The other side
Today is one of those days... hot and humid.
I was just going about my business, and suddenly, I happened to be in front of an old cemetery. Sometimes the sight of one very little element brings back to you a whole story, that unfolds in your mind in ways that only a good movie can. By contrast, the cemetery I happened upon was one of those small plots that you find in Manhattan. It brought back the memories of black and white photography in the huge monumental cemetery of Havana, el cementerio de Colon... and how I spent time there with some of my friends, wandering -and wondering- about the cemetery. The conversation will always go to the same statement: this is the only place were Cubans are free. A country where to be free you have to be dead or have left the country... go figure... The cemetery of Havana linked with the memories of a pizza parlor in the same neighborhood. The kid that used to work there doubled as a lead guitarist in Metal Oscuro, a great metal band in Havana. He played a lot of Joe Satriani and Steve Vai in that small parlor. Imagine the scene: one guy with rock star bravado baking the pizzas and the riffs going through the customers' brains -and some of the customers really enjoying that. Back to New York, pizza sounds like Satriani and Vai. It doesn't recall the tarantella or other old Italian tune, not to my ears, no. It recalls the fretwork of two guys from Long Island. Then there are places in Havana that sound Frank Sinatra all the way. And places in Hoboken that sound like places in Havana. Which took my mind to the musicians in the NYC Subway. Move over, selfcentered celebrity, you're no pundit. Y'ain't more than a houndog! Those street musicians are something else. They don't have it soft and cushy but they're not trying to play politics, they are trying to play music! Mick, please, shut up and sing dude. On that same walk, I looked into the storefront of a (still closed) second hand bookstores which is a treasure trove, like all second hand bookstores. And I saw an old movie poster with a fading sign, Baker Street. That was the radio show I used to listen on KAOY! Baker Street. So now suddenly, second hand bookstores have a Blue Oyster Cult ring to them. I was an accidental tourist during my whole life in Cuba. I had missed my plane out. It was like one of those absurd movies in which a foreigner is constrained to a place, and he needs to learn how to live and survive in it. The interior exile was a way of life, the inxilio. Until one went out, like crossing to the other side of the looking glass. On these days, I remember a lot of my life there. For example, when I was in one of those infamous programs of study and work and the guy who mounted gard on us was a crazy commie who looked like a chain gang guard, right out from one of those prisom theme movies from the Deep South. He was a stern guy under a wide brim hat, with aviator shades, gun, on a black horse. Where the hell fourteen years old could escape too? Cuban teens of my time lived all the fantasies of escape movies... And most of us did escape, and now we enjoy the Delta Blues of the soundrack. The most interesting thing was to arrive here and recognize smells, sounds, views that we supposed that existed somewhere and to find that they were real. How can you have nostalgia for something that you don't know, for a country you have never visited? I felt that many times. And I don't know the answer!
I was just going about my business, and suddenly, I happened to be in front of an old cemetery. Sometimes the sight of one very little element brings back to you a whole story, that unfolds in your mind in ways that only a good movie can. By contrast, the cemetery I happened upon was one of those small plots that you find in Manhattan. It brought back the memories of black and white photography in the huge monumental cemetery of Havana, el cementerio de Colon... and how I spent time there with some of my friends, wandering -and wondering- about the cemetery. The conversation will always go to the same statement: this is the only place were Cubans are free. A country where to be free you have to be dead or have left the country... go figure... The cemetery of Havana linked with the memories of a pizza parlor in the same neighborhood. The kid that used to work there doubled as a lead guitarist in Metal Oscuro, a great metal band in Havana. He played a lot of Joe Satriani and Steve Vai in that small parlor. Imagine the scene: one guy with rock star bravado baking the pizzas and the riffs going through the customers' brains -and some of the customers really enjoying that. Back to New York, pizza sounds like Satriani and Vai. It doesn't recall the tarantella or other old Italian tune, not to my ears, no. It recalls the fretwork of two guys from Long Island. Then there are places in Havana that sound Frank Sinatra all the way. And places in Hoboken that sound like places in Havana. Which took my mind to the musicians in the NYC Subway. Move over, selfcentered celebrity, you're no pundit. Y'ain't more than a houndog! Those street musicians are something else. They don't have it soft and cushy but they're not trying to play politics, they are trying to play music! Mick, please, shut up and sing dude. On that same walk, I looked into the storefront of a (still closed) second hand bookstores which is a treasure trove, like all second hand bookstores. And I saw an old movie poster with a fading sign, Baker Street. That was the radio show I used to listen on KAOY! Baker Street. So now suddenly, second hand bookstores have a Blue Oyster Cult ring to them. I was an accidental tourist during my whole life in Cuba. I had missed my plane out. It was like one of those absurd movies in which a foreigner is constrained to a place, and he needs to learn how to live and survive in it. The interior exile was a way of life, the inxilio. Until one went out, like crossing to the other side of the looking glass. On these days, I remember a lot of my life there. For example, when I was in one of those infamous programs of study and work and the guy who mounted gard on us was a crazy commie who looked like a chain gang guard, right out from one of those prisom theme movies from the Deep South. He was a stern guy under a wide brim hat, with aviator shades, gun, on a black horse. Where the hell fourteen years old could escape too? Cuban teens of my time lived all the fantasies of escape movies... And most of us did escape, and now we enjoy the Delta Blues of the soundrack. The most interesting thing was to arrive here and recognize smells, sounds, views that we supposed that existed somewhere and to find that they were real. How can you have nostalgia for something that you don't know, for a country you have never visited? I felt that many times. And I don't know the answer!
2 Comments:
CB, Way back when I was a senior in high school and we passed our year books around for signing, a boy I didn't even know wrote this in mine. "You are so beautiful, and you know we share the path you're on." Heavy words for 18 year olds facing Viet Nam. I never saw him again, but I've always remembered him and what he wrote, like I will this. Thanks, and I don't know the answer either, only that it's true.
Response to the question in many e-mails: who rocked in Havana?
There were two bands that rocked hard in Havana, one was Sesion Oculta and the other one was la guerrilla de Omar.Sesion Oculta's vocalist, Jorge Conde would do a great Robert Plant rendition anytime he approached the microphone. Omar was a dead on Jimi Hendrix follower and he had learnt all that was to be learnt from the master. There were many other garage bands, kids that rocked well and hard and whose track I have lost over these many years. I hope that some of them are still sticking to music. And that they have some success, wherever they are...
These are a few that I knew well: Miguel Castro-Palomino and el Chardo, amazing bass players, Matute, Tomasito, black ax gods. Eddy, one of the most thunderous drummers I ever crossed paths with. And Manuel Piña, whose good command of English and potent vocals would make many profesional front-men fade into obscurity. The last group I mention by name would wait patiently for a band to come to the school we all were in. Then, guerrilla! That meant one would ask for a chance at the instruments when the visiting band was taking a break. Then the thunder will rise and descend over the silent countryside (we all were in one of those schools that exploited our labor capacity, talk about free education, we worked the fields like born slaves). Rock was alive!
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