All posts tagged: Music

Swell Waves: A Song for Grandpa

Published by nathalie alyon

English TürkçeThree days after I arrived in Guatemala in June, I woke up at my dark hostel dorm room in Antigua and rushed out to catch the 9:00 am Yoga class across town. I hadn’t walked two blocks through the cobbled-stoned streets of Guatemala’s old capital when I flopped down on the sidewalk, crying uncontrollably. I had been expecting the news my phone had delivered on that fresh morning ever since I started this journey over one year ago. I knew this moment would one day come and whisk me away from whichever corner of the world I happened to roam. Yet the news came like a flash flood and there I was, curled up like a scared rabbit, frozen on the damp, cold stones of Antigua’s streets, as if the entire world had caught on fire and I was the first to know. “Your grandpa is in a coma,” my father said on the phone. It didn’t look good. My grandfather had been unwell for some time and he hadn’t called me in over …

“Fever to the Form”: Can Art help make sense of life?

Published by nathalie alyon

I frequently find myself mulling over a song for hours and days, playing it on repeat until I can no longer hear it anymore. In most cases, the compulsion ends within a day or two and I can go back to my life again. But other times, madness takes over.Not too long ago, my obsession with Marcia’s song “A PELE QUE HÁ EM MIM” made me translate the entire song from Portuguese. (No, I don’t speak Portuguese). The song in question today happens to be in English so I didn’t embark on adventures in translation of languages unknown to me. Instead, Nick Mulvey’s “Fever to the Form” made me think about too many questions I could handle in 3 minutes 44 seconds. The obvious one was: What does “Fever to the Form” even mean? But let’s leave that aside for a moment and go back to Mexico. How art can help make sense of life One of my fondest memories of San Miguel de Allende, the Mexican town of artists, is from an Italian potluck dinner around …

Who is this creature called the “backpacker”?

Published by nathalie alyon

Yesterday a Frenchman accused me of being a fake backpacker at a Cuban bar in Lisbon. His allegation came after I revealed that I was staying at an AirBnB rather than a hostel. We had a lot to chat about–he had recently returned back to his nine to five IT job in Paris after a seven-month “backpacking” trip in Australia and Asia. “I bet you don’t even have a backpack,” he said with a smirk. “I’m not a backpacker!” I said in protest. “And I certainly don’t carry a backpack on my sensitive shoulders.” Our discussion made me realize once again why I decided not to stay in hostels and why I defied the categorical “backpacker” label. Though I indeed was once a “fake backpacker” and it was while I slept in hostels in Colombia. Thankfully my fraudulence only lasted five weeks. Before arriving in Colombia I read various blogs on traveling alone—all posts instructed staying in dorms for a fulfilling social life on the move. So who was I, a novice solo-traveler, to stray from the path? While staying …

Adventures with Portuguese: “A PELE QUE HÁ EM MIM”

Published by nathalie alyon

“I did nothing yesterday,” I said to Kris, emphasizing “nothing.” Kris was my new friend in San Miguel de Allende and we were lounging on the grass at La Gruta hot springs. It was the second week of my writing workshop and I was feeling anxious for not having written five novels already in 14 days. “Me neither,” Kris said dipping her chips in the guacamole. Our beers were barely chilled but I couldn’t care less. Sunbathing with good company in Mexico not writing was better than staring cross-eyed at my facebook newsfeed not writing. The truth is I was lying—I had done something the day before. “Well, I did translate a song from Portuguese to English,” I said. Kris laughed: “Of course, you did!” “I don’t speak Portuguese.” “Of course, you don’t.” She laughed some more. After listening “A PELE QUE HÁ EM MIM” on repeat for two days, I copy pasted the lyrics into Google translate. It was awful; made no sense whatsoever. But I was obsessed and no matter what, I had to understand …