During the conversation that the Planeta editorial team had in Bogotá, they were very attentive and carefully listened to every detail. He stands out in front of any public, exudes empathy and even a bit of nostalgic vulnerability. Daniel Habiff has the ability to start a conversation quickly and nicely with anyone.
His mohawk honey-colored, her bluish irises, the art she wears as tattoos on her skin and her rings, seem to have planned every last fragment of her image, in keeping with her clothing, in a range of beige and white.
— Let’s talk about everything a bit, let’s make a type of profile.
–Yes, psychological profile (laughs)
— I don’t know if he wants to tell me personal and very private issues.
— I answer about what you want to write.
— Well, “roar” It is your third book. How are you doing with your career as a writer right now? How did this pen come about?
— Well, really from a very young age, my fingers were full of things and I always used them to communicate and express myself, because I didn’t know how to do it verbally, I stuttered, so I was somehow unable to express myself consistently, until pantomime came along. , which was what allowed me to express myself and communicate in a different way other than through words.
During this process in my childhood and until my youth I was only writing, that’s why I am so circus, because theater and pantomime stick to me and reading the theatrical universe fills my vocabulary and my fingers in this way that I have particularly to express myself, which can be very baroque.
The combination of pince-nez or of the Chekhov or of the Dostoevsky or of the trash of the Arguelles And from all that theatrical information, it was what I acquired and it adhered to me, not as a word, but as a sensation, as an emotion.
There is a peculiarity in the way I write, which is based on a law of simplicity, because I tormented people when I wanted to speak; first, because it was very difficult for me to communicate, then I learned to write in a very simple, very simple way, without torturing whoever read me; He also wrote a lot of letters.
— What kind of texts did you start with?
— Many letters and many stories. A month ago I visited my mother in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, I am from northern Mexico, and she gave me a story that I wrote when I was 8 years old, which by the way won a contest where Planeta awarded me. Can you believe that pod?, It’s crazy right? Now Planet is my publishing house.
A Christmas story, that was the first thing I wrote, and for a personal reason my mother told me: “My dear.” At that time I did not feel loved at all and she wrote me letters, so I learned to write in a very, very simple way, that led me to write poems, songs and then I began to be passionate about aphorisms, this way of enclosing concepts or contexts in a nutshell. There was a moment when the ink stopped flowing, in a certain space of my youth my heart began to change, so to speak, and the ink stopped flowing, appearing.
I returned to writing when I fell in love, when I conquered my wife, with whom I have been with for 21 years; I returned to writing, again, with a letter, after 7 years of not having written anything at all. I never imagined being an author, I just did it.
— He liked it, he did it deliberately.
— No, no, I wither, my dear, I wither, I die. I write all day, all the time and not everything I write is good, relevant or important, but I don’t do it with that intention, because I see a forest and it gives me anxiety, do you understand me? In other words, the blows that he did not give as a child, he wrote them down.
When I see my current wife I am born again. I stopped writing because what I started writing was dark, something that I didn’t like, that bothered me, because it obviously revealed all the sadness, a lot, a lot of nostalgia and I stopped. If I felt something, I would write it down, but it was a bit like the cliché of therapy, then it would disappear, at least I was able to… more than catharsis, just dilute myself a little, try to understand where I was standing.
But when I met my wife, I recognized her, that’s the name of the letter I wrote to her: “I recognized you”; It would be a page and a half, I made it and gave it to him; It was a leap into the void because I said: “if she doesn’t respond, I’m never going to write again”, but she responded with another letter, not talking about what I had made her feel, but about the words I had put on the sheet, what had happened to her with those letters.
The truth is, I can’t tell you where specifically the guy who writes today was born, I know he was always there and consolidated; To date, I am still that guy who seeks to write generously, not speaking so much to the intellect, I prefer to live in the heart than in the intellect of the people, for that there are already some extraordinary pens that confront us and bring us to our knees in front of them. our reason against our logic. But I am interested in moving others and making them feel something that perhaps they had not felt for a long time, with words that touch you, like when someone says I miss you at the right time and you don’t need more than that.
