Hasta la Raíz by Natalia Lafourcade
Dear readers, It’s another song. A profound one. Hasta la Raíz. It was released almost 10 years ago by the majestic Natalia Lafourcade, a Mexican musician and songwriter. I have always known the song was there. The oh-uh-oh, uh-uh-oh, oh-oh bridge is a kind of harmonic earworm which I don’t mind swirls around my head for a good few hours. Then, in the last month or so, I was in a coffee shop named Varietal in Tegucigalpa that I frequent regularly to do remote work and just relax and scoff their cheesecakes with gastronomic lust. The baristas have a great music taste, and on this particular afternoon close before closing my laptop for the day, this song came along on the playlist. As stated, I’ve always known the song was there and it’s such a pleasant earworm, but I’d never paid much attention to the lyrics. Since then, they’ve haunted me, but in such a profound way. Hasta la Raíz I keep crossing rivers, walking jungles, loving the sunSigo cruzando ríos, andando selvas, amando el solEvery day I continue to get thorns from the depths of the heartCada día sigo sacando espinas de lo profundo del corazón At night I keep lighting dreams to clean with the sacred smoke, every memoryEn la noche sigo encendiendo sueños para limpiar con el humo sagrado, cada recuerdo When I write your name in the white sand, with a blue backgroundCuando escriba tu nombre en la arena blanca, con fondo azulWhen I look at the sky in the cruel way from a gray cloud, you appearCuando mire el cielo en la forma cruel de una nube gris, aparezcas túOne afternoon I climbed a high hill look at the past, you will know that I have not forgotten youUna tarde suba una alta loma mire el pasado, sabrás que no te he olvidado Chorus I carry you insideTe llevo dentroto the rootHasta la raízAnd, no matter how much I growY, por más que crezcaYou’re going to be hereVas a estar aquí Although I hide behind the mountain and find a field full of caneAunque yo me oculte tras la montaña y encuentre un campo lleno de cañaThere will be no way, my moonbeam, for you to leaveNo habrá manera, mi rayo de luna, que tú te vayas Bridge Oh-uh-oh-oh, oh-ohOh-uh-oh-oh, oh-ohOh-uh-oh-oh, oh-ohOh-uh-oh-oh, oh-oh I think that every moment survived while walking Pienso que cada instante sobrevivido al caminarAnd every second of uncertainty every moment of not knowingY cada segundo de incertidumbre cada momento de no saberThey are the exact key to this fabric what I am carrying under my skinSon la clave exacta de este tejido que ando cargando bajo la pielThis is how I protect you, here you are still inside, Así te protejo, aquí sigues dentro, Chorus Chorus repeated Bridge Chorus Like all forms of art, you can resonate with the words in different ways. For me, it makes me think of those who I love and cherish, but for one reason or another, aren’t physically close, but remain part of me, spiritually or metaphysically. An unbreakable bond, so to speak. It captures themes of love, heartbreak and resilience, reflecting a deep connection to her roots and identity. Lafourcade described the song as a journey through her emotions and experiences, which I certainly identify with, especially the heartbreak and resilience, as do many who enjoy the song, which I believe is key to the song’s huge popularity. It is a certainty in life that we will suffer loss at some point, yet the song gives a sense of comfort and healing to move on. It’s rare a song can have such a deep impact on me, both lyrically and through its soft folkloric melody, but it also has a wonderful feminine touch. Thoughts of my dad, family and friends across the world, former loves, partners or colleagues or children and youths I’ve worked with, wondering what they are doing with themselves when I hear the song. I then came across a version on YouTube, created by a number of artists throughout Latin America through a multimedia musical project called Playing for Change, a project to inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music. Usually, I’m a bit skeptical of projects like this for some reason, but this version blows me away, especially reading it is a tribute on International Day of the Disappeared (which falls on 30th August) to those who are missing or suffering the loss of someone who has disappeared, whether it be armed conflict, climatic reasons or missing en-route to the US. At the beginning of the video are some accounts of people who have loved ones missing. It hits me deeply. It reminds me of the dozens of people I have met in Honduras both through my line of work but also in everyday life, who have lost someone, but are also missing from loved ones themselves. I remember speaking to a neighbour when I lived in Miraflores in Tegucigalpa, who told me how her brother and nephew went missing one night. They were en-route to San Pedro Sula in the north of the country, but they never made it, and she never found out why. There was no sign of the car or their bodies. No one knew or understood, and it happened two years before she told me, back around 2017. She feared the worst, but she hadn’t given up hope of seeing them again. It also reminds me of speaking to youths when I worked at Casa Alianza, who were forced to leave their families for one reason or another, whose parents had gone to live in the US and they had no idea where they were, or themselves had tried to go to the US, been deported and were too ashamed to return home because their parents had spent their life-savings trying to go there. It struck me deeply. I’ve never forgotten those stories, which make me feel so tied and connected to
