Last week’s newsletter was about what makes us human—and what makes us crab-like. The idea came from an article I read called “Homo Crustaceous,” by paleontologist-futurist Michael Garfield.
Beyond exploring a cultural obsession with crabs throughout human history, Garfield makes a surprising case for our similarity to these intertidal scavengers with an exoskeleton:
Firstly, humans do live in something like an intertidal zone: the turbulence and inescapable betweenness of our lives as we move in and out of the ‘virtual’ world. And, secondly, we encase ourselves in exoskeletons more literally every day as we become increasingly supported and defined by our technologies.
If our technologies are leading us away from what it means to be human, how can we find our way back? What does it even mean to be human? Singer-songwriter Will Varley provides at least one answer in his new song, “Machines Will Never Learn to Make Mistakes Like Me“:
Part of being human is being imperfect. We might say that our mistakes and failures lead us into a future that’s more human than crab-like.
Some friends of ours, the Stiflers, have a wall calendar by artist Nikki McClure. Each month features a word and image McClure cut from a single sheet of black paper. August’s word is “dissolve.” With all the ways our digital technologies might be evolving us as we move into the future, McClure’s word choice makes me think we might do better dissolving back into nature. Maybe that’s an action we can take to become more human too.
Last week I put together two playlists that express these contrasting sentiments: 1) my crab mix – A Digital Evolve? and 2) my human mix – A Natural Dissolve. You can read the rest of the newsletter here and listen to the playlists below. I hope you enjoy!
Earlier this spring, I was struck by the music video for Alan Sparhawk’s new single “Not Broken,” which features the Low band member contemplating life beside wavy waters. I wrote about it in last week’s newsletter on the waves of grief:
Alan Sparhawk of the band Low just released his second solo album—this time with accompaniment from the band Trampled by Turtles and appropriately titled With Trampled by Turtles. It’s a unique paring—Low’s music is part of the slowcore genre and Trampled by Turtles is known for their blisteringly fast bluegrass. Back in 2022, Sparhawk lost his wife and bandmate Mimi Parker to cancer. After Parker’s death, Trampled by Turtles invited Sparhawk to sit in with them on some of their shows. Both bands being from Duluth, it was an easy way they could show up for their longtime friend and support him during his grief. In this moving and insightful Stereogum interview, Sparhawk discusses his first solo album White Roses, My God—along with his experience grieving the loss of Parker. One of the singles from his new album is “Not Broken.” Its chorus features a female vocalist—sounding uncannily like Parker—who sings over and over again, “It’s not broken. I’m not angry.” This vocalist, it turns out, is the daughter of Sparhawk and Parker—Hollis. The music video for the song shows Sparhawk continuing to grieve Parker beside bleak, choppy waters—but with a hint that he’s finding his way into healing, that he and Hollis are not broken and not angry, despite their pain. As grief goes on, that’s a hopeful place to be.
You can check out the music video for “Not Broken” here:
In the Sci-Fi comedy The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, a wife argues with her husband and tells him to get a sense of perspective. Just to spite her, the husband goes ahead and creates the Total Perspective Vortex—an unbearable room that shows visitors their incredible smallness in relation to the incomprehensible vastness of the universe—to prove that the one thing we simply cannot live with is a sense of perspective. The room ends up frying his wife’s mind, which saddens the husband, but also satisfies him that he’s at least proven his point.
In last week’s newsletter, I wrote about Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. I was reading The Restaurant at the End of the Universe—and had just gotten to the part about the Total Perspective Vortex—when I started Flow, so I laughed when I saw how Csikszentmihalyi kicked off his book by framing human dissatisfaction from a universal perspective. In a section called “The Roots of Discontent,” he writes:
The motions of stars, the transformations of energy that occur in it might be predicted and explained well enough. But natural processes do not take human desires into account. They are deaf and blind to our needs, and thus they are random in contrast with the order we attempt to establish through our goals. A meteorite on a collision course with New York City might be obeying all the laws of the universe, but it would still be a damn nuisance. The virus that attacks the cells of a Mozart is only doing what comes naturally, even though it inflicts a grave loss on humankind. ‘The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly,’ in the words of J.H. Holmes. ‘It is simply indifferent.’
The universe is big, chaotic, and for all practical purposes, does not care about our happiness. In fact, much of the enjoyment we experience in life, is the result of our ability to create order in the midst of the chaos. Csikszentmihalyi argues that culture, religion, work, and any personal goals we might have for how we use our time on this earth are all attempts to bring psychological order to our sense of self and prevent chaos from unraveling it—what he calls “psychic entropy.” He goes on to write:
How we feel about ourselves, the joy we get from living, ultimately depend directly on how the mind filters and interprets everyday experiences. Whether we are happy depends on inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the great forces of the universe.
