There, where hearts are repaired

October 6, 2018

# Translation

Destiny played another bad trick on "El Guille." Intense pain warned him of the return of an "old ailment." Then, a familiar routine: the Emergency room at the Cardiovascular Institute, admission, emergency surgery and subsequent rehabilitation. There, in room 11 on the third floor of the prestigious hospital center, specialized in cardiovascular diseases, a heart repaired many times is recovering. It's Guille Vilar. Journalist Arleen Rodríguez Derivet came to see him, with the fraternal embrace of a friend and that inseparable companion of both that is music.

Guille Vilar's heart almost stopped. Kindred spirits, how do we say this thing between you and me in our circle? Twin souls, intimate companions?

Imagine you, soulmates.

Soulmates, I like that much better. We're here at the Cardiovascular Institute because Guille Vilar just came out of a rather complicated operation, as all heart operations are. The third one of these surgical interventions already. What's going on with Guille Vilar's heart?

Well, they've broken it many times. No, that's the metabolism, people say, you smoke, don't smoke so much, you do this or that thing… I say, no, it's not any of that, it's that human beings have a metabolism and mine produces fat in the arteries and that fat causes obstruction, which makes your heart hurt. So, you come here right away and they clear it out.

That is, are you here because your heart hurts?

It was hurting, not anymore.

So is it true that the heart hurts?

Yes, it does hurt. I don't know, you can have a nail hurt, your head; but when you feel that area hurting, you get on alert because it's your heart.

Which area is that?

The chest, over the left nipple, gives you a pain, I'd say, dry, deep, that's called chest angina. This time it wasn't deep; but I did notice it, because you get to know the signals. That pain would hit me when I walked down the street for half a block. This time I had to go back home, I lay down and suddenly it hurt. I said to myself: I'm not going to be here watching television. That was on Friday and Monday I came with my nephew and they told me, you did well, you're admitted.

Well Guille, we all know the priority is to take care of you and other patients too. But this radio program is to make your ears happy a little bit from the hospital, what should I play for you?

I knew you had an especially sensitive heart, but not that you put it at risk so often. Now, there's a mystery that I imagine you've been learning. Dr. Llerena is the one who's operated on you several times, he's a personal friend, yours and mine, and of so many good people. What has he told you, how to solve that problem? Because you're not an overweight man, you're a man who walks a lot, who ultimately, aside from overwork, follows the rules of a healthy life pretty well. What's going on with you, why do you acquire that fat?

At first it was normal, but already by the second operation after six years it was because I stopped taking pills and exercising. You're not necessarily perfect, you make mistakes, and that mistake can be, as in this case, what took me to the operating room a second time. Dr. Llerena scolded me quite a bit and then I got on the right path of what I should be doing.

Among the things we share as soulmates is a certain hypercritical spirit toward the problems affecting Cuban society today. Do you have any criticism of this place? I see it as perfect from the outside, but I'd like to know what you think.

First of all I want to personally thank Dr. Llerena for his undeniable professional performance, he who has a name, not like some musicians who pay to have propaganda made for them. Dr. Llerena has a reputation he's earned through his surgical ability. For example, in my case, I had a stent blocked by fat and he managed to clear it. Notice that the multidisciplinary team applauded when he succeeded.

Were you conscious?

Yes, you're awake watching that, and you even share the little screen, there you see what's happening; and they applauded because it seems the operation wasn't easy, because if you can't clear it, then you have to go to the second option which is, as they say, open heart. An option that's riskier.

I think the most valuable thing about the hospital is the personnel. I've noticed the weight and reality of the blockade, I've realized that in the rooms there are things missing that were there before and now aren't, simple things. Some medicines are lacking, although you can get them later, but you notice that sometimes there's a certain difficulty, but the hospital's treatment from the moment you arrive at the Emergency Room is excellent, and I don't say this because I'm a public figure, but you see when you're lying down how they treat others, and that's very reassuring.

Right now let's say we're on a Sunday at the Submarino Amarillo, and you have all the good people from the Cardiovascular Institute there, led by Llerena, what would you play for them? I'm thinking, not about the band that plays that night, but about those masterful videos you have. What would you play for them?, and don't make it hard for me.

