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The dung beetle, for its entire life, moves balls of dung. And, while it moves them, it looks at the stars to navigate.
It cleans the world, at least its part of the world.
Sure: it does it to eat them, but I don't judge the reasons if the outcome is right. Because in life you have to choose which side to stand on.
For instance, if I, as a young man, stood by the Chilean people it was for two specific reasons: Carla's breasts.
She listened to Inti Illimani with her fist raised (she had seen her mother do it) and I found it terribly sexy that she didn't shave her legs either. We didn't know a damn thing. At that time, I wouldn't even have known how to find Chile on the map. Besides, by then Pinochet had been in power for quite a few years.
Enduring Andean music was a small price to pay to be on the right side, and the right side was soft, warm, and smelled of lavender.
The first time I heard “Te Recuerdo Amanda” it was sung by Robert Wyatt. Only then did I start to understand why I stood by the Chilean people. And I still didn't know how indescribably more beautiful the original version, sung by Victor Jara, was.
It took me a few more years to realize that it's not so easy to always know which is the right side. That essentially, it's about moving your own ball of dung. Cleaning the world, at least your part of the world. And remembering, every now and then, to look at the stars while doing it.
And it doesn't mean it won't be bothersome.
It might even happen to you that, while you're working or going to an appointment, maybe you're at the University giving a lecture, they come and take you away.
It's not so improbable, nor so strange: it happens, it happens often, and it still happens today, in many parts of the world, closer to us than we'd like to think.
This happened to Victor Jara, at the University of Chile – the “Casa de Bello” as everyone calls it in Santiago – in September 1973. They first took him to the national stadium and then to Estadio Chile, a sports hall now named after him.
And they use it, and play there, how do they not smell the stench of death, the smell of blood, the wails of the ghosts?
(Te recuerdo Amanda la calle mojada corriendo a la fábrica donde trabajaba Manuel.)
-You are the one who sings? The famous singer! Where's your guitar?
(La sonrisa ancha la lluvia en el pelo no importaba nada ibas a encontrarte con él con él, con él, con él)
They broke his fingers, one by one. And then his hands
(son cinco minutos la vida es eterna en cinco minutos suena la sirena de vuelta al trabajo)
- And now, how will you play? Sing! Come on, sing!
(y tu caminando lo iluminas todo los cinco minutos te hacen florecer.)
And he sang. It was the song of the Popular Unity Party. They shot him in the head to stop him, and then they kept shooting, at least forty bullets.
(Te recuerdo Amanda la calle mojada corriendo a la fabrica donde trabajaba Manuel. La sonrisa ancha
la lluvia en el pelo no importaba nada
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