June 2020 - Amor Dividido

While I was doing the decimas course one of the participants reached out to a couple of us suggesting we collaborate on a song. I contributed a decima but the project never went anywhere so the decima stayed in my notebook.

Meanwhile, Rick had been working on some music which he thought could eventually be fleshed out as a band song, but in its raw form was a classical guitar piece. I really loved it when he first shared it, but I didn't really get my head around it initially. It was only later that I went back to it and realised that what seemed like unusual timing in the structure was actually sections of 10 phrases and therefore the perfect home for some decimas!

When I looked at the decima in my notebook, which was about my connection to Chile from all the way over here, I realised it spoke to something that Rick would have experienced as well - the feeling of being of two places. So I worked on another decima to accompany the first, but there was still something missing. Then I reflected on that idea, "being of two places" and this lyric by Facundo Cabral came to mind:

No soy de aquí

Ni soy de allá

No tengo edad

Ni por venir

Y ser feliz, es mi color de identidad

And so this became the inspiration for the last section which echoes these lines.

Musically, Rick and I kicked around ideas for instrumentation, but ultimately felt that the guitar was too great to cover up with other stuff and an arrangement of just guitar and voice would best highlight the lyrics. We wanted to tip our hat to those wonderful Inti-Illimani arrangements of pared back instrumentation and many voices, much of it in unison, like this one.

Te quiero a la distancia

Un mosaico de memorias

De canciones e historias

Y amor en abundancia

Si me falta consonancia

Pa’ expresar esto que siento

Es que solo fue un momento

Que yo estuve entre tus brazos

El partir dejó en pedazos

Mi corazón descontento

Te quiero en forma distinta

No es lo mismo que con ella

Que me impregna con su huella

Con los días que me pinta

Amarrado con la cinta

Tricolor está un trozo

De mi alma resquebrajoso

Cuyo amor va dividido

Por un lado agradecido

Y por el otro añoroso

Sentir que soy de aquí pero

Saber que soy de allá, este

Es mi color de identidad

El “G’day” con el “Qué tal?”

Así es como lo prefiero

Translation

I love you from a distance,

A mosaic of memories,

Of songs and stories,

And love in abundance.

If I lack the right rhymes

To express what I feel,

It's that it was but a moment

That I was in your arms.

Departing left in piece

My discontent heart.

I love you in a different way,

It's not the same as with she

Who marks me with the imprint

Of the days she paints for me.

Tied with the ribbon

Of three colours is a part

Of my fractured soul

Whose love is divided,

On the one hand grateful

And on the other longful.

To feel that I am from here but

Know that I am from there,

This is the colour of my identity,

The "G'day" with the “Qué tal?”

I wouldn't have it any other way.