David Carabén: "We are still in mourning, but Mishima is a life project."

PalmMishima will return to the Lloseta Theatre on December 28th, the same Mallorcan venue they played last year on their Christmas tour. However, this year's tour will be different. It will be their first since the death last February of Marc Lloret, the band's founder and keyboardist. "We are still in mourning," acknowledges David Carabén, the singer and songwriter, who affirms that both he and Marc, as well as the rest of the band, have always understood Mishima as "a life project." And they have demonstrated this over the past 25 years.

This Christmas will be more difficult than usual. But he is clear that the concerts are a way to pay tribute, to celebrate the life of Marc Lloret. How are you approaching the tour?

— It's difficult for us, yes. It's the first year he hasn't been here, although the previous Christmas tour was already something of a farewell. He was still alive and it seemed there was a possibility he might come to a concert, but in the end it wasn't possible. It's been a very difficult year, but it's been wonderful to see people's response.

After all, continuing to perform is the best way to keep his legacy alive, isn't it?

— Look, after something like this you wonder if it still makes sense to continue or not, but we were absolutely certain that Marc would have wanted us not to give up. In fact, when he faced his illness, cancer, he was the first to want to find a solution to ensure the band's continuity. We discussed together who could be his replacement while he couldn't come, and he kept coming to the concerts as long as he could. We all knew from the beginning that this was a life project.

Christmas is supposed to be a time for family. And you, the members of the group, already are like a family, but you also have your followers who, after so many years, consider you members of their own.

— Having so many albums and so many years of relationship with our fans means we can reconnect with ourselves in many songs, even though there are new ones on every tour. There are songs we've been singing for 20 years, and we make a kind of music that makes the songs grow with time.

That accompany you as you get older.

— Yes. There are bands and artistic projects, like some pop songs or summer hits, that you can enjoy from the very first moment in their entirety. They're immediate songs, and I admire and applaud those who create them. But there are also some of us who make songs that might not be so striking at first, but if you give them a chance, you'll see that they grow within you, that they unfold a meaning and speak to you. You can feel them in summer, and in autumn, and when you go through a breakup, and when you have children, and they'll continue to tell you new things. And I think we're a band that makes these kinds of songs; only in this way can it be explained why people come to see us and reconnect with all these emotions after so many years.

I actually wanted to ask you what the secret is to staying together as a group for 25 years.

— For me, the essential thing is this: we're a group that understands that the goal, the purpose, is to create. And by creating, I mean leaving a legacy of songs and albums. If you understand this, you see that there's nothing more important than having fun with what you do. I have friends in bands who don't enjoy it, even though they're incredibly talented and write wonderful songs. But you can see they're not thrilled when they're on tour or that they don't enjoy themselves when they're on stage. And they put up with it for three or four years, and when there's even the slightest tension, they look for side projects or go solo. In our case, if anything explains why we're still together, it's that we have so much fun.

It made me think of something Antonina Canyelles once told me.If I suffered because of writing, I wouldn't write. We're not that naive. 

— [Laughs] Well, there are some really great people who have a terrible time. Brian Wilson himself, from the Beach Boys, a genius who took many years to realize he didn't like performing. Due to personality issues, he had a terrible time and gave up touring and dedicated himself to composing, until he resumed it later in life. A music career has many facets; it's not just composing in your bedroom or going on stage. And it also has an element of financial instability, things like one album doing well and the next not, which makes it difficult to make a living from it. Not everyone can combine it all, or endure it. Being a great artist isn't synonymous with lasting many years.

Does the instability of the sector also affect a group like Mishima, which has been absolutely fundamental to the Catalan music scene for the last 25 years?

— Of course! There are bands that achieve recognition from their first album, and that allows them to plan ahead. However, if the next album doesn't do well, the touring slows down, they lose the security they had, and they have to decide whether to continue, combine it with other work, or quit altogether. We've had good artistic recognition from the beginning, but we didn't have an audience.

And how is this received?

— Well, we assumed it was something separate, that having an audience would be a gift, but that our vocation was to create art. Surely the audience came with Seven all my life, or even more so with Order and Adventurewhich was already our fifth album. If you've made five without public recognition, without ever feeling like you could make a living from this… You train and decide whether to give up or continue because of your commitment to the work. And we continued.

Did David Carabén, as a child, ever imagine himself leading a side like Mishima?

— Absolutely not! As a child, I wanted to be a footballer and many other things besides a musician. I had a strong vocation for being a filmmaker and film critic, and for working in television. But music was a hobby that kept growing. And most likely, after my father's death, which I found the strength to overcome, I realized that it was something powerful and that I was, in a way, destined for it. That I would continue doing it even without financial or commercial recognition. That's where it all began. Call homeFrom that state of mind, and from seeing that I had a group of people to do what I needed to do.

Does Mishima's immediate future involve a new album?

— We plan to start recording it in March, so we'll get to work after the Christmas tour. The goal is to release it after the summer, or maybe next spring. So right now, we're just crossing our fingers and seeing how we manage. This world is constantly unstable, but luckily, our strongest commitment is to ourselves.