I mentioned elsewhere that my current nominee for Album of the Year is Amor Supremo by Carla Morrison, which Tuli showed me. Right now my favorite song on my favorite album is Vez Primera, or First Time. I found the letras on a website but Google Translate was only sort of helpful, so instead I ran them through a convenient 52xMax, and got an excellent English translation, which confirms that yes, this is a very depressing song.
The song
Letras
Ya te fuiste de mi a tu vida nueva Con otra mujer de hecho una muy bella Era parte del destino que siguieras tu camino Yo mejor así Aunque siento raro aquí
Donde palpita el corazón Donde descansa mi pudor Donde guardé todo mi dolor Donde nace y muere mi amor
Tú fuiste mi vez primera Mi beso, mi ciencia a ciegas Te di todas mis maneras De mi todo cedí De ti tanto aprendí A quererme primero a mi siempre
Fuiste esa gran etapa en mi vida Donde mis venas a ti perseguían Mi piel deseando olerte Mi mente tan recurrente llora tan feliz a un ladito de ti
Contigo pasé momentos que nunca se irán de mi Nuestra etapa fue fuerte y dura Descubriendo la dulzura tú habitabas en mi Y yo era tan tan feliz
Donde palpita el corazón Donde descansa mi pudor Donde guardé todo mi dolor Donde nace y muere mi amor
Tú fuiste mi vez primera Mi beso, mi ciencia a ciegas Te di todas mis maneras De mi todo cedí De ti tanto aprendí
Tú fuiste mi vez primera Mi beso, mi ciencia a ciegas Te di todas mis maneras De mi todo cedí De ti tanto aprendí A quererme primero a mi siempre
A quererme primero a mi siempre
Lyrics
You're gone from me already went on to your new life with another woman, a very pretty one in fact it was part of destiny that you followed your way it's better this way, although I feel something strange here
where the heart beats where my modesty lies where I stored all my pain where my love is born and dies
You were my first time my kiss, my blind science I gave you all my ways I yielded all of me I learned so much from you to always love myself first
You were that big phase on my life where my veins chased you my skin missing your smell* my mind always going back, and I was so happy by your side
With you I spent moments that will never leave me our time was so powerful at finding sweetness you inhabited me and I was so, so happy
where the heart beats where my modesty lies where I stored all my pain where my love is born and dies
You were my first time my kiss, my blind science I gave you all my ways I yielded all of me I learned so much from you to always love myself first
to always love myself first
There were two things I wasn't clear on just from reading the Spanish in my very rusty Spanish brain: "mi beso, mi ciencia a ciegas" confused me some, because I wondered if that was a Spanish idiom, but as it turns out it's just a really good metaphor. She learned much from being with him, from their time together, that it was like she was blazing a new scientific frontier, exploring something never before seen--because in her life it hadn't been. Then the other thing was actually a misprinted lyric on the Spanish site, and Max corrected that for me too, listening to the song himself (he's quite a trooper; apparently he doesn't like her voice... but HOW) : "Mi piel deseando olerte Mi mente tan recurrente" which literally means "my skin wishing to smell you, my mind so recurring". Max took a bit of artistic license on the translation and I applaud him for it. By the way, I gave him the wrong lyric on the following line too: "llora tan feliz a un ladito de ti", which I guessed meant that she cried with happiness just being next to him. Same sentiment, really.
Long Meandering Self serving rant
Then this lyric, I don't know, it gets me: "A quererme primero a mi siempre". It sounds like a very empowered thing to say, but I almost tend to take it as the ultimate admission of defeat, in that, well... he ended up being selfish, looking out for himself first, and she learned that from him. Which, I mean, in any relationship you have to love yourself first, you have to actually have something to offer the other person you claim to love. It's the only way you can be fair to him or her. But at the same time, when you've loved and lost, you don't want the pain of that to get in the way of any future loves you may entertain. And sometimes, when you've been hurt deeply enough, it will.
Every person you will ever love changes you in some way. I have loved so many women in my life, even if I was never in a relationship with them, but especially if I was. I can feel each one of them inside my chest, some pulling me in different directions, some making my path clearer and some clouding my vision. I wish that I had the capacity to give myself fully, and sometimes I feel like I do. Other times it seems very clear I can never just be happy with who I am and where I am and what I am. That feeling that the number one person in my life is always going to be me, and not the ones I claimed to love. Or even currently claim to love.
My first girlfriend, well okay, my second, but my first real, true blue, girlfriend, was an artist. Still is, I think. She loved Homestar Runner. We watched it for hours one night after my auntie, who was her roommate, had gone to bed, and then we kind of cuddled because it was cold, and then we kissed for the first time, and to this day I have never kissed softer lips. She also taught me something about myself: she told me I was emotionally manipulative, and she was right about that. I just... know, you know? What buttons to push and what strings to pull.
