farolito (ˌfærəˈliːtəʊ) (n.)
a paper lantern used by Hispanic people in Christmas processions
…though google translate doesn’t seem to know that.
I focus on the lamppost: symbol that it is of urban night, indeed the locationary prop for urban dream. a thousand and one memories spring to life under the particular light of weakly luminous bulbs…
Disinterested, this week, in excavating those corpses, and feeling a certain call of duty to stay relevant to the subject, rather than talking over it through unrelated personal reverie, I take a somewhat more visual historian’s lens: recall the many reiteration of the lampost as urban symbol, often romantic symbol, in popular culture. Immediately what springs to mind is Singin’ in the Rain, but also an Hindi film, (circa the same decade, but sadly the name of which I cannot remember) that all but repeats the same imagery of some star-crossed lover’s unconventional joy in the rainy night, a lamppost to keep him company and render his (so we are supposed to believe) spontaneous movements choreographical.
From what I’ve read and understand of Agustin Lara, this image of transnationally-exchanged, popularized visualities of the modern and urban, gaining some sort of universal currency facilitated through spreads of popular culture, seems characteristic. For myself, I notice how much more accessible and legible his sound is for me, compared to some of the other music we’ve listened to this semester It is far more familiar; images flow along readily, invoking indeed romantic lamplit streets and the like in some midcentury bourgeois urban class air. Lara, it turns out, indeed was a romantic movie man (as far as musicians go), more interested in the poetry or his aesthetics than the felt reality of living (La Llorona, for instance, seems to deal simultanesouly with personal and historic pains even within the lyricist’s/composer’s personal poetry) and this comes as little surprise. The logical knot is this disinterest in public/collective reality, but the aesthetic appeal to popular taste. But also, what is interesting is fantasy as a role, both for poet and for audience, to engage life…!
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