I wrote about Maná in Friday’s newsletter. The Mexican band Maná was nominated to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year. Their nomination is especially significant because they’re the first rock group to be nominated that primarily sings in Spanish. This is a great article explaining why this is the perfect moment in history to induct such a deserving band. My dad—a Spanish teacher—introduced me to Maná when I was just 12 years old. I remember spending many summer days listening to their album Dónde Jugarán los Niños(#250 on the top 600), fully absorbed in the sunny vibes it radiates. My good friend Charles Hughes over at the No Fences Reviewknows that I’ve been a long-time Maná fan, so he asked me to do a write-up for one of their songs for his newsletter, “Turn It Up – Rock Hall Nominees, Part 1” (also check out Part 2). This is what I wrote:
At a time when many Latinx artists had to “cross over” by singing in English to expand their reach, Mexican band Maná just kept rocking out en español. Their sound is a fusion of diverse genres—rock & roll, of course, but also reggae, ska, and funk. In many of their songs, lead singer Fernando “Fher” Olvera gives voice to love’s yearnings and heartbreaks. Llorar (crying) is often compared with llover (raining) and you’ll frequently hear words that rhyme with corazón (heart). The song “Cuando los Ángeles Lloran” (When Angels Cry) is a softer ballad that has all the classic Maná sounds, but with an added lyrical depth that highlights an aspect of the group I admire—their protest. It tells the story of Chico Mendes, the Brazilian activist murdered in 1988 for his efforts to protect the Amazon rainforest. Here, too, llorar and llover mix together, but for a different reason: when an earthly angel like Mendes dies, the angels above cry along with us—and it rains. Beyond their environmental and social advocacy, Maná tells stories that connect with the human experience. It’s why they’ve remained a staple in the Latin rock scene for so long—transcending borders and generations, and absolutely earning this historic nomination.
In my newsletter last week, I wrote about Peruvian public speaking in anticipation for my work trip to Lima, Perú:
To learn more about Perú ahead of my trip, I’ve been listening to episodes from their Perú playlist. One of Radio Ambulante’s co-founders is Peruvian-American journalist Daniel Alarcón, who has an excellent short story collection about Perú called War by Candlelight, which I’ve also been digging into. A few years ago, Alarcón did a video for Pop-Up Magazine in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month called “Peruvian Tips for Public Speaking.” In the video, he talks about a cherished little book he bought from a street vendor in Lima, Perú. The pirated book contains inspirational and oftentimes hilarious advice on public speaking, yet it also ends up revealing a profound truth about Latin America and the complexities associated with its diverse cultural makeup. Language is power, and in Perú, the language of the majority is Spanish. But minority languages, like Quechua and Aymara, are still widely spoken today among Perú’s vast indigenous populations. You can see historical traces of these languages and cultures—present long before Spanish imperialism took hold—in the names of streets and cities. It reminds me of Wisconsin’s indigenous languages, which are still present in the names of many of its cities and lakes. Alarcón’s comments address language as a means of access. Spanish speakers hold power in Peruvian society and the public speaking book is meant to extend that access to indigenous groups.
Alarcón’s story about his Peruvian public speaking book—with its direct and hilariously exaggerated speeches and toasts—appeared as part of a series of videos put out by Pop-Up Magazine‘s “Stories for Hispanic Heritage Month.” In the video, Alarcón recites several toasts from the book. Here are two of my favorites:
“Eulogy of a drowned fisherman”
We’ll no longer find Juan sitting on the shore. We’ll no longer hear him tell stories of fishermen. He’ll never throw a line into the water again. And though his fishing nets are empty today, our eyes are filled… with tears.
“Words offered by a member of an institution on the occasion of the inauguration of a radio receiver”
These modern times have arrived to offer us this receiving machine, now installed in the social hall of the Club, from where it will not only capture information from all over the world, but offer the same back to the people, so that they may participate in the news that travels atop the ethereal waves directly to our ears, all those events taking place throughout this diverse and fractured globe where we earthlings reside.
