Salvador Dalí died in 1989.
And yet Amanda Lear would still have two questions for him.
Not about painting. Not about Surrealism. Not even about fame.
Much simpler questions.
Why didn't you understand me?
Why did you use me?
She framed them while speaking about him decades after their time together, also suggesting that Dalí had used her to attract publicity.
The second question immediately creates a problem for me.
Not because Amanda is necessarily wrong.
But because this is Salvador Dalí we are talking about.
A man who had turned Salvador Dalí into a permanent advertising campaign long before anyone invented Instagram.
So I have a doubt.
Perhaps doubt is exactly where this story should begin.
The muse
Amanda Lear is still often described as Salvador Dalí's muse.
It is a beautiful description. And a slightly dangerous one.
Because muse tells us a great deal about what one person represents to an artist. It tells us far less about what the artist represents to her.
Amanda did not arrive in Dalí's life as a blank page.
She already had her own artistic curiosity, her own image and a life that did not begin the moment a famous man noticed her.
Dalí did, however, enter her story. And not quietly.
Art, personalities, provocation, image, publicity.
Over the years, she has spoken about how important that encounter was and about what Dalí taught her regarding the power of image.
And here comes the first contradiction.
Can you be deeply fascinated by someone and, many years later, wonder whether that person used you?
Of course you can.
Human beings are rather good at holding two incompatible truths before breakfast.
Who was using whom?
We have two people who understood the power of a public persona extremely well.
Dalí built Dalí. Amanda would build Amanda.
And for a while, the two images met.
Decades later, one of them looks back and thinks:
You used me.
Perhaps that is true. Perhaps it is only partly true. Perhaps both gained something from the other.
And perhaps the question contains a mistake we often make when looking back at relationships: we try to assign permanent roles.
The one who loved. The one who used. The victim. The master. The muse.
Real relationships rarely have such tidy casting.
Being used
Perhaps being used does not necessarily require someone to have consciously decided to use us.
That possibility interests me far more.
Someone can care about us and benefit from our presence at the same time.
We can help someone's career without choosing to. We can provide security. Status. Contacts. Sex. A home. An image. Even a better version of themselves.
And one day we can look back and ask:
Did you want me, or did you need what I gave you?
A terrible question. Because the two things are not mutually exclusive.
But the first question was different
And this is why I would return to the order Amanda chose.
First:
Why didn't you understand me?
Then:
Why did you use me?
I find the first far more painful.
We can survive the idea that we were useful to someone.
It is harder to accept that a person who was extremely close to us may never really have understood us.
Being observed does not mean being seen.
Being desired does not mean being known.
And being known does not necessarily mean being understood.
Memory rewrites
Memory is not an archive.
We do not open a drawer and retrieve the past exactly as we left it.
We remember through everything that happened afterwards.
A finished love affair can change the memory of its beginning. A disappointment can illuminate details we once ignored. Maturity can finally help us recognise something.
Or it can convince us of an explanation that did not exist at the time.
That does not necessarily mean lying.
It means remembering.
So I do not know whether Salvador Dalí truly used Amanda Lear.
And I do not think we need a verdict.
I am much more interested in the fact that, after all these years, Amanda still feels the need to ask the question.
Because perhaps some people stop belonging to our lives long before they stop belonging to the questions we carry with us.