2023-12-08 18:03:20
When Pablo Neruda asked himself in a poem: Who dies?, some of his answers were diluted in these verses: “He who does not travel dies slowly, / who does not read, / who does not hear music, / who does not find grace in himself. / He who destroys his own love dies slowly (…) he who becomes a slave to habit.”
Lucía Fernández Cívico does not mention Neruda in the conversation that lasts just over thirty minutes, but everything she says revolves around the metaphor of death transferred to life, of death without a curse, rather of the no death especially if we talk about something new that is born or something old that transforms and advances.
She unravels this anthropology of existence while explaining that speaking of “the new radio” does not include that what was produced before disappears or dies, but rather that it is folded and reformulated by being nourished by the traditional matrix, a conception detached from her experience as a host, announcer and producer in different stations in the city of Rosario, in Argentina, and who brought to Cuba as part of the postgraduate course The new radio organized at the José Martí International Institute of Journalism (IIPJM), together with the Doctor in Communication Sciences Ana Teresa Badía.
Before that she graduated in Social Communication from the National University of Rosario (UNR), a specialist in Radio Communication from the National University of La Plata, a teacher of the Radio Production subject at UNR and a master’s degree in Communication and Education; Lucía is a sound hunter.
“The sound goes directly to the emotions” and that possibility of creating images through scripts and radio productions attracted her since she was a seven-year-old girl and she acted as a presenter in imaginary programs in which she interviewed her relatives and in the that she, from time to time, slipped away as a participant just by changing the inflection of her voice a little.
The mystery of the radio gave him other opportunities: “I always liked the possibility of creating worlds.” Hence, he has ventured into making podcasts from the most personal ones such as Next to a riverabout the music of Rosario, his homeland, to others like Stories that make you fall in love from the Penguin Random House publishing group; Currentabout safe and sustainable mobility and some projects produced with a UNR team such as 40 years, 40 storiesa series of interviews about the four decades of democracy in his city and 30 years after lovea tribute to one of Fito Páez’s most emblematic albums of national rock, awarded the Martín Fierro award, in the radio documentary category.
Ten years ago, the two-month experience of visiting Cuba for the second time and traveling through it from Pinar del Río to Guantánamo, ended with a course at the IIPJM from which he took away radio scripts, a passion for soundscapes, some notions about the tenth Cuban, the warmth of the colleagues from different countries with whom he shared, and above all the certainty that he should return, the same conviction with which he collected coins at the age of 15 inside a bottle named Cuba and which he achieved with his first trip in Cuba. 2008.
Returning to the island this month was his self-gift for turning 40, a gift that was complemented by the possibility of teaching classes at the Institute.
Lucía repeats that the radio accompanies, that it is life, imagination, encounter, meaning and memory, perhaps that is why, when asked what Rosario and Cuba sound like, she responds with such everyday details as the Argentine mobilizations and the strident voices of the Cubans and Cuban; like the horns of the ships in their port and the noise of the “almendrones”; like the Paraná River and the sea from the Havana boardwalk that leaves the smell on her body.
Fito Páez sings: “Love, after love maybe / looks like this ray of sunshine.” And maybe it looks like that piece of sea that Lucía can’t stop visiting every time she comes.
Cover photo: Lucía levitating in front of the Paraná River. Author/ Alejandra Boccardo
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