on hometown bands

a few thoughts on a concert

I'm starting to write this on Saturday afternoon because I have the feeling—the strong, strong sense—that tonight's concert will undo me. I considered inviting a new friend to come with me but I'm scared of the person I'll become while watching a band I've been listening to since I was 11 years old at my grandparents’ house by the beach, thanks to my uncle who gifted my brother and me their CD and by so doing created out of thin air another tether to Uruguay, the country we'd left three years earlier.

Do you see what I mean? There's a very good chance I'll cry.

It's stupid, how much music given to you by someone you love can change your life a little. I still remember all of my first CDs because for a while there weren't many of them. My first one, my dad got for me on a business trip, back when we still lived in Uruguay, and it frankly remains a classic: the Anastasia soundtrack. I can still see it, a deep blue with gold lettering, the plastic cover scratched all over from constant handling. I used to sit at the coffee table and read the little lyric book to shreds. Years later on one of our summer trips back to Montevideo, my grandfather, by then already ill, walked into my uncle's room where my brother and I slept and with the hand not holding his cane, sheepishly gave me the newest Shakira album—Fijación oral vol. 1.¹ In 2018, my friend and I were the youngest people at the Luis Miguel concert in MSG, but we knew every word that crazy man sang because our mothers had been playing his ballads for as long as we could remember.

It’s why I love sharing music. It always feels additive.

Recently, I’ve started to feel a bit guilty about occupying my space with music for so much of my days. Maybe guilty is the wrong word. But when Spotify chillingly said their main competitor was not Apple Music or Tidal or YouTube but silence, I began thinking that the way I listen to music—constantly—might not be the best use of my wild and precious life. That it might be a crutch. Maybe I should learn to sit in silence more often, I considered. See if I can untangle my thoughts once and for all. But then I think, well: what’s so bad about a little ambient assist?

*

Okay, so it’s Sunday morning and the concert did not in fact undo me. I accidentally started out in the mosh pit and for a second there I saw my life flash before my eyes. From a mental perspective, I fear I never recovered (let the record once again reflect I am all of five feet tall). I am, despite my best efforts, a small, intimate concert girl at heart. I do not want beer from anyone else's glass or bottle anywhere near my person. I do not enjoy being shoved. And I feel quite strongly that objects at rest should stay at rest.

However. I'm looking now at the deeply unstable videos I took last night of some of my favorite songs being performed, songs that I heard for the first time as a preteen and kept relistening to as I grew older, songs that I've sung alone and with my brother, in my apartment and in my parents’ house, on walks and drives in Montevideo and Miami and New York and Barcelona, and that last night I sang along with thousands of strangers in a city most of us aren’t from—and I'm thinking how is this possible. What a trip. There’s no way silence can compete with this.

I wish my brother had been at the concert with me last night. We have different musical tastes, but listening to this band has very much been our thing for the last twenty years. If we're in the car together for long enough, we'll eventually play a few songs if not an entire album, renewing our favorites every couple of years. I used to love this one, I’ll say, but now it makes me sad. He’ll agree, and still we’ll listen.

Sometimes I wonder if we'd be less fanatical about the band had we stayed in Uruguay, if this is one of the things we subconsciously insist upon because the strings that still tie us to the place that was once home are few and far between, thinner by the year if not the day. An album, made solid and true through hundreds of replays, is sturdier than an annual happy birthday text from someone thousands of miles away.

*

Andrea Long Chu wrote about Ocean Vuong's penchant for diasporic nostalgia this week. I'm not a huge fan of Vuong's writing—it’s too florid for me—and Chu's criticisms are valid. This bit in particular stopped me in my tracks:

That is the peril faced by every marginalized writer: He may become so accustomed to the margins he cannot recognize the center even when he is standing in it. But it is easier for the diasporic poet to loudly assert that the motherland is unknowable than to admit he happens not to know very much about it.

Still, I can’t help but empathize with this sort of blind search for the life one might have led, whether through music or language. Is there any real chance of not looking backwards at least a little as you’re discovering and crafting your voice? It’s uncomfortable, but it feels inevitable.

It’s something I think about a lot with regard to my own writing; whether I’m forcing something that isn’t there and indeed, never even was. Vuong’s manner of reconciling his past with his present is, to be fair, particularly annoying, but it's all part of romanticizing the unknown, isn't it? Much easier than romanticizing—or worse, downright enjoying—the alternative.

*

It’s not lost on me that when I did finally see this band, it was not in any of the places I’ve called home for any extended periods of time. It’s why I took the little videos (I won’t burden you with them, they’re literally unwatchable) that will now sit forever in my phone’s photo roll and in my WhatsApp chat history. The experience had to be sent somewhere.

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Thank you for reading. The band, if you’re curious, is La Vela Puerca. If you saw me in real life at some point in the last week, there’s a 90% chance I talked to you about it. My apologies. You can find me on instagram and tiktok. The newsletter is fully supported by readers, so if you find yourself frequently enjoying these posts, please consider sharing the newsletter with a friend and/or becoming a paid subscriber.

1. If I may, with respect: her last good album.