On Monday, an unusual atmospheric phenomenon occurred on the television screen: thunder of silence. Nothing so memorable has happened on our television since Fernando Arrabal came to a set prophesying millennialism and universal panic theater. On this occasion it was the … silence, the silences. And, unlike Arrabal, no one broke anything.
Not even the silence. The silences followed one another like discharges, like open perforations in a space, the television, rather full – if not parasitized – of noise, chatter, speaking for silence and crossfire. Especially in gatherings, debates, reality shows and blablabá shows. Silence on television is literally unheard of. It explodes and produces vertigo. Not to mention in prime-time and in a talk show, that of Xavi Fortes on Canal 24h. This gathering is, by the way, a model of not stridency but of order and discursive interest. Let this go ahead. And at the table of Fortes and his guests, at the end where an interviewee sits every night, often someone from culture, sat the great José Luis Gómez, actor and director. And a living monument of the word, the one that is said and the one that is not said, but is silenced and kept. The one you think. The job of acting consists precisely in maintaining and supporting that balance: in thinking the words before pronouncing them, emitting them or proclaiming them. The value of a word depends on the amount of silence it contains and treasures. The word, for an actor or actress aware that their life depends on it, is a way of managing silence. And silence, the natural place of thought, and the preamble to any sound. Silence shapes the word. And José Luis Gómez is a master in managing silence, then words. And so, the half-hour long interview that Xavi Fortes did with him really lasted an indefinite amount of time, and I would even say that he invented a new type of time in the television medium. The time of silence that opened between each question from Fortes and Gómez’s answer was an immense gap. He produced a mixture of modesty, respect, fear and amazement. What has never been seen/heard on television, in prime time (which comes from hearing). Fortes himself had to improvise a kind of patient impatience in the face of the eternal seconds that Gómez took to respond. And each answer involved first looking, lowering your head, half-smiling as if asking yourself how to answer the question, sometimes getting excited, rehearsing the answer (which could also not be seen as finished, remaining in suspense) and saying it. And when he said it it seemed like he was writing it. And he also said it by acting it, with the same precision with which he has said lines from Shakespeare, or Brecht, or Lope or Kafka so many times in his life. Which meant, on Monday, spacing the words apart, qualifying them, rethinking them.
Take time that neither television nor the viewer has. A time that belongs to the theater, and only the theater. The time of drama. The sequence of silences. In the theater the silence is full, while in much of television the words are empty. Gómez, very well understood and guided by versify ideas and memory, as if they were stanzas. José Luis Gómez even responded with a delayed response. Fortes asked him a question and the answer that Gómez gave responded to a previous question. Fortes entered at all times as a good scene partner, watching as Gómez chained thunderous silences, the kind that could set off alarms on the set. Not to forget the final story of his father facing the two mastiff dogs. And the rest is silence, as was said in Hamlet.
#Argentina
