The vocalist and leader of the band ‘Love of Lesbian’, Santi Balmes has assured that a “hypothetical” independence of Catalonia would not bother him “too much” in an excerpt from his new book ‘One day in my head. Songs for (not) very normal people’.
“In other words, this hypothetical independence would not bother me too much. -In reality, the last years of my life living in my own state would be a very interesting field of research- (…) I sense that just after a reasonable amount of time, my land would end up being accepted, in a healthy way, as a bilingual country“, writes Balmes in chapter 5, ‘songs in Catalan’.
Precisely, throughout this fragment, the singer acknowledges that he is aware that the day he releases an album in Catalan “many will not listen to it, and more than one” will insult him, and considers that there are people who “do not like” writing, speaking or thinking in Catalan.
Furthermore, in this chapter, Balmes reflects on “hoaxes” spread about the population of Catalonia and the ‘procés’, while he claims Catalan as an essential language and asks that Catalonia take “the initiative” to “sell itself better.”
“The only thing that in the end has become clear to me is that a language without a State is condemned to resistance. If someone does not enter my land through an emotional, humanistic path, or simply based on respect, the perverse logic of ‘We are in Spain, why do I have to learn your language, yes, totally, blablabla’ is invincible, ergo, the problem is served by depending on the good will of the people,” he reflects.
Throughout ‘A day in my head. Songs for (not) very normal people’, the vocalist of ‘Love of Lesbian’ recounts 24 hours “inside his head” in which “predictable” things happen while he relates his thoughts to his favorite songs, like ‘The uncle’ of Joan Manuel Serrat; ‘Papa, jo vull ser torero’ by Albert Pla, or ‘La Iaia’ by Nico Roig, in the case of the fifth chapter, about songs in Catalan.
Balmes dedicates each part of the book to songs depending on the occasion, such as “to wake up in a good mood”, for the shower, songs of jealousy and spite, for “the dog to walk you” or to go to sleep.
Although it is his first non-fiction book, Balmes, composer and singer of titles such as ‘Maniobras de escapismo ‘VEHN’, ‘1999’ or ‘The Poet Halley’, is the author of the children’s bestseller ‘I will kill monsters for you ‘, the humor novel ‘Why did you buy me a walkie-talkie if I was an only child?’ and from the book of stories ‘The Double Life of Fairies’.