When Your Building Crumbles

When the unexpected knocks on your door, what do you do? I wish that was more of a trope and less of a literal situation.

Two nights ago, the residents of our flat plus a few friends were having dinner and a long talk when the doorbell rang. I went to open the door and surprise! Two policemen. One of the officers is holding an eviction order from the local goverment and the dire news that we should leave the building as it is in a risk of crumbling. It takes me one second to realize they are being serious. Some of the neighbors of the same building are outside, so I decide it's not a bad prank. They ask me if I'm the tenant of the apartment and how many people live with me. I answer "no" and "five" respectively, still unable to ask/answer for more. I give out my passport and sign the notice. I then ask the police if we should leave now or if we have time to pack. He replied, with the Italian face expression of "none of my business": from now on you decide under your own risk when you leave. I nod and go to the living room to drop the bomb for everybody.

 I wish I had recorded every reaction. At first, people we skeptical. Maybe out of stress I was smiling like an idiot. "No, really guys. The police is at our door and it is the whole building. We have to move out tonight." We packed our stuff in the blink of an eye, revealing some of our darkest materialistic side, and moved to the other volunteers house with swiftness thanks to the organization’s help. The next course of action was the most natural: we went to a bar and got drunk to laugh over the matter.

It was pretty scary. I don’t usually give in to panic (except for that time a tornado blew up our roof) but I can’t help getting shaky. The police officers in our door speaking a foreign language, the whole commotion in the alleys, the risk of 6 stories falling on your head: I was nervous, and so were my flat mates. It was a fortune that some of our friends were there to help us pack, give some encouragement, and bring a lot of humor. There are now pictures with the eviction paper, everybody’s luggage in the alley, and one of me packing with a piece of Ice cream cake we just did not want to leave behind. We evacuated alright, and then the real reason for the eviction surfaced.

 The building was not really crumbling. An inspection done last year commanded a repair in the two main columns, and the landlady implemented most of it, leaving some minor modifications incomplete but enough to get some of the neighbors complaining and the local government to issue the eviction for safety reason. The next day we were allowed to go in since the problem should have been solved by some paperwork being signed, but hello Italian bureaucracy: the papers did not
arrive. By the end of the day, we were again on the street with our luggage, the streets around the building closed, and every single person who could move on the road with a suitcase; the police officers at the entrance discussing how to move the two residents who are severely disabled elderly and whether the Chinese on the building understood what was going on or not.

Viale Trieste 56, the place I’ve called home all this time, has temporarily closed its doors to us. It’s good this situation is finding me with full support from our superiors, with empathetic friends, and with an incredible, almost unnatural, good mood. We’re sure I’m going to tell this story in the future like that one of “oh, once an idiot forgot a suitcase in a double decker in London and we were evacuated by the possibility of being targeted by terrorism” or “a tornado blew up half of the roof of our house once while I was showering” (still fucking scary). Tonight offers a new place to stay (couchsurfing in your own town, a friend called it,) but it’s all good. Just this week I had started a serious diet/exercise plan that got disrupted the minute this happened. I had work and writing goals that reached a momentum, and then crashed into the ground. I am trying to see the lesson in this and not to leave my “hyperproductive/time-managing addict” taking over. It’s hard to be mad or let this get too much into my brain when so many people are in this with you and so much more giving you a hand. I guess the lesson is that life is bigger than me, and that I can only hope to have things under control, but never be too sure of it. It’s ironic that my last blog entry was about having a home, and now I’m yet again deprived of a sense of one. However, things could always be worse (like a building falling on your head or having no place to go.) Sometimes, when the unexpected kick us out of our comfort zone, we have to learn to look on how to make the best moving forward. If I was not appreciating many things over here, this has shaken issues off. I’m ready to have a new provisional home wherever I go, holding more appreciation for what I like about my stay.

Home

Once I dreamed with traveling to Japan and living there for a year. Then I shortened it to six months. Then I said I would only do it if it was in the company of either my best friend or my significant other (strictly selected to leave everything and go on this trip with me). Now I’m thinking I’d stay there 3 months tops and that I’d better work my ass off so that I can travel with enough money to foresee an early return.  My wanderlust only seems shunned by the prospect of other concept that I didn’t seem to yearn for much before: home.