SYou only need that, you don’t need a philosophical dissertation to regain the meaning of life, I believe that what a person tells you is very important, but, above all, who is the person who tells you things; That symbiosis, that way when the wind and the spark come together, that is part of my mission as a writer.
— About the fact that you did pantomime to be able to communicate: Have you ever thought about writing dramaturgy?
— I’m on it, darling, I’m on it; I’m working on it because the art of communicating, expressing yourself, of speaking with your whole body in this four-dimensional space is important and I’ve been writing a work for a long time that has to do with that: speaking with your eyes, the light in your chest, the silences, like everything that is broken, that noise, the body has many ways of communicating.
You know I was very scared, because I can be vulgarly tyrannical with myself, but my team has accompanied me and they have exhorted me to do it and they are usually the ones who tell me.
— Or is it ready?
— Yes, and I say to myself: “okay, leave him alone”, it’s going to be an important leap for me; It is logical that my books are in a category that has its critics and its prejudices, right? It is its own universe and making that leap is heavy, because on the other side there is a group of synodists willing to stamp on you.
But yes, I’m in that process and I’m writing other things… stories, I write all day and I really write to live, well, if not, I don’t know what to do.
— By the way, those unpublished texts, from its beginnings, do you think they will see the light of day?
— It’s a is a great question.
— Or are they hidden under mom’s bed?
— Look, I’ve drawn some cards, I drew a letter that I made to Sor Juana Ines, another letter that I wrote to Joan of Arca letter I wrote to Gustavo Ceratia letter I wrote to humboldta letter I wrote to Simon Bolivar, claiming many things. A letter I wrote to my father is in “unbreakable”but it is not complete.
Every day the world is less safe to be this vulnerable. It’s just that being vulnerable and resting is a revolutionary act, so I don’t know, the truth is, I don’t know, I’m telling you from the inside out, I don’t know. If by itself writing what I write is like throwing darts at your soul, I do it because people on the street tell me: “Please, don’t stop doing it.”
Maybe at some point I will do that recapitulation of many writings, because I also went through other stages, half of Marquis de Sade, so… these are things that might make me blush and others that might embarrass me
— More than 350 conferences, he writes all day, what does Daniel Habif do in those moments when he is not the writer, this public person, when he is in his privacy and with his silence.
— I’m good for laziness, the truth is I’m very good for laziness. When I don’t want to do anything I’m actually very good at contemplating. I really like to watch. I am very serene. I live provoking being in these environments of serenity, because, inside of me, if I don’t do that I flood myself.
We are going to the turbulence that can take place in my head, in my heart and I have learned to navigate that and the only way that is possible is by training in that serenity. I used to be very attacked, due to this demand for human being productivity, that “if I’m not doing anything, I’m losing my life”, but now I have other passions, other tastes; if I’m not writing, I’m doing something related to being moved by beauty; I love perfumes, aromas, walking; I like to go out and walk without really knowing where I am going, that fascinates me.
I love that, I love walking and walking and discovering details in buildings, in architecture… I am very romantic, extraordinarily romantic; When I’m alone with my wife I’m a little boy, I’m a child who resists in many ways, I’m hypersensitive… That can be very good and it can be very counterproductive, right? Because there are two options, your skin becomes very hard or your heart becomes very hard.
— Crocodile, as mentioned at some point in his most recent book
— Yes Yes Yes. I like that, I like being there, and being here is very heavy… the present is heavy, heavy, heavy, being obsessed with tomorrow, with “what am I going to do right now”; how creative, i have many creative needs.
I always have to be in motion too, when I’m contemplating I let my head think the most absurd things, I really like to approach life from the absurd, I like to make connections between things that don’t make sense: clothes that disintegrate, coffee that It doesn’t taste like coffee… I like to cross into those places of the absurd and it entertains me a lot, it inspires me.
It’s that you can travel to the darkest places of the mind when you’re calm, right?… Yes, I also like to talk, you realize… I love it, I like to talk a lot.
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