HAIR

This is my second post in over a year, I've been quite absent from posting and hopefully I will get back to it on a more frequent basis from now on.  What brought me back was a rather silly idea, today, September 23, is the official first day of spring over here in the Southern Hemisphere.  As those of you who follow or have read my blog at one point know, every thought that crosses my mind is usually linked to some sort of music, so the inevitable happened: spring = Donna Summer's Spring Affair.

I have to admit this is a very recent musical discovery, considering I've been listening to Donna Summer since the 80's, but somehow this song escaped me, and I believe I heard it about a year ago for the first time.  Shame on me, I know, and like many of my discoveries, it came by way of the one the only Queen Of Pop.  I downloaded a mash-up of Secret and this song from Madonnarama and it was then that I fell in love with it.
It's funny how the brain works.  One thing immediately connects with the other.  Now that I was watching this video and especially this version  the following happened:  Spring -> Donna Summer.  Donna Summer's hair -> Maricarla Boscono at Viktor & Rolf's UH-MAZING Spring 2003 show.  Oh-so-spring-y.  Almost 10 years ago.  Wow.  I must have posted about this before, but here it goes anyway.  Mariacarla at 0:25.  Enjoy.

VERY PIAF, NON?

I have fallen for Adele.  I can't say I loved her from the beginning, the truth is I never actually gave her a chance up until a couple of days ago.  A friend on Facebook posted her video for Rolling In The Deep and I immediately loved the song (and the video as well).
I had become aware of her when her Chasing Pavements came out and especially when Anna Wintour took her under her wing, but I still was not amused.  Yesterday I downloaded a podcast from one of my favorite blogs, and in it I found Someone Like You and I have to say I have not stopped listening to it since.  
I searched for videos on youtube and found her UH-mazing performance from this year's Brit Awards (which I remember had been posted by another friend of mine on the exact day of the awards but I totally ignored it).  I couldn't hold back the tears.  I was even listening to it as I was sketching today, then I'd go back to watching the video, back to sketching, and so on.

 In a time where songs have very poor lyrical content and a very predictable pattern, one can only appreciate a talent like Adele's twice as much.  Not only are the words in Someone Like You something you can relate to immediately, but her voice and delivery manage to create a heart wrenching connection that gives you goosebumps and leaves you teary-eyed.  
Whoever designed her performance deserves a round of applause.  I love the simplicity of it.  It makes her talent even more obvious.  I mean, it could have gone cheesy with the wrong lighting effects or any other props, but this was just perfection.  LOVED the rain of metallic confetti at the end.  Adele will be turning 22 this year.

BENJAMIN UNBUTTONED

My Peruvian ID expired (as well as my Uruguayan ID and passport), and so I feel like a character in a movie set in an Eastern European country during the Cold War, who, unable to speak the local language, is about to be detained by the police and then arrested.

Though I tried to fix my Uruguayan situation while I was vacationing in Punta del Este earlier this year, I wasn't able to for two reasons: 1. I took too long to start the whole renewal procedure (I was having too much fun) and 2. Uruguayan bureaucracy has not evolved, nor does it show any signs that it will any time soon (and their employees are apparently hell-sent).  Pretty much like the Miss Argentina character in Beetlejuice, remember her?



IN BEETLEJUICE HELL, THOSE WHO COMMIT SUICIDE ARE CONDEMNED TO WORK IN PUBLIC SERVICE FOR ETERNITY.  TIM BURTON IS A GENIUS.



Anyway, I must plan a quick trip to Montevideo some time soon in order to get all of this solved.  You see, Uruguayan law has it that in order for me to renew my passport I FIRST have to renew my ID.  Why not renew my ID at the Consulate in Lima?  Because you simply can't.  This is something that MUST be done in the actual country.  I know, it's ridiculous.  I cried, I wailed, I had a tantrum.
"Why bother so much for an Uruguayan passport?" you might ask, like some of my Argentine friends sneered back in Punta.  Well, you see, there are a couple of reasons.  One is that I actually want a physical element that makes the link to my mother's country of birth official.  Two: there are benefits from having it, such as not needing a visa for the U.K., Italy, France,Spain and many other European countries.  And believe me, having lost my diplomatic passport privileges when I turned 25 (someone hand me a tissue please), it COMES. IN. HANDY.  I've never had to ask for a visa so I'm really unfamiliar with the whole process and I've heard it's usually an unpleasant experience. 

IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING, I STILL KEEP MY DIPLOMATIC PASSPORT BECAUSE IT HOLDS MY US VISA.

