The last two days I've been trying to remember what's the first song in my mind. Not in a ranking sense but in a chronological way . As soon as I started to think about it, I discarded the primary school songs, as well as the different variations of birthday or lullaby songs. Since I was looking for songs that connect with my personal moments. I failed to remembered it. But suddenly I realized that I still keep, in my mother's home in Mexico, my very first record: "Presumido 78", a black vinyl single, 45 RPM, recorded by Kiss.
In this way they were more honest than me. Because I also didn't speak English. I didn't understand what the song was about. And I don't remember why I liked the music itself. I don't know what to think about all this misunderstanding. But now I realize that I wasn't alone in my incomprehension. Because the original title is "Strutter" and the record label translated it as "Presumido". I agree: in a general meaning, to strut is presumir. In English the adjective is the same for boys and girls: strutter. But in Spanish the adjective varies according to the gender: presumido (boy) or presumida (girl). The problem is that the song is about a girl and not a boy!
They mistranslate the title. Or maybe not. Maybe they were marketing geniuses that realized that their target was male consumers, that wanted to brag (presumir) about they have the newest single of Kiss. In this sense, they knew more about me than I knew about my self.
But what did I want to brag about? That's an easy question: the cover photo. It still mesmerizes me. The customs, the make-up, the fist's language and... the tongue! The attitude mesmerizes me since I was a child at such level that I, and thousands more, went to a concert of Kiss in Mexico City, back in the nineties, almost 20 years after the record was released. I fear that everyone at this concert were nostalgic presumidos that didn't understand what the songs were about, but wanted to see fireworks, fake blood and high-heeled seniors on the stage, pretending to be the youngsters that they and we were... Or maybe all that was just another marketing business...
Knife
Knocking the doors of the memory I remembered a song that makes me feel happy, close to my parents. We were in a Summer trip to Michoacan. We went to Tzararacua waterfalls. I think that I was five or six years old. After the promenade through the park, I was sat with my mom waiting for my dad. Maybe he went to the bathroom. When he returned he got with him a puppet.
I think that it was the first time I saw one of them. Of this kind, I mean, with treads moving limbs and head. I was so dumb when I tried to play it. My father looked my frustration, took the puppet and started to play it, the puppet was dancing while my dad sang a song about some guy named Juan Charrasqueado. My frustration disappeared and became happiness. And my father had to sing Juan Charrasqueado and play the puppet (Juan, of course) all that Summer.
Last Spring I realized that the song that my father sang while playing Juan was very different from the mexican corrido with the same name. I don't know why. I only know that during the Mexican Revolution, men soldiers were nicknamed Juan - the same way that during French Revolution men were Jacques. And I also know that charrasca is a knife. Thus Juan Charrasqueado was a revolutionary soldier who was wounded by or armed with a knife. For me, Juan is a puppet that danced on the edge of a waterfall and took me from isolating frustration to delighting warmth.
