The collection of CDs resides in a baby pink entertainment center that could have easily belong to me when I was little as it matched that ridiculous bunny wallpaper my mother used in our room.
They don’t all seem to fit in the space where a VCR or DVD player would sit, so they are crammed every which way. Yet, you look closely and see that every
band from The Who to a lone Janis Joplin album is residing with like CDs – it’s all organized.
Don Miguel beams at us three sitting in plastic chairs in his small living room. “Lo que existe hoy no es Rock and Roll,” (“What exists today is not called Rock and Roll,”) he says as he plays some of his favorites.
He knows all about the bands that live with him in his small house. He knows track by track and album by album who is on guitar and who is singing. Whats more, he correlates the music to events in history and to poetry he’s read by Cervantes and Walt Whitman.
Hey, hey you got me rocking now
I was a hooker losing her looks
I was a writer can’t write another book
I was all dried up dying to get wet
I was a tycoon drowning in debt
He quotes Stone rock lines in their entirety, before explaining what they mean in Spanish. A funny thing considering the language sung is the one we grew up speaking…
He then explains that up until last week he had never understood the term Hooker from his favorite band’s lyrics, The Rolling Stones. Luckily, he watched Pretty Woman and was instantly brought into the light.
It’s a riot talking to him. We spend all day sitting, sipping Presidente and listening to the likes of The Doors, ACDC and INXS.
It’s also fascinating. Here is a Dominican man, in his early 50s or late 40s (my best guess), lives alone, loves American classic rock, likes off-colour comedies, quotes more poetry than I even could AND is writing a book.
Where did this guy come from? Why is he who he is? More importantly, why does he care about such things and why can’t my students share this passion for exploring and educating themselves?
After a couple of hours of my journalistic inquiries, he has no answers.
He neither blames his poverty for making his interests such a struggle to satisfy nor does he credit it for pushing him to try strive to satisfy tem.
It seems the why is the only question he’s left unexplored.
And sitting in his wooden and tin house with ACDC’s “Back in Black” blaring behind us, it seems okay not to know.
“Well what can a poor boy do except sing in a rock’n roll band? ‘Cause in sleepy London town, there’s just no place for a street fighting man.” – Rolling Stones, “Street fighting man”