Months away from finishing my internship in Sardinia, I’m already cherishing the idea of “home”.  It has nothing to do with how much I am enjoying my time here since I can now see how much I’ve grown professionally and amuse myself with how much Italian I can actually understand. The social part is going well: I have Italian people I care about, and I already have my “dudes” who bring a lot of warmth in the displeasing Mediterranean winter with no heating.  The need of home is a calling from the inside; my inner voice is telling me my big next project is that if I haven’t found my place in this world it is about time to start building one.

I don’t think I’ve solved most of my issues in life, and the concept of home remains one. I had a wonderful house in my hometown, and the happy memories of my dad, my mom, my brothers and sisters and a full house abundant in laughter and love. In what it seems a blink of an eye, my older siblings moved out and started their lives. Then in the brink of the adolescence, my father dropped the bomb that we were moving to the capital, and hence starts the darkest chapter of my life yet. San José never felt like home, in spite of all attempts my family made to make it so. Life was all about work and society for my dad, my sister made friends, I made some friends, my mom had the hardest time finding a footing in the shadow of my dad’s social success. We drifted apart, and that’s how my dad’s death found us: separated, unknown to each other, and without having been able to make our San José residence a home. It took us a long time to pull together all the pieces as it seems we were new to life itself. My dad could have lost his way a bit toward the end, but he provided shelter. By ourselves, we made a great advance reconstructing our lives, but I remember feeling lost. I travel countless times to my hometown during that period, trying to see what remained of the home feeling for me, but there was no attachment, no familiarity, nothing. There I was in life, pushing forward with my studies and searching for a path, but homeless.

Whenever I dream about past, present or future events involving a home, my unconscious always recreates my first home as the setting.

The next episode of my life is written on a much happier note. I started traveling and discovering the world was immense. For nearly five years and heading towards the sixth I have not stopped moving from one place to the other and neglected the need of a home for the thrill life was giving me. I grew unaware of simply indifferent to my sense of homelessness. That is until I moved in my best friend and we made our rented apartment a home in equal proportion. That place provided me with warmth I only vaguely remembered, and it was until I decided to take this internship in Italy that I realized I had a home again. I’m happy I did realize because then I spent all the time I could inviting friends, throwing parties, organizing evenings of movies and popcorn or simply curling with a book or a video game in the beanie bags of the living room. After all these years, I felt amazing to have a home again. And then I took a plane, and this is how I keep on destroying whatever stability I find in life in the belief that that’s how I push myself to be better.

Now, however, life finds me like Bilbo Baggins, craving for home and the annoyances of the relatives after a great adventure.  I’ve seen enough to decide on the kind of future that I want, and the focus is hardly what society would expect from someone young who has proven to be productive. It’s hard to get the idea across because most of my friends are still in the adventure stage, wanting to eat the world and building their careers. I have noticed a big divide between them and me: they feel like they will always have a place to return to if plans in life didn’t go that well. I, instead, cannot say the same.

I have suffered  a dramatic priority shift, , and all I can think of now is the pleasure of building  some walls and see them slowly turned into a reflection of who I have become. I want to think what color I want to decorate my room. I want to plant a tree and watch it grow. I want to build a tree house. I have often felt so disappointed on where this world is heading that I’d much rather start building a shelter where all this race for money, fame, and success is worth nothing: a place where I can feel safe and make the people that really care feel welcomed. A place where freshly made coffee and chocolate cookies are never in short supply.

So many popular sayings weave the complexity of the home idea in very simple terms that I’ve disregarded them as overrated my whole life: “Home is where the heart is” “There’s no place like home”. For very long, my rebellious side associated this as an American imported value for the working class to build their cages and remain comfortable while productive for the bigger machine of capitalism. For a very long time, I associated home with the Christian values of raising a family. Now I think I see things on a different light. It’s not an universal truth, but I, I that have been given this life, need a home to cure my soul.  

