A gesture that is not learned
I don’t know how to smile, I’ve never known. I despaired of my parents when they wanted to portray me as a child. “Smile”, they told me. And I just grimaced. Over the years I have learned the trick to appear smiling in photographs. I start laughing, which I know how to do, and I ask the person carrying the camera to wait for the end of the laughter. And then, click. What will appear in the image will plausibly look like a smile, but it won’t be.
The difference between laughing and smiling
Laughter is excessive, aggressive, exhibitionist. It ends up being contagious because others don’t want to be left out of that fat, so visible happiness. A neutral observer, who came down from the garden and arrived right at that moment, faced with a burst of laughter, would think he had encountered a group of fools who deserved to be locked up. And you probably wouldn’t go far wrong.
The smile is something else entirely. Expresses balance, discretion, humility. It is the drop that remains from the abundance of the heart. He commands peace. The smile is cordial, it’s welcoming like a hug. Busy people who find themselves, suddenly, in front of a beautiful smile, experience a deep sense of mystery. They are forbidden to drink from the well from which that gesture was born. That’s why they crowd in front of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. Let’s see if they understand.
The importance of the smile
For many years, we have not had to go to Paris to face the mystery. We didn’t have to travel far around the world to know the cordial and welcoming meaning of a good smile. Because we had the immense fortune of knowing Anna. The most beautiful smile in the world I have ever known. Peigis’ schedule was always so busy because we all wanted to have a taste of that smile. For a long time, television performed the miracle of spreading it, of making it available to many people. Those who followed the cultural journalism of la Peigis knew that culture was, passed through the sieve of her smile, the most excellent form of friendliness, of coexistence. Someone, very ignorant, decided to destroy that source of peace.
And now he’s gone. So untimely, as necessary as it was in this turbulent world. The disappearance of his smile has left us orphans of kindness. Poets know that kindness is the most important feeling, Bertolt Brecht knew it, our Vicent Andrés Estellés knew it. The orphanhood of kindness is a banner of danger that we raise in front of the storm where everything is pouring down on us. Without you, Anna, everything will cost a lot more.
We loved you so much…