Translation: El Canto del Loco - Besos

The first time I watched this on Youtube it came with a warning: this song is addictive! Extremely happy-making Spanishness even before you know (roughly) what the lyrics mean.

"Hey, listen, why
have you come out into the street, you, so cool
And tell me why
have you thrown away three hours in the mirror
making yourself attractive to ensnare,
out in the street and you don't think
that this means nothing.
That you're not going to impress anyone
that the best part, what's important, is in kisses.

And that's what I want, kisses.
Every morning I am woken up with them,
in the afternoon keep the kisses coming 
and later at night, give me kisses for dinner.

And tell me why
have you put a thousand creams on your body today
if no one can see them.
And I know your senses have left you.
You have to start afresh.
You have the things that remain external
and you hardly think of anything else
for better or for worse.
Metrosexual and lacking kisses.

And stop and see,
That those that love you don't see those things.
They just want to see that wink in your eye,
Uninhibited."

YouTube link: Alvin Lau

"Love him. Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?"
 - Jacques, Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin (now finished!)

Apologies for the comparative shortness of the next few posts; between work experience and three birthdays I have less than an hour free a day in which to write these. In this hour I generally sink into the kind of sluggish, half-human state that would be ideal for watching The Only Way is Essex (I usually settle for Celebrity Come Dine With Me, even as a zombie I have standards), but suitable in reality for very little else.

Prompted by Eliot Boyd to write about the recent anti-proposition 8 victory in New York, but finding myself with very little to say on the matter*, I remembered this video. I remembered how despite not being especially eloquent, or lyrical, nor deliberately fragmented, nor skewed as though viewed from the bottom of a glass but instead as from the bottom of the heart, this poem by Alvin Lau gave me chills in a way that only Itch from the King Blues and maybe the voice of Tinky Winky from the Teletubbies have ever done before. Watch.





Thanks to my own sister for showing me this; she used it for a GCSE art piece based on the work of Grayson Perry.

*See the previous post for examples of how the human mind is mercifully capable of denying things too stupid to seem real, even if they clearly are: a mechanism no doubt in place to help us keep a grip on our own convictions, and by extension our sanity. Perhaps the reason I have never felt much of a strong desire to visit the US is my fear - my underlying knowledge - that attitudes even remotely contradicting this one still exist.

Happy midweek :)