I'm not telling you anything new if I tell you that literature doesn't feed you, but you may be surprised to know the things writers do to pay the bills.
Most of them are, predictably, on the merry-go-round of precarious moonlighting: a writing workshop here, an article there, perhaps a script.
But suddenly there are profiles that are difficult to imagine, such as that of Silvia Hidalgo (Seville, 1978), who, in addition to being the winner of the latest Tusquets Novel Award, is an experienced computer engineer in charge of certifying the cybersecurity of public institutions — which security must run in his veins because his father was a police officer.
Nothing about his appearance matches the stereotype of the withdrawn and scrawny hacker who lives hidden in a dark basement watching waterfalls of zeros and ones on seven screens.
She does not go unnoticed, she has presence, not only because she is tall, but because she also likes to dress with eclectic and polychromatic fantasy.
I met her one morning on a train on the way to the Hay Festival in Segovia, dressed in a
mod
uniform with military boots and a Fred Perry polo shirt. In the afternoon I saw her again dressed in an iridescent black silk Chinese shirt printed with oriental figures. At four in the morning I found her again in the center of a dance floor, in top form and marking the pace of those present towards the dawn.
We have arranged to have dinner at the table at the entrance to the Ponzano restaurant in Madrid, which is like being inside an obscene cornucopia overflowing with wild mushrooms, seasonal vegetables and immense ripened beef loins.
Without a doubt an inspiring corner to ask our guest to imagine her last dinner, the one after which she will die.
After hearing this request, Silvia exclaims wow with a Sevillian accent and begins to silently immerse herself in her fantasies.
Coco Dávez rescues her from silence by asking her what type of ending she is going to choose: one in which only she dies after dinner or another in which the world ends, and if we have learned anything from doing this thematic interview, it is that there is a lot people who are only willing to imagine their death in a context in which all humanity perishes.
The writer would like her last dinner to be in Cádiz, somewhere on the Costa de la Luz, Conil or Zahara.
“With my coquinas, with my sardines, some white prawns from Huelva, everything very simple but delicious and drinking a white wine from there," she says. Coco Dávez
“Being a mother, I prefer to die than for everything to end,” says Silvia.
If my favorite thing in the world, before movies, a good book, than music, are people.
I am an accumulator of friends, a collector.
The fact that I am gone is only a minor damage, but please let there still be people.
Even though she is from the interior and from Seville (she qualifies: from Sevillana poligonera, from outside the wall, specifically from the Brotherhood of Work neighborhood in the Polígono Norte), she would like her last dinner to be in Cádiz, somewhere on the Costa de la Luz, Conil or Zahara.
“With my coquinas, with my sardines, some white prawns from Huelva, everything very simple but delicious and drinking a white wine from there, in Vejer there is a wonderful organic winery called Sancha Pérez, and I love what they do” , Explain.
I demand from Hidalgo more precision in the preparations, because no matter how simple everything may seem to him, it is already known that the world is divided into two irreconcilable camps: those who prefer grilled shrimp and those who ask for it cooked and seasoned.
She does not hesitate, she has clear ideas: “I want my coquinas with garlic and wine, my cooked shrimp and my sardines from Malaga, specifically.”
She says that she associates this menu with happiness, not luxury, it is the taste of those days when she is relaxed and well, the coquina takes her to Cádiz and tastes like days without an agenda, where you can do nothing.
She associates the shrimp with festivities, fairs and Christmas, and sardines are for her the incarnation of summer.
I ask her who she would be with and she tells me that it is with her daughter, Valeria, and her friends, which are in any case the people she is normally with on the days when she is not planning to die.
There are like 30 of them, she says, she has a large tribe of divine ladies around her.
He divides them into biographical strata: 7 are his emotional support, friends from his childhood in the Brotherhood of Labor, the other 23 he has accumulated in the life that follows childhood, there are those that the university, work, leisure and, lately, literature.
“The best thing that literature has brought me is friends,” she says.
—Where are the uncles?
—I ask him.
Silvia lets out a scandalous laugh, repeats loudly and shouts: “Where are the guys!?”, and the people in the restaurant turn around to look at her.
She then answers herself: “I am in that search, I try to locate them, I have always had many companion friends, but I have verified that with them emotional connections disappear more easily.
My friends have started dating and the connection has continued, but when my friends got married or got into a relationship, I feel like the day to day life, the routine of friendship, is lost.”
Silvia says that now that she has separated, that she is alone and that she is looking at life at a certain age, she is reevaluating her relationships with men.
This is a terrain that she observes attentively, but with a distance, and she reminds me that she has in fact written a novel about this: “Read it, it's called Nothing to Say and it talks about how we are relating.”
This friendship with men is complicated.
It seems to her that they handle codes in which she does not know how to navigate well because she is a person who needs to connect completely and is not interested in doing so in a superficial way.
When she meets a person four or five times and she fails to connect in an intimate way, she loses interest, both with boys and girls.
“My therapist calls it emotional detachment disorder: I need to be intimate, open my heart, tell me the ugliest thing about yourself, break down those walls that we build for ourselves, I want people who are generous with themselves.”
Silvia says that she loves men, but it takes her much more effort with them and she maintains that with women it is easier to have the type of deep relationship she is looking for: “Women are more connected to our vulnerability and that makes it easier to create bonds.” .
Men frustrate her, she says, because when you open your heart to them as a friend, it doesn't seem enough to them. At that point, if you don't already offer them a sexual relationship, they aren't interested in you as a person because that turns them "into scroungers, assholes, everything." these types of insults..., that is, if you don't sleep with her, you're wasting your time, you're wasting your money and you're being an idiot."
She tells me that it's not something serious either, it's just a moment she's going through, things will change: "I haven't expelled them, they're the ones who are leaving my life, look, I've already told you that I'm a hoarder." of people, but this thing about men has been very complicated for me.”
In any case, she clarifies, when she says 30 friends she is an inclusive feminine, there could be some real friends in that group of friends.
“They know who the friends are.”
—And then what do these 30 friends do on the beach besides eating sardines? How do they spend their time at this celebration?
—Well, doing what I like the most: dancing and being sucked, barefoot, listening to music and in panties.
“Everyone with their tits dancing…, the ideal state,” she says with a laugh.
Later, when they were already in a state of madness, he would wait to see the sunset, because “there the sun falls into the sea and the horizon catches fire and the sea calms down and becomes a silver mirror and then you can walk towards the sea.” another world".
This is when she would put on the list of the downfall, which is a list she has made on Spotify for turbulent times “of groups of sad girls with straight hair” who sing with great humor about current relationships, love in times of WhatsApp, life glued to a mobile screen.
And so with the sunshine over the Strait, she was already relieved from dancing with her daughter and her friends: “I'm going into the sea, and goodbye, very good ones.”
Silvia remains taciturn for a while, stirring something on the plate with the cutlery, it seems that the interview is already over, but she suddenly raises her face with a smile, takes a sip of wine and adds: “Maybe, in the last moment, out there I find one among the dunes and I give myself a joy for my body, I won't tell you no.
Until the last moment anything can happen... I am not a big believer in romantic love, but I am a practitioner.
It's complicated, but I think I can still fall in love."