The eight months of summer I've enjoyed between South America and the United States came to a screeching halt yesterday. All the stress and anxiety of "being back in school" (even though I'm not taking classes, I feel the weight of academic work -- i.e., my dissertation -- pressing down on me, flooding my conscience) came to a head in a situation that left me wondering, How'd things go so sour so quickly? The signature line of G.O.B. (from my latest TV obsession, Arrested Development) rang all too true for me: "I've made a huge mistake."
Whether or not yesterday's situation could have been avoided, one thing is clear: I feel old habits creeping up on me. Or, more precisely, I'm losing touch with the self I became while living abroad and traveling around in South America. Which is why I'm taking this opportunity to remind myself of the great joy I experienced there and to imagine how I might continue to live a happy, fulfilling life based on friendship and openness.
What better way to bring this experience back to the fore than to present scenes from a bar in Lima? The night was May 11, and I joined Jorge, Tammy, Emily, Angela, and others on a wild bar-hopping trip around Barranco. Most of these photos were taken at Mochileros, a trendy bar housed in a quaint colonial-type building just off the main square. Jorge and Tammy knew the owner of Mochileros, which meant that we got a free drink or three thrown into the mix. All photos are courtesy of Emily Jump and her awesome travel blog survey of the universe.
Things got started at Juanito's, where Barranco's most recognizable roaming guitarist serenaded Angela with a little ditty. I forget the specific lyrics of his riff on a famous love song, but I do remember Jorge's chorus: "Por atras."
Jorge: writer, philosopher, drunk.
Don't worry, folks: Angela and Emily are only playing innocent.
Longtime compañeros: Jorge and Tammy doin' the dance once more.
I may have wished for another bottle of Cristal.
Jorge to himself: "Emily's got issues."
Sandra thinking, What have I done to deserve this?
An unforgettable tableau: Kinohi singing, Emily growling, and Jorge wondering, Who the fuck are these people?
Not a camera effect: by the end of the night, we were all seeing blurry. Only the next shot of pisco showed up clearly.
London, summer 2005: DJ Eric Prydz's "Call on Me" takes Europe by storm and is the dance hit of the summer. Sampling Steve Winwood's 1987 song "Valerie," the song is a foot-thumping blend of catchy beats and memorable lyrical crescendos: "Call on meeeee... Call on me! Call on meeeee... Call on me! Call on meeeee... I'm the same boy I used to be."
The music video for "Call on Me" is equally memorable: an aerobics class workout becomes the site for a hot-and-heavy flirtation between the instructor and the lone male in the room. Curiously, while the girls around him get sweaty and toss their hair, the male remains sweat-free and smiles in a sort of goofy, dazed way. At any rate, the video is probably best known for the pelvic-thrust dance move that the class performs in unison after the first crescendo. The move goes a little something like this: spread your legs apart, keeping them parallel to each other; bend your knees and place your hands on your thighs; and now in this semi-sumo-squatting position, THRUST your hips to the beat of the song. It's that simple!
Though the unremixed version of "Call on Me" runs a little less than three minutes, it becomes an immediate dance sensation throughout Europe and the pelvic thrust becomes a rather popular form of bodily expression in discos for the entire summer of 2005.
Lima, summer (or the northern hemisphere's spring) 2007: At the popular club La Cede in Miraflores, the lone gay-friendly discoteca in Lima (the "gay club" in Miraflores, Downtown, was recently shut down by the district's conservative, evangelical mayor), I grow accustomed to watching music videos of songs the DJ plays during his set. While I'm sure this fusion of song and video has become the norm in dance clubs the world over, I really only experience it for the first time at La Cede. (It's been five years since I was last in Europe.)
Now although La Cede is mind-bogglingly crowded every time I go in there, I generally enjoy its atmosphere, its diverse crowd, and the music/videos the DJ plays -- a sometimes jarring but always fun blend of salsa, reggaeton, and '80s pop. As far as I can tell, the two constants in the DJ's playlist are: "Gasolina" and Erasure's "A Little Respect." And the best part is that the mostly Peruvian crowd knows all the lyrics to both songs. "Oh baby pleeeeease / give a little respect / to-hoo-ooo meeeee!"