I am taking the next few months to make the best of the youth and the carelessness that I still have left, but soon after I’m done with Italy, I’ll start building my kingdom in this world, one brick at the time.

First of 2015

2015 has arrived, and my most realistic resolution so far is not holding back. Last night, I overcame a headache and finished one more chapter of the fantasy novel I am writing. There is no certainty on when I will publish it, but this is the year I will take my main character to his long anticipated final destination. Mostly, last night I reminded to myself that if I put my mind into it, I can do it.

I had a few entries scrapped in the last months because they were a little depressing and hardly reached any point; there lies the very reason on why I’ve left this blog idle for such a long time. I wrote a grim note on the “every man is an island” idea: one is isolated, one is limited. Being on an island seemingly left behind by the world was stirring all kind of dark clouds in my mind. I decided not to continue making metaphors on that line because they were not really helping my mood and focus, and I’m glad I did. One can also be an island that dances; one can be an island that remains in one piece after the most wondrous storm.

Rather than become an island drifting astray, I’m a sturdy one that will endure time.

I wonder when this need of proving myself to others will end. I grew up in an environment when my every day behavior was a subject of not only my parent’s approval but also the church’s. Over the years, I have come to love that time of my life for the good it left me, but I’ve come to blame it for the dependence of other’s say on my life that if left. Ironically, every new chapter is the same: there’s always something about my looks, my social status, my inexperience, my age that makes people believe they can underestimate me. In my century, people often talks about bullies as an archetypical manifestation in one person, often overlooking how often they assume the role themselves. I’m tired of being bullied by people with big names, much more so by people who have accomplished nothing. Right now, I’m in the middle of a social experiment where I can see on people’s faces all the tags they –consciously or unconsciously- put on me. I have come to be in terms with it. Nothing no one says truly defines who I really am. Those who perceive me as something I am not are simply too blinded by their own ignorance. The people that are ok with who they are and truly accept others make me very comfortable. They are too busy building dreams on their own to invest any energy in putting others’ to test. I’ve come to learn that the animosity they direct to me and others says more about them that what it says about me.

As soon as I started working in my Italian over here, some people told me that I needed to “avere fiducia in me stesso”, to trust myself. The meaning of that instruction has grown immensely lately. In the first days of this year, I made the promise to myself that I was going to trust my abilities and my judgment more. Now, I will add to that the adamant determination of not leaving room for others to undermine my history of personal success. Partially orphaned while still a teenager, I had to learn all by myself how to find opportunities to grow. Next time someone is against what I stand for, all I have to do is remember that it has been 11 years of fighting, but not only fighting: winning.

I really despise that self-vindication remains a topic.  Something is terribly wrong with this society that demands that you show that you are funny, that you are happy, that you are socially successful, that you’re in a never-ending row of achievements. It serves as a poor consolation that even famous people have to explain their success. If the world is cruel enough to bring someone down from a pedestal, not much sympathy can be expected toward you when you climb up one step.

I don’t need to be on the so called “top of the world” to know that I’ve made it. I may not have found the key to the door to success, but I have found the knowledge to build one for myself. I share Thoreau’s fondness for simplicity but an eye for the shiny things of the world. Somehow, I’ll find my way to get both… or die trying.

This is where the change of calendar finds me: not in a corner intimidated, but in a constant ascend, one that remains invisible to others. I might as well start rapping about knocking bitches down! Dear world, I’m not consulting you anymore. I am not asking for your permission either. I’m celebrating the best legacy of the evolution of the human intellect and exercising my free will.

I also learned another little cheeky phrase in Italian: What people have to say about me “non mi frega niente”, and as Taylor Swift sang “I’m just gonna shake it off”.

To Belong or not to belong?

My friend Luis used to tag along with me everywhere because he liked going to different settings he wouldn’t know in life otherwise. Many times, even if he wasn’t sure how the event will end, he agreed on going with me or joining me. That’s how I got him into trouble that time we were kick out from a gated community for rich people because I took a swim in the middle of the night. We also ended up dancing on the stage of Teatro Giratablas, among the volunteers who worked at the international festival of arts this year. Luis often recalls with some pride these and many other settings he’s been once, just by chance or fortune; places where he shouldn’t simply be, a paradox in time and space. I didn’t acknowledge that to him at the moment, but that was really adventurous of him.

