THE LINEAGE
Origin0:00 / 2:31
Ricardo Adrián Pena
The author of World Wanderer
World Wanderer grew out of experiences that for a long time followed paths of their own: travel, study, books, music, aviation, faith and memory. Over the years, all of them turned out to share something in common.
This personal archive tries to bring them together. Not to accumulate destinations, titles or objects, but to preserve whatever helps us understand: a place visited, an idea, a photograph, a book, a family story or a shared experience.
Each section is, at heart, a different way of asking the same question: what remains of a place, a book or a name when the journey ends.
Chapter I
The World Explored
Travel as experience
For me, travelling was never about collecting destinations. It was about observing, exploring, documenting, remembering and, above all, connecting: understanding what can link places thousands of kilometres apart, and why certain experiences endure long after the return.
“I do not collect places, but stories.”
A map tells you where a city is; a photograph preserves an image. Experience adds something else: what it meant to have been there.
The journey also begins long before departure. It starts when a route is imagined, a map is studied and one tries to understand what is still unknown. From that way of travelling came the routes, expeditions, photographs and geographical records that are now part of World Wanderer.
Chapter II
Knowledge
To study, to research, to read
My academic and professional education took place at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, in the field of Economic Sciences. There I completed the degrees of Contador Público Nacional (National Public Accountant) and Licenciado en Administración (Licentiate in Administration), followed by the Doctorado en Ciencias Económicas (Doctorate in Economic Sciences).
Curiosity, however, was never confined to a single discipline. History, literature, religion, thought, travel, languages and culture gradually widened that territory.
The personal library that is now part of World Wanderer is a consequence of that curiosity. What interests me about books is not only preserving them, but discovering the connections they can establish between seemingly distant eras, societies, people and ideas.
Research and writing are another expression of that search. My works include El Hombre y Su Tiempo (Man and His Time), together with other material gathered in the academic archive.
Chapter III
Music
To listen, to harmonise, to conduct
Music has been part of my life from a very early age. In 1972 I began studying piano and guitar and, a few years later, embarked on a choral path that would accompany me for decades.
I conducted my first children’s choir in Constitución in 1975. I later served as a chorister and harmonium player with the Coro de Boedo, conducted the Coro de Baradero and served as section leader of the Coro General de Buenos Aires. In 1989 I obtained the title of Director de Coro y Orquesta (Choral and Orchestral Conductor) at the Conservatorio Municipal «Manuel de Falla» (Manuel de Falla Municipal Conservatory).
I went on to conduct choirs in Palermo, Parque Chacabuco, Alta Córdoba and the Córdoba District, eventually extending that experience to orchestral conducting. Performances took me to Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Mendoza, Rosario and Santiago del Estero, and also to Santiago de Chile.
I no longer conduct choirs or orchestras, but that training left a lasting lesson: to listen to every voice without losing sight of the whole.
Perhaps that is one of the most precise ways of explaining something that also runs through World Wanderer: understanding the parts, discovering their relationships and trying to perceive the architecture that holds them together.
Three works
Sound starts only if you choose it.
THE ARCHIVE
Memory0:00 / 3:19THE HORIZON
Discovery0:00 / 3:23
Sonic signature
Chapter IV
Flight
Discipline and perspective
Aviation came into my life as a passion and as another way of experiencing travel. I am a recreational pilot of light aircraft; flying was never my profession.
Before take-off one must study, calculate, anticipate and decide: charts, fuel, weather, alternates. A flight is planned on the ground.
Once airborne, what remains is concentration, landscape, perspective and a very precise kind of freedom.
“Freedom is not at odds with discipline.”
Perhaps that is why flying and travelling are naturally related: in both, freedom gains meaning when it is preceded by preparation, knowledge and responsibility.
Chapter V
Faith and Service
A spiritual and pastoral dimension
Faith is a profound dimension of my life and, from a young age, it also found concrete expression in service to others.
My ministry began in Buenos Aires in 1981 and developed through various pastoral responsibilities. Since 2004 that service has been centred mainly in the province of Córdoba and, at different times, has also extended to communities in Chile and Paraguay.
Over those years I have accompanied people and communities at different moments of their lives, sharing teaching, celebration and pastoral care.
Beyond the ministries held or any chronology, that experience represents something more essential to me: faith understood also as responsibility, presence and service.
Chapter VI
Memory and Lineage
Understanding where we come from
World Wanderer does not only look towards places still to be discovered. It also looks back.
Genealogy, heraldry and historical heritage are other forms of reading. Names, documents, photographs, coats of arms and family trees preserve fragments of stories that might vanish if no one gathers and questions them.
Symbols outlive people; documents allow ties to be rebuilt. Behind a few letters, a surname can hold movements between countries, generations and very different historical circumstances.
Preserving that memory does not mean dwelling in the past. It means trying to understand better where we come from and what we are passing on. The documentary pieces are gathered in the heraldic and genealogical archive.
A shared search
- Travel
- Study
- Read
- Conduct
- Fly
- Serve
- Remember
Different experiences that, over time, converged into a single way of looking: observing the parts, discovering their relationships and trying to understand the whole.
World Wanderer is the archive of that journey. And precisely because the journey continues, it remains open.
World Wanderer in figures
- 39
- Countries visited
- 194
- Cities
- 1,100+
- Total hours in flight
- ≈354,000
- Miles travelled by air
- 14+
- Equivalent trips around the Earth
- 482
- Catalogued volumes
Accumulated flight experience includes flights both as pilot and as passenger.
The archive continues
There are places still to discover, books still to open, stories still to reconstruct and experiences that have not yet found their place in these pages.