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As a solitary dude, all my life I have relied on music to connect with the world at large, to feel that my feelings weren’t that unique or detached from the rest of humanity. Over the years, I’ve returned to certain albums that have spoken to me in ways that can’t be fully put into words. I love discovering new albums, and perhaps that’s also the case for whoever is reading these words, so I’ll spend some of my limited time on Earth sharing some specifics about the albums that have marked me, and that in many ways changed me.

Today’s album is Palabras más, palabras menos, by Los Rodríguez. A bit weird for me to start with this album; even though Spanish is my mother tongue, this one is the only album in Spanish that I have listened repeatedly over the years. I like the entire thing, but I find myself repeating four songs in particular.

“Todavía una canción de amor”

The song speaks of a love already dead and gone, but that has never let the narrator go. I discovered this album back in 1995, when I was ten years old, and I only came to fully understand the song years later, when I found myself sleepwalking to places that I had shared with a past lover, hoping but also dreading to see her appearing there as if summoned.

Death is a spurned lover
Who plays dirty and doesn’t know how to lose.

I’m trying to tell you I’m desperate waiting for you.
I don’t go out to look for you because I know I risk finding you.
I keep biting my nails of resentment day and night.
I still owe you a love song.

Singing is shooting against forgetting,
Living without you is sleeping at the station.

“Mucho mejor”

A song that praises losing oneself in sex and general debauchery, for when you don’t give shit about anything else but making love in the balcony with your likely quite underage lover; the ideal state of mind.

Sweet like wine, salty like the sea,
Princess and vagabond, deep throat,
Save me from this loneliness.

Honeymoon, paper moon,
Full moon, cinnamon skin, give me nights of pleasure.
Sometimes I’m bad, sometimes I’m good.
I’ll give you my heart for you to play with it.

They could accuse me, she’s underage.
We’ll go to a hotel, we’ll go to dinner,
But we’ll never go together to the altar.

“La puerta de al lado”

A haunting song about a man who has given up on life, has detached himself from anyone who knows him, and is staying at a motel that he expects will be the last place that sees him alive. Beautifully written, depicting very well that suicidal state, and ends the song powerfully by mirroring a previous symbol in an understated manner: he had mentioned someone having hanged himself next door, the door itself marked with a “Please do not disturb sign.” Now, the same sign hangs on the narrator’s door.

Let time pass
With a wandering gaze, no direction to follow,
A book always open,
Pages torn one by one, filled with resentment.

In some place,
On a secondary provincial road,
The light in the window
Shining with the noise of passing trucks.

And at the front desk, there’s a fake name.
No one in the world knows where I am,
Not knowing, not knowing where I am,
And now that I’m alone with my thoughts,
I’ll wait for the wind to come and find me.

There’s someone out there,
Talking in the hallway as if mocking me.
Laughter is heard,
And the sound of spoons, and a girl says “yes.”

And at the door, there’s a sign hanging,
That says: “Please do not disturb,”
Never again, never again, never again.

“Diez años después”

My favorite of their songs, it speaks to unresolved grief, regret, and other complicated feelings for a past love that he wishes yet dreads that it could restart. This song played in my mind many times as I wrote my latest novella, Motocross Legend, Love of My Life. I’ve been in love for more than twenty years with the lyrics of this song.

If ten years later I find you again in some place,
Remember I’m different now, but almost the same.
If chance brings us together again ten years later,
Something will flare up; I won’t be polite.

Ten years later, who can go back?
We’re here on earth for only a few days,
And heaven doesn’t offer any guarantees:
Ten years later, better to start anew.

If your trust has eroded somewhere,
Don’t forget I’m a casual witness to your solitude.
If ten years later we’re not the same, what can you do,
Another ten years and then, start together again.

That was a lovely spring,
But it was only the first one.
Ten years later, time starts to take its toll.
I still have bullets left in my chamber,
But I always save the first one for you.
Ten years later, better to laugh than to cry.

I gave you a letter I never wrote, unread by anyone.
Today, ten years later, everything remains the same:
It never reached you.

Within my heart, nowadays, there’s no room left.
If I lost my mind, it wasn’t because of love, but loneliness.

Life is a grand waiting room,
The other is a wooden box.
Ten years later, better to sleep than to dream.
You can’t live any other way,
Because otherwise, people don’t notice.
Ten years later, who can go back?

Ten years later, better to speak than to stay silent.