I, even if I have traveled some, played very safe until this last year. I always knew where I was going, for how long, all calculated. Although I cannot take any credit for it, life and work have given me that one time of being in places where I clearly do not belong. Italy, right now, is fully of those.  Since my bosses over here are taking my apprenticeship even more seriously than I am, they have taken me along a lot of places I clearly do not belong. I’ve been attending meetings with politicians, lawmakers, heads of foundations, and more recently, commissions of professors of the University of Cagliari. I’ve shaken hands with lots of people I was never meant to. I have been introduced as a colleague from Costa Rica when I never studied Politics, Human Relations, or anything related. I, who have somehow made a way in the global NGO world, keep on being pushed to a world I don’t belong. It took me some getting used to, but I’m loving it. There were instances before when I didn’t fit in and enjoyed: filming a commercial because no one else wanted the green man role, translating for an impromptu real state meeting in Panama, that time my family got lost in a guided tour on a Peruvian Naval Ship and we ended up using the captain’s private toilet (it seems to run deeper in the Lopez Aguilera .) All this shall pass, and I’ll be left behind with the picture of me taking a coffee on the legislators café, 3^rd of 4^th floor of the Sardinian local government, laughing a bit to myself because I am immature like that and enjoy the irony of being out of place when only I, a simple language laureate, get to sit on all these tables I was never supposed to sit on on first place.

I’ve been giving some insider privilege I don’t fully finish to comprehend. I am a paradox over here, and I continue to be so. It took me by surprise that the president of the organization asked me in confidence why I had come here if my profile really didn’t fit what a volunteer/intern does. He sees me a bit of a paradox. I clearly do not belong to the world of meetings where words fix the world, but I’m there anyway. My suspicion is that he takes me as the good kind of paradox. Still, the prospect of not fitting right in took me aback. From all the places I don’t belong, I was surprised work, such an essential part of what I do in my new life, is a place I have to yet learn how to belong.

When I go to the streets, I get the same feeling of not belonging; just the frustrating type. Of course I don’t speak Italian natively, and my attempts to do it so remain poor. This morning, I said “permesso” (excuse me) to two girls who blocked my way on the side way. It might be that I came too close and spoke too gravely, but I never expected them to jump.  This is just the first of so many awkward situations I’ve been exposed to recently. I have redefined awkward pretty much. The signs of not belonging continue every time I phrase does not come out as it should have and with every social convention I step on, unaware or simply too feed up to care about for the day.

See how complicated the matter has become. Under a different approach, though, I can see the places where I belong. I came with some volunteers who have embraced me (in the extent that one can embrace a stranger.) With them, working and cohabitating, I’ve felt I’ve belong. We speak the same language of feeling disoriented and a similar broken Italian that has made us team up somehow.  The universe got crazy enough to make me landing with people who are actually interesting in writing and creating art. I’m being constantly challenged by other people talking about their stories, and I can’t stay idle (oh, and this weekend alone, I’m attending a Queer Film festival and a Fantasy Book convention: hard not to want to belong in there.)  I left a pen pal in Costa Rica, and mailing with him ignites my creativity and helps me exploring my feelings in a carefree way. It seems I belong or rather was meant to experience this at this time. My flatmates eat healthily and speak of exercise, which goes with the changes I wanted to implement in my life for good. The cold is an issue to stay close to the sea all the times, but that color blue washes away any of my worries. It hypnotizes me and makes me feel good. This proximity to the sea, beautifully juxtaposed to old stone towers and churches uphill stand as my newest source of inspiration. … 2 out of 10 times, a conversation flows wonderfully in Italian, and I’m even able to make Sardinians laugh. The whole world could tell me I was out of place at that moment, that I wouldn’t believe it.  It’s going to be a month since I came here soon, and there’s a war between the experiences that make me feel that I don’t belong in a negative way and those who reconcile myself with the choice of coming here. I’m starting to miss home now, but that’s when the world gets complicated. In the simplicity of the smell of the sea and the sound of the seagulls and people speaking an euphonic language, I’m more than content.  Maybe in the future I’ll look back to this and decide I didn’t really belong, but the bets are on that being one nice memory of not belonging, like being kicked out of a gated community, drenched and half-dressed but having the best time. 

