La lucidez perversa de la nostalgia is a phrase from Garbiel García Márquez’s book, Love in the Time of Cholera. It translates to something like "the twisted lucidity of nostalgia." It is with such lucidity that I continue these essays after weeks from returning from Argentina, without photos or detailed journals to back me. These scenes have washed through my memories of what Argentina was, and what I wish it would still be for me. As far as I know it's all true, but it shouldn't really matter.
La Peña
In our determination to suck the marrow out of the little time we had in Buenos Aires, we decided to forego a night at a dance club and go to a peña instead. It's a bar where friends go, guitars in tow, to sing folk songs and drink cheap wine with one another.
Without guitars, we went to listen. We found a table in a room bathed in bright yellow light, dominated by a group of about 15 kids with one guitar and a few players among them. They sang pop rock songs, radio hits by Latin America and Spain's versions of U2 and Alanis Morissette. Loud and happy, the guitar and wine passed up and down the long tables, friends arrived and left, lighters and cigarettes shared around.
Some girls arrived and settled into a corner opposite the large group, we sat in the middle along the wall between them, talking and craning our heads each way to watch both. The girls were joined by more friends and singers until the volume, smoke and cheer of the two groups filled the room.
Meanwhile, two young men, about 20 years old, had entered with their guitar, sat with their wine, waited for a chance to hear themselves sing, and left as the two larger groups left no space for silence.
I had to walk to the very back of the peña to find the men's room. Other groups, just as happy and loud filled the tables in the front rooms, but the two young men from our room had found their place in the back, in the last room before the bathrooms and storage areas. I couldn't return to my friends, leaving them to wonder about the length of my trip to the bathroom.
In this backroom, these kids sang Argentina. Dim lights lit the corners and a few naked bulbs shone harshly on the grimy smooth stucco walls. A few employees of the peña and two children around 11 years old listened, but they mostly played to each other, as each one sang a few songs and switched off. Sometimes one would mumble a few words and laugh a sheepish laugh after his turn. One man moved charcoal around a large grill behind the bar. An older rough man who might have owned the peña sat with his back to the bar, watching the kids like protégés. One of the children, an indio in a baseball cap and with a face flat like a cliff sat in blank admiration of the singers. I stood there, wondering if I should even be there. And now, I sit wondering if I ever really was.
Both of them sounded so affected. One would lean his head back stretch his mouth out as wide as he would open it up. The other would sing towards the table in front of him. But both looked like ordinary guys from Buenos Aires until they sang when, to my senses, they suddenly represented the pampa, its singularity and loneliness. And I stood glued to the wall—afraid of being discovered—knowing that I was on sacred ground.
—September 30 2004
