The Light, by Love & Rockets

Everything went black. At the hospital, when I woke up, I saw my mother crying over me. When she left, two fat nurses got me naked, violently looking for "tattoos, like those of my friends". The three of us had been run over by a water-pipe truck. The irony: it had been a truck from the University's Fire Dept. They took me to the bathroom, where they "bathed" me with isodine, which was also applied to my long hair. On purpose, one of the nurses made knots with my hair, saying "this is so you will have it cut when you leave here, you delinquent faggot! This what you deserve for being drunk".

The truth is none of us had been drinking; I was 16 and we were coming back from work. We sold skateboards and Doc Martens shoes. The car stopped in the freeway, out of gas, and the three of us tried to push it to the nearest exit. It was raining and it was my father's birthday. After a minute or so of pushing, I heard a loud noise and felt a very sharp pain on my lower back. Noise and darkness. I swear: when I was hit I saw faces of people I loved along a dark tunnel, and a very bright light at the end. I thought I had died.

Next thing, I am on the floor, with my leg broken and lots of blood around me. The ambulance arrived and the first thing they did was remove my brand-new cherry red boots, which I had just bought with my salary (I would never see those again). They carried me like a wounded whale. The pain was so intense I passed out.

I spent six months in bed, at home. My hair was a total mess from spending so much time with my head rested against a pillow and the nurses' kind treatment. My mother and my girl friends from school helped me untie the knots. I couldn't do anything by myself, so I could not change tapes as much as I would have liked. One tape remained near me a long time: Love & Rockets, Earth, Sun, Moon. It was the second track, The Light, that meant the most to me.

This was the soundtrack of my late teenage years and the soundscape of my physical pain. It was an epic narrative in itself, a song full of pride, hope, sadness and optimism. It was, for me, a prayer: it had force in it, a sort of self-respect I had never witnessed. There was no self-deprication here, nor the usual miserabilism I was so indulgently fond of. The whole album was very strange to me; it wasn't what I expected and therefore it fascinated me. Instruments and voice merged in The Light in an eery, uncanny mixture that resembled, musically, what I felt when I had been hit by that truck.

The Light described, both lyrically and musically, aesthetically and emotionally, the experience of being completely by myself, watching time flow and run like water through my hands. I would lie there, unable to rest or concentrate with a book, listening to this prayer, an elegy for the ambitions of youth and the possibilities of happiness. A song of urgency, of love; an epiphany, like the ones one has in the verge of death.

And do you remember/the blackest moment...?


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Dirty Dream Number Two, by Belle & Sebastian

Con las ventanas abiertas quedan tus pies descalzos a la altura de mis ojos, mientras comes una mandarina de desayuno. Días en la playa hacen brillar tus piernas bronceadas y el sonido de la grava suelta hace reir a la música que vamos dejando por la carretera, tal vez la única vez que este rincón de la tierra se una con esta canción, un hecho único en nuestra cadencia.

Rápido viaje a explorar, parando en una mezcalería al lado del camino. Bajas en tu pequeño vestido de niña citadina, probamos las cremas alcohólicas que ofrece ese niño oaxaqueño.

De regreso fumamos, para llegar a la playa y echarnos a leer, a escuchar el mar, llenarnos de ese ritmo para la noche.

El mezcal va menguando a través de la tarde, las estrellas aparecen y empieza a refrescar el aire - tiempo para abrazarse y sentir el cuerpo ardiendo.

La música tocando junto a la cama y el mar acoplándose a cada movimiento nuestro.

Para celebrar nuestra última noche en el paraíso dibujé un retablo a nuestra cama, y en él escribí la palabra que nos une desde siempre: SÍ.

