Back
I know I said we’d be back up and running on Monday and everything, but the last three days have seen me juggling class, work and about 100 different great post-SXSW shows every night, so I’ve been a bit too busy to really get much internet time. I’ve pretty much run out of money though now, so I’m staying in tonight until 11 when Cut Off Your Hands go on at Piano’s, at which point I should have roughly enough money to buy half a beer (thank god for guest lists).
But yeah, I’m back. It’s good to be home, sans the whole having to do work again after a week of drinking my bodyweight in rum and cokes and smoking Cubans like it ain’t no thing. I’d originally planned to do a recap of the absolutely incredible experience, but considering I wrote two pages on my layover at the Cancun airport alone, I figured it’d just end up being a lengthy-ass waste of everyone’s time. So the following is just a brief overview of the highlights:
- I ate a quesadilla in Mexico, made by actual Mexicans. In Mexico. Probably the best thing I have ever eaten in my entire life ever.
- The last two times I went to Cuba I stuck to the more tourist-oriented stuff, but having covered all of that in my previous trips I struck out on my own a lot this time, allowing me to rock some choice tunes (see below) while getting lost in the incredibly cinematic grandeur of Old Havana.
- I went to a Cuban night club, Casa De La Musica, and got rejected (for wearing shorts), thus bringing the number of times I’ve been rejected from clubs in third world countries equal to the number of times I’ve been rejected in NYC. However, after going home and changing into more respectable attire (read: pants), we gained entry and just happened to be there on the one night that Latin America’s best pop salsa band, Paulito F6, were slated to rock the house with their winning brand of ample ass-shakery, slammin’ brass sections and pop-infused latin rhythms. Suffice it to say, it was awesome. Watching the Cuban girls shake what their mothers so gratefully imparted unto them wasn’t all that bad either.
- Warm weather.
- The incredible, incredible art. Seriously, I’ve never been so consistently floored by more amazing artwork in one place than I was in Cuba. Whether it was the Museum of Fine Arts or just the flea market, the Cuban culture is just bursting at the seams with incredibly talented young artists. Next March will be the Bienal, a month-long art festival in Cuba, and I’m already psyched for it to be one of the most incredible experiences of my life.
- Everything else. Seriously, there wasn’t a single moment on this trip when I felt as if I wasn’t having a truly amazing experience, and Havana is truly the most magical place in the world, without even the slightest doubt.
One thing though, it’s hard to find music that feels terribly appropriate for the atmosphere of Cuba, so the trip found me revisiting a small batch of songs over and over again, as they were the only tracks that seemed to work in harmony with my surroundings. Some of these made it on the mix because I was just terribly fond of them at the time, while others were much more fitting for the tropical, cinematic nostalgia of Havana. Then there’s “Sao Paolo”, the only song that truly fits Havana like a glove. From the cinematic grandeur of the dramatic, swirling strings to the overwhelming emotion of the chorus and its epic runtime, “Sao Paolo” is exactly what walking through Parque Central and down past the Capitolio at midnight sounds like, and doing so with the song scoring my ever step was truly an unforgettable experience. For all intents and purposes, the following tracks are the only songs I listened to on the trip, and they’ll forever be remembered as the perfect score for my life-affirming adventure to Cuba in the spring of 2007.
MP3s:
1. “There Goes The Fear” - Doves
2. “Man Overboard” - Polytechnic
3. “Diamonds In The Dark” (Kid Harpoon Version) - Mystery Jets
4. “Heart’s A Mess” - Gotye
5. “Setting Sun” - Howling Bells
6. “Run Run Run” - Phoenix
7. “You Got Me All Wrong” - Dios Malos
8. “Everything Is Alright” - Four Tet
9. “Coney Island” - Death Cab For Cutie
10. “Sao Paolo” - Guillemots
Back to usual tomorrow.