"I studied audiovisual communication because I was passionate about cinema, and then I worked for three years in a documentary production company, an experience that showed me other ways of telling stories beyond the utopia of fiction. But one day I decided to leave my job as production manager, because I needed to do something more creative. Then I started my adventure writing about what I like: music, cinema, art, literature, and travel." Leaning on the bar, journalist and cultural agitator David Moreu follows the wisps of smoke rising from the freshly served green tea with mint, waiting for it to cool while Ben Harper performs his Wicked Man with the Blind Boys of Alabama for the morning clientele of the Bar.
That decision to write about what he loves, facing the chiaroscuro that it implies, crossed his life along with the journalist and also parishioner Manuel López Poy. "It was he who encouraged me to do journalistic collaborations, without knowing that advice thrown into the air would become my profession. Then we spent many mornings at his house, talking about journalism and life on the road. There I learned many things that are not taught in universities. Even today we laugh remembering those talks and the paths our lives have taken."
A life on the margins of established paths, "doing what I like, which is a small great privilege in the frantic and collapsed world in which we live" and whose trace can be followed through a multitude of reports for headers such as Esquire, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, El Periódico, Ruta 66 or the supplement Cultura|s of La Vanguardia, in addition to regular collaborations with the programs Sofá sonoro of Cadena SER and Els viatgers de la gran anaconda of Catalunya Ràdio.
Author of the books From a whisper to a scream and Un aplauso para el astronauta, his most recent feat is the co-editing of the Friday Foster strips in an impeccable volume published by Norma about the adventures of this Blaxploitation heroine created by Jim Lawrence and illustrated by Barcelona-born Jordi Longarón, who unfortunately passed away before seeing this work restored and re-edited in such a luxurious way. "I'm still busy with the last throes of the promotion of this book thanks to the fabulous exhibition of the original press strips that the MNAC is dedicating to it until June 24," he announces. In parallel, he anticipates that he is already finishing a book of illustrated blues conversations with cartoonist Jordi Vilella, which will be released by Editorial Confluencias, and a book of surf and counterculture conversations, for Sílex. "We also share a garden with some friends and their young children. Today it's our turn to water and my daughter loves it!" he laughs.
Epiphanies several kilometers from here
In November 2007, the parishioner traveled to Memphis with an assignment from a magazine to do a report on the history of Stax Records. "I decided to take a video camera and a microphone to record all the interviews and all the things that crossed my path with the dream of making a musical documentary."
"From that trip came four reports and an award-winning documentary titled Down to earth, about the almost magical relationship that existed between the Civil Rights movement and soul music." That was the first of many trips to the deep south of the United States in search of its hidden sound stories. "Undoubtedly, a dream come true for a soul and blues lover."
---And what would you say is the best place in the world?
The journalist laughs, knowing the answer by heart: "New Orleans, always," although his next vital epiphany would catch him quite far from there. "In 2019 I spent a season in Indonesia as a digital nomad where I revalidated my personal contract to continue working as a freelance at a time of existential doubts. It was an amazing trip and a unique way to discover that country and its culture. I still dream of nasi goreng!"
Moreu's most recent feat is the co-editing of the Friday Foster strips, in a volume published by Norma about the adventures of this heroine created by Jim Lawrence and illustrated by Barcelona-born Jordi LongarónBut, of all these existential, sonorous, and gustatory experiences, the regular customer highlights those he has lived "on the margins of the road and that do not appear in my reports, because I keep them for myself, orconversations with those people I have met over the years thanks to my workand who, in many cases, have become good friends."
When calm won over intensity
The journalist was born half an hour from Barcelona, on its outskirts, "in a town that is no longer a town, that is, where the baker no longer knows you." Since adolescence, the city was in his sights and that of his friends, "because it was the place where the things we liked happened and we wanted to be in the eye of the hurricane to attend concerts, parties, film festivals and presentations of all kinds." Later, he settled here "and for ten years I was moving between Gràcia, Guinardó and Arc de Triomf." But that love for Barcelona "mutated as calm gained ground over intensity" and, although there are still days when he lets himself be seduced by its charms, the time came to leave. And a distance was established that, at times, surprises him "because I must confess that I never imagined that I would come to feel like a stranger in its streets. I suppose that is the price you pay when you move away from something you have loved."
In love with "the stories of places that were and no longer are, in a gentrified Barcelona that is losing its identity," he likes to visit those corners, "where you can close your eyes and dream of what they were." And he gives as an example the old Zeleste venue on Platería street, today converted into a fashion store of a big brand, in a corner through which "all the musicians of the 70s Layetana wave and artists like Bill Evans, Stan Getz, Machito or Gerry Mulligan passed. Curiously, in the store there are still, or at least until not long ago there were, posters from that era hanging in a half-hidden corner. A nice detail," and he smiles as he sips his green tea with mint while Harper and the Blind Boys chant about their 11th Commandment.
---What is full of nice details is our succulent gastronomic offer, in case you want to eat something before going to water the garden with your daughter.
David Moreu bursts into laughter after which he asks to take a look at the menu. "And if there's some chocolate for dessert, that's also a good temptation," he adds with undisguised appetite.