The Volatile and Loly discovered Miyajima fascinated
Agustina Guerrero says that in the creation of her new book, El viaje, distance has always been present. Physical distance between the place where she lives, Barcelona, and Japan, the destination where she was when the accumulation of emotions that shape her latest work began to shake her. Distance between her house, where she normally works, and the coworking space that she looked for when she started drawing because she needed to be in a context other than her own.
And, now, she also distances herself in the telephone interviews in which she tells us how this graphic novel is not only about a trip to Japan, but also of the panic caused by anxiety bursting into your body, of the importance of friendship, of the power of listening without judging, of motherhood or non-motherhood, of abortion (voluntary or not) and of the need not to be silent.
La Volátil and her friend Loly begin a physical and inner journey
the volatile, that woman with a messy bun, striped shirt and black pants who is the alter ego of the illustrator Agustina Guerrero, has returned and has done so by exposing herself, showing her seams and her vulnerabilities, and using the inner jolts that a trip often causes us from even before take off.
Yes because all this begins with an anxiety attack of La Volátil before embarking for Japan and with her friend Loly patching him up by racing through the airport in search of a pharmacy.
"The first trip we did together was to China for a job I had and it was so wonderful that we decided to take a trip on our own to Japan, with the idea that it was going to be a book where I explained our adventures, where the axis was going to be friendship; but from another place, not the way the book took”, Agustina tells Traveler.es.
Yes, it all started with an anxiety attack
It was May 2019 and those adventures are there. La Volátil and Loly tour Tokyo for 10 days, passing through Hakone and reaching Kyoto.
Along the way they learned that Japanese rockabillies have them, there are them; that some bills have adorable illustrations; how to purify yourself before entering a temple; that free Wi-Fi is in supermarkets; how beautiful it is to see a Shinto wedding live; that photo booths allow a retouching festival; that it is the color of the sushi plates that marks their price or the delight of taking a thermal bath in the onsen of a ryokan.
“I was fascinated by the island of Miyajima, the temples, the trip to Hakone; but if I'm honest, I was a little blind. Loly was my guide. I enjoyed what I was seeing, but I was more with the view inside me, of what was happening to me. The book is a travel guide, but in parallel there is a trip that seems to me much more powerful. I recommend to all people that when they travel can reconnect with what is inside each one”.
"I was clear that I wanted to talk about panic, anxiety, insomnia, but it never crossed my mind to tell about the abortion." And it was the decision to abort that she made some time ago that suddenly triggered that cluster of uncontrolled emotions inside her and reactions around her when she began to verbalize it.
The Volatile and her friend Loly toured Tokyo, Hakone and Kyoto
“I wanted to make it very clear how important it is to be supported when you are sad and when you dare to explain and be honest about what is happening to you. There is nothing more healing than sharing your story, receiving it without judgment and feeling accompanied and understood”, explains Agustina to later reflect on the importance of not being silent.
“This goes hand in hand with encouraging women who have been through something similar to not shut up. I thought it important to emphasize the importance of listening, that is associated with feeling understood and supported and When you talk about it, this matter is more bearable and healing. In fact, when Loly talks about her experience, there is no dialogue between us: she talks and I listen to her and vice versa, too”, she says.
And it is that the character of Loly not only serves so that La Volátil has for the first time an adventure partner so present throughout a story, but also to introduce another theme: the impossibility of being a mother.
This is not just about a trip to Japan, this is about how getting away sometimes helps to wake up inside
“Making Loly is very easy because she is like that and she was in another process: she had been trying to have a child for many years and she had it all chewed up much more. Even so, the feeling is that she had a lot of empathy with me because, although hers were miscarriages, she also felt a lot of guilt, a lot of shame. There is a union and a community is created that seems fundamental to me”.
Draw and tell this dance of sensations, of sadness giving way to happiness and situations; fit everything together and that the story flows in such a way that when one thinks one is going through an illustrated travel guide, one finds oneself doing it through a personal story in which the door is opened for us to share normally silenced confessions It is not an easy task.
“In my head I was going to come back from the trip and I was going to start drawing, but I couldn't because I had the 'run run' that It seemed scarce, not very honest, to explain all this that I lived without mentioning the root of the matter. But taking that step, I was very scared." Augustine admits.
“In the summer I was very quiet, trying to listen to what I needed and talking to those around me. With the few people who could share it, close friends, many told me that they also went through this. It was so overwhelming and I was so angry about that shared silence that it was the push for me to talk about it.
The power of listening without judgment made illustration
Thus, September 2019 arrived and in four months he healed by drawing a 232-page book.
“I was in a trance. When I decided what I wanted to explain, it was clear to me and I jumped into the pool headfirst. I don't work with a previous script, with a structure, with some dialogues: I only had the photo albums from the trip and I hadn't even done them, Loly sent them to me organized. I had no idea what I was going to write, I would arrive and throw it up. It was spinning in such a natural way, so magical. I just got carried away and what came out came out.”
Agustina's personal history is easily intertwined with that Japan of rituals, of dolls everywhere, of beautiful food... “It's so rich to draw. I saw everything in pictures. I remember when we went to Fushimi Inari, when we started going through all those giant red toris, I already knew how I was going to draw it. I wanted to show the way, show it from the side, talk about the smell, the humidity, its traditions…”
And get, thus, embark on a trip to the other side of the world, even without moving from ours (for now). “Traveling is being able to slow down, look at yourself, be with yourself. For me, going to Japan was the cause of waking up all that I was trying to shut up, hide or not see”.