whenever, wherever

Pretty much since I arrived in Mexico, and someone told me that Shakira had played here fairly recently, I have been hoping she’d come back while I am here and resolved to go and see her if so. I absolutely love Shakira, and how much more exciting to see her in a Latin country?

So… I have tickets to see Shakira in concert on the 13th of May! Wooooooooo!

When I found out (by chance) that she is playing here, I was ridiculously overexcited and went around smiling like a loon for a while, and going around looking for Shakira CDs and watching her videos online. The subsequent hassle (trying to work out how many tickets to buy with a number of people being vague, trying to buy tickets online and finding they didn’t take my card, making a special trip to the city, finding they no longer had the seats we wanted in a decent position, buying a phone card, calling a friend to discuss how many of the more expensive tickets to get, trying to buy tickets in a shop and ditto, finding a cash machine, realising I didn’t know the pin number of my new card, going back into the city the next day…) has slightly taken the shine off things, but I think (hope) it will come back. I also feel slightly guilty that this is the weekend that my mother is visiting, but, you know, it’s SHAKIRA!

My love of Shakira clearly makes me not at all cool (in the ‘alternative’, anti-cool sense… um, or in any sense). I have also recently (re)discovered my love of volleyball, which a bunch of us have started playing on Fridays. This is a sport I associate with cheerful, vapid, clean-livin’ types, and definitely not with the (anti-) cool kids who listen to sad music and wear black and look down on things. It is also the BEST fun.

I’m still enamoured of and intimidated by the anti-cool kids, and part of me wants to be like them, and has an unnatural love of armwarmers and other items of splendidly absurd teenage clothing, and feels defensive about all the uncool things I like… But mostly, one of the loveliest things about being… well, not grown up, but older, is being able to like lots of things and not having to worry about being anti-cool, or regular cool, or anything. I can like Shakira and volleyball and books and flying kites and black humour and ping-pong and grammar and intelligent conversation and odd details and dancing and sunsets and armwarmers and art and comic strips and folk and BBC radio and treasure hunts and sincerity and silliness and so much else and IT’S ALL JUST FINE, AND HURRAY! Which is just as well… figuring out who you are and what you want doesn’t seem to get any easier, so not having to try so hard to squeeze that into some notion of cool is a relief.

I went to another concert at the weekend (which if nothing else should boost my obscure-world-music-snobbery cool quotient): a free concert in the main square of Mexico City by Silvio Rodriguez, a famous (here) Cuban singer. His songs are beautiful: romantic, poetic ballads suffused with uncompromising left-wing politics (apparently—that’s a bit above my head in Spanish). I was very tired and a bit nervous about going on my own, and almost didn’t—I was in the car having decided to go back with the two colleagues I’d been spending the day with, when I told myself not to be so dull and spineless. And I’m glad I did. I’d guess there were thousands of people there, but it wasn’t packed – I guess the intermittent rain kept people away. The music was sad and uplifting. He played a song I knew and a song I immediately loved, and lots more lovely songs. I was reminded of Simon and Garfunkel a tiny bit, if they’d been Cuban. It was strangely peaceful, among the crowds and the magnified music that echoed off the buildings. People cheered when he began a song they loved and sang along, and closed their eyes, smiled, and held each other. I watched people, and the big screen by the stage, and the enormous Mexican flag that flies above the square, billowing with fantastic grace against the grey sky.

Great things I bought on Sunday: Shakira tickets; a Tracy Chapman CD; a ring in the shape of a rose; a hammock (lazy summer evenings, here I come).
Unbuyable: sunshine; the exuberant, cosmopolitan hustle-bustle of the city, street performers and kite-sellers; rain and a cool evening; beautiful music bathing a crowd; a flag flying.
Not bought: a military/revolutionary-style cap with ‘Silvio Rodriguez’ and the Cuban flag on the front. I can’t say it was taste that held me back (after all, I do love armwarmers), just self-consciousness that let the girls selling them disappear into the crowd.