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I'm tired, I want to sleep today
Adrián Taverna, Gustavo Cerati's intimate friend and sound engineer from the beginning of Soda until the last show in Caracas reveals how the last days of the Natural Force tour that the artist would close in Caracas took place.
His last words were "I'm tired, I want to sleep today" indicated Taverna in an interview for Rolling Stones.com
Until then the tour "Natural Force" had been quite relaxed, with several days off between show and show, in that last stage it gained speed and in five days they had three shows. Tuesday in Medellín, Thursday in Bogotá and Saturday in Caracas. "That's where he felt the most because of how little rested he had come," Taverna analyzes. He had never been to sleep much, but during those days his classmates noticed him tired and a little annoying.
"The day we arrived in Caracas, I told him to take a break and he said yes, he was going to ask for room service and he went to bed early. And then I found out that at one o'clock in the morning he got up and went to hell, alone. And he came back at any time. Medium escaped us, "adds Taverna.
The next day, on May 15, before the show at Simón Bolívar University, he spent some time at the hotel talking to Andy Fogwill via Skype, defining some details of the "Magic" clip, the third natural force cut. The idea was that the videos on the album would form a psychedelic road movie. "What we were doing with Gustavo before his acv, was Natural Force, the movie," says Andy Fogwill. Gustavo cut the talk because he had to go play. "Now, it's show-time!", He said goodbye.
In the Bolivar, he was in a very good mood. "The place where we played could not be more beautiful, it was a property in the middle of the mountain; Imagine the scenery surrounded by mountains and an unreal green vegetation, "recalls Coleman.
In general, Gustavo was not very communicative with people and, after the shows, when he returned to the hotel and went to YouTube to see the videos that the fans had uploaded, he used to regret the things he said. But that day, however, he kept on making jokes. The last theme of the night was "Lake in the sky", from Here we go.
Cerati's last words in Venezuela
The days of recording Natural Force and the intimacy of the Latin American tour before the ACV. The first hours of uncertainty in the hospital in Venezuela, his days in a coma and the hopes of his family
When the show ended, Cerati went down to the dressing room he had for himself and asked for something to eat. Richard Coleman came in to greet him and Gustavo asked him: "Did I say a lot of stupid things?"
"And yes, as always," Coleman replied. "But people love you to say stupid things."
Half an hour later, when Taverna came down from the stage after disarming the console, he also passed by the dressing room to chat about how the show had sounded. She found him eating a loin medallion and a salad. "I know what you came from," Gustavo told him. "I already realized that it sounded good."
Taverna saw it too muted and asked, "Do you have something wrong?"
"No, I'm tired," Cerati replied.
"Do you want to do something?"
"No, no, I want to sleep today."
Taverna left the dressing room a little disconcerted by the answer. In a lifetime shared in shows, Gustavo had never wanted to go to sleep after playing. Outside he found the rest of the musicians, who were organizing the picture they took when the tour was over. Fernando Samalea was arranging the camera automatically, up on a stool. Gustavo appeared at the last minute, when they were all settled. He had changed the clothes of the show for a jacket, a shirt and a jean. The first photo came out without a flash, so Samalea asked them to stay where they were. Taverna turned to ask him how he was doing. "I looked at him and he was white, with his eyes bulging and his mouth open," he says. "I do not forget it anymore in my life."
"Something happens to you," he asked.
Gustavo could not answer him. Half lost, he walked to his dressing room, took off his jacket, opened his shirt a little and collapsed on the chair. Thinking he had a pressure spike or something, Nicolás Bernaudo, his assistant, called the paramedics to attend him. But they were so young that when they found themselves in the dressing room with Cerati that they could not talk, they did not know what to do; so Charly, his physiotherapist, had to take charge of the situation and asked them to go get the stretcher. Gustavo could still move on his own, but he was overwhelmed, unable to speak. They loaded him on a stretcher and took him in an ambulance to La Trinidad clinic.
