Barrio República
After Lima Peru, here I am in Santiago in Chile. I am staying in the neighborhood of La Rebuplica near the central train station. It’s definitely not an upscale neighborhood. This is probably where the cheaper rents are in the downtown area and where creativity has probably much more of a chance to flourish. I was surprised by the number of foreigners living in the neighborhood. Pretty much everything that you can imagine is being sold on the street, by a majority of people coming from elsewhere. From nail clippers to freshly cut watermelon passing by fried chicken and of course the inevitable fake Nike sneakers, you can find it all on the streets of La Rubuplica. It appears to be that most of the immigrants in that part of town happen to speak French. I first thought that the vast majority of them would be from the African continent, but it appears to be that there is an important community from Haiti and the Dominican Republic living in La Republica.
Playing, Playing, Playing
Playing the streets has been my main activity here in Santiago. This activity of practicing in public has presented itself as being more challenging than it was in Lima for many reasons. First of all, the parts of the city I’ve been playing are, in general, a lot louder. Even in the areas where it feels quiet, in parks, for instance, there is an ongoing noise in the bass frequencies due to traffic coming from a certain distance, and sound made by a large number of people gathered together. There is a high concentration of people here in Santiago. Locals told me that this is the time of the year when the city empties, because of people being on summer vacation. I can only imagine how crowded the main centers of the town must be in mid-March and the rest of the fall season here in the southern hemisphere.
When I’ve been playing arpeggio based songs like Kayıp Bir Aşk or Baharlarda, it has been extremely difficult to project my sound to be eventually heard by another pair of human ears. This is why I’ve been adapting my way of playing to the situation. I’ve been coming up with jams sessions that are 10 to 15 minutes long, playing full-on chords rather than arpeggios. I try to get myself into suiting rhythmically but at the same time a bit challenging physically grove, and I try to stay in the pocket and hold the chord progressions as long as I can. It’s a little bit like doing fitness, and meditation at the same time.
Each time I find myself in these kinds of jamming situations, I have a thought for one of my favorite active bands, Earthless of San Diego. Mike, Mario, and Isaiah can play and hold jams for over an hour or more without even stopping once. Not only they can hold physically challenging uninterrupted parts for so long, but at the same time, the improvisational creativity is always present. There are constantly interesting ideas coming at you as you are enjoying the show as a listener. I really miss seeing them live. I wasn’t able to make it to a couple of shows in Mexico a few months ago, even though I was in the same country at the same time. I hope to not miss their next show(s) in Latin America. The good thing with Earthless other than their amazing live performances is that they’ve been constantly touring for the past years. This is why I am hoping to catch them somewhere sometime soon.
As I’ve been playing the streets of Santiago on a daily basis, things have been more difficult in terms of connecting with people as well. The grand majority of people are looking at me and my cardboard sign with empty eyes and they keep walking. It could just be that they don’t hear me very well, or they really don’t care about another dude playing an acoustic guitar on the street. All that said, I have every day at least met three people and had a chat with them. I’ve even met another street musician named Samuel who happened to be from Oceanside in San Diego County. It was a lot of fun to talk about San Diego and the music its scene with someone from there at thousands of miles away.
Tipping money has also been very low in comparison to Lima. Especially if we consider that life is costly in Santiago. I remember one day playing over two and a half hours in Plaza de Armas under the sun to make about 500 Chilean pesos. Then I needed to go to the bathroom. I went to a shopping mall hoping that a bourgeois environment will give me free access to a restroom, but there happened to be a cover to pee as it is often the case in most Latin American countries. The difference with Santiago is that it will cost you almost a buck to use the bathroom. Two and a half hours of Black Sea Storm jams under the sun will generate just enough Chilean cash to visit the bathroom once in Santiago.
Again the low tipping could also be a consequence of not being heard correctly. It may be a good idea to buy a cheap little amp with batteries. I don’t find it very romantic at this point. It feels so great to take my guitar on my back every morning and explore the city. With an amp a microphone and a microphone stand, the whole thing is going to look and feel more like a business, which I don’t want at this point in the adventure. The idea is to reach and meet new listeners and discover their stories as I am sharing mine with them. This situation could change but, I am more in need of people’s
Digital Autism in Big Cities
Other than the musical and social aspects, it has been a great learning experience for me to play the streets of Santiago with my guitar. This has been giving me the opportunity to get a sense of how rare human attention has become in big cities. People seem to live in their bubbles paying very little attention to what’s going on in the physical world. The cell phone addiction and headphones are also acting as shields to reinforce that bubble. We live in an era when the Facebook news feed and Instagram seem to have precedence in terms of attention over the reality surrounding us in the physical world.
It has now been over two years that I live without a cell phone plan, and I don’t use GPS to navigate in the cities I am discovering. At times it creates its series of relatively tricky situations, but I am so glad that I took that decision of limiting my access to technology when I started this journey. It saves me money, I got to observe my surroundings through my own eyes, I meet people when I get lost, and the whole experience feels overall very stimulating for my brain. Otherwise, I would have past all this time on Google Maps and social media to become dumber and atrophy my mind a little bit more every day. I believe that we don’t need that much technological assistance for small tasks, and I also think that all these apps that present themselves as making our lives easier are in the long run turning us into weaker individuals. More importantly, I feel like we are missing out on opportunities for social and physical interactions during our daily lives because of our smartphone addiction and the overuse of those devices.
My Two Cents on Digital Distraction
What fascinates me with software development is that all the coders building the smartphone applications need to focus hard and avoid distraction to developing apps which most likely are going to distract the vast majority of us from our real purpose in life. In theory more apps there will be, more distracted we will become as a society and more the developers would need to isolate themselves from connected apps so they can code to create more apps to distract us even more. I guess with self-discipline we can enjoy both of the digital and the physical world and find a healthy balance for ourselves. The problem comes in when we are the only few ones being disciplined with technology; it can be a bit difficult to reap the benefits of that balanced discipline in social settings. I compare the madness we live in with smartphones at the current moment, with the early cigarette smoking era when almost everyone one had a cigarette in her hand.
At one point I am hoping that humanity is going to realize that this addiction is making us dumber and sadder than it is adding any true value to our lives. We then will eventually move on to the next mass addiction until an eventual collapse of the capitalistic society. Then again as it was probably the case in the past, acoustic street musicians will be heard without any need for amplification, and without having to compete against Facebook’s news feed and other digital mind killers.
I want to make it clear that I am not a technology hater. I find it fascinating in many aspects. I use it, and it allows me to create and share my music, and to do work as I am traveling. It’s more the addictive and the unnecessary junk aspect of technology that I think is taking away joy from my life instead of adding value to it. It is precisely that aspect that I try to put under control as much as I can.