The Sea and I

Que me cante el mar Un bolero de soledad Que me cante el mar Que ando sola con soledad

- “Soledad y Mar” by Natalia Lafourcade

I am embarrassed to say the first time I heard Natalia, I was in a Starbucks. This isn’t a knock on Starbucks in anyway. It is more on me. As being Latina, I feel like I have to know everything in my culture to truly be apart of it. I have to listen to the music, eat the food, and speak the language. It is not only to prove to myself that I am Latina, but to the Latinx community and to others who question my “authenticity”. It has been a struggle that has been a constant theme in my life. Growing up in the suburbs outside of Dallas, I was always surrounded by people that didn’t look like me but were still apart of marginalized communities. Yet, I still sought out to find what truly made me: me, Ana Belen Perez.

I started to listen to more Selena when I started high school. I fell in love with her story and most of all her voice. It also brought me closer to my mother. We were able to sit down and just listen to her. Since I didn’t speak Spanish, my mom would translate for me the meaning of each song. At this point, I was hooked. I began to listen to more artists that spoke Spanish. I sang to Julieta Venegas’s album “Limón y Sal” . I danced to Prince Royce. I cried to Selena. The rhythm, beats and production of the song felt so familiar to me. I was drawn to each word. It is an incredible magnetism that I can really explain when it comes to Latin artists.

Flash forward to junior year of college. It was the fall semester, near winter break. School seemed to pile on and on. I was stressed, mostly about things that didn’t mean very much since I can’t seem to remember them now. The snow had started to create layers on the street in front of the Starbucks. I would glance up from time to time, waiting for for my drink to be made. It was then I heard an angelic voice begin to croon, however, it wasn’t in English....but in Spanish.

I was thrown off. “Wow, Starbucks? Really?,” I said to myself. I had never heard a Latin artist playing in such a public space. Then, without any sort of warning, I teared up. Each word Natalia sang was so beautiful. I know I say this in a lot of posts but I was transfixed. I didn’t care about the drink at this point. All I did was stare outside and looked at the beautiful snow and got lost in it. The song starts off with a soft strumming of a guitar. It brings me back to hearing mariachi music at my family gatherings in San Antonio. With this type of music, there is an air/feeling of intimacy. It is something beautiful to witness in person. All it is, is you listening to music in the purest form. The lyrics are equally as beautiful and haunting.

The song's title translates to: Loneliness and the Sea. Natalia compares the end of a relationship to the depth of the sea. It is hard to determine it from the surface, but once out there you are able to see it. Like a relationship, it is hard to tell where it will go at the beginning. You must swim further and further into it,

However, once the relationship ends you understand the effect it has on you. The deep connection that lied beneath the surface the whole time. Feelings towards the remnants of what once was, pull away and rush towards her over time. Much like the poem by Emily Dickinson titled “I started Early-Took my Dog and Visited the Sea”, love can take many forms. It can be personified into many different things. Natalia allows for the listener to watch the sea roll in front of her, yearning for her to take a step forward.