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“I never quite felt at home 🏡 in Colombia but now that I’m in London I also feel slightly out of place. How is this experience for you and how does it inform your music?”
Ricardo,
My experience has been similar. I have lived outside of Colombia for some years now and everywhere I've lived I’ve felt slightly off, out of place. I guess I’ve learned that “feeling out of place” might have nothing to do with an actual “place”. Maybe it is simply a feeling some of us carry inside. A sensation of not truly belonging anywhere. I still feel like that, but I am no longer looking to fit in. I have forced myself to find peace in it. To stop looking for the feeling of belonging. My body, my mind, my instruments, my books, sound, those things are home. Feeling at home in my own body and my own soul. It took a while, at first it wasn't easy shaking the melancholy off, constantly wondering if i should move somewhere else or go back to Colombia, constantly feeling unrooted and detached. But with time it has become easier to simply be. I try to be present with the sensations that arise with each place, with each culture, with the sound of each language, and connect a little part of each place to a little part of me. Some days are better than others, and some situations too.
Some of us are made of too many different things to feel at ease in a single place, especially us Colombians. We come from such a complex pool of contradictions, beauty and extremes, you know? I did not feel very “Colombian” when I was younger but with each year that pases, especially living outside of Colombia, I feel my identity more and more rooted to the country. But in new, deeper ways, my own experiences and reflections have made me redefine what it means to be Colombian and feel closer than ever to my roots.
I used to envy those who never moved from the place they were born and raised, who feel completely at home in that place, who live a car ride away from their families, can be near them as they grow old and are able to become adults and have fulfilling lives, all in the same country or city where their lives started and their families have settled deep roots. I've never known what that is like. I still get melancholic when I think about that. Even just writing this, I wish I had that, but maybe it's simply the romanticism of something I've never had. I don't feel envy anymore, just curiosity about a life so different to mine.
To answer how all of this informs my music, well, I always have trouble answering this type of question because to me there is no differentiation between the self and the work. At least in myself. But in this case the answer is probably that music feels right to me. Like home and where I belong is working on it, improving, learning, making it, living more and more in it. It's been like that since I was very young. Back in Colombia, being part of a band as a teenager made me feel like “I belonged.” The work. The work music takes, the work music demands of you. That is where I fit. There is a certain submissions -I find- when you are a musician, in which you submit to this thing -lack of a better word- that is bigger than yourself and you submissively follow it. Music and sound are home to me, and what gives me a sense of belonging and meaning.
I hope you have -or you find- music in your life, or something equivalent that makes you feel at home.
Ela.