one where we are kissing each other on the mouth. The photos were accompanied by a text where I wrote things about our relationship. But a celebrity magazine took the nude photo of Juliet and put it on the cover. She was famous. And it was a drama. It was a change in my relationship with her but also in my work, because she told me: "You can't take any more photos of me." And I said: "What do I do?"
Yvonne's texts, under the photos, say: “Maybe I want to take photos of Julieta in all the ways she leaves me to secure a place in her memories, and perhaps Julieta does not allow me to take photos of her because she does not want to make sure that place".
***
"I met him in Mexico."
-And they married.
-If we marry. But do we have to talk about it? He says, laughing. Yes, we are civilly married in the United States. Thank goodness, because in Chile there was no divorce.
In 1998, when her relationship with Joselo Rangel ended, she married Álvaro Henríquez, leader of Los Tres and one of the most recognized musicians in Chile.
—Neither he moved to Mexico nor I to Chile. We lasted a year of boyfriends and a year married. It was cute. You also take that weight off when you get married. Done, you already made it, you got married, check. I still love him a lot. And I am fond of that decision we made. Then he fell in love with another girl.
He pauses and, throwing his head back, laughs out loud.
—From a soap opera actress. I can never help saying it because it makes me laugh. It was part of the anecdote: "And then she left me for a TV series actress." It was obvious that what happened would happen. But I have never been spiteful or tormented. Love disappointments never give me what they are supposed to give you, that you are sad, you eat. I lose weight and become super active. I do not fall into self-pity.
In 2000, when he released his second album, Bueninvento, his parents had long since returned to live in Chula Vista. On the first day of that year they separated.
***
"We were nine years apart," says Julia Edith, Juliet's mother. We returned at the beginning of 2009. We had a very tremendous situation. One day I exploded and I said, "You know what? This is impossible, I'm leaving. " The first four years we didn't even speak. Then he started to win me back. It has changed a lot. He is calmer. Before, it exploded and screamed. You were even scared to talk to him, because you didn't know how he was going to react.
Everyone says that since they got back together, he changed completely. They explain the reasons for that conversion with a simple argument: "He missed his family."
***
—In my family silence has been a problem. I know that my dad had a hard childhood because once, a few years ago, I asked him: "Dad, what's up with your childhood?" And he said: "I have erased the first 10 years of my life." But now I see it all loving and I want to enjoy that man.
His second album, Bueninvento, was released in 2000, and the appreciative critics highlighted its "magnetic", "lyrical", "dark" character. In 2003 he released Sí, an album that changed everything. His cut 'Andar with me' climbed to the top positions in Latin America and that made the phrase “became commercial” begin to sound among his devotees. The All Music portal published: “Venegas should not be confused with (…) something temporary. Sometimes love is meant to last. " In 2005 Limón y sal, with hit hits like the song that gives the album its title and 'Me voy', sold six million copies and ended up consolidating it among the royalty of Latin American pop. They followed the 2008 MTV Unplugged; Another thing, from 2010; The moments, from 2013, and Something Happens, from 2015. He toured Europe, the United States, and Latin America. He bought a house. A Steinway grand piano was purchased. He had left Tijuana without a copper and there he was, shining through the universe. However, everything was beginning to be a bad dream.
***
"Juliet's fame was a huge blow to me," says Yvonne Venegas. People confused me with her. He said to them: "No, I am the twin sister." And they would say to me: "I take a photo with you and say that you are Juliet." And at that moment we stopped talking to each other for a year and a half. Part of the issue we were fighting over had to do with the fact that when her project got so big I didn't recognize her. We went to Japan to record the video for a song, 'Slow'. On the plane we were laughing, using a language that we invented between us. As soon as we got to Tokyo, everything was cut off. It was "we are going to put that silly little world aside." She was tough on me. And yes, there were problems.
"Who suffered the most when they fought?"
"Well, me, really." She doesn't think she ever had a bad time. The year we were without speaking to each other, I was looking for her and she did not attend to me.
