Articles

Nuestra Playa

(Our Beach)
by Emilio Jose

Nuestra Playa (Our Beach) is a popular Spanish song which I first heard about the year 1987 when I was living and working in Honduras.  I was in Protección, a village in the mountains about a two-hour drive from San Pedro Sula where I lived with my family.  It was probably a Saturday night and I had gone there to teach Saturday during the day, and then in the morning of the next day, to celebrate worship services and preach.  Adjacent to the church was a small room which was called the "casa cural," that is, a little house where a visiting priest could stay.  It was not really a house, but a small room, and next to it, a small bathroom with a tiolet.  The villagers had built this little addition some months after my arrival.  I was thankful for it as I did not like to use the forest to relieve myself which had been the case previously.

On that particular Saturday night, perhaps in the church or in front on the patio, two young men were trying to sing Nuetra Playa.  One of them was named Marical who later, just before I left Honduras, stole about $300.00 in church money in order to fix his teeth which were rotting.  I couldn't make out the words of the song except for one line of the refrain which I remembered as this, "Nunca voy a encontrar, un amor como tú," which translated is, "I never will find a love like you."  This line of the song was the most difficult to sing since it required two voices, the second voice repeating the phrase after the first voice.  For that reason, that line was repeated over and over as the singers tried to get it just right.  Apart from the refrain, the song was sung by a single voice.   

After that night I never heard the song again until recently when I managed to track it down on Youtube.  That was a couple of weeks ago, and after listening to it, I decided to comment on it.  The primary theme of the song is a lost love.  It is sung by a man who has gone to the beach where he and his lost love spent many happy hours together.  

I will now give the song in Spanish, and to the right, the English translation.  Let me recommend that the reader absorb the words, and then, once the ideas are planted in the mind, listen to it on Youtube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OSXOrpD-OM.  Then, once we have listened to the song several times, I will comment on it in my concluding remarks. 

La playa se ha dormido en tu silencio                                   The beach now sleeps in your silence
Las olas ya no vienen a suspirar                                            The waves no longer come ashore with a sighing sound
Triste se queda el tiempo sin tu presente                               Time remains, sad without your presence
Tristes suenan las notas de mi cantar                                     The notes of my song resound with sadness as well. 

Clavadas se quedaron sobre la arena                                    Upon the sand were once engraved
Todas las ilusiones que yo tejí                                              All the dreams that I once wove
Pero el viento y el agua borró sus huellas                             But the wind and the water erased all traces of you
Nadie sabrá en la vida lo que escribí                                    No one in life will know what I wrote.

Donde voy a encontrar (donde voy a encontrar)                  Where will I ever find (Where will I ever find)
un amor como tu (un amor como tu)                                     A love like you (A love like you)
que nació al escuchar el ruido del mar                                 Born to listen to the sound of the sea
bajo el cielo azul                                                                  Beneath the blue sky

Nunca mas hallare (nunca más hallaré)                                Never again will I find (Never again will I find)
quien comprenda mi amor (quien comprenda mi amor)        Someone who understands my love (Someone who understand my love)
pues no habrá otro querer                                                     For there will be no other beloved 
que sepa escuchar mi triste canción                                     Who knows how to listen to my sad song. 

Las velas de los barcos lloran tu ausencia                          The sails of the boats weep your absence
las rocas que recogen tu dulce voz                                      The rocks seek to capture your sweet voice
Tristes y acongojados sin tu presencia                                They are sad and brokenhearted without your presence    
tristes suenan las notas de mi canción                                  Sad resound the notes of my song.

Puede que otro verano no vuelva a verte                            It could be that another summer will never see you
puede que incluso pienses que te olvide                             And it could be that you think I have forgotten you 
pero aunque ahora finjas no conocerme                              And although you now pretend you do not know me
siempre con toda el alma yo te querré                                Always, with all my soul, I love you.

Donde voy a encontrar (donde voy a encontrar)                 Where will I ever find (Where will I ever find)
un amor como tu (un amor como tu)                                    A love like you (A love like you)
que nació al escuchar el ruido del mar                                Born to listen to the sound of the sea
bajo el cielo azul                                                                 Beneath the blue sky

Nunca mas hallare (nunca más hallaré)                               Never again will I find (Never again will I find)
quien comprenda mi amor (quien comprenda mi amor)       Someone who understands my love (Someone who understand my love)
pues no habrá otro querer                                                    For there will be no other beloved 
que sepa escuchar mi triste canción                                     Who knows how to listen to my sad song. 

