Third lap, the podcast with Alejandro Gaviria and Ricardo Silva Romero, a podcast
of the locutorio shoots the locutorio dese or Intuito that what my mother was telling
me insistently was that famous phrase that says that all excessive virtue is usually a
vice and that life, better life needs balances. Master means the person where
it begins, a way of being, a way of doing things, a
way of beauty. Hi, Ricardo, we have to resort again to the
audio exchange of whatsapp ara to fulfill our weekly engagement with third round. I
propose that we speak this time of what we might call masters of life to
men and women who have influenced our gaze of the world, whose example or
teachings have remained in our memory and have to do with what we are.
And I' m going to first mention a person I' ve already mentioned
in previous third- round episodes, the professor or my professor of philosophy and
aesthetics at the Jorge Robledo Institute in Medellín, the first half of the eighties,
IgnacioÁlvarez. Beyond his classes, to his knowledge taught then, to
his insistence on the need to clearly argue what we thought, of my taste
for the coming reading, of his classes. Beyond all this, what remained
of me is his gaze of the world, the gaze of the world of
IgnacioÁlvarez, which today could describe in the following way as a kind of
subtle criticism. It is never trividante, but a subtle critique of the vulgarity
of the world had ignacio, a kind of aesthetic resignation, as if it
thought the world in this way. I am not going to change it,
but I am going to try to fight it quietly, hoping that some of
these young people will help me in the years to come. One of the
strange things rich, of being an adult, of aging is that we can
articulate over the years what we barely intuited then and what it included then.
Today I think the way the article is that this professor was self exiled in
culture. It was his way of life. He was not fully happy,
as no person is, but he wanted to show us that world of that
way of living, the world of culture through culture. And some of that
was left today. It is not that I live in that world fully inhabited
by another world professionally, but its teachings have allowed, I think I will
be interpreted over the years as a balance of culture as a way of inhabiting
the world and of escaping many times from certain traps the camps of the domestic
world and the professional world. That teaching left me that first teacher of life
that I want to mention, IgnacioÁlvarez. Alexander Yes, in fact,
we turn once again to these voice mails, which also have the grace of
exchange and letters and have another kind of joy and other kind of emotion.
And well, and they keep pushing forward our conversation, which has always been
a way I think very clever to become such friends. I want to start
our list of tributes of portraits to teachers who have changed our lives with pompilio
iriarte chain, professor of literature of the modern gymnasium, an extraordinary sonetist and
a master of the workshop of letters that left me absolutely convinced and until today
I am of the view of literature as the game. We' ve talked
about it before, we' ve talked about it again, but I'
ve stayed from your sessions, your workshop. The idea that one, when
writing in crypt, for readers to decipher and interpret and everything is really a
game. Fiction is a game that serves to digest reality, to make it
possible, to shape it. In a way, reality is a blurry stain
and fiction, literature, play, are finding the edges of features, crutches
and ticks and all that to me became clear and I have assumed it in
my life as a writer since pyriarte taught on his board custody of Octavio Paz
and the poetry of César Vallejo and Lope de Vega and Borges to neuda,
but especially when he taught to build sonnets. The sonnet turns him to another
person and he is responsible for much of what I have been. I want
now, Ricardo, to talk about another master of life, of a person
that you would say still has a great influence on my way of seeing and
understanding the world. His name is Juan Camilo Ochoa. It was at that
time, in the seventies, in the eighties, in Medellín, my father
' s best friend, Juan Camilo, still lives was professor of mathematics at
the National University at Medellín headquarters. He had studied a doctorate in mathematics at
the University of California at Berkeley. I often went to the house, to
our house, especially at the end of the afternoon, to throw wagons and
when we all came my dad and my brothers sat with him just to talk.
He had a peculiar intelligence, dazzling, almost even intimidating. At times
he was a great reader. He was a great teacher. Today I am
struck by the rich attention that he never wrote much. He liked to write,
but he didn' t do it often. He didn' t write
many academic articles. Despite being a teacher for more than thirty forty years.
He wrote some press columns but very few, some few essays, but seemed
to tell us that someone has to think of others writing, but he thought
of his two great teachings. Now he tried to interpret them in this exercise,
to try to understand these influences in retrospect, they were the following.
The first one told us what she was talking about and sometimes directly, although
she didn' t like preaching very much, she told us to get out
of here for a while. Go around the world, leave the linguistic comfort
of your people and their language. Read other things, get out of here,
so be it, for a while. He conveyed that idea to us
all the time of that kind of anti- parochialism. It is not trident
again, but it was always in his thought. It was something he was
trying to inculcate with the stories he had and the reflections he was making.
And he also comes a sort of embracing mind that always caught my attention.