I'd like to think that if she was talking to me today, she might have a better impression of me, but honestly some years back, after I'd already married Mrs. Notch, we got to talking a lot on Facebook because she had fallen for one of my friends, was looking for some advice, and apparently thought I was the guy to offer it since I had suddenly gotten all confident. I did my best to help, but I was just as surprised as her to find out that her love interest had no interest in women. So then our conversations didn't cease, but rather turned to looking for comfort, because she was devastated. And after a while our conversations just got to a point where if something didn't change, they'd quickly become something more. So it did change. A while later I would get off of Facebook entirely (not before I made other far graver mistakes) and we haven't spoken to one another since. She's moved to Portland now. She and my wife are still friends.
So I think about that, you know? Even after we were broken up, even after she'd fallen in love with someone else and so had I, I still knew how to push her buttons, and make her happy or make her cry or make her think she'd made a mistake in letting me go all those years ago. I did all those things, some less intentionally than others, but I knew what could have happened and I did it anyway. That lyric makes me sad because I struggle with that. I want to give more of myself to my friends and family and my flawless, perfect wife, and I can't because there's always some bit of me that wants more out of them. Because I love myself over all others.
I had a moment today where I suddenly felt like no one really cared about me anywhere. I was so sure, too. I felt that, even if someone said, "You're a good man, Notch, and I always miss you when you're gone", he or she probably really felt that way, but would, in the end, be wrong. After a couple weeks no one would care. Or maybe they'd even get that premonition in their heads that things were better somehow, and they couldn't put their finger on why because it never occurred to them to even consider that it was because they didn't have to worry about my silly face anymore. That was my own hubris once again; I really don't affect people's lives that much. But I want to. I want every person I interact with in any capacity to think of me and say, "I have no other relationship like I have with Matt. He is really something special." I get jealous, sometimes, if I'm anyone less than someone's best friend of all time in the history of ever. I have to laugh about that, because neither outlook is very healthy. The treacherous heart wants what the treacherous heart wants, sometimes.
Saw this one performed live and bawled my guts out, and still can't listen to it without bawling my guts out all over again.
The last two thirds of the song are where it usually hits for me:
Two friends hooked up to hospital machines To cure of cancer And there is no better place than from this Waiting room to answer
The French kid who wrote an e-mail To the website late last night His father raped him and he’s scared He asked me “How do you keep fighting?"
And the truth is I don’t know I think it’s funny that he asked me ‘Cause I don’t feel like a fighter lately I am too unhappy
You are bigger on the inside But your father cannot see You need to tell someone, be strong And somewhere some dumb rockstar truly loves you.
You’d think I’d get perspective From my few years by the bedside It is difficult to see the ones I love So close to death
All their infections and procedures And the will to live at all in question Can I not accept that my own problems Are so small?
You took my hand when you woke up I had been crying in the darkness We all die alone But I am so, so glad That you are here
You whispered “We are so much bigger on the inside, You, me, everybody Some day when you’re lying where I am You’ll finally get it truly"
We are so much bigger Than another one can ever see But trying is the point of life So don’t stop trying
Promise me.
4
"I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not."
Encyclopedia Dramatica wrote:Reallifegirl: Is supposedly a girl in real life, but we all know that's false. Gets highest comment roughly 75% of the time, and has never had a single red-thumbed comment. Ever.
Terribly sad and beautiful. In fact, you could say that about the whole album. It's very vulnerable.
You know, the first time I heard Sufjan's music some while ago I thought it was kinda boring and decided not to investigate further. But my opinion has completely changed with this album. It makes me think about life and our humanity and in the end, what can be more important?
It's the same with men as with horses and dogs Nothing wants to die Evelyn James they killed in a game With guns too big for their hands Just off St. Charles in No-Mans Land And you'll have to find your own way home, boys You'll have to find your own way home
The oldest was Troy, an eighteen year-old boy Shot dead in March with a robbery His brother started out to hell and to ruin Troy's killer was never caught they say Young nick he just went bad that day Now he'll have to find his own way home, boys He'll have to find his own way home
Why cook dinner? Why make my bed? Why come home at all? Out the door and through the woods There is a world where nothing grows
It's hard to say grace and to sit in the place Of someone missing at the table Mom's hair sprayed tight And her face in her hands Watching TV for answers to me After all she's only human And she's trying to find her own way home, boys She's trying to find her own way home
My legs ache My heart is sore The well is full of pennies
The lyrics have political overtones, but for some reason, this song just ripped me up the last few weeks. And you know what? I kept hitting replay over and over again.