The thinker of poetic laughter. Pepe Viyuela, in sips
Interview by Lali Ortega Cerón
Ways of Telling the Culture of Wine, with Pepe Viyuela.
Otoño opens with a very familiar face, one of those who bring a smile to your face for his closeness and sharp intelligence: Pepe Viyuela from La Rioja.
On 24 October, this actor and comedian, with a degree in Philosophy, will be the first guest to visit Vivanco and will share, in the evening, from 20.00 to 21.30, a lot of humour and a wide experience in literature, film, theatre and television series. His participation in films such as Tierra or Mortadelo y Filemón. Misión: Salvar la Tierra ; in plays such as El Pisito or Los Habitantes de la Casa Deshabitada; or his unforgettable roles in series such as Aida, or the one he is currently starring in on TVE, Olmos y Robles, will provide plenty of time for conversation and many toasts.
Wine is a matter of the senses. We begin, as in a wine tasting, by the logical order of Pepe Viyuela's face and voice. An interviewee who, after a few days, leaves us with a serene, warm and tasty aftertaste.
Your best vision...
Always, a library.
When has your sense of smell not failed you?
Generally when I detect that a person is good. I am not usually wrong. In fact, when I have a choice between working with a good person and a good professional, I always choose the former.
You feel at ease with...
I feel very comfortable with my family.
With whom, or with what, you have to be very tactful?
With anyone: you always have to be very tactful with people. Politeness and good manners are fundamental. And besides, we would all be much better off if we took this into account.
The cycle of the vine renews itself every year in a miraculous way. What would you keep intact with the flow of time?
Love, affection. It is what makes us happy and makes us live in a peaceful way. To love and to feel loved, if only we could constantly renew and maintain the love that you have and that they have for you! It is very difficult. What I like most, what I am most passionate about in life, is love: what you give and what you can give them.
Your first wine
Yes, I remember. I remember perfectly well. I was a kid. I drank it, with permission, because I had never tasted it before, and it was in a village in La Rioja Alavesa. I had gone with my father. There were his friends, his cousins, the family, tasting the wines from the barrels in a cooperative. Give it to the kid! He's too little, my father replied. A little bit won't hurt anyone! I took my father's glass and took a sip. That was the first time I tasted wine in a social way, in a circle. Drinking has two possibilities. The one of enjoying it in solitude. And the other, the sharing part, the conversation. By eye, I could be about 15 years old.
What has been your best drink?
(Sighs...) I think being a father. I'm still enjoying it, I'm not finished. It has made me experience things I didn't suspect. It's a drink that continues and that I hope will reproduce itself naturally when I have grandchildren. It is the regeneration that we were talking about before in the vine. That drink of seeing how life continues, and how you are able to give it, to create it, is one of the most impressive and surprising things.
And the worst?
Always the death, the farewell, that dark part. On the one hand you are able to give life and on the other hand you are unable to stop it when it is gone. My father's death, so far, has been the hardest moment of my life.
The best company to toast
Earlier I was talking about the family, whom you already know. The best moment to toast is with a stranger who, with the words of someone you don't know, gives us the gift of hearing and taste. A toast as a discovery.
Your best vintage
When we had our children's harvest. The year 88 and the year 92.
What does maturing/aging mean to you?
The best thing that can happen to you. As time goes by and you feel that life leaves you everything: caresses, scratches, the odd blow.... but you get wiser. If anything is worthwhile, it is knowledge and the ability to understand, to fit in, to give, to interpret life and others.
Emotionalising is very complicated. And habitual on the other hand, who or what reaches you?
Sincerity, people who are able to open up and show themselves as they are. We are surrounded by disguises, lies and masks. We hide behind many things. And when you suddenly discover someone who undresses, and tells you, and is able to recognise their limitations, their incapacity for many things, with the necessary and appropriate humility... that always moves me.
The wine cellar has, with the wine asleep, a lot of sleep. What is yours?
Maybe it's that I'm always asleep. (He laughs). I don't know if I'm not already living in a dream. My dream is to continue living this way. I have many, but as I know that many are unrealisable because of the magnitude of what they represent, I prefer not to even comment on them... my dream is to continue living in this way: healthy, surrounded by people I love, and who I think love me; doing what I like; continuing to celebrate my birthday. I think I'm saying, "I'll stay as I am! I'm living in a good period that I would like to prolong.
When you received the Ondas Award (2013) for your role in Aida and closed the last chapter as Chema, you pointed out that it is not easy to close chapters, but that if you look for them, philosopher's stones always emerge...
(Laughs) That's what I said! If you ask me whose phrase that was, I'd say I have no idea!
One could say that this philosopher, clown, actor, poet and writer, by the name of Pepe Viyuela, is a thinker of poetic laughter?
(He laughs...) It's nice, but I think it's too big for me. I'm a normal person who really likes to live. And living involves thinking (we don't think much), talking, reflecting, thinking things over, discussing. That helps thinking a lot: sharing what's on your mind and listening to what they have to say to you. A sense of humour comes on its own, when you reflect, when you look at what's around you. It is a sense that we have little exploited, but it is very human. Without it, we would probably have killed each other. To turn it around, to be able to laugh at what happens to you is what makes life more bearable and can turn sorrows into sweets. That's wisdom. I'm a normal guy. I'm living, getting older and knowing more and more about life.
Philosophy graduate, what gives you food for thought?