So, back to Peru.  I went to get my Peruvian ID renewed.  There was a huge line.  I left.  I decided I'd come back another  day, hopefully before the elections in April, ha!  I already had my picture taken though, and on my way back home, as I stared at it and placed it next to the one on my expired ID I thought to myself : GOD have I  AGED!  Not that I am not happy with the way I look now (I think I'm more comfortable with myself today than I was then), but I the signs of this certain "maturity", so as to call it, were undeniable.
In a very 1989-1999-The-Next-Best-Thing-mirror-scene kind of way, I found a blog's (thank you Matt Rettenmund) side-by-side comparison of a picture of Madonna at the Vanity Fair party on Sunday and another one of her at a book signing in 2000, where she actually looks younger TODAY.  I discussed the Madonna situation with a dear friend of mine from Buenos Aires and he said it was a case of "Benjamin Button", and that he too "suffered" from that syndrome.  He kept me laughing for a while when he sent me some ridiculously, terribly photoshopped pictures of himself to prove his point.  I then had to do my own side-by-side comparison and realized I do NOT have that condition.  Unfortunately.

DARK CIRCLES! 2011 vs. 2005

I had another nostalgic moment today that took me back to a bit earlier than 2005, precisely to 2003.  I had a wonderful cardio workout today to a song from that year.  It was on repeat for a while, and as I listened to it, it brought back many memories: parties at my favorite restaurant, a silver Beetle, a rooftop party, the friends I used to hang out with back then, those who STILL hang out with me now, a hat party, etc. etc.  I originally thought my picture had been taken in 2003 as well, so I thought "what a fortunate coincideeeeence...", but no, I was confused.  So, just for confusion's sake, let me post the song.  The End Starts Today (Tommi Sunshine Remix), by Bis .

SOUL IS IN THE MUSICAL

After two failed attempts at going to the movies last night - even trying two different movie theaters- a friend and I settled for a movie at his place. We decided to watch The Tourist despite ALL the negative reviews it had received. Half-way through the movie we couldn't agree more with everyone who held this position, but what struck me the most was the terrible choice in music throughout the whole film. It was AWFUL.

 

 This immediately made me think of a scene in GASLIGHT which exemplifies the exact opposite: the perfect choice in music for one of the most dramatic moments in the film.  This is one of my favorite movies, I believe I've mentioned this before on this blog, and it is one I would come back to all the time as child.  Besides a couple other scenes, including one where the main character screams the name of her housekeeper a zillion times like a madwoman, this is a part I'd watch over and over again (and once again I am suprised my parents never sent me to therapy).

Here is Ingrid Bergman playing Paula Anton, the mentally tortured wife of Gregory Anton (played by Charles Boyer), suffering a crisis to the sound of one of Chopin's greatest pieces : Ballade No. 1, Op. 23 in G minor.  Enjoy.

THE NEXT GENERATION

DISCUSS.

YOU BETTER KNOW WHAT YOU'RE FIGHTING FOR

LOVING this.
I guess this is one of the examples when less is DEFINITELY more.

THE FUR THAT MURDERED LOVE PART II

Here's a live performance of the song at The Graham Norton Show.
Enjoy.

THE FUR THAT MURDERED LOVE

The former obnoxious environmentalist in me has appeared in the last couple of posts and apparently he's here to stay for a bit.  I've been thinking about how difficult it is to draw an artist and his/her talents away from the person they really are.  I know this is nothing new, and it's a fact we tend to want to know more and more about the pop stars, actors, and other kind of performers we admire, in order to sympathize more with them or just from plain curiosity.
I have never been too fond of Kelis, to be honest the only song I ever heard from her was Milkshake (and now that I remember, her vocal contribution to Timo Maas's Help Me some years ago), but after her recent comments to the press regarding the letters she received from PETA asking her not to wear fur, and her ridiculous, mocking, aggressive and tactless answers ("I would have fur walls if I could") stating her love of it (and therefore obvious insensitivity to animal suffering), have made me want to ignore and not even give a chance to her new album though I know it's been getting some good reviews.  Personally, I hope it TANKS, no matter how childish that might sound, I just can't help the feeling.  She really gets on my nerves.  Too bad Robyn has decided to tour with her.

                                         

Well, while we're on the subject, there's this new catchy, poppy song that I've had on repeat since I downloaded it.  I'm kind of infatuated with the lyrics and even though I was not seduced by the performer's voice at first, I'm liking it more and more each time.  It's The Boy Who Murdered Love, by Diana Vickers, a British singer who was a semi-finalist in The X Factor two years ago.