A Glimpse of Cagliari

“Once my father gave me a necklace with a ship’s steering Wheel. It was one trinklet, he must have got it in a Chinese shop. It was some cheap pendant, but twenty five years later, I discovered it was a metaphor, so I felt compelled to write a song about it.”

I don’t even know what I’m doing in this underground club of independent artist, but I’m here, listening to all in Italian and trying to understand how this guy just sang a song about poo that ended up with a message about human feelings.

Such are the sights of Cagliari. My friend Claudia was telling me the story of this guy who stands at the exit of the docs when the tourist season is at its best. He just stays there and asks for money for him and his pets, a bunch of kittens now laying on his feet on a box, kittens that are cuddling with about three times their number of white mice, all of them sleeping in perfect harmony. Claudia tells me the trick: the animals are drugged enough to be sleepy, still the guys pulls the trick on many tourists who believed he was a kind soul that solved the enmity of two species with love.

Such are the stories of Cagliary. Here, I can speak to a security guard to get entrance to an exportation dock, and he allows it by just trusting me. Here I lost my phone and got it back from the bar staff a few days after. Here I go to class with two classmates from Pakistan who later go their parents’ shop to help out in the family business. I’m in a city in which my bubble speaks English all day, but when they go to sleep the rest of the world keeps on going in a romance language.

Such is the magic the foreigner gets in Cagliari. However, what we get is the rumor of it. This beautiful city, far from being a stage of elaborated and simple everyday plays as I first thought of it, has a beautiful spirit that comes from its everything. I’ve fallen not only in an old city one third castle-one third fortress-one third chaos. I’m tangled now in a beautiful lifestyle that weaves itself around food,  drink, chatter, and wonderful social conventions that demand to be followed.

I’m tempted to go outside and eat it all at once. I have discovered, though, that unless I care to implement a few changes in my life, that spirit will hardly bruise me.

To mention:

-Learning Italian has become a must. The language carries far more culture that what one would think. Italians are very comfortable in their Italian self – and I can see why. More specifically, Sardinians enjoy their Sardinian flesh and have a hard time leaving it. To successfully integrate with them one should then shed its own skin and identity and mimic others. One has to adapt its sense of humor and the topics of conversation – as well as the scale of priority certain stages of life have, to the socio-cultural context. Sure there are some curious souls that speak English or Spanish to you there and there, but they are to be taken as extremely curious individuals, never as people who are seeking for an identity in foreign values. Being Sardinian requires no further search to be anyone else in life, so it seems.

- Fitness is important. I’m already making note of working out and closing my mouth because the body difference of people around here it’s not even funny anymore. I feel is extremely unfair they have these free complete dinners in bars and all this gastronomy and yet they seem to have developed a genetic immunity for fat around the waist line. That, sadly, does not apply to foreign me.  They are naturally blessed with health, and God has to be a bastard with favorite people on Earth.

-I should refrain from just having an 8 hour shift, plus 2 hours classes and still think I’m presentable for a club. Not grooming properly only puts me 3 hours and a salary of cosmetic and hair products behind the average Italian. My current stipend money does not really allow me to catch up, so an effort seems to be only in place.

-I should never underestimate the generosity of the people over here. To give over here is natural. They make it seem like is nothing. I find myself constantly overwhelmed and in debt with these giving people that exercise a hosting spirit that I once knew in the old Costa Rica. I’m sure this welcoming spirit still exists in essence in remote corners of the country, saved for a few explorers if compared to our tourists; well, over here it remains immaculate.