"Professionally he is a general. Otherwise she is a floating princess in a strange cloud ", says a friend
***
—Professionally he is a general; loving, but a general —said his friend the Mexican actor and director Francisco Franco—. And otherwise, she is a floating princess in a strange cloud.
***
In 2009 he traveled to Buenos Aires. He stayed there for five months to record Another Thing. I used to have lunch at a vegetarian restaurant, Krishna. There, a music therapist named Rodrigo García Prieto worked as manager.
—The relationship started in Buenos Aires. I got pregnant and he came with me to Mexico. When we arrived, we parted immediately. It was a very short time of relationship. Three months. But now we are in a beautiful moment and that's why I don't want ..., for both of us it was very traumatic.
When it became known that she was pregnant, celebrity shows and magazines speculated on her father's identity: "An Argentine psychologist," "an unknown Argentine musician." She didn't say anything, then or later, when things got ugly.
—We have had a very difficult history with Rodrigo's family. I feel like my family now. But everything that happened was traumatic. Now I see it as a chain of desperate acts. Mine, his, Grandma's. It was horrible for everyone.
Simona was born on August 12, 2010. Before the birth, Rodrigo García Prieto had warned her that she would not allow him to go on tour with the girl. Venegas's reaction was to write it down only with his last name. García Prieto, who continued to live in Mexico for eight years, initiated a paternity trial. It did not help that Venegas was, since September 2009, a goodwill ambassador for Unicef, an NGO that defends children's rights. In February 2014, the court ruled that the girl must bear her father's last name. Since then, the bond with the paternal family has been fluid, but she talks about it with a prudence loaded with concern, as if each word could destroy painfully constructed universes.
—Ma, how long is the interview? It's just that my granny is leaving tomorrow, ”Simona says, entering the room with a phone.
"Give it to me, my love." Hello Irma, ”she says gently.
"Hello, Juli, how are you?" Simona's paternal grandmother says. Tomorrow I'm going on a trip and I wanted to see her today, if I can.
-Of course it is possible! All you have to do is take a bath, but if you don't come back late ...
"You can bathe at home, if you want."
"Oh, but of course." When you want to come? Well, in half an hour, ”he says, and cuts short. Ready My love. Granny's coming in half an hour.
That night, while grandmother and granddaughter walk, the mother will lock herself up to finish a song ("I think I have a nun living inside me, in the sense of austerity").
***
"Is this the concealer?"
-Yes. It's in another container, but it's the same shade.
-That's crazy. The other was more orange, but I try it.
It is Friday and has arrived a few minutes ago at the Picadero theater where La enamorada, a monologue that premiered in August with disparate reviews, is replenished for a few days: "Venegas has charm (...) but she cannot avoid over-acting (...)", published Page / 12; and "Enamora, is moved by her dedication, by her mastery of the scene," La Nación published.
"Simona's bottom tooth has come loose," she says now, laughing, dressed only in an old pink culotte and a blouse of the same color while putting on makeup in the dressing room (the work is done cooperatively and they can't afford a make-up artist) - . I guess it's the milk ones, right? I have to take her to the dentist.
"The first thing that falls off is the ones in front," says a girl who helps her pull her hair back.
"I thought everything had changed." Hey, when did we travel with the work to Peru? Because on April 14 and 17 I am going to do New York and Miami, with the Soda Stereo. Oh, today I have dogs. Pablo left and left me the bitches. I left the house early.
"Do they have a walker?" The girl asks.
"No, they are left alone, the poor." With the cat. He also gave them to me without food and I put cat food on them! He says, raising his tone to a laugh. All wrong.
***
"Come in, come in," she says as she opens the door to her apartment. Sorry for the mess, but I forgot you were coming. We were making some tapioca balls with Simona, for a tea called boba tea. We have to go buy milk.
"If they had plans, I'll be back another day."
"Oh no, come in, come in."
