Andábamos maravillados

“I feel every day that I’m coming to an exhaustion of love / And the only thing that relieves me is to think of my friends and their existence / I think of them. They simply make me feel part of something. Something like belonging, something like a country.”

These verses by Violeta Gil leap from the page to the stage in Andábamos maravillados. The poet’s voice and the music of Marcos Nadie (the stage name of Marcos Úbeda) shape the author’s new proposal in a concert that is, at once, a conversation about love and friendship, a questioning of contemporary forms of communication, a celebration of the possibility of encounter, and a dance. Two very different generations meet on stage and try to understand one another. Gil and Nadie had already worked together in the acclaimed production Así hablábamos, created from the universe of Carmen Martín Gaite by the writer’s company, La tristura. The production premiered last year at the Centro Dramático Nacional, with Nadie composing musical pieces for the show.

Violeta Gil, co-founder of La tristura, has been active in the performing arts for twenty years. She published her first poetry collection in 2019, antes de que tiréis mis cosas (Arrebato Libros), with which she toured for three years in a show of the same name alongside musician Abraham Boba. Her autobiographical novel, Llego con tres heridas (Caballo de Troya, 2022), further established her as one of the most notable voices in contemporary Spanish narrative. Both the book Andábamos maravillados and the performance will reach audiences this autumn. In them, the poet reclaims her love for words and their beauty while creating a time and space to think together about how to keep living humanely, intensely, and kindly in this world we share.