Alarcón summarizes the toasts by saying, “It’s not poetry, not exactly, but it’s not not poetry, you know?”
He goes on to say that Perú is a country divided by language. There are 15 different language families found in Perú, the most popular indigenous one being Quechua—spoken by around 5 million Peruvians and an official language of the country since 1975.
But Alarcón points out that Spanish is the language of power, and that how you talk and look in Peruvian society determines how you will be perceived. Spanish is the language of access and Alarcón concludes that the public speaking book is intended to serve as a bridge between the in-group Spanish-speaking majority and the out-group minorities who speak other languages.
Alarcón calls the public speaking book “an attempt to heal a national wound,” and without even cracking a smile, he finishes the story in typical Peruvian fashion, pointing out this subtle and underlying purpose:
There’s no speech addressing this, there’s no soothing discourse on the bifurcated identity of a country fractured by its own complicated and troubling history. There’s no tribute to the possibility of creating a hole from disparate, often warring, cultural tribes that constitute, for now, a purely imaginary nation. There’s no homage to the Quixotic 200-year-old attempt to hide the fault lines intrinsic to this national project, from our very first, very flawed moment. None of those speeches are in this magical little book. I know, because I looked.
You can watch the full video below and read the rest of my newsletter here. Enjoy!
Two days ahead of the album’s release, Bad Bunny posted a short film (also titled DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS) featuring Jacobo Morales, the much beloved Puerto Rican filmmaker, actor, director, and poet. The 12-minute film addresses the problem of gentrification on the island as tax incentives make it easier for foreign businesses to take up residency there. In the opening scene we see the 90-year-old Morales dig up a small box of photos, marked by a small Puerto Rican flag in the middle of a field, while he reminisces about the magic of the Puerto Rico that used to be—a magic he goes on to say is still there. Also in the film is Morales’s small friend Concho, a native toad that has come to symbolize Puerto Rican identity and cultural memory. The sapo concho is in danger of extinction, much like Puerto Ricans themselves who continually confront forces driving them away from the island. Morales is wonderful in the film, co-directed by Benito A. Martínez Ocasio (a.k.a. Bad Bunny) and Arí Maniel Cruz Suárez. He also makes an endearing appearance in the official video for the song “BAILE INoLVIDABLE,” where he joins a lesson to learn how to dance salsa.
I wanted to write more about the themes developed in the short film because they’re worth taking a closer look at. There’s a lot going on. This is what Morales says to open the film:
Español:
Qué muchas cosas he vivido. Conocí mucha gente. Gente buena. Fui a muchos países. ¡A casi todas partes del mundo! Pero ninguna como Puerto Rico… O como lo que era antes. Aquí había algo… No sé qué. Una magia increíble. Y todavía la hay. Todavía la hay.
Quisiera haber tirado más fotos, Para enseñarte. Las fotos son momentos vividos. Recuerdos de cosas que pasaron. Yo no era de estar tirando fotos por ahí. Ni estar subiendo stories ni nada de eso. Yo decía que era mejor vivir el momento. Pero, cuando llegas a esta edad, Recordar no es tan fácil. Debí tirar más fotos. Haber vivido más. Debí haber amado más, Cuando pude. Mientras uno está vivo, Uno debe amar lo más que pueda.
English:
How many things I’ve lived. I met a lot of people. Good people. I went to a lot of countries. Almost to every part of the world! But none of them like Puerto Rico… Or how it was before. There was something… I don’t know what. An incredible magic. And it’s still there. It’s still there.
I wish I’d taken more photos, To show you. Photos are lived moments. Memories of things that have passed. I wasn’t one for going around taking pictures. Not uploading stories or any of that either. I said that it was better to live the moment. But, when you get to this age, Remembering isn’t as easy. I should’ve taken more photos. Lived more. I should’ve loved more, When I could. While you’re alive, You should love as much as you can.