It is four in the afternoon on a Monday. She wears an emerald green skirt, a black T-shirt that has some traces of flour, plastic flip flops. The meeting was going to be on Sunday, but he sent a message asking to move it to Monday because he forgot that "he had a barbecue." That tendency to distraction is common (he modifies the days and times of the interviews because he forgot another commitment, always with a delicate request for apologies), but it can have worrying manifestations: during the only seven months in which he drove he collided three times, always because "I did not turn to see: I went in and then remembered that I had to look."
"I am thinking of moving into a house." But it was good to come here. I needed a balance.
He often uses the word "balance", sometimes as a shield against the threat that life will return to what it was.
***
"She was sick in Mexico, she was not happy, and she went to Argentina and she is divine," says Yvonne Venegas. I prefer this Juliet. And this Yvonne. I admire her so much. It is so smart, so intuitive. They say to me: "Don't you get tired of being confused?" I say: "That they confuse me with a big woman like her I love it." He threw everything away and left. Run out of nothing: my daughter, my cat, and nothing else. A woman
One album led to another, one award to the other, one tour to the next. But her daughter learned to walk in an airport, her house was the promised land that she did not finish arriving.
—I was arriving in Mexico and I had to leave immediately. They said to me: "We are going to play in such a place", and instead of being happy, I felt anguish: "How many days will I go without seeing Simona?" The whole last tour I was like this. Three years. And sick. An amoebiasis grabbed me and it wouldn't heal. I think I was depressed without realizing it. She lived in slavery. When I got on stage he said: "This is good, but what about everything around you?"
In 2016, Simona's father told her that she was going to return to Argentina.
—And he said to me: "It would be nice if you thought about living there." I said that!? What am I going to do there? ”
The mechanisms that triggered her move to Buenos Aires had been launched in 2012, when the Mexican writer Brenda Lozano went with her friend to the Eterna Cadencia bookstore, in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo. They were attended by the owner, Pablo Braun, who did not know her, so when the women left, the booksellers said: "It was Julieta Venegas!" He asked, "Who?" "The one that sings Lemon and salt." He thought: "One of those pop singers, like Paulina Rubio." And nothing else happened until 2016, when she did a show in Montevideo.
—In the last years, during the tours, my only walk was to go to bookstores. I was in Montevideo and they told me that the people of Eterna Cadencia had opened one there, Scaramuzza. I went, I asked if they had King Kong Theory. They said no, but they could get it. I ordered it, I took a photo with the bookstore and I uploaded it to the networks. Pablo was in Montevideo and they warned him: "Julieta Venegas came, she uploaded a photo." He wrote me on Twitter: “Hello, this is Pablo, from Eterna Cadencia. Scaramuzza is a venture of mine, I am at your disposal ”. When I said I was going to come back, he said, "If you want, I invite you to eat." Good vibes, but very institutional. We have lunch and connect with great complicity. We started talking on WhatsApp for hours, so the following was: "I'm going to visit you in Mexico." It was the best date of my life. On the other hand, Simona's father had already returned to Buenos Aires, and it seemed sad to me that Simona had no contact with him. So, when I met Pablo, I said to myself: "Buenos Aires is cute." And we moved.
He arrived at Braun's house on July 10, 2017, with his daughter and his dog Benita (who now lives with him, who has more room). A year later, the idea of sharing space didn't seem so good anymore, so she rented this apartment. By then, she had been away from music for months.
***
"On January 11, 2017, I went to see her in Mexico," says Pablo Braun in the Eterna Cadencia bar. Already in the taxi we kissed. I reengaged with the mine. I think on January 15 he said to me: "I want to live in the same city as you." On July 10 he was not in the same city but in the same house. We were there for a year and a half, there was a crisis and we resumed life in separate houses. When he came to Buenos Aires he made it very clear to me that it was his decision. He liked a skinny guy, he came, he wants a more normal life. It's a nightmare to be on tour. The rehearsal, the sound check, the press. He wanted to get out of the meat grinder. The first time she spent here she was almost phobic with music. The truth is that the first year I can't say that I was dating a musician.
