and Words
Noto cómo cambia tu voz
Cada vez que me confiesas: “te quiero”
Somos mundos en aproximación
Orbitando con el mismo fin
Choque ciego de universos de amor
Con caricias rotatorias y lentas
Que nos pone el corazón en la boca
Y transforma el aire en elíxir
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
On a quiet weekend night, we browse through movies on Netflix. We cycle through many tiles and previews. Eventually, we land on a sci-fi romantic comedy, called “Our Times”. The plot centers around a married couple of physicists in 1966 who invent the means to time travel… and land, right here in 2025. The preview features actors we do not immediately recognize, though that’s not entirely uncommon.
As we start the film, the credits roll. While Netflix obviously produced the film, the credits roll in Spanish. We’ve watched several foreign films (and shows) and even a handful that were dubbed. Sure, the lips move out of synchronicity with the words, but this isn’t a deal-breaker.
As the film starts, a message declares that the setting is 1966 Mexico. The next credit appears on the screen: Lucero. Lucero happens to be the Spanish word for ‘light’. We use common words as proper names: Hope, Faith, Chastity, Bob, and even Frank. However, the name piqued my interest because it bears a striking resemblance to a singer I listened to as I approached college graduation.
The film served its purpose; it entertained us for a couple of hours. Netflix just released it, and we must’ve caught it during its first week. Naturally, the movie doesn’t discuss the technology by which time travel functions (because it does not yet exist). Instead, it focuses on the couple’s relationship and their adjustment to the nearly sixty-year gap and change in culture. The period is large enough so that we don’t question the patriarchal nature of some of their behavior. It’s easy for us to rationalize that they’re nearly sixty years out of their element. To be truthful, we could easily see such behavior twenty or even ten years ago.
The ending surprised me a little, but that’s why you watch the film. You wait to see how the characters interact and the choices that they make. In a way, the story ends in a way that makes the most sense.
As for that actress, Lucero was indeed the same singer I remember from decades ago. This was not entirely unlike when I re-discovered Angelica María. I remember her as ‘Lucerito’, which is the Spanish equivalent of Annie versus Anne. Lucero went by the moniker ‘Lucerito’ for two reasons. First, she started in the entertainment business when she was only 10 years old as a child actress. Second, her own mother’s name was Lucero; she also named her own daughter Lucero.
While she and I are the same age, I grew up having only a peripheral knowledge of who she was. Furthermore, she was just a kid, so she did not yet cross my radar, much like Britney Spears, who joined the Mickey Mouse Club at the age of twelve. I first really discovered her as a singer with this album, “Cuéntame”, which she released when she was merely twenty.
She eventually becomes known as “Americas’ Sweetheart”. Note the subtle plural for the Americas reference as the entire Western world. I don’t doubt that she became that established in the Hispanic music industry, but I honestly, once I moved away from Miami, I didn’t track new Spanish music.
As for the album “Cuéntame”, she transitioned from a child into an adult with this album; in effect, crossing a threshold. In fact, she initially released the album under the junior moniker “Lucerito” and later re-released it years later with the name “Lucero”. If you do web searches for the album cover, you’ll see both versions.
However, I found this album to be a polarizing mixed bag of songs. For the record, songs like this one, ‘Corazón a la Deriva,’ are inspiring and at times even melancholic. Other such tracks include Lento, Tanto, and even Madre. However, other tracks like “Me Gusta Tu Dinero” (literally translates to “I like your money”) and “Cuéntame” (where she mentions men’s muscles and chest hair) felt a bit over-the-top. It felt like she tried a little too hard to shed the childhood image of her.
That said, I found the songs I enjoyed to be truly exceptional. Her voice carries both strength and femininity. The words are poetic even by Spanish music standards:
Corazón a la deriva
Náufrago en la mar de tu cuerpo
Translates roughly to “Heart adrift, shipwrecked in the sea of your body”. It paints a melancholic picture of lingering passion with no direction. She tells an unresolved story of longing. I can’t help but be caught up in both the loss and the hope of that romance.
Perhaps this tune tells the story of me, though not with a particular person and a specific face. I grew up spanning three communities, mostly centered around the three languages of Cantonese, Spanish, and English. I’ve even written about this struggle before. Much like I’ve observed before, the loss and hope that I carry circle back to those moments and those communities, conveniently labeled “Spanish” or “Cantonese”.
Instead, the end to this story could be the Brené Brown’s lesson about scarcity. I can finally set my shame and guilt aside about not being Asian or Spanish enough. I can make my peace with having navigated my life as best I could. I am enough, just the way that I am. I need not hold myself to others’ standards. My cultures speak to slivers of who I am, and they guide my humanity and understanding.
I endeavor to see these pieces of me, neither adrift at sea nor shipwrecked like the USS Minnow. Instead, they’re parts of my heart and soul that have wandered out to explore like the USS Enterprise. Each new encounter is a new world, but guided by my collective experience.
However, I will forgive myself should I wander briefly back into bouts of the unresolved story of longing. It is through this passion that I remember who I am and where I come from. It’s what drives my humanity.