Thoughts from the Bar Stool: Passion of the Moz

Wednesday is my day of leisure—work and home life have dictated it so. It is kind of like all the other ones that have preceded it. The only factors that set it apart from the other Wednesdays are that it’s starting to feel like autumn and the City of San José is already in the process of decorating the Plaza de César Chávez with Christmas décor. The air is brisk and the days are getting shorter. With the evening starting earlier, the lunatic brigade is out in full force. My dogs are tired from walking. My mind is tired from thinking. I find the café that I frequent in the afternoons and early evenings. I go in and I get a coffee. I unshackle myself from the doldrums of television and the internet; in exchange, I sit at the same table, at the same café, drinking the same coffee, smoking the same cigarettes. I crack open the same book (well, I do have to finish it.) The darkness of the night sky compels me to put my book down (my eyes are not what they used to be), put on my headphones, put my iPod into shuffle mode, and zone-out. Three songs into my music-appreciation session, “Suedehead” by Morrissey starts to play. 

      I decided to do some more walking, to see what the mid-week city life has to offer me, nothing more than the same old sea of strangers ebbing and flowing past me. Their banter (both idle and banal) drifts past me.  I make my way to the bar. A beer is in order to counterbalance the caffeine that is fraying my already-frayed nerves. As I walk in, “Panic” by the Smiths comes on. I nod my head as I swirl my pint of Guinness, nodding in approval, occasionally lip-syncing to it. Of course, there are some patrons who listen to the song and immediately begin to snort and mouth-breath some profane words of disapproval. C’est la vie. Life goes on, and so does my appreciation.

       I don’t remember when or where I first heard Morrissey’s music - or whether it was his solo work or his oeuvre with The Smiths - but I do recall that I was a teenager, and I remember feeling a sort of primal connection to his particular strain of pining and angst-ridden music. Up to that point, I listened to a variety of music (and still do), never committing to a single genre, or mutation of said genre. Though to be honest, I have always been partial to música norteña, baladas and rock music (some subsets more than others.) Then, from some horn-rimmed-glasses-wearing ether, his brand of music with witty, erudite lyrics came into my consciousness. My musical revelation was met with derision of others. Being laughed at by friends, by strangers, by the folks that ask for spare change; comes with the territory. For a good portion of the world at large, Morrissey’s music is as antiquated as the British Empire. As for those who were into him since day one, his music is either on the shelf collecting dust, or they are staunch classicalists (any music that he made after 1995 is deemed blasphemous by them.) Then all of a sudden, in the midst of his irrelevancy, a Moz renaissance began (a resurreción if you will.)

      The Mexican/Mexican-American fascination with Morrissey’s music (Smiths, solo) has been mused upon before; by the sarcastic, pop-cultural Gran Poobah Chuck Klosterman and by Telemundo. Closer to home, my friends have asked me about it because to them, it seems rather odd (if not, diametrically-opposing) that Mexicans/Mexican-Americans from the inner-city would get into Morrissey, let alone, that strain of rock music. There is seemingly no rhyme or reason for this phenomenon. There has to be something to it, something underneath the pompadours and gladioli firmly pressed inside journals and fanzines.

      “I want to start from before the beginning.”

      Those of us that are Mexican-Americans and like Morrissey, we do so with enthusiastic fervor. As previously stated, the old-guard prefer his work with The Smiths over his solo stuff, while the ones that came after are faithful to the totality of his catalog. What is it with the sons of Moctezuma (and the daughters of Tonantzin) embracing this pale lad from Manchester, England? The Mexican culture is a patriarchal one—where men are men, masculine to the core, emotionally stoic, almost distant. Yet, underneath the machismo, there is a romantic who loves his woman, who will do anything for her, who will cry when the feeling is unreciprocated (or is mutual, but they were doomed to be star-crossed.) It is a duality of the Mexican male. The two halves battle often, and often, it is a battle waged in silence.

      Some of the biggest and widely-adored Mexican singers were love-struck troubadours who celebrate love and lyrically cry over women who left them high and dry. Singers like José José and Vicente Fernández are prime examples. For those who are shackled to tradition, music (and to some extent, literature) function as a sort of emotional proxy, a fountain of expression we go to when pride and manhood has made us into inarticulate oafs.

      The passion for Morrissey is visceral. Those who are his ardent detractors do so with a zeal usually reserved for Michael Bolton, peppered with some borderline homophobic invective for good measure. Those that love his music love it with near-religious fervor. And for Mexican-Americans, la pasión is a deep, accented one. I think that if it weren’t for the Mexican-American fan-base, Morrissey would be nothing more than a novelty with cult status.

      I finish off my pint, I exit the door and I make my way to the bus stop. I have seven minutes until the bus arrives. I light up an American Spirit menthol, inhaled, exhaled, and sighed. Other than a woman who had the unfortunate luck of having her skirt raised in an updraft, there were no surprises. At home, I turn on the computer, check my messages and prepare to go to bed. “And as I climb into an empty bed… oh well, enough said.”

©2011 José-Ariel Cuevas