Keep Walking
This week’s missive begins where last week’s left off.
I showed you a picture of me and a few street musicians. It was Saturday of last week, and a young guitarist came out to chat with us on his smoke break from a restaurant a few doors down. He took the picture as shown below.
The next day, I wrote The Sunday Bagel and headed out on a stroll of strolls, riding the never-ending wave of markets and people through La Calendaria (old town) of Bogota.
Eventually the wave took me to the undesirable core of the downtown so I called in my White Privilege Super Powers™️ and Uber’d to the nicest area GPT could suggest for me.
In Usaquén, I was captivated by the high-end wares being sold in this market. I found a table with funky shoes. A dark-skinned woman started speaking English to me without my prompting, and she told me that these are her mother’s shoes. The young girl’s name: Universe.
Her mother, Pastora is a stunning aboriginal woman descending from the Muisca peoples with many layers of specialty and focus. An artist and a healer, I felt a deep bond with her though the translations of Universe.
Yet they were closing up shop, and a plumbing issue in the area meant that all the restaurants had no banõs in service. Even though I just arrived to this area, we made plans to go back to La Calendaria together to continue the conversations over dinner.
She offers to split the taxi there since we are going a far distance, but when I tell her that the price of this taxi is the same that I pay for an Americano Con Leche back home, her jaw drops.
Now I realize why the average South American would not seek out trips north of the equator, as it would be far too expensive.
In the taxi, Universe tells me she finds it frustrating being a tour guide for Dutch cyclists. They don’t want to try anything new. I tell her that just by going to Colombia, these people are adventurous as they could just as easily go to places in the Caribbean and have an easy vacation.
It doesn’t occur to her that for decades, North Americans and Europeans wouldn’t touch Colombia with a ten-foot pole due to fears of being caught in the cross-fire of narco violence.
They learn a bit of my musical story that originates in Spain in 2017, a wandering Jew with a guitar as we listen to some of my music on my phone. They are amazed that I make all of it from soup to nuts, a fact about my work that I never even would take a second to question since I started producing music at the age of 15 years old.
We arrive in the La Calendaria, and I insist that Universe picks the restaurant that I will treat them to. The first place is closed.
Her second pick is open. Is it the place I think it is?
The kitchen is the first thing you see in this restaurant (the opposite of just about every other restaurant we know about). I guess this used to be someone’s home. I ask the man at the door if someone works here who plays the guitar.
And then he comes down the stairs. The young man who took the picture the day before.
The name he goes by? Galaxie.
As it turns out, Universe already knows Galaxie because it is a small community in La Calendaria. Yet she doesn’t know that this his nom de plum as a musician. We are laughing and laughing but I am secretly crying.
I want you to review this story for a minute and take note:
I meet Galaxie on Saturday and he takes my picture with the musicians.
On Sunday I drive 25 minutes to a neighbourhood (Usaquén), only to meet a girl named Universe and her mother Pastora.
After ten minutes of being in this neighbourhood, I am in a cab going back to the city.
She takes us back to the restaurant of her choice, and Galaxie happens to be working that night and is enthused to serve us dinner.
This is not a small town: The population of Bogota is just a bit bigger than that of the Greater Toronto Area at 7.9 Million people (GTA is 6.7M)
Where is the wave going to take you this week?
Keep walking…
The music playing in the restaurant that night:
Wow Wow Wow! What a blessed trip you're having. So happy for you Elliott <3
What a beautiful story and message.