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, summer 2007: It's my first sojourn to Chapel Hill, a neighbor city to Durham, since my return to the States. In fact, it's probably my first trip to the Chapel Hill bar scene in over a year. Five of us pack into my friend Bea's two-door, and having to ride on the "hump" in the back seat reminds me a bit of "making do" with transportation in Lima.
Chapel Hill is pretty dead this Thursday night -- perhaps it's post-Memorial Day fatigue. After a quiet spell at the bar Jack Sprat, we go to the dance club The Library, an old favorite of mine from three years ago. Bea, Ignacio, and Darian don't like the scene there and leave within fifteen minutes. Alvaro and I, though, are digging the fact that at least some people are dancing here and so stick around a while longer for a drink.
After a forgettable song by Eminem, the DJ puts on "Call on Me" and those funky aerobics girls appear on the huge TV screen above the dance floor. The students on the dance floor scream in unison -- the song has become a huge dance hit on the college circuit. (Perhaps there's a musical progression/regression to be examined here: from European discos to the U.S. college party scene.)
Without any prompting, girls in their short skirts and boys in their khaki shorts and polo shirts "assume the position": it's the preppy version of the dance. After that first deliciously frenetic crescendo, twenty college kids thrust their pelvises in an orgy of glittery make-up and popped collars.
Alvaro and I are watching the dance floor, and the music video, from a booth ten feet away. At first I make a vague attempt to laugh off the scene in front of us. But then I feel a weird sensation. My feet start tapping the bar stool I'm sitting on. My hand begins to rap the countertop in sync with the song's beat. A smile crosses my face. I love this song!!
But... but then I feel paralyzed. I'm bumping along in my seat, yet I can't muster up the courage to just go to the dance floor and move, let my body go. To be fair, I don't a friend to dance with, and the dance floor is pretty empty overall. Still, I can't help but feel that if this had been Lima, I would have wasted no time in getting my pelvic thrust on.
I mention something to Alvaro about the difference in social relations in bars and clubs between Latin America and the States. We agree that things are less socially awkward and uptight in Latin America, where making eyes at a girl can in fact be a seductive thing and dancing with a guy doesn't mean you're "his" or "with him." Here in Chapel Hill you could sense something almost completely different: friends surely had a great time with each other, but there was very little opportunity for strangers to meet, to dance, to blush, to sing.
The song ends with my not having moved an inch from my seat.
I remember the several nights of dancing I enjoyed at La Cede. I remember joining the tourists, locals, expats, and guides who were dancing the night away at a discoteca in Arequipa.
I finish my beer and wonder how long it will be before I dance like that again.
A pop-reggaeton song grabbed me from the first day I arrived in Lima. I had heard the song in sundry ambient settings: usually while in a taxi or combi,or while eating at a menú restaurant. The song's swaying beats and catchy lyrics penetrated my subconscious in no time, and I found myself humming its choral tune while cooking, shaving, and e-mailing.
None of my friends in Lima knew who actually sang the song. In truth, I was somewhat embarrassed to admit loving it, because the song seemed to be this summer's bubblegum pop hit in Peru. I was reluctant to reveal to new friends my secret admiration for what probably amounted to the Peruvian version of Justin Timberlake (the singer really did sound like early JT in Spanish -- their voices share a cuddly, high-pitched boyishness).
Another stumbling block to my figuring out who sang the song was that I barely understood the lyrics in Spanish. It wasn't just that I couldn't translate the lyrics into English; I also couldn't discern the exact words being sung. And so whenever I mustered up the courage to ask someone if she knew who sang this mysterious but wildly popular song, I could only say, "You know, the one that goes, 'Duh-duh-dah-duh-duh-dah-duuuhuhuh!'" Needless to say, that tactic didn't get me very far.
Well, finally, in mid-May, Leigh Campoamor e-mailed me an exciting message: from the empleada next door, she learned that the song in question was called "No puedo volverte a ver" and that it was sung by the Cumbia Kings. I was elated. I thought I had found the Holy Grail of sappy reggaeton. I immediately went to Google to find a site where I could listen to the song.