Letter to Hermione, by David Bowie

Like ‘An Occasional Dream’ this is a painfully and intimate song of lost love addressed to Hermione Farthingale, the lover and collaborator who left David [Bowie] in February 1969 after completing her part in Love You Till Tuesday. In November of the same year, Bowie told George Tremlett that Space Oddity’s two Hermione songs were “me in a maudlin or romantic mood. I’d written a letter, and then decided not to post it. ‘Letter to Hermione’ is what I wished I’d say. I was in love with her, and it took me months to get over it. She walked out on me, and I suppose that was what hurt as much as anything else, that feeling of rejection”. Nicholas Pegg, (2000), The Complete Bowie, B.H. Great Britain.

Last Saturday I went to see Separate Lies. In the film, one of the main characters, James Manning, experiences pain, embarrassment, and despair as his wife, Anne, goes off with another man. It is not abandonment as much as it is a passionate escapade.
There was a particular scene that struck me the most. James Manning arrives home from work, his wife has moved leaving him all alone…or so he thinks so. When James enters his house, as he is hanging his coat, he finds a silk scarf. He takes it and for a moment, which might have been eternity for him I suppose, contemplates it, hesitating; and then, defeated he covers his face with the scarf and gives a long profound breath. Another moment, another eternity goes by. A brief pause in hell that occurs as the smell of Ann fills James’s senses. Unfortunately, the obligatory exhalation interrupts this little re-encounter. Ann's scent flies away as James bursts into tears, without ever taking the scarf off his face.

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All These Things That I've Done, by The Killers

It's still early to realize the effects this song will have in popular culture or at least in MY personal popular culture. I walk the streets of my neighbourhood, the iPod is playing this song over and over (just like the lyrics say) and I can't stop thinking how good it gets everytime. Maybe it will be the sort of song only I will enjoy and will become my personal anthem in years to come, just like "Jellybelly" by the Smashing Pumpkins or "Freeloader" by Throwing Muses have. Brandon Flowers's guitar and his voice repeating, then the gospel choir kicking in: "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier". Yes, I ain't no soldier and yes, I do have a soul. Just like when Kristin Hersh sang: "I'm headed for the trees, over there. If that's not a destination, I don't care". Sometimes I'm rather misunderstood because of what I consider a great pop song...

Tainted Love, by Soft Cell

It's the sheer simplicity of it all. Just a realization. What everyone who is not in it can see. That's the truth of things: one turns blind. "Can't you see?", they say. Marc Almond sings with all the emotion it was allowed in the times he had to deal with. It was more than twenty-two years ago, I think, that he called it quits. He tried luck with other names. But once you suffer from a heartbreak like that, well, it's difficult to recover. It took him two decades to find himself, to accept his own name. Marc Almond, behind the cold machinery of inspired nights with synthetised dreams, lived in his own flesh the attempt to materialize theoretical problems by incarnating the oxymoron. His was, after all, a soft cell: trapped inside his own body, within an island, he managed to make the human voice, the heart, come through. Over the clean, sharp, now-classic new wave beats, there were no automated thoughts; no mathematical, scientific pretentiousness. It was a heart on the palm of a hand, more than twenty years ago. Like waking up from a dream. Opening eyes, at last, and seeing. One had to run away. The pain was there, but it may have had other names. The task he managed: he came out with the sounds to describe it in an era which ignored him. Now, the heart still beats. Taught us a lesson. There comes a moment in everyone's life in which one has to run away, to escape from pain. An optimistic, yet wounding, open door towards the light. A voice drowning in darkness and sorrow. If you think about it, Marc Almond is a hero. He gave us wings. In times of coldness and "intelligent design", he joined the opposites without merging them. He shared with us a special knowledge, a wisdom, of the body and the soul. Tainted Love: a hymn for those seeking their wings.


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One Hundred Bars

Last night, in a warm, semi-drunken conversation with Argel and Evelio, we thought it would be a nice idea to start a collective blog dedicated to short ficciones about pop songs.

The idea is to post little essays/commentaries/short stories inspired by songs we like. Every post must be titled with the song's name.

Let's see how this works out. I think it might be fun. Posts can be in either English or Spanish.

Hope to see you around!