Anon. Me: Anonymous Collection of Introspection
Dear readers, Following on from my post (Artistic Musings….) about narratives and messages in art, I have been working on a strange collection of doodles that was born out of lack of technical skill at drawing people. As you can below, the figures are a scribbly shadow. It’s simplistic. I know. Easy to draw: just a matter of minutes to sketch out and finish. That’s why I enjoy it. Innocent fun, I suppose. It’s therapeutic. It’s been a theme for some time, without me really realising it. I started drawing the shadowed scribbles or sketches of people dancing, playing music, drinking, enjoying romantic moments under moonlight or in the rain, sometimes with a dog, reminding me of my old dog, Chente, or just memories of my dad and I together. They’re like scenarios, narratives of life and moments, some just pieces of advice I picked up from somewhere. Some are in black ink, some multicoloured, some in pencil, and some even in pastels, even though I struggle with them (see my post: Playing With Pastels). Recently, the drawings have taken on a new life. I was recently asked why I don’t sign or initial any of my drawings. I didn’t know why. I still don’t. I just draw. Fun. Enjoyment. Like I mentioned in the previous post, once the art is published, it belongs to everyone. I lose ownership. Well, reverse that ridiculous little idea. It was a pretentious hippy shit thought and I was clearly inebriated on ink fumes. Of course I need to pay the bills; better still, retire early, roll in a bed of cash, swim in a pool of moolah, buy beach homes on a whim etc, you get the picture. These babies are mine and I aim to claim royalties on them if people choose to purchase. Talk like this could lead me into legal trouble at a later date. All self-mocking aside, I like the theory that what we produce belongs to the thoughts and reflects of others. It just never occurred to me to add my signature to the work. They were just doodles. So I replied to the question, “I suppose I’m even anonymous to myself”, and in that moment, the thought fell from the sky, a lightbulb moment, something of a pseudonym or tag name, Anon. me. However, I fully understand the irony. It’s not so anonymous if I’m declaring to the world this collection is by me. It’s not meant that way anyway. I am very much an introvert. Not many people believe this, but I enjoy passing time by myself, regaining my energies by disconnecting and being anonymous to the world. Some of the pieces are just that: anecdotes of searching for inner peace and healing (read more on artistic journey on: Why Do I Doodle?). Like in my previous post, they consist a mixture of imagery and musings of whatever’s passing my excited, reflective, worried, angry, happy, sad, numb, and conflicted mind at that fleeting moment. There is a lot of shadow and introspective work going on, a window into my chaotic thoughts and world. I like a bit of humour, self-mockery, sometimes mocking the world, sometimes observations of what’s going on in society. Some are purely emotional, accepting and the power of saying goodbye. Now, I don’t want to applaud myself to loudly – after all, it wouldn’t fit with my anonymous alter-ego – but one of my favourites is the drawing to the left. Let me be selfish for the moment. This scribbled figure is very much me, maybe more than any other. This is my forceshield against views, comments and opinions that once might have wound me up and/or left me wounded, but telling myself this helps me to let go of words which harm, intentional or not. It shrinks the person and their words into insignificance, to let it go, move on and not let it hurt your esteem, or better still, laugh at the comments (and the person), maybe even review the words to see if there is truth to them, even if they are wrapped in barbed wire. I hate to use the cliché: sometimes the truth hurts. I take great strength from this strategy, giving me patience and calm. It’s part of growing up and realising what’s a battle and what’s not. Some people or comments aren’t worth the energy, time or thought. I offer it to others who are sensitive. I hope it works for you. Then again, I hope the rest of the collection does. It’s meant for your enjoyment, to inspire and for you to resonate with. I suppose most artists aim for the same, as well as dream of swimming in pools of money, which is possibly a dream which also extends to many different people: not just creators. Nonetheless, a shallow dream, it might well be. So, sit back with a hot brew, or a cold one, and enjoy a few moments of my chaotic thoughts. Some of the drawings you may have seen before in other posts, as they were also inspired by other elements, such as music, cats or the sea. If any inspire you, let me know in the comments. Anon. me Anon. me with Pastels Anon. me in Other Themes Older Anon. Me Doodles Anon. Me – Pencil Drawings
Musings from the Coast: Drawings of the Sea