She's VERY young, she'll be turning 19 at the end of July, and though I love the song, like I stated before, I can't get over the fact that she's wearing a fur jacket towards the end of the video (which has a pretty cute aesthetic to it involving a cartoon-interfered reality and a hard-to-ingore cute male model). I'm hoping it's fake, though I doubt it, just so that I don't have to hate her.  I sound thirteen now, I know.
Here's the link to the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1wKCXbrK74

NEUE-STALGIA

One of Lady Gaga's best songs on her debut album finally gets a video. I really like it, not in love with it (yet), I just think it's a good video. I do LOVE the wardrobe though (some of it reminds me of my own stuff hehe..) the choreography, and the make-up. I love the fact that she has so many dancers and that this time they are all male. It has been a long while since we've seen a new, fresh pop star with such a well-achieved image.
I know she gets a lot of criticism for some of her wardrobe choices but I think it's all good. I love how she's created this pop-superheroine persona and how as her success increases her image gets more and more polished and continues to evolve. What I mean by polished is that it gets closer to what I believe she had in mind for herself from the start of her career which could have been a limited version of her actual self due to different factors such as getting the right people to work with her, and yes, budget too.
I like to think I was the first person to listen to her here in Lima haha...I got to know her through Perez Hilton. It took FOREVER until she finally got some airplay over here. I've liked her ever since the Just Dance video, I like the song itself, her look and how it represents this younger generation's fascination for the 80's. I love how something, such as the 80's in this case, can appeal to almost three different generations in two different ways : for teenagers it's something new while for us late twenty-something's and beyond it's pure nostalgia.
Here's the video for Love Games, I think this one really says she's arrived. Enjoy.

YMA FOREVER

It's been almost a month since my last post, I've been extremely busy these last few weeks. What brings me back to my blog is a sad piece of news : the death of legendary Peruvian singer Yma Sumac.

It's been exactly once week since she passed away and I felt the need to write a post on her. I remember listening to her music when I was around seven or eight years old. My parents introduced me to her music and I remember one specific record (we're talking long play here...), I don't recall the actual album name, but I do remember listening to it and staring at the picture of this colorfully made-up woman and a parrot in the background. I think I stared at it mostly because the picture of her was the only sort of evidence I had that the amazing sounds I heard came from an actual human being. Her claim to fame is based on her amazing voice range (five octaves) and for being a pioneer in the mix of typical Peruvian music with jazz and other genres. Though she received a lot of criticism for this by musical purists who were unable to share her vision and appreciate the kind of exposure she would give Peru, her drive for innovation made her a star in the rest of the world. She is the only Peruvian artist to have her name on the Hollywood walk of fame.

I think Yma Sumac is probably Peru's most least-locally-recognized-icon (did that make any sense?). This is quite ironic, my parents used to tell me how back when we used to live in Europe, they'd introduce themselves as Peruvians to locals at dinner parties and one of the first things they'd mention would be her name, yet when I came back to Lima and mentioned her name to people I met, all I'd get in response would be an intrigued face.

Yma's music is one of the very few things that have kept me linked to Peru throughout my life. This may sound a little weird, but I've always had a sort of nationality-identity-crisis (if I keep on coming up with these hyphenated expressions I'm going to have to create a special dictionary for them). My father is Peruvian, my mother is Uruguayan and I was born in Romania, I've never felt 100% from just one place, but this will the the topic for a future post.

In 2006 Yma Sumac came to Peru for a series of belated homage ceremonies. It was at the one held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that I was actually able to meet her. This came as a totally unexpected gift, so as to call it, I had already come to terms with the fact I would never be able to see her perform and least of all even meet her.

She was dressed all in pink, hat included, and wore transparent lucite platform sandals. It was a very brief moment, a one I will cherish forever. I was finally meeting and holding the hands of the woman on that record cover.
For more information please visit www.yma-sumac.com.

TAKE YOUR PASSION AND MAKE IT HAPPEN

Yes! I figured it out...I was about to post another video regarding my work and a recent trip but I definitely wanted this one to be the first. It's from one of my favorite movies ever, and my first tape. Yes I did say tape, I was about three when this movie came out ( damn I didn't want to give away my age at such an early posting-stage...) my family and I were in Rome and legend has it I had to be pulled out of my seat at the end of it because I wanted to stay and watch it again. When my three-year-old strength failed me and I was being dragged out, I caught onto some wall. Tantrum followed. We all stayed. Haha. Things were crystal clear back then, yet somehow it still took me another 15 years to come out of the closet.
Enjoy.