Unfortunately, my search was in vain. Even with quotation marks around the song's title, I found only a handful of sites that mentioned the exact phrase "No puedo volverte a ver." And the group the Kumbia Kings (with a "k," not a "c") didn't seem to have such a song in their repertoire. I was so disappointed. How could such a popular song elude me for so long?
On the penultimate night of my stay in Lima, I met a group of Peruvian students through my friend Rosana (whom I had met at a French expat birthday party about a month earlier). We went out for drinks and dancing in Jesus Maria, a distinctly non-touristy district in Lima. I was quite pleased to be going someplace with which I had very little familiarity; it was my last great adventure, outside of Miraflores, in Lima.
Anyway, at some point in the evening I thought I'd ask one of Rosana's friends if he knew the song I was dying to get information about. In broken Spanish, I told him I was going to hum a few lines from the song's chorus. I then did my old shtick of singing, "Duh-duh-dah-duh-duh-dah-duuuhuhuh!" Rosana's friend paused for a moment, and then said those magical words: he knew exactly which song I was talking about. He told me the song's title, and I committed it to memory.
Well, almost... The next day I e-mailed Leigh excitedly and said, "One of the Peruvian guys I met last night told me the song I desperately want to hear has the main lyric, 'Loco volver que a ver,' or perhaps 'Loco por volver aver.' At any rate, the lyric basically says, 'I'm crazy to see you again.'"
I knew my version of the lyrics weren't exactly correct, as further Google searches didn't turn anything up of significance. But Leigh's response to my message struck gold: "i guess it'd be 'loco por volverte a ver.' that makes sense grammatically. hope you can find it!"
Sure enough, the song I had spent four maddening months looking for turned out to be: Chili Fernandez's "Loco por volverte a ver." Not only that, but the Kumbia Kings did in fact have their own version of the song -- I'm just not sure whether they or Chili recorded it first. At any rate, my quest was over, my Google search complete, and I had located enough pirated YouTube "music videos" of Chili's version (my preferred version) to make me happy for a long time to come.
Here's an example of one such music video posted online. Note the use of manga images here; the Japanese animated art is all the rage in Peru these days.
Isn't that awesomely sappy... yet true?
Now that I'm back in the States, listening to it constantly on a repeated loop, I've realized something very interesting about the lyrics (see below) of this song. While the song's title is "Loco por volverte a ver" -- "dying to see you again" (thanks, Justin) -- its main lyric actually reads, "Ya no estoy loco por volverte a ver," or "I'm already not dying to see you again." And so although Chili slurs the "ya no estoy" in singing the lyric, and although the song as a whole is resolutely upbeat in tone and rhythm, this is all about heartbreak, not falling in love. "Don't think the world revolves around you," Chili sings, just before dropping the line, "I'm already over you" -- my paraphrase of "ya no estoy loco por volverte a ver."
Knowing this now -- that my four-month-long search for a starry-eyed, romantic ditty has instead revealed a bittersweet riposte to an ex-lover -- makes me appreciate "Loco por volverte a ver" even more, and it makes me think back on the own love I lost in Lima.
“Loco por volverte a ver” de Chili Fernandez (from the Musicstar X website)
Que te llamo, que no olvido y no puedo estar sin ti… que me estoy volviendo loco desde que no estas aqué Que yo nunca encontraré mis deseos de vivir Y tu piensas que yo muero pues ya ves que no es así
Rompí tus fotos cuando te marchaste de aquí quemé tus cartas y no volví a pensar en ti y me reía yo escuchando a tus amigos decir que a todo el mundo le estás preguntando por mi. Pasé las noches enteras bailando sin ti ya no me duele tanto que tu no estés aquí ya no me importa lo que pienses de mi no creas que el mundo no gira sin ti
Coro:** Ya no estoy loco por volverte a ver ya no paso por tu casa ya no llamo para ver si acaso estas ahí Ya no estoy loco por volverte a ver y me dicen mis amigos que he cambiado, que yo estoy mejor sin ti…
Y el teléfono no vuelve a tener su ring ring y mis amigas que siempre me querían dar su pum pum, mami mami, pum pum, mami mami Ya no hace falta llamarte, ya me convencí que ya no duele tanto que tu no estés aquí Ya no me importa lo que pienses de mi no creas que el mundo no gira sin ti.