These words from Morales appear in various parts of Bad Bunny’s album. In “BAILE INoLVIDABLE,” for example, the intro music that’s been building into a rocker suddenly cuts out and we hear Morales say, “Mientras uno está vivo, uno debe amar lo más que pueda,” right before a glorious salsa reincarnation of the melody takes over. In “DtMF,” Bad Bunny sings the album’s title to start off the chorus, using the same words as Morales—“Debí tirar más fotos.”
After the opening monologue, Morales begins to converse with his friend, Concho the toad, who like Morales is a native of Puerto Rico. This is a shared characteristic not to be missed. One of the main themes of the short film is Puerto Rico’s ongoing problem with gentrification and the multiple ways in which it’s displacing native Puerto Ricans on the island.
After they both realize they’re hungry, Morales goes for a walk downtown to pick up some food for the two of them. On the way, the signs of gentrification abound—foreigners living on the island blasting their music, English being spoken to the exclusion of Spanish, franchise restaurants taking over local cafes. Morales has the appearance of someone who doesn’t even recognize his hometown anymore. It all comes to a head when he tries to make a simple order at a newly-established chain restaurant and is met with a barrage of choices and inflated prices. He even has troubles paying for his order due to the restaurant’s no-cash policy. At this point, a younger Puerto Rican man intervenes to pay for him and offers an encouraging, “Seguimos aquí” (We continue here).
Songs from Bad Bunny’s new album are sprinkled throughout the short film. Upon returning home, we see Morales percolating some coffee on the stove while the song “TURiSTA”—not unintentionally—plays gently in the background. The song directly calls out the issue of tourists benefiting from the beauty of a place without being willing to help solve the challenges associated with preserving that beauty. The beauty of Puerto Rico—both in its physical landscape and the cultural identity of its people—is something worth preserving. In this song, as he does throughout the whole album, Bad Bunny is commenting on the risk of it disappearing.
As Morales and Concho enjoy their food on the back porch, Concho inquires about seeing more of Morales’s photos. After Morales reminds him that he didn’t take many, Concho suggests that they take a picture today, implying that it’s never too late to start recording their cultural identity. There’s hope for its future.
I loved this short film because I love Puerto Rico, and I love the devotion and care with which Bad Bunny positions himself as an advocate for his homeland. It’s not the first time he’s done so. In 2022, he released a music video for his song “El Apagón,” which included a documentary at the end of it called “Aquí Vive Gente” (People Live Here) that addresses how foreign investments in Puerto Rico are negatively impacting island natives. DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS also introduced me to the wonderful Jacobo Morales. I’ve since discovered more of his work, like his 1989 film Lo que le pasó a Santiago, which was the first and only one from Puerto Rico to be nominated for an Academy Award.
I also loved the film because—as good ones often do—it challenged my own thinking about important issues. I’ve done a fair amount of traveling in my life and have even lived abroad as an expat. The film’s commentary made me wonder: have I traveled and lived abroad in ways that preserve and support local communities? Or have I unknowingly aided and abetted the takeover of their spaces and the displacement of their people?
Two summers ago, for example, my wife and I stayed in an Airbnb in downtown Murcia, Spain. It was only afterward that we learned about the recent trend of foreign investors buying up downtown properties to rent out to tourists, and how this is a growing problem—contributing to a higher cost of living and the displacement of local peoples who end up being forced to live outside of their preferred urban spaces. It has led me to explore more responsible travel and adopt more sustainable practices, like regenerative tourism. We can all do better.
But at the core of the film is Morales’s attempt to preserve the cultural identity of Puerto Ricans, at a critical point in history when that identity is again being threatened. At the end of the film, Morales promises his friend that he’ll share his photos and his memories with him—both elusive attempts to capture the essence of what it means to be Puerto Rican. Photos and memories are snapshots frozen in time. They are not completely reliable in their ability to represent cultural identity, as cultural identity is active and always evolving. I think that’s why it takes the effort of a full community—not just one individual—to remember its past identity and carry it forward into the future.
