Friday, 11/07/03 - 11:45 am.
I went to see a band yesterday (the band whose name was written in a wall of the room where I learned to play guitar). It was really good, latin rock and I don't know what other labels. But it was great.
Two of my friends, Victor and Art, are starting bands. Victor will perform next thursday at the UCA, and at the UCA martyrs vigil next saturday. His band plays latinamerican music, I can't wait to see him.
Art and his band are going for something more depressive and such, but he's still learning to play the bass guitar. There are chances he'll perform at La Luna, because Pablo's mother is good friends with the (outrageous) lady who owns the place.
I've always wanted to be in a band, but I really suck at songwriting and all that, and I have zero stage presence. It's like those dreams that you start out with "when I grow up...". If so, I suppose I will never grow up, but that's ok. I will be happy enough going backstage and all that.
Half a tangent here, I'm psychologically preparing myself to take the driver's test again. I need to drive so I can to the places where they play. Suddenly, I want to get in that live-on-stage scene, no matter if it's not Beatles or Aerosmith music. Expand your horizons, Simeon says (Simeon is back in my life, and I'm truly happy about it).
I might as well make drawings of them performing. When I was in school, whenever there was an event at the auditorium, I'd grab a notebook and draw everything that was happening, like I was a journalist, only with drawings instead of words. Most of those...comics, or whatever you'd like to call them, ended up in Carmen's hands, because she enjoyed them so much, and always encouraged me to keep doing them (ok, so I DO have something to thank Carmen for).
Well, except for one drawing, that ended up in Head's hands....but it was fair. Just last night, Head and I were reminiscing about the day when he and his friends were playing basketball and accidentally the ball went up to the cafeteria's roof (don't ask me how!). Since Head was very skinny and therefore not heavy at all, they all threw him up in the air, so he'd reach out the ball and threw it back down. He did, but then everybody went on playing and he was left hanging, and he had to jump off the roof. I think nobody else saw that scene but me, but I'm glad I caugh that on paper. I signed it, wrote the date, put a title to it (impossible to translate to english) and handed it to him. Head was a hero to me that day.
Yesterday I had a discussion (as a part of History of Psychology), about Martin-Baro. As far as I know, he's one of my brother's most admired people, if not the most admired (my brother is the proffesor of the Social Psychology class at the UCA, and my instructor, who knows I'm his sister, quoted him yesterday on how vain the statements of the american social psychology are when applied to Latin America). I'm becoming more and more interested in following Martin-Baro. He would have turned 61 today.
Above all, this is a society that is more than poor -- it is impoverished; a society that is not just divided -- it is violently torn apart. It is a society in which the most basic human rights of the majority are structurally and systematically denied -- such fundamental rights as having a place to live, a job in which to fulfill oneself as a human being, or a school in which to educate one's children. This situation demonstrates how arbitrary and deceptive it can be to distinguish between 'economic' and 'political' refugees: in El Salvador, to demand the satisfaction of the basic needs of the poor majority is, in itself, a 'subversive' proposition since it attacks the very bases of a discriminatory system. - Martin-Baro.
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