What goes through your mind when you face a situation like feeling chest pain so great that you can't walk even half a block, when you feel it's not the first time but the third, when you go into an operating room and they tell you you're in a critical situation? What goes through a person's head in that critical situation?

Precisely on this third occasion I was the last one to have surgery that day. I went in at 3 and came out at five-something, that is, it was a difficult, long operation. And in that time, before I lay down on the stretcher, I had time to reflect, and I thought about war, about what soldiers say, that the bad thing isn't being afraid, it's facing it. You can be worried, you can't go in there laughing, because, even though you're not anesthetized, you're not in an emergency case, but you go into an operating room, there you're always risking your life. I thought, well, if I have to go, at least I leave my family the immense affection I know the Cuban people feel for me and for everything I've done. That's what I leave, and I think that's very valuable, because we're not talking about material things, but about deep spiritual things, and thank you for letting me say that, for me that's life.

I was thinking whether also in moments like that you start to review the sheet of your life, to say what was left to me, what did I leave pending, what things would I have wanted to do and didn't. Do you think about that, or don't you torture yourself like that?

Sometimes, and perhaps more often than one imagines, you question yourself especially about love relationships, and say, if they had given me another chance, now no, we're both old now, but I say, why didn't I push harder with so-and-so or why didn't I listen to what's-her-name. And yes, I think about that, but, especially, when you're in that situation you also think about other things, and I think about the importance of seeing the country based on what really matters and loving what you have, because sometimes we get lost in questioning about difficult situations, that there isn't this, there isn't that, and that's the least of it.

And it doesn't mean I'm not concerned about things here, but you have to know how to look in other directions too and see how in our continent's sister countries life is worthless, or that the right wing is finishing itself off, bourgeois morality no longer has ethics, democracy.

And impunity.

Of course. And that doesn't exist here. What happens is that unfortunately you have to feel like you can lose what you have to value it much more. For example, when I ate in the intensive care room, I was about four days on purée, and they gave me chicken and fish, but the rest was purée, and I would scrape the bean purée with my spoon, because it was so delicious, but there was so little of it, and I said, I think sometimes in love you have to let those things happen so you value what you have.

The other day they showed an English movie called I Am John Lennon, and at the end I shed a tear. In that moment you realize how much you know about that person. A girl who was here asked, hey, how far does it go, and I told her, surely until Ringo appears, otherwise it would be the history of The Beatles, not Lennon's, and indeed, it ended when John was heading to Hamburg, Germany. In that movie I could see how difficult John's life was as a teenager. His father left him, his mother too, it was a tremendous drama. I don't know, they're those things that suddenly you enter the same frequency as the character and it hurt me. And even so he had the capacity to be a tremendous artist, to leave people songs like this Imagine, which is a hymn of love.

In a few days I'll have the luck of being just a few blocks from the building where Lennon lived, and maybe I'll even pass by there.

I was going to tell you that. You have to go for me and, when you're there, think of me and John, nothing else. That's enough.

What will Guille Vilar do from now on, when they allow him to get up, to walk, to start a routine of exercise and care? Is overwork over or will you continue with your routine?

You have to try to be consistent, if you want to be here you have to toe the line. It's also respect for the family that's pulling along with you. Me, because of them, I have to get on the right path, and many other things. I'll continue with my diet and I'll try to come do the exercises. And as for work it's very unlikely I'll stop things, especially because I respond to calls, hey, Guille, we need such and such things, and I'm already fired up, I take it on. But there's another thing too that you pick up over the years: how pleasant it is to have time for yourself and rest, to sleep in the afternoons, I don't know, I think in that sense I'll be more measured, more relaxed and, above all, perhaps what I'll do most is write, which is what I like most of everything I do.

Yes. Just now I'm reading two books by and about Lezama Lima. Revelations of my Faithful Havana, some writings he did for the Diario de la Marina, in the year '49; and the book of interviews with Lezama, by Ciro Bianchi. Here what he collects are interviews that have been done with Lezama, which is another delight. It's a mystery to be reading Lezama Lima when you're in the intensive care room.

