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What is insanity?
The Sands that I hold in my mind could be called perfectly sane, perhaps.
All seeming evidence to insanity is perhaps too much evidence of a man who simply doesn't care. Not for human life, not for society's morals, not for fashion; and what are ethics but the currently fashionable modes of judgement?
Is this lack of caring derived from a higher calling, a belief of an order that goes beyond an order called forth as 'sanity', or from a lack of love?
In regards to the scene with the church shootout, Rodriguez in an interview mentions the violent symbolism of having to destroy a guitar to get to a gun that El Mariachi was ultimately forced to use, a gunshot that shatters the silence of church, echoing like a choir's collected voice.
But I doubt that, in Rodriguez's universe, music was really so far removed from violence.
El seemed to have attempted to choose music above violence, but 'El Mariachi' by definition is the twining of sound and death and a latin beat, caught and tangled and inseparable, and is the stronger for it once El accepts the death and the music together, and re-establishes his loyalty to his land.
The moment an instrument is picked up by him, be it one either of music or death, is the same moment that you sense the rumble of an approaching storm; the guitar contains a gun and, no matter how much he may have wished to preserve the outer mask of music, he could not ignore how violence trails him like fate.
What is missing?
He is Sheldon Jeffery Sands, and what has he left behind, for Mexico?
And does he care, then, of / for Mexico? What does he care of its people, its culture, its clothes, its norms, its language even? He refuses it all, and absolutely refuses to believe that any part of it is worthwhile.
Shoot the cook, because the pork is too good.
Bring the balance, because for America to exist there has to be a Mexico, because idealism gets shredded in Mexico's shantyhills, because someone always has to suffer and why should he suffer alone?
Blood mixing with Mexico's dust, coating skin and sockets and bullet holes.
An offering to the land.
Because look: he has a song now. He has a legend.
He is claimed by Mexico,
and bound as surely as El is.
The Sands that I hold in my mind could be called perfectly sane, perhaps.
"What, after all, is a cook?"What indeed.
All seeming evidence to insanity is perhaps too much evidence of a man who simply doesn't care. Not for human life, not for society's morals, not for fashion; and what are ethics but the currently fashionable modes of judgement?
Is this lack of caring derived from a higher calling, a belief of an order that goes beyond an order called forth as 'sanity', or from a lack of love?
Is love the ultimate measure of being sane?If so, would not El Mariachi be termed as one lacking sanity as well, having love killed before him 'til nothing matters except perhaps the music?
In regards to the scene with the church shootout, Rodriguez in an interview mentions the violent symbolism of having to destroy a guitar to get to a gun that El Mariachi was ultimately forced to use, a gunshot that shatters the silence of church, echoing like a choir's collected voice.
But I doubt that, in Rodriguez's universe, music was really so far removed from violence.
El seemed to have attempted to choose music above violence, but 'El Mariachi' by definition is the twining of sound and death and a latin beat, caught and tangled and inseparable, and is the stronger for it once El accepts the death and the music together, and re-establishes his loyalty to his land.
The moment an instrument is picked up by him, be it one either of music or death, is the same moment that you sense the rumble of an approaching storm; the guitar contains a gun and, no matter how much he may have wished to preserve the outer mask of music, he could not ignore how violence trails him like fate.
And what is Sands then, separated from his personal theme?His beat is Mexico, but his lyrics are Judy Garland's, are from a culture insistent on its own inherent superiority. His initial theme jars; it clashes, broken edged and holey.
What is missing?
He is Sheldon Jeffery Sands, and what has he left behind, for Mexico?
And does he care, then, of / for Mexico? What does he care of its people, its culture, its clothes, its norms, its language even? He refuses it all, and absolutely refuses to believe that any part of it is worthwhile.
Shoot the cook, because the pork is too good.
Bring the balance, because for America to exist there has to be a Mexico, because idealism gets shredded in Mexico's shantyhills, because someone always has to suffer and why should he suffer alone?
Begin the second stanza,and we see that he has seen too much, and Mexico claims him, and *look*: Sands finds a new song, develops a new Theme, sloughs off his tourist skin and bears the colors of Dia de los Meurtos, all black and pale and red.
Blood mixing with Mexico's dust, coating skin and sockets and bullet holes.
An offering to the land.
Because look: he has a song now. He has a legend.
He is claimed by Mexico,
and bound as surely as El is.
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And, man... is THIS post freaky when you skim it. I'm going ot have to come back and READ this post when I get back from HORSEBACK RIDING today!
Res