***
—They told me to play somewhere and I said no. It was as if he had stopped loving someone. I was wondering: “How is it possible that I don't feel like playing? How crazy not to have momentum.
Almost a year passed. Until one day, during a barbecue, the owner of the Notanpuan bookstore proposed to him to do a show there, a place with capacity for 50 people, without sound equipment, with a precarious piano.
-And I said yes.
***
- In July 2018 he played there, with a piano that was anything, a modest microphone, and tickets for 400 pesos, says Pablo Braun. And he was happier than doing concerts for three thousand people. She already wrote Limón y sal, she has 70 million listens on Spotify. Why did he do all that if he can't enjoy it? I never asked him, but I imagine that Spotify's check every month should be used to pay his expenses.
—The apartment where he lives…
"It's a piece of paper." We had quarreled and the first thing that appeared he rented it. Still, she is very modest. In Mexico the house was simple, not even the prizes were in sight. I once accompanied her on a tour and in Switzerland we slept in a hotel that made you feel ashamed. The bathroom door was a sheet of plastic. It was the only time he complained a little bit, and not for her but for me, he felt bad that he had taken me to such a place.
***
Notanpuan's small recital was the first movement of a gear that started up again. In January 2019 he performed at Café Vinilo; in March 2019, at the Torquato Tasso cultural center. Always small places, always alone. These tiny concerts summoned by an artist of crowds produced in the critics an appreciative reaction: “She needed to take a sabbatical from the big music industry and send herself to play whatever she wanted, in small spaces, alone with her instruments and her voice sweet and versatile ”, published Page / 12 about his show at Torquato Tasso; "An impeccable concert (...). Venegas has a unique angel and a trunk full of songs with enough flight and solidity to enable bold rereadings ”, published La Nación about his concert at Café Vinilo.
—Now I don't have a label, I don't have a manager. I have no cachet. Someone says to me: "What is your cachet?", And I say: "I don't know, how much do you have? If I'm interested, give me what you can. ”
If there is something that can be called "normal life", the one he leads in Argentina is similar: he takes his daughter by train to school, does the shopping, cooks, has domestic help once a week (in Mexico he lived with a babysitter and she had a driver), and very few recognize her on the street. Only sometimes, when he pays with a credit card and they read her name, they say, "Oh, like the singer."
"It is very difficult to come out completely unscathed or unscathed from childhood"
—And I say: "Yes, the same." Sometimes they even tell me: "And you look a lot like that." But I never say "It's me".
In a few days he will leave for Mexico (he will tour Puebla, Monterrey, León, Guadalajara, Querétaro, Tijuana, Oaxaca: "I set too many dates, I'm a little sorry, I don't want to go back to the rhythm of before"), but now the woman has who the newspapers of his country will celebrate as a prodigal daughter - “Julieta Venegas returns renewed after two years”, “Julieta Venegas returns to offer intimate concerts” - she puts on her flip flops and, with her shirt sprinkled with flour, she goes down with her daughter to buy milk to make tapioca balls.
***
On Saturday December 28, 2019, the ND Ateneo theater in Buenos Aires is packed. Julieta Venegas, on stage, looks like a girl delighted with the success of her birthday party. She wears a stunning red and cream print dress with a tight bust and a pleated skirt. It shines as if crystals were running through his veins, and not blood. As if with a slight movement it could become translucent. He has already played the piano, the accordion, the ukulele, the guitar. He has already sung classic and new songs. He has already made jokes about inclusive language, delightfully pronouncing the X in "todxs." He has already said that "it is very difficult to come out completely unscathed or unharmed from childhood, there are always a few trauma". You've already laughed nervously at that phrase. He has already done all those things and now he sings - with an airy voice that breathes over the verses a meek restlessness - a powerful and strange song: “Why does my blood push so much? / Why is there a sun burning on me? / Why do I have this tireless strength? ” She is an artist in her domain, the dominatrix of a devoted audience. And a woman who lives far from her country, in a rented apartment, with a cat, with her nine-year-old daughter.
