Spanish rush
Most of the noughties were an intensely dark period in my life. After losing my best friend in 2005, my soul became void, my mind chaotic and my emotions misplaced. Yet somehow, through a tripartite emotive support device, I managed to channel these wayward energies into creative productivity. This support device grew from people historically and spatially close to me, through the embracing of music, and through new friendships with people I’d yet to met in the physical world.
This short article touches on the latter.
With the collaboration of a multifarious group of people, I released the Project The Future album by The Projections in 2007. The idea was that The Projections were a hypothetical band, were never going to all meet at the same time or be in the same room, some didn’t even know each other, and still don’t. But for me, it was important to present every collaborator as part of the band.
Following the curation of Project The Future, I was around DJ Loctite’s house (who had already contributed production for ‘Ital Farm’ and several scratches and cuts sections on other songs), and he played me the beat he had constructed with Jay Carter playing guitar over the top. I immediately fell in love with the music, and begged him to let me write for it. He calmly agreed, humoured and entertained by my animated enthusiasm.
At the same time, I had begun to talk to an emcee and singer from Viña del Mar, Chile, and over the following few months we had built an intimate friendship which had only existed in what was – in the late noughties – still very much the new realm of the digital world.
In 2012, I decided I needed to visit Chile. Never before had a place pulled me so much; the astral plane was thick with energy and I could feel it enlivening my body with each air mile I travelled westwards. I had visited the beach of time on many occasions prior to boarding the aeroplane, in flight without the need of a metal carcass, but this had still not fully prepare me for such deep vibrations.
After a period of time in Valparaíso, I became fully fortified. My negative vibes befell, my positive energy returned. The Pacific Ocean sang back as she sang to the open water; and all I could do was sit on the sand, listen, and weep.
I wrote ‘Española Apuro’ long before I arrived in South America, but its story resonated intensely. I’d written the memory before the event.
She seemed like something from a film
Noir, je ne sais quoi as I pulled a stool at the bar,
“Have you travelled far on this journey?” she inquired,
I spied I could keep her wired,
Her eyes were on fire I said, “Which journey you refer?”
The travel of the far narrows through the Pharaohs’ lands,
Of legends with ornaments and fallow sands,
And grand mausoleums with solemn encrypts,
That turn into shadows when you flinch,
Or the quick hitch, must be the season of the witch,
‘Cause every time I look outside my window there’s something strange
Making me blurry and deranged,
Am I awake or asleep? It’s lucid,
I want to tread the roads the same as you did,
In answer to your quest you pose, I only knows,
Where I haven’t been; the paths I’ve trodden erodes
Under the souls of mine and my mind’s eye,
I can only spy self as I’m longing to fly
Through other dims with low lights,
I’m on the highest ledge but I can’t make the flight,
Something’s not right or maybe nothing is wrong,
I can’t place myself unlike a note in this song,
“Sing along” she said, “I wrote the melody,”
I’m starting to think she’s years ahead of me,
You’re not ready you don’t hear my talk,
You’re trying to ruin before you can walk,
She turned in the low light shadows exaggerate,
By the candle light in the darkness of night,
My memory’s like amnesia this is,
She seems to understand as she tells this,
My memory’s like amnesia this is,
She understands as she whispers this …
Could it be the saviour I seek
Is within this room, looking right back at me?
I see through the haze we’ve been frozen for days
The long candles have spilled over the trays,
Leaving the space blacker than black, darker than dark,
But we hark and hear each other with made marks,
That uplift like writing a hieroglyph,
And feels good like a pull on a spliff,
The shift of the split was a miracle,
As all of the lyrics, became invisible,
I think thoughts that transport to other minds,
And the confusion I’m losing is left behind,
As I row across rivers that make me consume,
While the water flows in tune with the moon,
Its part becomes a part in this psychic cycle
Of events, change, rotate it all makes sense,
And if you ever find yourself on the astral plane,
Relax your mind and erase your brain,
It’s all here to gain, unlock the chains that remain,
On the doors of thoughts and the rooms of the insane,
The beach of time reveals more as the tide slacks,
Like dictionaries opening more tools for raps,
And I know who I owe it all to, that’s right;
As I realise I knew her in a previous life …
(In a previous life, yeah,
I think I really knew her in a previous life,
In a previous life, in a previous life, yeah,
I think I knew her in a previous life …
.
Yeah, sí hermana, la dura
.
Beunas vibras
.
Play on, brother …)
Acknowledgements
To MC Aire (the dopest voice in Chile), to DJ Loctite, to Jay Carter.