Norah in Colombia: The Musical
By Norah Hively
Back in August, I was sitting in an orange booth in the back corner of my hometown coffee shop. I was attempting to memorize the menu for a restaurant I never ended up working at. In the other booth to my left, mirroring the one I was in, sat a woman with a crying baby. The crying went on for about an hour.
Luckily, with my noise canceling headphones equipped, I could work anywhere. The only thing sort of distracting me was that I felt like, from the corner of my eye, the woman was repeatedly looking over at me. I wondered if there was something she needed to say but I was determined to get this menu memorized so I didn’t return the glance.
After some time, the man she was with returned from being outside. The vibe was that they were getting ready to go. He grabbed the baby and the baby carrier from the table and headed out. Then it was just the woman. She sat and waited for a moment, glancing at me another time (this was all still happening in my peripheral) before getting up and slowly easing herself into my line of vision.
“Hi, I was wondering, are you spiritual at all?” Oh god, I thought. First of all, loaded question. Second, I was not down for a Jehovah’s Witness speech, I was trying to memorize which fish was called suzuki in Japanese. “I don’t know,” I responded. “I think I believe there could be something but I’m not sure exactly what that something is.”
“Ok…do you have a second?” she asked, still standing up next to my booth. I was still trying to read where she was getting at. “I don’t know, I was kinda trying to work,” I said sort of rudely, hesitantly.
“Alright let me just say a few things real quick,” she started. “Are you a writer?” I looked at my table. My laptop and the menu for this restaurant were the only things sitting there. This was the only time I had been to this coffee shop and wasn’t writing. “Yes…” I answered. “Have you been having writer's block recently?” she asked. At this point, I had just moved home and an inner crisis coming up for me was figuring out how to use my writing for good post-grad. “Yeah, sort of,” I replied with an eyebrow raise. “How did you know?” Sensing my hesitation was turning into curiosity, she said, “okay, I’m gonna sit down.”
Flipping to a fresh page to journal in my hostel: The Wandering Paisa, in Medellín, Colombia.
Her name was Kayla. Kayla began describing her experience with God, emphasizing that hers was a very untraditional spiritual journey. “I found God with my bong in the woods,” was a direct quote. She went on to describe that ever since that moment, she hears God and his voice guides her, often telling her things about other people so that she can be a messenger.
From talking to her more, I could tell she was kind, well-intentioned and, though I still had a guard up about whether this was some kind of cult ploy, I was willing to listen. It seemed like there were some things she really wanted to say. “I was sitting over there,” she said, motioning to the other orange booth. “And he was really urging me to speak with you.”
Kayla started again. “Have you been more interested in making music recently?” This was a very new development for me. I explained how I had just bought a DJ board and her face lit up. “Oh, like electronic music! I love that,” she said. “I know, it doesn’t look like it—being a mom with a baby and all.” “No, of course you do! The rave community can be for anyone,” I told her and she smiled.
Her last question, the one that drew me in most: “Do you feel like you’ve always wanted to make music but you have some unknown force that you can’t figure out or understand holding you back?”
This struck me as if I were being seen for the first time. It was as if all at once, in a fraction of a second, I recalled every experience in my life that contributed to this one idea that she just put into words on a random Wednesday evening. After I basically told her “yeah that’s crazy,” Kayla said that he (God) wanted her to tell me that, if I listen to him and kept following his guidance that he will make a life of making music happen for me.
The interaction ended with her thanking me for allowing her to talk to me since he was really pushing her to come up to me. I thanked her for talking to me despite me not being open at first. Then, with a smile, she kindly said, “you have a beautiful soul,” and left.
Music & Colombia So Far
I’m telling this story because, as I sit here coming up with what to write for y’all to encompass everything I’ve experienced and learned (which is so much already) in just a week in Colombia, music is at the heart of it all. I have already met so many people and, at one point or another, music comes up in my conversations with them. In most cases, I haven’t even mentioned this to be an interest of mine. Yet, I feel as though the way I’ve started to embody music, leads to diving deeper into the subject with someone either by recognizing that I have a passion or taste for it or by exchanging our musical interests.
After a day of touring Comuna 13, a place rich with hip hop and break dancing, me and Magi, a German girl I met in my hostel, had a beautiful dinner. At the end of the meal, she suggested we just go peek into a listening bar nearby. The vibes of the place were immaculate and we arrived just in time for the half time show. We decided to stay.
Break dancing group prepares for their next street performance in the lively neighborhood of Comuna 13 in Medellín, Colombia.
Of course, Bad Bunny’s half time show in itself presented so much inspiration through themes in music and such a chilling performance. I told Magi I felt like I was watching history be made. There I was, in a Latin country watching the Spanish broadcast of the Super Bowl and watching the first Spanish-language halftime show in Super Bowl history. The moment felt all consuming like I couldn’t have been in a better place than at that bar we had said we were just going to “peek into.” Around round two of drinks, the DJ came on to play over the second half of the game.
I was so enthralled by the DJ. Although it was a light, chill set, he was captivating as he actively recorded all the sounds he was mixing. Layering and looping his own voice and instruments including the guitar, maracas, harmonica, and flute. I had never seen anything like it.