I knew how to program computers, I was an expert in differential equations,
a great expert in English literature, expert in plastic arts, I belonged to
the Board of the Museum of Modern Art of Medellín, and that branding mind
that wanted to know everything always caught my attention. And I think that somehow
it influenced me and continues to influence me in my tastes and my way of
seeing and also treating evil that comes to encompass the world. I was thinking
about your father' s friend. I think of my father, who was
a teacher and we' ve talked about him before and who, in my
own way, is the fundamental person, the original person is the person I
give birth to. I have already said that teacher means Persian, area where
a way of being begins, a way of doing things, a way of
beauty. And I see in my dad' s figure or a way to
do the things he invented. I do realize when I behave, for example,
authentically friendly as when I behaved with humor before strangers or when I managed
to break the ice in some circumstance that I am making gestures and using resources,
even the inflections that I saw him using I was that I really adored
and adored my dad It was a really very special love that one can keep
mentioning in present And because it coincides with that he was a teacher and he
was the master of many weights and really what one has left of him good
and he has left. It' s that way of behaving. There is
always the suspicion that teachers are not a discourse, but a content, but
a form, They are an example, a way to move from the halls
outside and out of the halls that stays one forever. I want to mention
another master of life, if I want to call him a person I believe
has already mentioned in other previous third- round episodes. He is a bookseller,
Álvaro Castillo, who has the bookshop San Liberario in BogotaÁlvaro has shown
me some authors that I would never have read, he has directed my readings.
I could say so without believing it, without even knowing it and fed
for many years, almost two decades, my taste for books and somehowÁlvaro
has also usefully taught me this idea that I already mentioned of culture as a
refuge with my brother Pascual sucking cock. We toldÁlvaro a while ago about
the obsco bookseller, because of his strong personality and a peculiar form of sincerity
thatÁlvaro practices in hard times, in times of illness that I have had,
in times of professional anxiety and even in times of sadness, going to
the bookstore and talking toÁlvaro has been a form of therapy. But I
say that he has been a master of life, becauseÁlvaro, in some
way or in a direct and indirect way, has greatly influenced the books that
I have read over the last fifteen or twenty years, and that is a
great influence and he has already fed it, but I want to reiterate it.
That love for books that has defined a facet of my life also over
the last few years. Well, I, the truth has been very close,
Álvaro Castillo, to the point of having nicknames that are I expect private,
and we have had a bond that curiously started for my dad. My
dad was the first one to come to him andÁlvaro told me right and
then we got together as a friendship very similar to this conversation, like back
and forth messages to find books, to send books, to keep an eye
on each other' s lives. And then it occurs to me to think
of a teacher who I still have relatively close and is also from the school
in him, byÁlvaro, because there is a suspense in that relationship.
Álvaro is a person totally concentrated in one and when one arrives at his bookstore,
he is there entirely, totally present. And that' s the attitude
of a professor of mathematics of mine, of geometry, especially, whose name
is Edgar Obonaga, who once wrote a column about when he was dealing with
El covid in the two thousand twenty. And he' s a teacher to
more than many generations, from many colleges and universities that I think everyone agrees
as in the case of pompili iriarte, everyone agrees in his figure, in
the way he turns his class into a thriller movie. And you' re
thinking all the time and you' re going to touch me, pass to
the front, and I' m going to have to prove this exercise of
geometry or trigonometry or whatever. It is a class in which one can think
of something else, one the next a certain tension of being there and then
very soon appreciate it. I want to talk now about my mom, my
mom as a teacher, I, Ricardo had a problematic relationship with my mom
during the years to which I have referred several times in this episode, during
the years of my adolescence. Not because I was an especially troubled teenager with
a tendency to mess with me that I wasn' t, but because of
certain forms of isolation and self- absorbing that I practiced almost defiantly for a
few years and that generated a permanent conflict for at least a few years with
my mom. She always sensed certain excesses in my personality in my form,
especially then of inhabiting the world, certain excesses of responsibility, I could say
so, and a certain propensity also to isolate myself too much for a few
moments, even to get away from the family. My mom, almost always
subtle sometimes with some sarcasm pointed to those deviations and I always see it now.
In this way I try to preach balance, to teach me that balance.
I disobeyed his teachings for many years, but today, in retrospect and
this podcast has been that as a retrospective exercise of teachings left to us by
people in life. Or I sense that what my mother was insistently saying to
me was that famous phrase that says that all excessive virtue is usually a vice
and that the better lived life needs balance. During a difficult time in my
life, during my illness, I fully understood the importance of those advices of
my mother and those teachings that have been permanent for more than fifty years.
Today I can say that it seems a little more attention, though not full,
and perhaps it is a message for her perhaps I should pay more attention,
because her advice or recommendations always end up being valid, even many of
them clairvoyants, because I am very touched by the portrait of your mother and
I very much like the idea of a mother teacher, of a mother who
manages to transmit a way of living also with the example, and with some
phrases and some behaviors, with a lot of wisdom. In any case,
and then I fall a little bit into a behavior that I have had and
that has put me to sign the books not Ricardo Silva, but Ricardo Silva
Romero. Everything I write I sign with both surnames, because I' m
always thinking about the balance between those two teachers, my dad and my mom.
