We had to eat next week, where always, with the usual friends, lighting the usual soufflé. Lluís Llongueras was admirable first and foremost, above all else, for his joy, for his tireless joy, his militant joy. Normally, this militancy is already a sign of generosity, but in his case it was a kind of genius. When he summoned us, it was as if he wanted to celebrate his birthday now yes now also, to celebrate that he is here, to celebrate that he is a joyful and different person, to celebrate him. That formality and good manners that means, despite the suffering, giving joy. It's a whole breed, a genetic trait. It's found in very few people. Every day in fewer people, every day it's less fashionable, and I think that's exactly what drew me to him.
I met him inaugurating his sculpture exhibition Fractals at Arts Santa Mònica, where I was able to introduce him as a genius, without really knowing what I was saying. I didn't have to know very well what I was saying, there are things you intuit just with a presence that carries a legacy. He certainly didn't seem like a hairdresser to me. Never. He always seemed like a child dressed as a hairdresser, artist, writer, designer, communicator, producer, photographer. "Jordi, do you think this photo book I've made is a pornographic book?". The book in question was a kind of obsessive homage to vaginas, but I replied no, because his gaze was not obscene but amazed. Surrendered. A man totally surrendered to femininity, not exactly to female beauty but to femininity. An absolute fan. Incapable of returning to women all that, whether they wanted it or not, they gave him. And incapable of stopping trying.
A hyperactive. He shouldn't have, in the single-floor elevator in his workshop, a pile of books, a magazine, and a phone. It shouldn't be necessary unless tempus fugit at full speed, and not a second can be lost, and above all, not a second can be lost doing mediocre things. From mediocrity we must flee, from mediocre jobs and mediocre moods, and being sad or angry is always a mediocre thing. Lluís Llongueras displayed a sportsmanship, a knowing how to lose and a knowing how to win, that was utterly invincible. It's not exactly that he was a great hairdresser, it's that he knew how to comb souls and cut the hair of characters. He associated hairdressing with psychology, with an early and particular scientific method, and opened the city's first unisex salon, where he himself designed the spaces and even the furniture so that every centimeter would fit his gestures and ideas.
"He didn't seem like a hairdresser to me at all. Never. He always seemed like a child dressed as a hairdresser, artist, writer, designer, communicator, producer, photographer"Llongueras was the first to equalize the salaries of female workers with those of male workers, he styled Dalí's mustaches, installed the immense wig in the Mae West room of the Theater-Museum, and made every media appearance a festive and immodest show. Since modernity is something that cannot be avoided, as Dalí said, because we cannot stop being modern or deny our era, let's be it to the fullest. Let's be avant-garde. I think the second reason I approached him was because of this kind of fairy dust, of remnants of Dalinian DNA, that emanated from his skin. As if desperately clinging to an era when, unlike now, political correctness was only worthwhile if it meant innovation. Being creative, being brilliant, as a rule of civility. Being unique as a moral obligation.
Perhaps next week's lunch we will do it anyway. Lluís, I will not forget your way of styling my hair with your eyes from the first day. That sharp beard of Satan, those black wings of a fallen angel, that signature with the 'elle' downwards, that look of a child trapped in the mediocrity of a man's body. The notes scattered throughout your house ("Hello life! I'm still here!"), the vacant horror on every inch of wall, the passionate sculptures that still try to dignify the emptiness of life. Yes, Lluís, it was a pornographic book. Like you, pornographic, excessive, provocative, effervescent, naive, amazed, imperfect, inevitable, involuntary, unstoppable, brilliant. Hairdresser, they will tell you. Method, they will tell you. What a laugh.
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