Willy
There's a man in the field with a candle in hand
And he walks all the hills and he talks to the land
But when you call out to him, he disappears
But I know he’s there still, the man in the field…
Friday, half past eight, Plaza de la Catedral. It is drizzling. The square is deserted; now and then, the footsteps of a passer-by echo in the night, then disappear like a mirage. Little by little, some shadows glide across the cobblestones, and beneath the remains of the Roman wall, a small group of people of all ages and backgrounds gather.
Nine chimes ring out in the dark; this tall lady in the background seems to be watching over the night, and we can hear the sound of a slightly out-tuned guitar. The musicians step forward, the semicircle forms, and the show begins.
We are thirty, forty, sometimes up to seventy choristers, a little crazy because coming voluntarily, singing every Friday night, right here. And Willy never missed a concert.
Gospel music is the euphoric soundtrack of regained freedom. It is the music of the awakening, of the consciousness that as long as air fills my lungs, I am alive. And life is a gift. So we raise our arms, snap our fingers, look people in the eye. And as water has a memory, while the voice carries its vibrations to those people who stop to watch us, we smile. There are simple things in life that have great power.
Willy wore a kilt; he was a metalhead. A son of Cain who, on his way, had found a little piece of paper in the street saying, ‘Do you want to sing gospel?’ and he had followed the flow. He had been given a year to live. It was in his lungs. But he wasn't ready to give up, and since his thing was the drums, he came with his fist raised, drumsticks in hand, ready to conquer the city.
Little Light (the name of the choir) is not a very ‘traditional’ gospel group. It's not easy to explain, but we do everything a bit upside down. The soloists are not the most beautiful, nor the most charismatic, or even those with the strongest voices, but they are the ones who have something to say. We don't have sheet music or even the lyrics of the songs we practice during rehearsals, but we still manage to sing in English, French, Catalan, Arabic, Hebrew, Xhosa, Japanese, etc. etc. There are no auditions; it doesn't matter if at school they assigned you to play the triangle so as not to ruin the Christmas show. All that matters is your desire to be there.
And on that day, the day of the cathedral street concert, when it was pouring with rain and no one really believed the concert would take place, he picked up his drumsticks and his mini portable drum kit and said: ‘To me, it's that... Just to feel the rain falling on my face while I sing, it was worth coming...’ The desire to participate in life. That's all that matters.
We lost him on August 15th, months later. He had managed to cheat fate a little bit longer than expected, and we followed him in all his battles, all his adventures. Church concerts, theatre concerts, street concerts, masses, local festivals —he was everywhere, and we followed him, right up to his hospital room. We sang Oh Happy Day to cheer him up.
He was a stranger, he stayed for a year. Those who started in September never even saw him. And I sometimes wonder how someone whose surname I ignore managed to leave such a deep impression on our hearts. But sometimes, when I walk past the cathedral square in the evening, I can still hear the wind blowing the notes of music; in a mirage, an audience, and on the far right, there he is, smiling.
There's a man in the field and he’s lost in between
The moon and the sun, the dead and living
And if you listen close to the song of the wind
He's singin' with the hills, the man in the field…
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