Dear readers, I’ve never lived close to the sea. Not for any length of time anyway. I’ve always found myself in cities and places landlocked and/or at some distance from the coast. I’m not sure why. 44 years on this planet. I’m almost obsessed with it, with a giant tattoo on my upper right arm, based loosely on The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai, which is also the cover of my current doodle book, a special gift from a special person. So what’s stopped me from moving to the coast? Life and career choices, I suppose. This personal goal hasn’t coincided with my career. It’s not a regret. There isn’t much point in that. It is what it is. But it is a goal I have. Bucket list stuff (as opposed to bucket and spade stuff: poor pun intended). To live by the sea. To have a home with sea breezes flowing through the windows, strolling on to the sand with the mass of blue before me. I see it there before me right now. I almost taste the salt in my mouth and feel the vibration of the crashing waves bounce up through me from my feet. I glare out in wonder and admiration at this big, beautiful force of nature before me, covering 71% of the Earth’s surface, 139 million miles2 or 361 million km2 of water, with a volume of approximately 1.37 billion km3. That’s a lot of H2O. It just has the added ingredient of dissolved salt, which accounts for 3.5% of the entire ocean mass. You do the maths if you want to know the total volume of salt in our seas. I’m just stealing these numbers from the web. In the morning, I would swim before work, then do the same in the evening. I then look up to the stars at night and lie mesmerised at the theatre before me: the universe. I would eat fresh fish at lunch and drink it down with coconut milk and/or pineapple juice. Quite a manifestation, isn’t it. It seems I have it all worked out. I plan on winning the lottery any day soon. See you in my beach house dreams. I know this isn’t an everyday reality for those who live by the coast, at least not for the majority. I’m not sure how people live their lives by the sea to be honest. I doubt it’s like the above. Hurricane and rip tide warnings. Sand flies that chomp through your flesh to the bone, jellyfish, sharks, snakes, sea crocodiles, pollution…the list goes on: all the cons of living by the sea. People I know who’ve moved to the coast from the city have told me that the novelty wears off pretty quickly. I’m crushing my own manifestation. I’m thinking of Honduras though. Those Caribbean beaches in the north. It’s Easter week and a sizable chunk of the population is flocking there as I write. I’m stuck in Tegucigalpa, about 5 hours south. Looking on with envy. But I wouldn’t want to go this week. Too many people. My moment will come again. I grew up in Birmingham in England, located probably at the furthest point from the coast in the country, the closest beach being Weston-Super-Mare which is two hours away, famous for the tide spending the majority of the time in the horizon so you don’t actually see the sea, and the sickly sweet rock, which wrecks teeth and your budget with dental bills. Preston, where I studied at university, is 20 miles from the seaside town Lytham St Annes, but as a penniless student without a car and dependent on public transport, beach trips were rare. The icy cold waters made swimming in it near impossible. Memories, though. I also lived in Madrid and Seville. The former was like Birmingham, far from the sea. The latter was closer, but not close enough. I spent a summer working in Calella de Palafrugell on the Costa Brava, a sleepy, picturesque town that used to be a fishing village. It was a 10 minute walk to the beach from where I resided and consisted of tiny coves where one could paddle or dive deep.. Every morning I would take a dip, or disappear on my few days off to the many little beaches close by and read Hemingway books while basking in the sun. The weeks went by swimmingly, pun intended, but a little too fast for my liking. Just two years ago I found a print of Calella while on a work trip in Barcelona, floating through the streets and galleries in Barrio Gótico, or Barri Gòtic in Catalan, by an artist I can’t remember the name of. It sits on my bedside table today, and you can find it to the left of this text. A small treasure that reminds me of those days at the coves. In Honduras, I reside in Tegucigalpa. It’s been my home for 14 years, although I often ask myself how I find myself in a country blessed with pristine beaches yet I live in a city nowhere near to any of them. It grates me, why? Seriously, why? Tegucigalpa isn’t the worst place in the world, but once you sample the beaches around Tela, La Ceiba and Trujillo, you wonder, what fuck are you doing here? You live once. Go, go, go. Tegus, as it is commonly known, is closer to the Pacific, just two hours or so away. The sun scorches and the water is murky with volcanic ash. It’s nice, don’t get me wrong; nice shrimp and shellfish, and there are mangroves and history on the island of Amapala. Yet, it struggles to compare with the North; the Caribbean vibe and turquoise waters, which feel warm and spiced and makes you feel you’re treading water in a relaxing tumbler of rum. Beach for the Brummies During the summer months, Birmingham City Council would lay out a fabricated beach close to Victoria Square outside
Doodle Playlist: Songs that Inspired Drawings
Dear readers, I love music, I love doodling, and as you may have seen from previous blog posts, I enjoy entwining the two, writing about songs that trigger and inspire me to draw my reflections out on my paper. Songs have given memories, sometimes there is a lyric that resonates that makes me think of something or someone. Sometimes they give me the blues, sometimes they make me feel fan-f—–g-tastic. [Note to readers: I’ve been warned about expletives and profanities by the moderators aka my mum. Please note the curse culling]. Call it fan art. Call it what you will. It is cathartic and therapeutic. You can read more on my joys of doodling in my previous blogpost, Why Do I Doodle? This post is more a playlist of songs and doodles, songs that have grabbed my imagination in one way or the other. You can find the compilation on Spotify at this link: Doodle Playlist. No more explanations. No more reflecting. Enjoy the gallery. Enjoy the Instagram reel. Enjoy the playlist. Love moi