Photo captured moments before enjoying my first Club Colombia (que rico!) while listening to one of the most calming, creative sets I’ve seen live at Siete Pulgadas Listening Bar.
While he played in this calm, groovy atmosphere, Magi and I had a great conversation about music and art. She said how she finds it so cool when people make a career out of their art in a way that practically becomes an identity. “It would be so cool to say ‘Oh yeah, I’m a DJ or I’m a singer,’ like that’s just amazing,” she said.
The biggest thing I took from our conversation was this idea that so many of us have creative things we enjoy doing right, right? Whether it’s crafting, singing or whatever. But, for everyone who’s even kind of creative, there comes a time when you subconsciously or consciously begin to decide, is this just a hobby or do I want this craft to embody me? To represent me. To be my life rather than something I do on the side from my ‘real’ job. And, neither is wrong. Magi described how her graphic design career doesn’t feel creative but she enjoys it, just like she enjoys her creative hobbies as breaks from her work.
One of the first people I met in Colombia was a woman named Mary from Dallas. She had this lively, crazy energy about her. She was overjoyed to be talking to another American. She hadn’t spoken to one in months since she left. Dancing is her passion, specifically kizomba. In Medellin, she would go to group dance classes at the park.
There was also Emma from Hamburg who dances hip hop. Francisco from Portugal who I got to talk about my many passions with, including music. We were both very passionate about our own interests which provided really refreshing conversation. And Antonio, from Miami, who returns to Medellin regularly to get his braces worked on and enjoys the city’s culture through pick up basketball and, like Mary, group dance classes in the park.
One night, we all decided we were going to go to the park for a dance class after playing Uno over some wine at our hostel. When we got there, the class had already ended, but we spent hours dancing and talking, making our own fun in such a wholesome way in beautiful Parque del Rio.
Antonio and Mary taught me the steps for salsa and bachata with Antonio as my dance partner. Emma showed me some of her hip hop moves. With Antonio I discussed mainly hip hop and R&B. He admitted he was super impressed with my music taste (for someone my age). On the way home, Antonio, Mary and I made conversation weaving between the cultures of each of our southern states and the hip hop influences that came from each.
Uncovering Messages
These are just some examples of the overall music heavy experience. At my new volunteer job, I am already connecting with people through music as well as making friends with musical people. I think a big manifestation for me with my travels was like, “okay, I am going to venture out into the world. I’ll meet people who possess a similar creative drive as me. I’ll seek out the music in these culturally rich countries of South America and I will be led in the right direction.” I already sense that this is somehow coming into place. The only thing is, I have to figure out how to kill the part of me that still remains which Kayla referred to as the unknown force holding me back.
Whether the faith I need to have is in God or not isn’t exactly the question I believe I need to ask to face this unknown force. But rather it’s discovering faith in myself, the faith within my message and my faith in the world around me as well as for what it has in store.
When I got up to take a break from writing this very post, I sat back down trying to get back in the flow of things when I felt the urge to listen to another episode of the podcast Make Art Not Content. The episode I was one was called: Why You Keep Losing Faith Just Before You’re About To Win. Very fitting right? Father Branques describes the importance of having faith as a creative perfectly in this episode (you should really give it a listen). He even uses musicians as his prime example taking sound bites from interviews with Jewel and Kid Cudi.
Jewel came into the music scene at the height of Nirvana and the grunge movement but she was the female vocalist with an acoustic guitar. “Nirvana’s like: ‘We’re not happy but, you can only be in pain for so long until you k*ll yourself. So at some point you have to decide, are you gonna k*ll yourself or now what?’... so I was writing my songs about the ‘Now what?’ What do I do with this? What do I do with pain? What do I do with feelings?” said Jewel. “So, even though culture and the radio gatekeepers were like ‘no grunge is everything,’ I saw in the audience that people responded to heart. And that I was ‘Now what?’ So if people could just hang on long enough to say…now I’ve been in pain long enough ‘Now what?’ my music would be a medicine to that.”
Like woah. Her message resonated with me so hard. And I know every word she’s saying to be true too. My mom was going to First Avenue in Minneapolis around this very time. And you know what? She saw Nirvana play there. She saw Hole as well, even hung out with them once or twice (yeah my mom is cool or whatever). But early on one random night, before the place turned to 21+, this blonde woman with a guitar began to play. And she still remembers how infatuated the audience was with her—Jewel. “You know, this was where Nirvana would play. She was completely out of place from the normal crowd,” my mom even said. “It was strange but still people couldn’t take their eyes off of her. Everyone was just infatuated.”
The amazing sight of barrios built into the hills of beautiful Medellín, Colombia.
It’s coincidences like this that keep popping up which I end up directly applying to my life which then presents stronger meanings for me. Like a lot of us are feeling right now, I’m trying to understand what I’m good at and passionate enough about to take it a step further. I’m looking to find how to best use whichever craft (whether it’s writing, directing documentaries or making music) to best serve people and the world around me.
So, deciding which path to walk down, having faith in that decision, is the hardest part but I don’t want to get stuck in this phase. I’m unsure how to describe it but I feel like I’m moving towards something. I'm just unsure what that something is or looks like right now. All I know is that the more I embody music, the more it presents itself in my day to day life. The more natural everything becomes.
Thanks for reading,
Norah <3