I have always wanted them to be in the same sentence, which is
the name I have and is also called to balance, that name I use
in the texts, because while I have more inclination to be like my dad
in the sense of moving around the world with a certain humor and with a
certain ability to put myself in the place of others really my spirit what I
have inside has a lot to do with my mom, that is, she
was the one who adored the movies. She was really the one fighting the
books. My dad was also a very good reader, but she was always
arguing with some book. She, then, not only worked in several governments,
but has suffered the political world since her father was a senator and her
brother was a union leader. He' s always had a lot of courage,
a lot of courage, a lot of desire. To say that what
has to be said and certainly, for there is a very clear combination that
is given within me and that even physically is evident. I mean, I
' m one of those people who can' t deny the dads he has,
because I have the same height of them and the traits of each well
distributed. I want to end Ricardo with an anecdote, not two masters of
my life, because they never were. I did not know them, I
never knew them personally, but that independently, they left me a teaching of
commitment to a profession, this case, of commitment to the academy, with
the fact of being teachers of generosity, of great generosity. The anecdote is
as follows. I was studying my doctorate in the third year, year one
thousand nine hundred and ninety- seven, and I wrote two articles. One
ended up being part of my thesis, the other didn' t. The
first was about intergenerational mobility in the United States, about how socio- economic
fortunes or the socio- economic performance of parents and children. It looks like
an article with data and the second was the somewhat more theoretical article on technological
change, but it used some record data in sports to evaluate or test some
of these ideas. I sent these two articles to two different teachers in the
mail. There was no e- mail at that time. It consisted of
the ease of e- mailing files in Manila bags, one to Professor Gry
Becker at the University of Chicago and one to Professor Robert at emmat alone.
Weeks later, one and the other answered me with long letters, two letters.
The two had clearly read the article thoroughly and had both substantive and formal
recommendations. It always seemed to me this rich fact, that generosity, that
commitment to being a teacher, an extraordinary fact two already veteran Nobel laureates with
all the honors, receive in their mail some articles from a student. Anyone
uncovers that Manila Stock Exchange read two articles and they take the job of writing
a letter to the other side of the United States, a letter that I
responded by thanking, but that more than that left me a generous teaching in
the world of academia that I tried to practice with my students. Maybe not
the same way. This was a teaching I always remember. I end by
saying that the two letters, in one of the many fretts of my life,
were lost, unfortunately, in one that I have been able to find
again. Embrazo Ricardo, it seems to me a beauty of anecdote. I
do not know if because my family has had that vocation to the academic and
I am deeply moved by the image of a student who awaits the response of
his teachers and there is his whole world and his research spirit, his spirit,
his search for knowledge is engaged. In short, it seems to me
from an earlier era, the era of Manila envelopes, but from an earlier
era that should be revived and constantly cared for. I think I' m
gonna have a lot of teachers left. My parents got on the list and
then I thought I' d close thinking about extraordinary teachers I had later in
the Unit. I think of the first semester that Mario Mendoza dictated and how
fascinating his monologue was about literature and what literature was. It was really transformative
or listening to it in that first semester of literature. Then I remember a
Jesuit professor, well known at the Javeriana University and at the Faculty of Literature,
without a doubt, who was called Enrique Gaitán, and had a speech
as a fictional about literary language. It was his class, usually, and
it was really a class one could understand in a two- page document.
But the grace was to see how the class by class told anecdotes, explained
where literature came from and did it with a really very, very particular humor.
You can also think of masters on the side of the artists who have
fascinated you the most, from Van Gogh' s paintings to Richard Ford'
s very great novels. There are a number of writers you' re imitating.
While writing or from which one is stealing or from which one is taking
tricks and solutions to texts. And in my case, because that extends above
all to popular musicians, who usually come to mind a lot while I write.
And there is another band of teachers that makes me sad to leave aside
in this list of five who are friends, friends as in my case,
like Daniel, or friends like Carlos Manuel, friends like Santiago, in short,
people that I know, that have changed my way of being and that
have put me where I am. They encouraged me to find things I hadn
' t found. Only those sound a lot to me as teachers, as
examples I have followed, and perhaps the first of them is just my brother.
So I think the bottom line, Alejandro, is that we come across
a lot of teachers, we start with family and end up with friends.
And it is worth saying that the third round is the meeting of friends and
new examples, new teachers who have helped us. Me. This meeting with
you and with you to live better has helped me a lot. It'
s not clear that we can all write. It is clear that we can
all, with luck and vocation, devote ourselves to the craft of writing.
But lately I think we can' t just write, we should write.
Writing is the best therapy we have at hand. Welcome to a fictional audio
course on how and why to write. Take the audiocourse of fictional writing in
the locutorio com slash fictionario with Ricardo Silva Romero. Always pick a good time.
Always choose a good conversation. Third round, the podcast subscribes now and
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