Coro:** Ya no estoy loco por volverte a ver ya no paso por tu casa ya no llamo para ver si acaso estas ahí Ya no estoy loco por volverte a ver y me dicen mis amigos que he cambiado, que yo estoy mejor sin ti…
YA NO PASO LAS NOCHES PENSANDO QUE ERA YO EL QUE TE ESTABA FALLANDO YA NO TENGO QUE ESTAR ESPERANDO PORQUE EL TELEFONO POR MI ESTA SONANDO
Y AUNQUE TE SIGO, YA ME HAS VISTO Y YA ME CONVENCÍ QUE NO PODÍA ESTAR CONTIGO, NO ERAS PARA MÍ, Y SI TU SIGUES CONVENCIDA QUE LLORO POR TI EL RITMO, EL DELIRIUM CANTA PARA TI
Pasé las noches enteras bailando sin ti ya no me duele tanto que tu no estes aqui y ya no me importa lo que pienses de mi no creas que el mundo no gira sin ti
Coro:** Ya no estoy loco por volverte a ver ya no paso por tu casa ya no llamo para ver si acaso estas ahí Ya no estoy loco por volverte a ver y me dicen mis amigos que he cambiado, que yo estoy mejor sin ti…
Two weeks ago I arrived by plane to Buenos Aires, Argentina, for a week-long stay in the most "European" of South American countries. I had absolutely no plans in store prior to arrival, so this was something of a "see what happens" adventure for me.
Thanks to some great advice from my Finnish friend Tiia back in Lima, I chose to stay in a hostel in San Telmo, a neighborhood renowned for its welcoming bars, yummy paradillas, and... well, a bustling nightlife. I got a cheap room (AR$18 per night) in a dormitorio with two bunk beds. It was a far cry from the relatively private quarters I've had in my travels around Peru, but I was actually very happy to do this trip as any bargain-needy backpacker would.
One of my roommates, recently arrived from the States via New York and Atlanta, was a Belgian named Sergio. A friendly psychology student from Brussels, Sergio and I had dinner at a nearby restaurant (where I had a nice cut of steak and some fries, or papas fritas) and conversed freely about his studies, which to my surprise consisted of lots of reading in continental philosophy (Nietzsche, Freud, Camus) and the intellectual history of emotion. It was great to meet a scholarly humanist like Sergio who, like me, found the need to balance his academic studies with backpacking and world-travel.
The next day Sergio and I met a South Korean traveler who, amazingly, was in the middle of a three- or four-year trip around the world. This guy was in his late 30s, had saved up money as a banker in Seoul, and one day had decided to quit his job and just travel for as long as he could. He's currently one and a half years into his trip, and his passport (I later saw for myself) was an amazing document in itself: visas and stamps from all over the world, including India, Iran, and Pakistan.
The three of us -- a sort of United Nations of travel-partners (not an unusual theme, of course, for backpacking culture) -- headed out for a walking tour of the city center, famous for its monuments, architecture, and European-style streets and pedestrian zones. Just a short while into our tour, however, Buenos Aires was inundated with rain. It wasn't a constant rainfall, but there were periods of intense drenchedness. We did our best to see the Plaza de Mayo and the Plaza San Martín, and we did see the city's major cathedral, the famous Casa Rosada (or Rose House: Argentina's version of the White House), and the "Big Ben" of South America (whose name escapes me). But we ended up spending the majority of our afternoon in a rather pleasant contemporary art museum (Imago), taking in an exhibit on the history and culture of the city of Buenos Aires.
Reason #1: Heavy rainfall, poor background/natural lighting, trying to keep as dry as possible rather than take only "eh" pictures. (Besides, after my travels around Peru, I think I now prefer to take pictures of people and/or of natural settings rather than "city" landmarks on their own.)
In the evening I met up with my Dutch friend Tosca, whom I met in Nasca (and to whom I should've introduced you by now, in a blog entry on that trip), and her Argentine friend Soledad, from Rosario. We learned in a Messenger chat that we'd be in Buenos Aires at the same time. We had such a good time traveling to Nasca and then Huacachina (both in Peru) together that we made our best effort to meet up in Buenos Aires.