Such community efforts exist. A large portion of the Puerto Rican diaspora lives in New York—or, “NUEVAYoL,” as Bad Bunny’s opening track of the album pays homage to. In 2019, two of these nuevayorkinos—Djali Brown-Cepeda and Ricardo Castañeda—started the digital archive and multimedia project Nueva Yorkinos. It’s a beautiful community project that serves as “a love letter to Nueva Yol” and the type of group effort that seeks to achieve the cultural preservation that Morales longs for in DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS. Since its founding, the website “has amassed over 2,000 pieces of visual media, and 1,500 personal stories and family histories” of Puerto Rico’s diaspora in the city. Visitors can peruse the many media and stories that others have submitted, and of course, submit their own.
These are the kinds of projects we need to ensure that the marginalized have a voice and that their stories are heard. This, too, is what Bad Bunny is using his platform and creative energies to accomplish. His final lyrics on the album leave a powerful and definitive statement:
Español:
De aquí nadie me saca, De aquí yo no me muevo. Dile que esta es mi casa Donde nació mi abuelo. Yo soy de P fuckin’ R.
English:
Nobody’s taking me from here, I’m not moving from here. Tell them this is my house Where my grandfather was born. I’m from P fuckin’ R.
For more Bad Bunny and Jacobo Morales, check out the official music video for “BAILE INoLVIDABLE.” It’s simply excellent! It will make you excited to live your life to the fullest and to dance like no one is watching.
Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti album cover on a towel, gifted to me by some very thoughtful students
When I was in college, I took a semester-long class on the history of Puerto Rico. It was fascinating—such a rich and nuanced history, filled with the ongoing struggle of living through colonialism’s legacy, but also with the pride of overcoming it in the celebration of life as a Boricua, or Puerto Rican.
Last week’s newsletter included the following with respect to Puerto Rico:
You may have heard what the comedian said about Puerto Rico at the Trump rally that took place in Madison Square Garden on October 27. I wanted to share some resources that say otherwise. Puerto Rico Strong is a “comics anthology that explores what it means to be Puerto Rican and the diversity that exists within that concept, from today’s most exciting Puerto Rican comics creators.” Since Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017, all sales of the book have gone to support ongoing relief efforts. La Brega is a podcast from WNYC Studios that looks at the history and music of Puerto Rico. There are both English and Spanish versions of each episode. From the website:
There’s no direct translation of la brega in English, but for Puerto Ricans, it’s a way of life. To bregar means to struggle, to hustle, to find a way to get by and get around an imbalance of power. It’s got a creative edge, a bit of swagger; as Puerto Rican scholar Arcadio Diaz has observed, it’s a word that belongs to the underdog.
A good example of la brega comes from Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny, who released El Apagón – Aquí Vive Gente(click on CC for English subtitles)—part music video, addressing the challenge of constant power outages while celebrating the pride of being Puerto Rican, and part documentary, addressing the dual problems of foreign real estate investments on the island and the reduction of public beach access. For further reading on the beautiful complexities of Puerto Rico, as often revealed through Bad Bunny’s music, check out The Bad Bunny Syllabus.
In last week’s newsletter, I suggested some scary shorts from the page and from the screen:
One of my favorite times to be a teacher is during Halloween. I love incorporating eery music and stories into my classroom. I’ve played the music video for the song, “Drácula, Calígula, Tarántula,” by the Chilean sitcom, 31 Minutos (similar in content and esthetic to The Muppets). It’s a total vibe that you’ll pick up on even if you don’t speak Spanish. I will also use movies without any narration or dialogue in class, like Almaand Úlfur, and then work with students to build language around the story. Alma is a creepy animated short involving children and dolls, neither of which is creepy, right? Úlfur is another animated short that confuses the line between dream and reality in a circular fashion, reminiscent of two of my favorite short stories from Argentinian author, Julio Cortázar. Continuidad de los parques (English version) and La noche boca arriba (English version) were both introduced to me during my college days as a Spanish student. Both are well worth the read. Cortázar was a master of confusing what’s real and what’s fiction—perfect for Halloween!
