“lyrics”

“Y mi mente ha parido nostalgia por no verte ya… Hasta en sueños he creído tenerte devorándome, y he mojado mis sábanas blancas recordándote”. Extraña esta cancion de Lalo Rodriguez, Ven devórame otra vez. Es tan burda que es chida in a campy sort of way. De cualquier forma, es destacable por el solo hecho de ser una canción inmensamente popular (hasta yo la conozco) que menciona (aunque algo eufemísticamente) la masturbación y los “sueños húmedos”.

I’d never heard of Jerome Kern. Much less of The Platters, apparently a pretty popular “doo wop” (!) group from the 60s. But in 1933, it turns out, Jerome Kern wrote a purdy, small song called Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, which The Platters in turn recorded and made famous in 1959.

And in 2006, today, serendipity brought me the song, played by Roxy Music (who are oh-so-very-cool), and it made me smile.

Yup, I am aware of it’s glaring cursileria, but it’s late at night and I’m strangely happy, so shut up and read the lyrics:

Yey! A playlist serendipity has brought me back Roy Vedas’s wonderfully weird Fragments of Life (its weirdness is a fact). If I remember correctly it was Pako who first showed it to me, late nineties, and I hadn’t heard it in years (old, how past starts to pile up). Anyway, it’s definitely one of my favorite songs. Here, enjoy.

I must confess that I love Spanglish in a kitschy, campy, and yet honest kind of way.

It all started with Molotov and their ¿Dónde jugarán las niñas? album of my early adolescence. I loved their mongrel insults (”fuck you puto baboso!”) and their Voto Latino song:

More recently, a song by Yolanda Perez (featuring “Don Cheto”), Estoy Enamorada, has brought it all back to me:

Akwid, a recently famous group from Los Angeles, is a slightly different matter. Their music itself, for one thing, is something both truly different —mixing Mexican Pacific brass band with hip-hop— and truly good —the tuba “burping along like a nimble elephant.” But they don’t really speak Spanglish. It’s mostly just Spanish, but a different one from mine. One even more imbued with American influence.

They have a song called Pobre Compa in which the singer tells about a romantic triangle between him, his best friend and a girl. There’s a voice-over at the middle of the song in which the singer addresses the girl. One hears knocking, a door opening, and the following brief dialogue:

You can’t tell by the text, but the girl speaks her 5 words with a distinct accent that I love: crisp Spanish with an English cadence —which, btw, is completely different to gringo Spanish: broken Spanish with no cadence at all; an English tongue trying to mimic, unsuccessfully, Spanish sounds. And there was something else, beyond the accent, that I found interesting and appealing but couldn’t precisely pinpoint. I know now: it’s that “pienso que si”; a perfectly valid Spanish sentence, of course, but it feels somewhat unnatural to my Spanish sensibilities. “Pienso que si” mimics the English “I think so” where I would have more naturally said “creo que si” (“I believe so”).

It’s similar to the phrase “dulce para mi ojo” in their Taquito de Ojo song. That’s a quintessentially English phrase, “eye candy”, translated to Spanish inside a song with a quintessentially Spanish phrase as its title: “taquito de ojo” (“eye taco”). I like that.

Truth is, I love this blending whatever the language involved, I “delight in mélange.” Just to give an example, yesterday, via Diana, I found about a French Canadian group called K’maro and I was thrilled. They have true talent for Franglais, just look at this gem:

Or think about how “weekend” is now a French word. It’s much more natural to French cadence that the clunky “fin de semaine”.

En ficcion, el primer paso para crear destruccion digna de ese nombre es describir algo tan bello que duela destruirlo. Si quieres un divorcio realmente tragico y amargo, muestra primero lo feliz e idilico que fue el noviazgo. Para que que duela la caida, vuela alto. No duele el vacio, duele el recuerdo de lo que alguna vez hubo, la superposicion.

Es por eso que creo que el prefijo “des” (y su equivalente en otros diomas) es la forma suprema del lenguaje para expresar destruccion. Sad no lastima, no puede, lo mismo que unhappy, que insinua felicidad solo para arrebatarla. Existe algo mas triste que el desamor, la desesperanza, el desencanto, la desilusion, el desamparo?

Es un deber basico de toda generacion introducir a la generacion siguiente a los logros mas destacados del pasado. Me molesto mucho pues que nadie—ni un primo, ni un tio—me haya dicho lo realmente genial que es Mecano. Habia oido, claro, clasicos que por alguna razon se cuelan en toda polvorienta coleccion de mp3s—Hijo de la Luna o Mujer contra Mujer, por ejemplo—y me gustaban pero hasta ahi. No me toco su periodo de fama y todo podria haber quedado en eso sino es que Martha me avisa un dia que tenia que escuchar la de Stereosexual. Me gusto muchisimo y, emocionado, baje toda su discografia. Que sorpresa oir canciones tan magnificas y originales como Cruz de Navajas, Aire o El Cine—entre lo mejor que he escuchado jamas. Tienen aparte muchisimas otras canciones destacables; bajenlas (su discografia de una vez), escuchenlas y lean sus letras—lo ameritan. Aqui va una muestra:

...es el titulo de una cancion de Miguel Gallardo. La cancion es buena pero a mi lo que me encanta es el titulo. Es mi eleccion para ristra de 5 palabras mas romantica (y cachonda) de la lengua Española. En Frances, mi delfin es aquel inovidable (y fatalmente ironico) Je veux baiser votre âne! de Vince Cassel a Monica Bellucci en Irréversible (al que ella responde, sonriendo y tambien con 5 palabras, Tu es un tel romantique!)

Aunque ahora que lo pienso, siendo el campo de juego ristras (y no solo frases), preferiria: lima, axila, cadera, media-mañana y pupila.

En que cosas divago… supongo que yo tambien ando en busca de una amitié amoureuse.