Luz Casal: "Sing 'Sin ti muero'? I don't think love should demand death"

She is one of the most powerful and recognizable voices in Spanish popular music, but Luz Casal is also a composer and author of many of her songs, perhaps her least known facet. That is why this Friday, at eight in the evening at the Teatro Ciudad de Marbella, she will open the eighth edition of Marpoética, the poetry festival held in the coastal city. She will be accompanied by two old friends: the scientist and writer Carlos López-Otín and the journalist and poet Antonio Lucas.

–Today you are opening Marpoética...

–I was excited about the invitation. I will be with Carlos López-Otín, whom I admire very much, and with Antonio Lucas, who is a delightful guy and I love him as a poet. I'm looking forward to it.

–Your relationship with Carlos goes way back.

–Yes, he's a total guy. He makes the complicated understandable and is very sensitive. We met many years ago at an awards ceremony and at first, I confess, I didn't like him. He was late and it annoyed me. I thought: "Who is this guy who arrives late while we all had to make an effort to be punctual?" Then I heard him speak and my annoyance subsided a bit... (Laughs). He seems like an extraordinary person and, for those of us who are not exceptional, being near someone like that is exciting.

–It's not like you are exactly ordinary...

–Well, well. (Shy silence). Have you read his latest book? The references he makes to literature, pop music, the experimental... Really, I find it extraordinary. And then there's his memory, which I have always envied: he can tell you the title and the author and even the names of the characters and the plot details of books he read fifteen years ago. I'm really excited to meet him again.

–I always remember you with a book of poetry nearby, buying the latest anthology of Pizarnik or any other author.

–Yes, but ask me to recite a single verse. I'm unable. Ask me to continue 'Life was serious' by Gil de Biedma... I must have read Gata Cattana's poetry about thirty times and I can't remember a single title of her poems.

–Maybe songs already occupy all your memory.

–Well, sometimes I forget the lyrics. (Laughs). My lack of memory, for example, prevents me from drawing on the poems I've read when composing. Other authors do have that facility.

–However, your songs have always been very linked to poetry.

–But I don't try to make them poems. For me, song lyrics are a genre in themselves because they are conditioned by melody, meter, and rhythm.

–You have a great exception in 'Negra sombra', which is a poem by Rosalía de Castro.

–Yes, although I haven't worked much with poetry, the little I have done is not bad, fortunately. (Laughs).

–And you released an album like 'La pasión', with lyrics by María Elena Walsh or Bola de Nieve, among other brilliant authors.

–Yes. The song by María Elena Walsh, 'Como la cigarra', is incredible, you know? I find it a beautiful text. ("So many times I died, / so many times they killed me, / yet here I am, / resurrecting"). I also sang 'Gracias a la vida' by Violeta Parra ("Thanks to life, which has given me so much; / it has given me laughter and it has given me tears. / Thus I distinguish happiness from sorrow, / the two materials that form my song / and your song, which is the same song, / and everyone's song, which is my own song")... I have a certain knack for saying: "This is it."

–The other day Conchita highlighted your ability to write songs about topics other than love and heartbreak.

–I modestly believe that the love songs I have, like 'You are everything' ("Give me your smile and your warmth, / give me death and life, / your cold and your heat, / give me your calm, / give me your fury, / give me your hidden resentment"), are so crushingly good that... How do you write after that?

–Another characteristic of your lyrics, except for a few exceptions, is that they are never too explicit, right?

–I like to leave the door open for each person to interpret the lyrics as they want, you know? To take them to their own ground. I think that's part of the magic of music. I struggle with being descriptive.

–And then there's that vulgarity of singing "Without you I die" that you've always avoided, right?

–Well, there are songs like 'Think of me'... Boleros are like that, heart-wrenching, but I don't think love has to demand death to complete its intensity, I don't know. It's an extreme that I find exaggerated. Maybe it's because in that area I'm already covered. (Laughs).