Comments

Let us notice several features of this song.  First, the singer's sense of his lost love is so intense that even the rocks, the sand, the waves, the sea, and the sails of the boats, and time itself, all ache for her lost presence.  This is not sheer poetic license. It is an experience.  The physical elements of the world are experienced as personal, as having feelings, as longing to see her once again.  I would not say that the elements of the natural world are personal in and of themselves.  Nevertheless, they mediate personal realities.  They are integral aspects of an epiphany, an epiphany in which the lost love is present in the things the lovers once knew, and at the same time, they mediate her absence since she is no longer physically there.  Further, notice the scope of this epiphany.  It is all encompassing -- the sky, the sea, the rocks, the sandy beach, all of them, the entire world aches for her.  This all-encompassing epiphany is created by spirit, the spirit of aching loneliness which gathers up all visual, audible, and tactile aspects into a personal mode of both presence and absence.

In light of this, it can be said that the human soul is capable of perceiving great and intense personal realities as mediated by the things we see and hear.  Consider now, for a moment, these words taken from the book of Exodus.

Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness.  And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank (Exodus 24:9-11).

This passage comes at the end of a covenant renewal renewal ceremony which was sealed by the shedding of blood and the eating of a meal.  The covenant was mediated by Moses who first went up on the mountain to meet God and to receive the words of the covenant.  The people were not allowed on the mountain because they would be consumed by the holiness of God.  After the covenant had been established, however, "Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up" on the mountain to eat and drink in the presence of God.  There they saw God, and there "was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness."  What they saw with their senses was the heavens, the blue dome of the sky, and beyond that, they sensed a profound personal, holy presence, so holy that they should die, yet "he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel."  This God was so great that he could scarcely be seen, yet the great dome of heaven beneath his feet, clear blue like a sapphire stone, mediated his presence.

The biblical people did not prove God as inference from the facts of creation.  They saw him, heard him, and tasted him in many and varied ways.  In this example from Exodus 24, they experienced him as incomprehensibly great and wonderful, beyond comprehension, yet palpably present, conveyed by the vast dome of the sky that stretched forever to the far horizons.  Think about that.  God in his incomparable greatness can be experienced.  There is nothing like it. 

Here is how Mark 15:39 describes the reaction of a centurion who witnessed Christ's crucifixion: "And when the centurion, who stood facing him [Jesus], saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, 'Truly this man was the Son of God!'"  According to a number of modern biblical scholars, the statement, "Truly this man was the Son of God,'" was not really said by a centurion, but was added years later by the early church to describe the theological significance of Christ's crucifixion.  The biblical writers did not have the same narrative norms as modern writers, but unlike a number of contemporary biblical scholars, they and the population in general were capable of experiencing the reality of God, the very God seen on Mount Sinai, and this in connection with his Son hanging on a cross.  The centurion was not the only one who experienced the reality of God himself when Christ was crucified.  That the God who created the heavens and the earth could so humble himself was utterly stunning.  As I remembered from Protección, "Nunca voy a encontrar, un amor como tú."

The refrain of Nuestra Playa is especially poignant.  It happens like this.  The man sings the opening line of the refrain, "Where will I ever find," and as his words come to an end, a haunting female voice breaks in, singing the same words, "Where will I ever find," and at that moment, the woman repeating the refrain becomes the lost love.  She is there.  You know it.  She is no longer lost.  She is the one who as born to be with him, to listen with him to the sound of the sea beneath the blue sky. They are, at that moment, together.  And as he continues with the words, "a love like you," she continues as well, her lilting voice vanishing and then reemerging in the second section of the refrain, "Never again will I find," he sings, and she too says the same, "Never again will I find," a love that understands, a love that loves his sad songs, a lost love, yet for the moment, within the song, together again. 

What are we to make of this?  The song clearly tells us that the lovers are no longer together.  He thinks she believes that he has forgotten her, and she even pretends to no longer know him.  Apparently something tragic has destroyed their relationship.  He can hardly bear it, but regardless of what she may think or pretend, he always loves her.  "Always, with all my soul, I love you."  Yet, even as he sings of his loss, she is there with him, speaking his words of loss with him, loving him always just as he loves her.  So, what does the refrain communicate?  Hidden, unknown to the man who sings, she loves him with a love that never dies.  Even when the sky, the waves, the sand and the shore proclaim her absence, she is in love with him forever.  And if that be true, does this song not hint at the possibility of a love that will never die?  Think about that.  I think of my wife who died in 2003, and I think of Paul,

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:12-13)

The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D.