18th of December: Ode to Shane MacGowan
Dear readers, So what does 18th of December mean to you? Yes, you. Is it your birthday, or that of a loved one or friend? Do you know someone that died that day? Is it a significant day in your relationship? Did you meet someone, marry someone, divorce someone, or dare I say it, murder someone? Maybe it’s the date of a Christmas nativity. Maybe you smashed it, maybe you buggered it and it gives you childhood trauma. Damn it. Tell me what it means to you, the 18th of December. It’s a random date in the 365 of them in a year to throw at you, I know. It’s 7 days before Santa Claus comes to make or break the festive season. Either that’s going through your mind, or God knows what else, but I doubt the date means that much. Com’on, you eejit. Where’re you going with this? Well, reader, yes, 18th December is very dear to me. It is actually the night that the Pogues used to come to Birmingham, for what I think was the best part of a decade, to perform their Christmas concerts. For the lack of a better term to adequately express my emotion, it moved me to my very core. I jigged in the mosh pit with the rest of the fraggles and psychopaths, glasses of beer and piss thrown in the air, while everyone sang along to Shane MacGowan’s growl. I’d arrive home with a strong whiff of the worse side of human life. I cared not, though, despite the looks and giggles from family members. I saw them in three different years: 2001, 2009 and 2010, always on the 18th. I can’t remember the name of the venues. I can’t remember how many months in advance I bought the tickets. But I remember counting down the days to the night of the concert, like foreplay before the climax, and the thrill was always worth it, especially to hear the Fairytale of New York at the end. The Pogues – which means the kisses in gaelic – shortened from Poguemahone, which means kiss my arse. They were punk and folk and they were explosive on stage, just as much as their melodies and lyrics. They formed in the 80s and went on into the 90s, but without their frontman and main songwriter, Shane MacGowan, after he was fired for drug and drink dependency. Yet the band regrouped in the 2000s to do the aforementioned Christmas concerts. I can’t remember the whole story of how the band formed, but they were a wonderful mix of talented of Irish and English musicians. They wrote of Ireland and London and love and politics with such furious devotion…it wet-fish slapped me into understanding the power of music and literature at such a young age, and brought so much inspiration into my own attempts in the creative arts. I doubt I will ever see them live again. It definitely won’t be with Shane MacGowan. He passed away on 30th November of this year. The Gods insisted he be born on Christmas Day of 1957, and creative Gods helped him co-write probably the most iconic Christmas song in the English language, the song I mentioned in the previous paragraphs, the Fairytale of New York. Ironically, the song became something of a poison chalice in the eyes of Shane. He apparently came to loathe it, and you can understand why when everyone is singing it every Christmas. For the millions, it became their favourite Christmas song. Without doubt, it became mine. The broadway melody mixed with melancholic lyrics, focusing on lost dreams, lost hope, and a toxic relationship. Saying that, it’s not my favourite Pogues song, although it was the first I heard of theirs when my mum and dad used to play it at Christmas when I was young. I really got into Pogues in my teenage years and early 20s and they became a constant in my life, wired into my brain and became part of who I am, as idolism has the power of doing. It was the punk and hedonism that attracted me, the rebellion and storytelling, the lyrics that would suckerpunch my imagination and emotions and make me jump or jig or reflect. I put him up there with the best for his storytelling: James Joyce, Brendan Behan, and Roddy Doyle. But melodies…the damn melodies. I went through a period of trying to get my hands on every piece of merch available before the internet became a thing…the posters, tshirts, and every book ever written about him. I loved the man. I just didn’t get a chance to meet him. I feel more than blessed to have seen him live though. The day he died wasn’t much of a shock, sadly. I don’t want to repeat what millions have said about him “living close to edge that it is a surprise he made it to 65”. His hedonistic ways could be seen in his disheveled hair and disjointed teeth. However, I’d been following him on social media in the previous months of his final day, and I had witnessed he was in acutely bad health. Pneumonia beat him in the final round. Now he’s up there dancing and singing with Kirsty McColl. He was more than his hedonistic lifestyle. He was a romantic, a rebel, a poet, as well as being spiritual, with a fierce sense of humour, quite shy and eloquent. He wrote about dabbling in drugs and prostitution in his early years in London, as well as having part of his ear bitten off at a concert. The absurdities and madness followed him. I can only take what I know of him through documentaries and literature. There was more to him than his rep. He wanted to make Irish music popular, and he certainly did that. The Thatcher government knew of his popularity and saw it as a threat, banning a couple of his songs. He threw everything at