Are you a virgin when it comes to reading Lezama?

Yes, but well...

Not even Paradiso?

No.

Not even chapter 8?

No, not even 8 (laughs).

I'm not ashamed of not having read Lezama Lima, because the thing isn't to say yes, I like it so much, no, it's that you arrive whenever it is, but that you arrive, and me, for example, years ago I was with a Venezuelan woman and I was listening to the trio Los Panchos at her house, and I was with journalist Pedro de la Hoz enjoying that and he told me, come here, Guille, but didn't you know Los Panchos?, me, no, but why Guille, that's impossible. Well, because in my environment, from my youth and adolescence, Los Panchos didn't figure, but the thing is I hear them now and they've driven me crazy, I've already embraced them. So, with that same policy I'm approaching Lezama. I'm sure I'm going to enjoy Paradiso or try to enjoy it, because I know it's difficult. But after you go trying to get to know this person, I think you have some keys that might help you understand him.

So readings, writings and some program, and of course, the Submarino.

Yes, girl, when Abel called me to work at the Submarino, they had called before and I said no, no, no. Hey, Guille, we need you to come here, man, I don't like show business, I'm a radio and television man and I write, I'm not here to be doing things at night, around. And Abel called me, hey, Guille, we need you to come here, I didn't say anything to him, but when Abel Prieto calls you it's always an honor, and when I got there I realized it was real work. It was a serious intent of the Cuban state to create all that atmosphere next to Lennon Park. And look, I didn't have much relationship with Cuban rock, because it's not necessarily the music that particularly fascinates me, I'm more fascinated by trova, traditional and new, I'm more fascinated by Van Van, Frank Fernández.

And the fusion of all that too.

At the Submarino I've learned to value those rock bands much more. They had tremendous exclusion, and both the young people and those who went through that experience, go there and it's like the magical encounter with an era, a sound and visual magic that, when you leave, you say, what a good time I had. And I think, because of the fact of playing there and playing it with passion, the experience is worth it, because the problem is that Cuban rock needs good writing, because they're very good instrumentalists, there are very good voices, but the dilemma is composition. Look, Buena Fe isn't rock properly, but rock is part of their sound environment, and they do have several songs that have stuck around, like the one they dedicated to Martí: Everyone Counts.

Everyone Counts, do you want to say goodbye with that? Would you like to go to bed tonight...?

I'd love to, and how good, because, especially for me, what moves me most about that song is how a young person sees Martí. There's a part of the song that more or less says: how this guy without a computer or anything, has done so much. That's our Martí, and that Buena Fe song, from a very honest and young perspective, has paid the tribute the Apostle deserves.

Thank you very much for letting me do this interview. This is from bed 11 on the third floor of the Cardiovascular Institute, with Guille, absolutely without clothes, but no, covered, wrapped in a blanket because the Institute has air conditioning. It's one of these things, as he said, these mysteries, despite the blockade and how much it crushes us, and we ourselves whip ourselves on the back, every day we call to improve and be better in the country, the truth is that nobody knows what they have until they lose it, and hopefully we'll do everything...

When we're risking that, it means there are shots fired.

Exactly.

And shots are never good.

Please, may it never happen. Thank you, Guille, special thanks to Dr. Llerena who is a master, a professor not only for his students. You have the Cultural Journalism Award, and Llerena has the Félix Elmuza Order, because many journalistic hearts have continued beating thanks to Dr. Llerena. Thanks to Llerena, thanks to this hospital.

And to its personnel.

And to all its workers who have shown me affection so that this heart returns to the Submarino Amarillo, to Radio Progreso and to everything it can return to. The important thing is that you write and that you continue to be that sensitive heart we love so much, that soulmate. Frank Palacio is the one doing the work of gathering everything afterwards and assembling this sound. Me, while this is being heard, I'll be there at the session of the United Nations General Assembly. And I promise you, even if I have to crawl I'll get to the Dakota building and, if I can, I'll put a flower there in your name. Thank you very much Guille and long life to you.