Of course, we miss Cal and the fun of being around the hood tonight to hand out candy and play terrifying tunes for all the children. Angie and I are still planning on watching a scary movie or two though, be it tonight or tomorrow night. Studying is the horror consuming most of the time around here these days. Movies currently in the running are:
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)
I Saw the TV Glow (2024)
Coraline (2009)
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
Last but not least, I was finally able to put together a Halloween playlist for 2024, just in the nick of time! You can listen to it here.
I learned a new term this week: negative capability. Rebecca Solnit talks about it in her book, A Field Guide to Getting Lost.
She writes that in December 1817, the English poet John Keats penned a letter to his brothers, George and Thomas, in which he described negative capability (from Selected Letters):
I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.
Keats is speaking here of creative pursuits, in particular those of writing and literature. While fact and reason are important matters indeed, much of life is not so easily defined. There is a real skill and perspective in being able to accept those things that are unresolved and yet-to-be worked out—things like learning to do something new, adapting to a different culture, dealing with the unexpected, and putting in the effort to grow a relationship. Negative capability is something I embrace. I knew how it felt before knowing the name Keats ascribed to it.
The term got me thinking a lot about what it means to use the word “negative.” In mathematics, of course, “positive” means addition and “negative” means subtraction. In the case of negative capability, the answers are subtracted, or taken away, and one is left in the space that exists before arriving at an answer.
Negative might also imply that something is nonexistent, as in the negative space surrounding an object in art. Sungi Mlengeya (via kottke.org) is a Tanzanian artist who deftly uses negative space to create beautiful paintings of dark faces and bodies. In perhaps less-striking, yet no less profound fashion, Charles Schulz’s drawing of Charlie Brown and his sister, Sally (at the top of this post), uses negative space to reveal the two characters as they look out into the black night sky.
Pencil drawing by Charles Brown (not to be confused with Charlie Brown) of his close friend John Keats, 1819 (via The Examined Life)
The negative, by nature, removes the nonessential, leaving space for a minimalist perspective to shine through. It can be said that the Peanuts comic strip was minimalist in this regard. I recently read Nicole Rudick’s article, “How ‘Peanuts’ Created a Space for Thinking” in The New Yorker. Quoting David Michaelis’s Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography throughout, Rudick writes of Charles Schulz:
To draw the readers’ eye, Schulz opted for the less-is-more approach, aiming to ‘fight back’ with white space to echo what he once called the strip’s ‘very slight incidents.’ The usefulness of that simplicity became clear as Schulz’s writing deepened. ‘The more they developed complex powers and appetites while staying faithful to their cut-out, shadow-play simplicity,’ Michaelis writes of the strip’s characters, ‘the easier it would be for Schulz to declare the hard things he was set on saying.’ Had Schulz filled his panels with visual distractions, the business of examining interior problems might have proved less successful.
It’s no secret that modern life is filled with distractions. If negative capability describes a person’s ability to experience peace in the midst of discomfort and contentment in the absence of answers, then negative space, perhaps, can be said to remove those distractions that are obscuring what’s important, bringing life’s profound truths more clearly into focus.
Negative as the removal of something to reveal something else—it reminded me of Nazca lines. I just read about the discovery of over 300 new ones. Nazca lines are geoglyphs—drawings on the ground that were made by removing rocks and earth to create a negative image. They were created by the Nazca people in the desserts of southern Peru between 500 BC and 500 AD (you can see more of them here). The dessert rock is a deep rust color due to oxidization and weathering, and when removed, a lighter sand color is exposed, creating a high contrast that reveals the drawings when viewed from high above (via National Geographic).
There are theories, but it remains largely a mystery as to why these drawings were created. Nor is it known exactly how the Nazca people were able to create them with such precision, given their magnitude and the lack of a means to view them from above. Some have speculated that the lines were pathways, tread upon by the people.
