No. 019 - Julián De La Chica & Yana Mann’s “Poemas de Bar, Op. 12: No. 8 El Amor” changed my life
A new chapter, affairs with married women, and the song that led Cole Burnett to a place of beauty and wonder
This Song Changed My Life is an independent music publication featuring essays from people all around the world about the songs that mean the most to them. Created by Grace Lilly, supported by readers.
• 4 min read •
At the start of 2020, a friend of mine and my brother’s died somewhat mysteriously, and it had a really dangerous effect on me. I went numb all over, feeling at the mercy of an indifferent universe.
I often still feel this way, and it may in fact be the way it is, but back then the feeling engrossed me and ruled my life. To continue living felt like an act of betrayal.
And then the fucking pandemic happened.
I broke up with my girlfriend, moved out of our apartment in Dallas, and tried to find something that would jump start my heart again. Mind you, I was a year sober at the time, so like many people, I felt like I was bearing witness to the final hour of existence and it wasn’t even entertaining, it wasn’t even a party. Everything felt stale. What a bust.
That year, I became a sad little voyeur, truly believing my life and the lives of others were just for observing. It seemed funny to me to have affairs with married women, it seemed useless to find real love, and it felt like a relief when I could go home to my movies and pass out to images of another world, forgetting that this was the one I lived in.
Thankfully, 2021 did indeed roll around, the world didn’t end, and in May of that year Julián De La Chica and Yana Mann released their superb album 11 Poemas De Bar, Op. 12. The album was composed by De La Chica, written about the very loneliness and numbness I’d been experiencing.
I want to say I was on a morning walk in the park near my dad’s house when I first heard anything from Poemas De Bar. Maybe it popped up on my Discover Weekly? Not totally sure. I digress…
He says he wrote the poems that would become the lyrics while sitting in bars at 3am in New York, taking in the general sorrow of the city during the pandemic, listening to banal late night conversations. I might be embellishing or getting this wrong, but this is what I understand the album to be about. This is how I listen to it. It feels almost like it belongs to my imagination now just as much as his.
On this album is a song they call “El Amor” which is maybe the song that struck me the most, hit me the hardest. I would listen to it every morning and often when I was driving home from work. It turned my breakdown into a ballet. It showed me the holiness and the treachery of consciousness. It wasn’t all just a daydream. It had teeth and claws.
It’s a song about never finding love, never knowing that pain and joy, and how tragic that feeling is. On the track, Yana Mann laments:
Love, I’ve never experienced it.
How sad are those who don’t know it.
The emptiness that had engrossed me the year before was replaced by electricity and color and the sweet glorious magic only great art can bring to our lives. The simplest way to put it would be this: it gave me faith. They knew how to express what I could not.
I think I just needed someone to create a space for me to feel all the deep horrible feelings I thought were numbness, and “El Amor,” along with the rest of this perfect album did that for me. I rely on art for this.
A great song is like a space you can walk into for a time, or a tunnel. “El Amor” acted as a guide to my imagination, leading me to a better place, where there is still beauty and wonder.
Even sadness and loneliness could be richly beautiful. I felt inspired and reinvigorated. There are so many things I want to experience and document, so many people I want to love.
There is a limit to what conversation can solve, to what therapy can soothe, and to what science can explain. For me, this is where music is required. ◆
About Cole
Cole Burnett was born in Missouri but spent most of his life in Texas where he learned to play guitar from his brother, Chase. The two played in a few bands together, both in Texas and LA, where Cole decided to go solo, releasing music under the moniker God Of Love. He now lives in Chicago, managing an empanada spot and finishing his third studio album and a collection of short stories.
Instagram @godoflovemusic
⭐ Recommended by
Chase Burnett (No. 011)
Every TSCML writer is asked to recommend a future contributor, creating a never-ending, underlying web of interconnectivity 🕸️
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