When they arrived at the clinic there was no light, so they had to load it back into the ambulance and take it to a study center to do some studies. Gustavo remained conscious: with his eyes Open, looking at nothing, unable to speak. After the exams they took him back to the clinic and left him interned. They called a cardiologist, but told them that the next day at 10 o'clock in the morning he was going to the hospital. The room, on the third floor of the clinic, had a living room where Taverna, Michell and their manager, Nando Travi, accommodated themselves. At that point, the nurses had given him a sedative and Cerati was sleeping. The next day, he was also conscious, although he still could not speak. Lying on the stretcher, he grabbed his right arm all the time, no longer responding to it and hitting the bed rail with his left hand, nervous, annoyed. In a moment, he got up to go to the bathroom and, since he had several cannulas connected, Taverna had to help him. cerati "And there happened a very strong thing", says his friend. "When he entered the bathroom he looks in the mirror, he stood still and began to touch his face. He looked like a stranger, he touched himself, he looked at me in the mirror and then he looked back, lost. The right corner of my mouth was half asleep. "A while later, a nurse arrived with the food. A broth of vegetables, a salad and a chicken with sauce that Taverna had to cut so he could eat it. The right arm remained motionless. After finishing his meal, he was taken to do some studies and when he returned to the room, he spent the rest of the afternoon restless, going from the bed to the couch. After eating an arepa of shredded meat and a half of cheese, he gestured to Taverna to turn on the TV. And after a while, he held on to the remote control and began to pass the channels himself. After three laps through the two hundred and eighty channels, he ended up leaving a movie already started. It was Dark City, a dark science fiction film. "That was his peak of expression. I went to the hotel happy, thinking that the next day we were going home. "The next day, the nurses found Cerati clutching her head with her left arm and shaking on the bed, her eyes tight and a strong gesture of pain. "That's when the acv was produced, without a doubt," says Taverna. Some stretchers took him to do a tomography and a scan, but Gustavo did not stop moving and grabbing his head, until in a moment he fell asleep. The stretcher did not pass through the door of the room in which they had to make a scintigraphy, so Taverna had to carry it himself and put him to bed for the study. When they took him back to the room, they decided to tell the family. The days of recording Natural Force and the intimacy of the Latin American tour before the ACV. The first hours of uncertainty in the hospital in Venezuela, his days in a coma and the hopes of his family That same night, his sister Laura traveled to Venezuela and, as soon as he arrived, he had to sign a permit to operate on Gustavo: they had to decompress the brain. What followed was twenty days in the hospital, dodging the journalistic guards at the door and spending time in the room next to Gustavo's, who was in intensive care. The doctors talked about the motor and speech difficulties he might have when he woke up. However, after moving it to the Fleni Institute in Argentina, the medical part was much less encouraging. "The computed tomography performed on admission showed extensive infarction in the left cerebral hemisphere and secondary brain stem damage," the report said. After four months in a FLENI bed, where Gustavo went from intensive care to a common room, never waking up, the family decided to move him to ALCLA to have more privacy. In addition, FLENI is a rehabilitation institute and Gustavo is not in that process. In the room where he is interned, on the first floor of the clinic, there is an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe watching over him. There is also a picture of Lisa and Benito, their two children. An iPod that was loaded with music between his friend and lifelong soundman Adrián Taverna and his son Benito, who was responsible for including several tracks of Michael Jackson and some new bands that he downloaded recently. And when he was still in Fleni, there was also a guitar that Luis Alberto Spinetta had brought him. At his side, his family does not lose hope. A friend of Gustavo describes them as "ultra optimists". There is a laboratory in the north of Brazil where they are working on the regeneration of neurons with good results. There is another place in Asia. For now, searches on the Internet maintain hope, although the reality of the days and months that accumulate without Gustavo awakening at times is too heavy. "I draw strength where there are none, I am 80 years old and I do not have another," Lilian Clark, her mother, told Rolling Stone. "Gustavo is a lion, I trust that lion that he has inside: I know he will be able to leave.go from this situation because he was always a very strong person. "In his environment, there is a kind of tacit agreement to continue referring to him in the present (Gustavo likes such a thing, Gustavo thinks so), although that verb tense deposits in him a load of action that he no longer has. On the other hand, talking about him in the past, even if it is a way of referring to his life before losing consciousness, for his environment is like giving him up for dead and is a shade too fine for the seriousness of the situation. "The first thing that is expected is to wake up and then see how he awakens. What he had is very serious, because there were two brain accidents: an ischemia in the show and a cerebral infarction in the hospital, "says Taverna. "I think there was a very important lost time between the two accidents and I have the horrible feeling that the second could have been avoided or minimized enough". And then he adds: "We must not lose faith, although sometimes it is very difficult."