But why do we complicate our lives so much? Why do people insist, or do we insist, on hurting us? Why do we compete, in the worst sense of the word, instead of collaborating? Why do we insist on destroying what others do in order to shine with our own, when it is better to contribute? We are very destructive and that gives me pause for thought. Violence is so present in our lives, in war, in everyday life. Why can't we spend a day without violence?
A paradox. As a clown referent, what is it that doesn't make you laugh?
The lack of respect, the gratuitous insult, the lack of cordiality. I don't find it funny that we start from the idea that we won't understand each other. It is funnier to think that we can laugh at ourselves, at our intransigence. Fanaticism, intransigence, intolerance, lack of respect, in short.
You are a member of Clowns without Borders, where do you set no limits for yourself?
I set myself limits in almost everything, except in my desire to learn, to know, to know. I don't want to be afraid to know what things are like, to know what surrounds us, however hard it may be, as in the case of war or conflict.
Let's review part of your filmography. In your role as a theatre actor, what could not be missing in Tu Pisito?
Enthusiasm. Vocation. Discipline, rigour. The illusion to live and to make theatre, cinema. You have to be very much alive. You can't be a piece of wood: you have to have all your senses wide open.
TierraDirected by Julio Médem (1996), when have you ever muttered "earth, swallow me"?
(Laughs) I've said it many times! On stage a few times: when you think something is going to be very funny and it's not funny at all... In that situation you have nowhere to hide, in front of hundreds, thousands of eyes, focused on you. In those cases I used to say to myself: "Oh, my goodness... this, Pepe, you're not doing it right".
The Miracle of P. Tintodirected by Javier Fesser (1998) What are you still amazed by?
Faced with people's capacity for endurance. It's amazing because despite how much we are laughed at and hammered, what patience people have, especially with the political class. It amazes me that we are such good people.
Mortadelo and Filemón. Mission: Save the Earthdirected by Miguel Bardem (2008) ¿Quién es tu Mortadelo?
My Mortadelo? What would it be, the partner who makes your life impossible and without him I can't live? Ugh, I don't know, I have no answer. Maybe I don't have anyone to solve my life on the one hand and on the other I'd like to kick him.
School of seductiondirected by Javier Balaguer (2004). The question is obvious...
I am seduced by intelligence. I like people who are quick, with a well-furnished brain, and with the ability to solve problems. I try to make that my weapon of seduction as well: to solve my life and reach out to others... When you are not attractive on the outside, you have to be attractive on the inside. Instead of spending money on creams, you have to invest in books, records, travel... in something that makes you more interesting on the inside. I love intelligence!
In 2003 you published the poetry book Bestiario del circo: el vientre de la carpa . Winner of the Second Edition of the Margarita Hierro International Poetry Prize 2007 with the collection of poems Y amarte sin saber, in 2008 came Las letras de tu nombre. In 2009, La luz en la memoria came out of the shadows and, in 2010, you published your latest book of poems, Silenciario.
What has left you speechless?
Pain destroys my ability to respond. Both my own, when I suffer for something, and when I see others suffer. In the case of children it is the last straw, I don't know what to say: I am speechless. What's more, I run out of hope and courage. When the pain is so strong, I don't know what to say or what to do.
Before what or before whom do you imagine the most rigorous silence?
To someone who has something important to say and who is not worth interrupting. Throughout my life, in front of my grandparents, my parents, I have felt that it was worth listening to. As you get older you are less able to do that. That's why when I meet someone intelligent, I keep quiet, because you don't want to cloud the wise.
The Vivanco Kids programme transmits, with the vocation and enthusiasm you mentioned, the legacy of wine culture, in a playful and educational way, to young children and their families. If you had met a guy like Pepe Viyuela as a child, what would you have thought?
(He thinks and hesitates...) It's hard for me to see myself since childhood. I don't know if I would have wanted to be like that when I grew up. Children are either fascinated by things that aren't so great, or they don't see clearly enough who they have in front of them, or they have X-rays and perceive things that the rest of us miss. If I had seen myself on the outside, I would have thought that I am a nice guy, with whom you can be at ease. And on the inside, I would have thought, what a complicated guy! (He laughs). You'd have to ask them. And as asking me as a child is impossible, I think it's going to remain unanswered.
(He hesitates and continues) I don't think I would have wanted to be like him.
What if you went back to childhood?
I would like to go back without the knowledge of what I have been. That's why when they say that I'm 20 years old with the experience of 50, I think, then you wouldn't be that age! Age is not determined by time, but by what you are with the time you've lived. The beauty of being 20 is to live that experience. What's the point of being young at my age? Not at all. If I were to go back I would like to reset, to restart life again without knowing what comes next. That's what makes it interesting: to be surprised, to find yourself, to learn. But not being 15 as if you were 60, what a drag, it would be unbearable!
If I were born again I would like to be someone else. To live another life. Maybe I'd like to be a woman, you name it: to see the world and live life from that side, from that gender. What would be really nice is that when both existences end, these two beings, man and woman, would sit down after having lived the same thing. And that they would talk. And that a third person would emerge to listen to them and learn.
If you were the interviewer, what would you ask yourself?
I would say to myself, why don't you shut up!
And, once again, he laughs again, with that frank laugh that is so familiar to us.
If you also want to ask Pepe Viyuela a question, just post a tweet with the hashtag #ManerasDeContar and on Saturday we will ask him some of the best questions during the talk.
