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One of my favorite songs of all time was written by the late Chilean poet Violeta Parra and made famous by the now-also-late belovèd Argentine folk singer Mercedes Sosa, who was affectionately known as “la negra”. This song makes me incredibly homesick: homesick for Chile, homesick for Latin America, and… [Continue Reading]

Last week, while binge watching the last season of Breaking Bad, I heard a song I’d never heard that made my heart skip a beat and then pick up again more insistently. The music choices in Breaking Bad don’t disappoint. First of all, rather than using music to cue the… [Continue Reading]

Hide ‘n’ Seek. Remember the wordless buzz with which you would scatter about while someone counted to twelve, or to twenty, or to whatever number you and your friends would have determined with so much ease, using that superpower you had (still do! maybe just dormant) which instantly took whatever… [Continue Reading]

This morning I watched live footage of the miners in Chile being pulled out of the ground in a capsule after 70 days of entrapment. I heard the Chilean Spanish of my childhood, and felt very close to what I watched. I was amazed by the silence and sense of… [Continue Reading]

(Translation (c) Heidi Fischbach. “Demasiados Nombres” is the Spanish, original title) Monday tangles up with Tuesday and a week with the whole year. Time cannot be cut with your weary scissors, all the names of the days are washed away by the night. No one can be called Pedro, no one… [Continue Reading]

(Translation (c) Heidi Fischbach. Read Neruda’s original “Pido Silencio” here Now if you’d leave me in peace.Now if you’d get on without me. I am going to close my eyes And I only want five things,five favorite roots. The first is love without end. The second is to see autumn.I… [Continue Reading]