I would be a liar if I said I haven't almost felt blue sometimes this week, but I’ve easily got distracted by the constant highs the discovery of new places and experiences give me. I’ve been in an overall high that I’ve found hard to get across. It’s easier to look at Abi, the Indonesian guy who came with us, who seems to be in a constant and more notorious high, even in his more notorious lows. Stil, this city whispers to me. This city is my current lover.  I just realized today that my only fear for the future is finding out that I’ve signed up for a limbo: Quitting to many experiences I could have lived in Costa Rica just to discover after ten months that nearly one loop around the sun is not enough to enjoy the scent of this surreal and wonderfully conflictive island in the heart of the Mediterranean.

The story goes on. 

Closing One Huge Chapter

It is not until I'm now sitting at the airport, waiting to board the plane to my new life that I truly realize how much I've enjoyed my life in Costa Rica. In my former apartment, I truly had a home. I lived with my best friend, spent much time socializing with awesome friends and acquaintances. In the last days, I was even dating someone crazy enough to want to spend time with me knowing I was leaving. My family was being more than over supportive, and my 6 month old niece smiled at me and played with my hair like I was her new favorite person in the world. However, I think it is all very romantic because I'm leaving. Once I told everyone I had decided to go to Italy for 10 months, life became this romantic tale that ends today, the moment I step on that plane.

It does not matter what little could change on the surface: life is not going to be the same when I come back. I'm ten months apart from it, exposed to new stimuli daily, and there's no way my new environment does not leave a scratch on me. I should confess, I want Cagliari to leave me scarred, not in the same way London did, but hungrier for life, even more adventurous and far more human. I am going to Italy and allowing the Mediterranean and its lifestyle to make love to me, and refine my appreciation of life itself. Other than learning Italian, seeking to spend as much time as possible at the beach, and a few previously arranged trips, I do not have this new part of my life scripted. I believe is much better that way. My friends tell me I'll get fatter for eating all the wonderful food. It might be so. My friends also say I will come back showing off my Italian. I hope I learn better than to flaunt my new romance tongue, but I do hope I acquired good communication and writing skills. My friends say I'll fall in love, only if the guy has a yacht and a beach house, I joke, My friends say I'll be really different when I come back, if I come back at all. There they are partially wrong, as I know now no matter where I am, I haven't given up in Costa Rica and the people I called mine just yet. Life will show itself to me. The lady at the Italian embassy in Costa Rica told me I couldn't go wrong with this experience, and I want to cling to that. 

I don't want to go to my new life carrying regrets, though. What I’ve done to myself is forgiven, but I’m concerned to the cracks I never got to fix as a result of my interactions with others. I want to confess the things that still bother me about the last chapters (the loose ends sort of) and truly get a blank slate. These are situations that should have been addressed privately, but I'm a fool, and I'll just confess them in public, hoping that they reach the right ears (eyes?) sometime.

-Once I told someone that The Kill were opening Pink's concert, but when I got there, it turns out it was the Kin opening for Pink. I had read the name wrong, but I had posted on her FB wall that I was going to see them both and think of her. She probably found out that the Kill never opened for Pink and must think I'm an idiot now. I never got to clarify the situation out of embarrassment. Sorry, Ale. I've learned to double check info now before being overly enthusiastic now.

-I created this event for meeting up with people I only had met briefly socially, and there was this guy who said he was up for it. We met in a workshop for publishing books, and at the time he seemed pretty congenial. From all the list, he was the one I never called, and I even missed his birthday. Once I saw him in a bar, and I attempted to say hello to him, but he - no surprise- turn his head to pretend he hadn't seemed me and even looked annoyed by my presence. It hit me I had been a douche with him, and I never got to say sorry because I thought at the moment I'll just let it pass. But it haunted me a little, until today. Sorry, Diego. Truly good people aren't always treated fairly, but I'm trying to be more aware of others around me now.

-Kiara, I'm sorry I'm going to miss your first words and your first steps. Maybe I can make it up to you by teaching you your first words in a foreign language and guiding you in your first steps in a foreign country?

-Karo, I owe you that takoyaki. I honestly don't know where you get those in San José. Next time around. Brian, I'm sorry I wasn't the friend you expected in your tough times. We need to learn how to start anew, but I'm willing.