There’s an ancient Tibetan proverb that goes like this:
Emptiness is the track on which the centered person moves.
In A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Solnit unpacks the proverb by describing the deep meaning behind “shul,” the Tibetan word for “track.” She writes that shul is:
a mark that remains after that which made it has passed by—a footprint, for example. In other contexts, shul is used to describe the scarred hollow in the ground where a house once stood, the channel worn through rock where a river runs in flood, the indentation in the grass where an animal slept last night. All of these are shul: the impression in the ground left by the regular tread of feet, which has kept it clear of obstructions and maintained it for the use of others. As a shul, emptiness can be compared to the impression of something that used to be there. In this case, such an impression is formed by the indentations, hollows, marks, and scars left by the turbulence of selfish craving.
Negative describes the removal of earth to reveal the Nazca images, just as it describes the removal of those barriers that hold us back from becoming centered. “Centered” here does not mean whole or complete, because these states are unattainable as imperfect human beings. According to the proverb, however, becoming centered is within one’s grasp, if only there exists a willingness to let go. The experience of suffering—both the self-inflicted kind and the living-in-this-world kind—is something that knocks us off balance. It’s at the moment of letting it go that we become aware of the emptiness filling the impression of its absence. That emptiness, existing in all of the impressions made by things that used to trouble us, is what reveals the path, or shul, upon which we can become centered.
Solnit also likens it to purposefully getting lost in order to be fully present. She contemplates the words of the German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin by writing:
In Benjamin’s terms, to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery. And one does not get lost but loses oneself, with the implication that it is a conscious choice, a chosen surrender, a psychic state achievable through geography.
This too is negative capability and is something that’s achievable only through intentional physical and mental movement.
Negative capability is a valuable skill to cultivate—especially because while some things resolve over time and with effort, there are a great many things that don’t. The messiness of life is unavoidable, and oftentimes the only means left to overcome it is through acceptance.
through Peanuts, Schulz wanted to tell hard truths about, as he said, ‘intelligent things.’ But the main truth he tells is that there are no answers to the big questions.
There’s a Peanuts comic strip mid-article that, to me, perfectly highlights the acceptance that comes with negative capability:
Yes, there are solutions for Snoopy’s predicament and he actively seeks them out. But in the end, Snoopy accepts that he will have to weather the storm, just like so many of us. Can we accept it?
Taking risks in life is hard. You have to cross the threshold between what is known, well-documented, and comfortable; and step into territory that’s foreign, obscure, and uneasy. Whenever I have started afresh in a new place, I tend to initially latch onto those things that make me feel comfortable, before fully stepping across that threshold. Music is a big help for me in this way and so is, it would seem, Harry Potter. When I studied abroad in Spain, I read the first Harry Potter book in Spanish before immersing myself in my new Spanish community. In anticipation of moving to Grenada, I bought a Kindle Paperwhite, which included a 3-month free subscription to Kindle Unlimited. The last book in the Harry Potter series was available to download so I’ve been enjoying the comforts of reading a beloved story every night before going to bed. It’s the perfect anecdote to the daily struggles that inevitably come with adjusting to life in a new place. I was reminded of several scenes that are missing from the movie version of the book, which prompted me to stumble upon this video that looks at two such deleted scenes.
It continues:
Both feature a character crossing a threshold, physically and symbolically, to meet another character where they are at. To take a risk and enter an unfamiliar space in an attempt to bridge differences and create a mutual understanding. I think it’s a great visual for reflecting on what thresholds we might cross, be they cultural, political, relational, or something else all together. Taking risks like these do not have to be enormous and completely life-altering. They can be small and achievable by anyone, anywhere. This makes them no less profound. I love this 72kilos post which provides another great visual for crossing thresholds.
Translation: I think completely different than you, but that doesn’t prevent me from drawing near to you. Image by 72kilos.