And that’s just it—it comes down to what we have the ability to control. Csikszentmihalyi concludes the section by describing the kinds of people who are able to improve their quality of life through the flow experiences that result from an appropriate focus on what they can control:
Such individuals lead vigorous lives, are open to a variety of experiences, keep on learning until the day they die, and have strong ties and commitments to other people and to the environment in which they live. They enjoy whatever they do, even if tedious or difficult; they are hardly ever bored, and they can take in stride anything that comes their way. Perhaps their greatest strength is that they are in control of their lives.
The one thing we can truly control is ourselves. That’s a perspective we can maybe all agree on, both husband and wife.
Then again, when it comes to having a universal perspective, recent research suggests that maybe the husband was wrong after all. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Acceptance frees us to fly – I made this animation from a paper bag I got at the
Jade Rivera gallery
in Lima
In last week’s newsletter, I wrote about finishing Oliver Burkeman’s book 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. I loved its central message of accepting our limitations—not the least of which is the limited time we all have in this place—as a way of living more freely and more meaningfully. In particular, I loved the sentiment with which Burkeman ended his book:
And the life you will see incrementally taking shape, in the rearview mirror, will be one that meets the only definitive measure of what it means to have used your weeks well: not how many people you helped, or how much you got done; but that working within the limits of your moment in history, and your finite time and talents, you actually got around to doing—and made life more luminous for the rest of us by doing—whatever magnificent task or weird little thing it was that you came here for.
It has me reflecting on what “magnificent task or weird little thing” I came here for and goes well with Austin Kleon’s “Be the weird you wish to see.”
It also has me wondering about how limitations can counterintuitively liberate us in other areas of life. On this topic, Kleon too, has something to say. In the final chapter of his book Steal Like an Artist—titled “Creativity Is Subtraction”—he writes:
Nothing is more paralyzing than the idea of unlimited possibilities. The idea that you can do anything is absolutely terrifying.
The way to get over creative blocks is to simply put some constraints on yourself. It seems contradictory, but when it comes to creative work, limitations mean freedom.
I’ve recently started following Erik Winkowski’s newsletter Paper Films, which I find to be wildly creative. When I think about using constraints as a way of unleashing creativity in your work, Winkowski’s short films immediately come to mind. For example, a few weeks ago he posted a video showing how he uses a typewriter to draw.
It’s hard to imagine a more constrained way of drawing than doing so on a typewriter.
Kleon also employs the humble typewriter as a limiting tool for his own creative work. He conducts his excellent typewriter interviews via the U.S. Postal Service, a constraint in its own right. In today’s hyperconnected world, the time it takes to type up interview questions, mail them out, wait for a response, and post the results serves as a limiter that brings Kleon’s creative work and collaborations into focus. It’s the good friction.
He also popularized blackout poetry—a form of found poetry in which you remove, or “black out,” words of a newspaper or other text to create your own unique composition.
One of Kleon’s predecessors in this type of work was the visual artist Tom Phillips. In 1966, Phillips decided to take W.H. Mallock’s 1892 novel A Human Document and modify every page through his beautiful paintings and collages with the goal of creating an entirely new work of art—blackout poetry taken to the extreme. Phillips’s commitment to the project would produce his magnum opus: A Humument. Over the course of 50 years, A Humument saw various publications and modifications, the latest version coming out in 2016, just six years before Phillips passed away. Every page of this beautifully unique and impressive book is graciously available for viewing on Thomas Phillips’s website.
Page 93 of Tom Phillips’s A Humument (2nd version 1986)
In the end, Winkowski, Kleon, and Phillips have all used limitations as a way of freeing themselves to pursue and define their life’s work. In doing so, they’ve carved out their own creative niche—their own unique voice, their own version of weird.
I think we need limitations in life. There’s definitely a time for pushing yourself beyond your limits, but when life seems complicated, I always find it helpful to simplify. If I ever feel stressed out, this mantra always helps to ground me: “Keep it simple.” This could just as well be, “Find a limitation.” It’s a way of focusing yourself in on what you can actually do now with the tools you currently have.
Setting such limitations ends up teaching you something important—it might even reveal the wings of your real self opening, or the weird little thing you came here for.
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.
Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. … Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimism and pessimism.
There’s a middle ground, according to Solnit, that exists between being too positive or too negative. It’s the room where hope resides. Maybe we can find other things in that room too.
The cult British singer-songwriter Bill Fay died this past week at 81. I was only vaguely familiar with his work from Jeff Tweedy having routinely covered his song “Be Not So Fearful” (also featured in this scene of the excellent I Am Trying to Break Your Heart documentary).
I’m thankful that side of my life has continued for all my life—finding songs in the corner of the room.
For much of his life, Fay’s music lived on the periphery. His recording career started in the early ‘70s and abruptly ended only a few years afterward. Later, his career would have a resurgence of sorts after being rediscovered my musicians like Tweedy, among others.
Fay’s comment about “finding songs in the corner of the room” circles us back to something else Solnit writes of hope:
How the transformation happens … recalls that power comes from the shadows and the margins, that our hope is in the dark around the edges, not the limelight of center stage. Our hope and often our power.
