Day five of sampled based songs pentalogy…

Mark Everett said that this song was about detachment and it certainly found me on said mood. After hanging in Tampico for a while, I attended a Statics class on summer school at uni. It wouldn’t count as a credit, though, but I enrolled as I heard it was a particularly hard class and I wanted to get a head start.

It really was a hard subject. Which I had to do twice, and where I galvanised my friendship with Teresa.

As I mentioned before, I love black and white videos as much as Mark Romanek loves suspending musicians from wires. He did it for NIN’s closer, he did it for Eels. W

Novocaine for the soul described my autumn of 96 perfectly. Between the solemn, almost depressing atmosphere, a few rays of hope pierce through. As flimsy and shaky as they are, they resemble more a feeling of acceptance than of relief. That’s ok, sometimes acceptance drills through that emotional wall we face with things out of our control.

Lost a few friends that semester, mostly because life makes you choose the company you take. Gaine a few friends too, and even if I don’t hang with them anymore, it was a good ride.

October of 96 is full of memories, magic and tragic. I went on a school trip to Mazatlán, getting a few buckets of reality on my stay there. On the long ass 18 hour drive, I had enough time to start sorting out the idea I had for a novel, one that I would write in a piecemeal fashion over the years. It involved trips to Tampico, Mazatlán, Los Angeles. It had conspiracies, violence, pop culture references. It had ghosts, futuristic weapons, and mushy romance.

It was a mess and I should’ve edited way more carefully before self publishing in 2001. Still, I learned much from it and some people actually liked it.

The novel featured a lot of songs, perhaps too many. I didn’t include Novocaine for the soul because the particular moment of that trip to Mazatlán it’s intertwined with it’s too personal (and embarrassing). However, I think the novel, the trip, the revolving door of friendships changed me for the better, but not the best. You can always improve and I hope I’ve improved from back then. Thirty years do that to you.

-Sam Valdés López