Which is exactly what we did that night: the three of us had dinner at a somewhat mediocre restaurant (where Tosca's "lasagna" turned out to be a pile of cheese on two slices of eggplant; no actual pasta to speak of) but then went to a nice bar in San Telmo (Café de l'Arbol) to listen to live music and have a few beers. The first group that played at the bar was superb: two guys playing guitars, and one of them singing classic Spanish songs of revolution. The singer had a really nice voice, and many members of the audience sang along with him. Makes me want to learn more about the political context against which these songs were originally composed.
After two or four cervezas, Tosca, Soledad, and I went in search of a good disco. We ended up at Por Vos Buenos Aires, a rollicking, mostly Argentine, club in San Telmo that played tons of Argentine pop (but also the seemingly universal Latin pop song "Gasolina") and just a smidgen of American pop (the first lyric of "Sweet Child O' Mine," but not the rest of it!). Tosca and I did our best to keep the beat, and with the help of three jarras of beer and a Cuba Libre, we did.
Reason #2: Lots of drinking. Had my digital camera with me but didn't bother to take it out of my pocket. Tosca, however, did take some nice pictures of us over the course of the evening.
Reason #3 (follows from #2): Made it back to the hostel OK but woke up the next day at around 2pm. (I fell asleep in the hostel's TV room after having finished a late-night snack. In my defense, I did so only because a Dutch couple fell asleep on the couch next to me. I figured, My room is upstairs, these two are also clearly going to bed, so why not relax in this comfy armchair? I woke up later that morning and made my way to my room. But my South Korean friend told me he saw me asleep in the TV room as late as 10am! I thought it couldn't have been later than 9 before I stumbled upstairs.) Too lazy to do another city tour, and eyes too heavy to see straight.
To make up for our partying the previous night, Tosca, Soledad, and I went to the international book fair in town. It was a great experience. Thousands of people of all ages flocked to the convention center for a Sunday stroll of book-browsing, book-shopping, and general appreciation for literate and print culture. Apparently, the fair had been advertised throughout the country, via every possible medium, as a major cultural event. And so like most of its European counterparts, Argentina remains a deeply literate and literary nation. I hope to write more about the fair on my other blog, The Paperback Museum.
After the fair, the three of us did our own things. Tosca and I picked up dinner at McDonald's, which was a pleasant taste from "home" after a day of recovering from Argentine beer. (My Chilean roommate Osvaldo did give us shit for this, but we told him to leave us alone. I think Osvaldo had been staying in the hostel for two months when I met him.) I then went with a Chilean girl, Gabi, to have a few drinks at two other bars in San Telmo. The second bar featured a local funk-rap-reggae band that ended its set with a 10-minute version of James Brown's "Sex Machine (Get On Up)."
The next day Tosca and I bade farewell to Soledad as she headed back to Rosario. Tosca and I had already talked about going to Iguazú Falls, the majestic waterfalls in the north of Argentina (actually on the border with Argentina and Brazil), by taking a night-bus later that day. Though this meant we had to leave Buenos Aires without seeing much, it also meant spending more time together and at a site that everyone who travels around South America says is a "must-see."
Tosca and I, it turns out, have similar traveling philosophies: make the most of where you are, and always keep open the possibility of visiting somewhere again in the future. (This is obviously very easy for a city like Buenos Aires.) So on Monday we decided to call it a day on the metropolis. But before we did, we went shopping.
Reason #4: While fun and memorable in its own way, I didn't want to take pictures of Tosca and me shopping.
I got a nice pair of leather dress shoes, a nice dress shirt, and two ties. I could've bought more, but I didn't want to embarass myself in front of Tosca (!).
We left in the afternoon for Puerto Iguazú, 18 hours to the north of Buenos Aires. On our way to the Retiro, or central station, Tosca took two pictures through the window of the colectivo, or public bus: the Casa Rosada and a government building. The pictures, which I now have saved on my laptop, are actually quite good, as though Tosca took them from the street on a day-long walking tour of the city.