Bill Fay didn’t occupy the limelight and our hope doesn’t have to either. This doesn’t make it any less transformational or less powerful. In fact, it does just the opposite.
Rest in peace, Bill Fay. You can read the whole newsletter here.
Jellyfish made of recycled plastic water bottles at the
Monkey Bar
At the very beginning of 2025, I wrote a newsletter about letting go to welcome in. The Spanish put this idea into action beautifully during Las Fallas de Valencia. Artists create beautiful monuments called fallas in the main plaza of the city that serve as a commentary on current social issues. Then, on the final day of the festival, they set the fallas ablaze in an event called La Cremà (see pictures here)—a symbolic cleansing and renewal of society. I like the idea of letting something go to create space for something new.
Las Fallas will be in full swing soon. The festival takes place each year from the 1st to 19th of March in Valencia, Spain. You can check out this year’s festival map and explore the festival website to learn more about what makes this such a special event (also refer to Rosetta Stone’s guide and this article from Move to Traveling). The following video gives a good idea of the esthetic and emotion involved with Las Fallas.
We tend to welcome in the new year with so much hope for the future. As winter wears on in the colder parts of the world—and as administrations change—that hope can quickly diminish. February, after all, is the worst month of the year. It would seem to make sense, then, that Las Fallas takes place in the spring—a season of rebirth and renewal. Maybe there are some things that we’d all like to see burn and go away right about now.
In Grenada, recycling plastics is difficult. But there’s a group here that’s working hard to change that—they’ve organized a plastics drop-off that happens once a month. We save any plastic recyclables we accumulate throughout the month and when the next drop-off date arrives, we load them up and make the trip. The Monkey Bar also helps alleviate the plastics issue—they repurpose plastic bottles in many of their art installations (see the jellyfish featured above).
Instead of burning away the bad to make space for the good, I wonder if we might just remember the good we’ve forgotten—recycle it and bring it back. Can we recycle our hope once we’ve lost it?
Last Sunday, Angie and I hiked out to Hog Island. Right now, it’s the dry season in Grenada and our trek felt strangely similar to what we’d experience on a very nice autumn’s day in Wisconsin. The leaves are changing colors, ever so slightly—light yellows and browns—and some are even falling off their trees. The temperature has calmed down a bit and the sun hits you at just the right angle so as to create the golden, breezy feel of fall.
Trees were all around us and I was thinking about hope. Sarah Vos, of the Dead Horses, has a song called “Swinger in the Trees” (see full lyrics), that is based, in part, on a Robert Frost poem called “Birches” (see reference). The song ends like this:
All these strangers Passing by me But we choose not to see, Yeah we choose not to see (I wanna be) Oh, we choose not to see
There is always hope, There is always hope. There is always hope (I wanna be) A swinger in the trees
There is always hope, folks. Choose to see it. Recycle it and reuse it. And, watch Sarah Vos sing about it here:
Street muralin the Barranco neighborhood of Lima, Perú
Earlier this month, I traveled to Lima, Perú. I wrote about it in last week’s newsletter on unity through difference:
At midweek, we were fortunate to go on a tour of Lima’s Historic Centre with workshop participants. We walked through the expansive plaza at the heart of Lima while looking at the beautiful colonial-era buildings surrounding it and the Andean foothills beyond. When we entered Lima’s stunning cathedral, I was handed a little card with a short prayer of unity on it. As I read it something immediately felt wrong. Classical music was gently playing in the background of this nearly 500-year-old cathedral and I sat down on a pew to take it all in. After a while I realized that I didn’t like how the prayer advocated for unity through “sameness” or “oneness.” If we somehow were to achieve unity through “sameness,” life would be reduced to something far less that it actually is. It reminded me of Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk on the dangers of a single story, where she encourages us to see the multiple layers of people and cultures, and to fight powers that would seek to silence them. Some would argue that the silencing is already taking place. It’s why I’m appreciative of people like Kendrick Lamar, who publicly give voice to a counter narrative, both directly and symbolically. If we’re ever going to get to a place of unity, we have to do so through accepting and embracing “difference.”
This week, I started reading Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities. In the book, Solnit calls for continuous hope and action. And she makes an important point about the past—be it good or horrible—and how it relates to hope:
We can tell of a past that was nothing but defeats and cruelties and injustices, or of a past that was some lovely golden age now irretrievably lost, or we can tell a more complicated and accurate story, one that has room for the best and worst, for atrocities and liberations, for grief and jubilation. A memory commensurate to the complexity of the past and the whole cast of participants, a memory that includes our power, produces that forward-directed energy called hope.
I’m encouraged by this—to be fueled by hope as I lean forward into action. In my newsletter, I wrote about other “untold” or, perhaps, “forgotten” histories of Perú that you can read about here.
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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eric Wenninger is an educator and writer. He teaches language and culture and writes about his thoughts and experiences here.
