{"id":163385,"date":"2023-02-17T14:00:22","date_gmt":"2023-02-17T19:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=163385"},"modified":"2023-02-17T13:43:25","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T18:43:25","slug":"love-songs-estoy-aqui","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/02\/17\/love-songs-estoy-aqui\/","title":{"rendered":"Love Songs: \u201cEstoy Aqu\u00ed\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Shakira. Wikimedia Commons<\/a>, Licensed Under CCO 2.0<\/p><\/div>\n

This week,<\/em>\u00a0the<\/em>\u00a0Review\u00a0is publishing a series of short reflections on love songs, broadly defined.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Romance and heartbreak are promised before they are experienced. As a child I was filled with a sort of yearning that preceded any actual object of desire. It was a desire for desire itself, one that, like many girls who grew up speaking Spanish in the late nineties and early aughts, I conjured by listening to\u00a0 Shakira\u2019s 1995 album, <\/span>Pies Descalzos<\/span><\/i>. The first song was my favorite. \u201cEstoy Aqu\u00ed\u201d begins with a teenage Shakira\u2019s lilting voice over an acoustic guitar: \u201cI know you won\u2019t return,\u201d she sings with quavering melancholy, and then the song explodes into a saccharine tempo unbefitting of a lovelorn person. But how would I have known that? I sang along in my room, imagining that one day I would love someone but also one day I would lose them, and that was even more thrilling. To be alive! And drowning amid \u201cphotos and notebooks and things and memories.\u201d I could hardly wait.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In adulthood I have found that intense pleasure and intense grief are startlingly similar experiences\u2014both ecstatic states of being, from the Greek word <\/span>ekstasis<\/span><\/i>: \u201centrancement, astonishment, insanity; any displacement or removal from the proper place.\u201d \u201cEstoy Aqu\u00ed\u201d articulates the specific contours of feeling left behind in a great love\u2019s wake. But, also in adulthood and much to my disappointment, I have found that most affairs end in anticlimax. Twice I have been overcome by the obsessive conjuring of a lost lover; countless times, a budding romance has fizzled out unspectacularly. Infatuation often fails to coalesce into substance. As a child I knew no anthems for the guilt that comes with ghosting or, worse, for the blunt anxiety born of receiving text messages with decreasing frequency. I must admit I feel a little ripped off. \u201cThe letters I wrote, I never sent,\u201d sings young Shakira, but what about the pages you leave blank because passion would be unwarranted?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I suppose it is apt that, to borrow from T.S. Eliot, \u201cEstoy Aqu\u00ed\u201d ends not with a bang but a whimper. The song fades with no resounding note, just a watered down repetition of what has already been stated, a languid dissolution of something that started off so strong.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ana Karina Zatarain is a writer living in Mexico City. Her debut essay collection<\/em>, To and From, will be published by Knopf in 2024.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMuch to my disappointment, I have found that most affairs end in anticlimax.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2331,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1187],"tags":[67827,13325,6843,1058],"class_list":["post-163385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-music","tag-featured","tag-nineties","tag-shakira","tag-spanish"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLove Songs: \u201cEstoy Aqu\u00ed\u201d by Ana Karina Zatarain<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"February 17, 2023 \u2013 \u201cMuch to my disappointment, I have found that most affairs end in anticlimax.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/02\/17\/love-songs-estoy-aqui\/\" 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