-I'm sorry for not spending more time with the last bunch of volunteers who arrived in the country. They are very likeable people, but my head was somewhere else, and they found me wishing for freedom. I hope one day they understand it wasn't that I didn't like them or my job. They arrived when my heart was somewhere else and my gaze upon the future, I'm hippie like that.

-Tell Kevin I cared for him more than I never told him, fucked up games and all. He should have kept my Disneyland mug. Tell the other Isaac I wish I had told him how attractive I thought he was and how I made a fool of myself by playing all cocky that night we spent together. I can only watch him from distance now thinking I'll turn to stone waiting for a second time that it won't happen.  Don't tell Jonathan and Manuel anything. I still have to learn that attraction is not always reciprocal, and they probably had to deal with me more than they never wanted. Tell Alo he was the right person by my side at the end, and how I hate that I could have spent more time with him than I did, but I was just trying not to get too attached to someone who has handsome and cute, and probably insane for seeing me growing fat and saying only he still thought I was one hot guy.

-Luis, I'm sorry I left some material stuff behind knowing you'll get rid of them for me. Expect a big time apology (food) when I'm back.

As for the rest, I think I've made my peace with everybody else, and look forward meeting new people in a more socially responsible way. The lights go off on this stage, and the curtain is falling. I'll take a nap some thousand meters above the ground, and reach a destination far away to open yet another chapter of my life, hoping I mess up a little less, and get a step closer to the person I aspire to become.

-

It's the music, people.

I'm having a second Maroon 5 moment here. When they played at the Festival Imperial in Costa Rica a little more than two years ago, I had to hear way too often "It's because of Adam Levine, right? It's because he's hot." I had the energy then to explain that I've liked the music back then. I might not be a connoisseur of “good” music, but I live the music that I like with intensity. Back then, the songs about break ups, infatuation, sexual games, and suffering for that other person made a lot of sense. But I like guys so I automatically fall into the category of fan girls with posters in their room and half-learned lyrics. Eh, no. I sang every song and that was it. Pure appreciation of art.

This week, it's Thirty Seconds to Mars. The band, not Jared and his undeniable impressive physical presence. Very objectively, I can see why people would assume it is about the guy. It's about the music, though. I genuinely like 30 Seconds to Mars to the point that I'm willing to give some background on the band's musical influence in my life and some Thirty Seconds to Mars for Dummies along the way.

 The world knew Jared Leto for his acting, more notably Requiem for a Dream. He announced that he was going to make a band; that music had always been a bigger dream that acting and that he had used acting as a platform for a bigger project. The skeptics that surface were many as so very often the Hollywood dreams are delusional. It turns out Jared had already been working on his music while acting, and in 2002, 30 Seconds to Mars was being presented to the world with a homologous album. That one didn't steer the music business. Jared, Shannon, Tomo, and a fourth one no one remembers would have to wait until their next album to draw some attention.

I feel 30 Seconds to Mars was a little too similar to other pseudo-emo rock bands back in 2004. The first market was the kids listening to somewhat dark, fast paced variety of rock with deeply angsty lyrics. When From Yesterday,  the single from the album A Beautiful Lie, became widely known, My Chemical Romance had best represented the Emo movement with I'm Not Ok. Thirty Seconds to Mars was another in the list of these bands of deeply emotional songs with aggressive sounds. By that time we were all like "so Jared Leto can actually sing," and while us the dificult were trying to see the reason for his hairstyle and his obsesion with black, pink, and teal, the music was catching. My friend Javier and I would listen to their singles from A Beautiful Lie and enjoy them nodding and chanting. I sensed a certain undertone in the band's music that got me wondering what they would do next. They were not singing only "feel like crap and purge." Somewhere in those lyrics, they were saying we're deeply rebelious. What's not to like about that.

It is 2010 that changes everything, both for the band and for my admiration for them. With their third album released in December 2009 called This is War, they consolidated their position in the music industry. The album came not only selling big but with really good reviews from the critics. Billboard favored it particularly for coherence, balance, and the great production that was even conceptual (an album with war in the title had an "army" of people singing the most powerful lines of the songs or making remarkable extra vocals and the percussion resembled war drums.) I remember delaying listening to the whole album because there were more important things going on in my life (from my perspective, of course) and it wasn't until I settled in London that I gave the album an ear. By that time, the band was already huge and it was only me having a late discovery of their success.

This is War is what ultimately bought me as a member of the Echelon (their fan base.) If I had to rescue two albums from that time, one would be Hands All Over by Maroon 5; the other would be This is War. The song This is War particularly fit my reality in London. I was having a lot of fun in the nights and days off alright, but getting up every morning to go to work in the middle of the first winter of my life felt like war. Sticking to a volunteer's work that wasn't very dignifying and being half accepted in London as not an immigrant felt like war. I was broken more times than I'd like to accept, but picturing the whole time as many campaigns I needed to survive was what ultimately helped me keeping myself together. This time around, the brainwash was extremely positive. Then Kings of Queens was that mood lifting song when I was sitting on the second floor of the bus from Wimbledon to Brixton, feeling blue and lonely and demoralized to a certain extent because my only other human contact that day were this couple of Indians who looked at me as if I was shit. I needed to remember I was a king back home (or just me, outside the working context) where family and friends knew me. The song brought back that feeling of self-worth. Then Hurricane confronted me with my many moral dilemmas. More often than any other time after adolescence, I was harboring dark thoughts at that time, partly influenced by the poorly lit space of my room in Brixton as the sky went from gray to black in a seemingly everlasting loop. "Would you kill to prove you're right" may be too strong for describing what I felt, but I was questioning myself for seeing this guy in a wheelchair and still feel no sympathy, more like extreme contempt. How can you hate on a disabled person and not come out as a disgrace of a human being? In a twisted way, I accepted through Hurricane that the health condition of this person I hated had nothing to do with who I was; some people's worst disability is their lack of empathy, and this guy scored big time on the scale of complete indifference to others (and I didn't have to kill to prove I was right on that one.) Closer to the Edge is just madness and a genuine rush! This is War is one of my favorite albums of all time, and it only feels wrong that I'm being questioned for it. It was a manifesto that I needed to come out alive and victor of the socially and culturally violent times I was living. 

By the time 30 Seconds to Mars released their latest album Love, Lust, Faith+ Dreams, the band needed no introduction. People, at least in the West, knew Jared Leto had a band and that he was a consolidated performer. Professionally, he had earned every credit as a performer and as an actor at this point. His band's new album was bringing back some elements from This is War (Conquistador follows the idea of an ideological war, just that the singer and the fan base are no longer simple warriors in this war, they have become conquerors.) Up in the Air delights my senses, and that's the only explanation I can give for my devotion to the song. I feel Jared took a risk making too many references to his personal struggle for making dreams come true in City of Angels, but he ultimately managed to translate his own experiences into universal and relatable feelings. This album feels more like a compound anthem for the achievement of the long desired wishes. He tells his fan base "I've made it and so will you if you keep on fighting for your dreams." Do or Die comes across as a challenge: the time is now so take chances. I like this positive vibe evolving from the original super angsty band. What makes the band consistent is that they have not disconnected from their original dark charm that can give you highs and just as easily sink you deep in the darkest of thoughts. Somehow, their music focuses more now on energy of creation than destruction. For a dramatic effect, this is the album I was listening to the time I went to Turkey in 2013 and the riots were on. It evoked so many intense feelings on the dreams of humanity and the will of people to fight for what they believe is right.

It's all about the music, and Jared can go shirtless as many times as he wants, that I won't give a damn (well, maybe but not for too long.) The screaming fans will be there, sure, and I'll end up hating half of the Costa Rican Echelon by time the concert  ends (some people were there when I swore death and antrax letters to the Costa Rican head fan base of Evanescence,) but I will enjoy this day as I have felt 30 Seconds to Mars' music for far too long. I will rest my case, until the next time I find myself enjoying the music of a ridiculously good-looking lead singer, that is.